It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor: Free Yourself From the Hidden Behaviors Sabotaging Your Career Success - Hardcover

Shambaugh, Rebecca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071493948 ISBN 13: 9780071493949

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2007

Synopsis

Turn the top 7 career breakers for women into career makers

Statistically, more than one-third of Fortune 500 managers are women-and yet we represent barely five percent of the top earners among executives. Usually, we blame it on men-those “old boy” networks that don't typically welcome women into “the club.” But, according to leadership coach Rebecca Shambaugh, the real obstacle to women's advancement is not a “glass ceiling.” It's the self-imposed career blocks that prevent us from moving up.

These are the 7 “sticky floors”:

1. Balancing Your Work and Life

2. Embracing “Good Enough” in Your Work

3. Making the Break

4. Making Your Words Count

5. Forming Your Own Board of Directors

6. Capitalizing on Your Political Savvy

7. Asking for What You Want

Admit it: You've probably been “stuck” in at least one or more of these situations. Maybe you're a perfectionist who has trouble letting go of a task. Maybe you're so loyal to your company that you haven't explored other career options. Maybe you're afraid of speaking up in meetings. Or maybe you're so accommodating to others' needs that you never take care of your own.

This book will show you how to get unstuck from these common traps. You'll discover how other successful women have managed to break out of middle management jobs to grab the top leadership positions. You'll hear hard-won advice from working mothers who also happen to be CEOs, including proven tricks of the trade when it comes to juggling career and family. You'll learn how to conquer your insecurities, transform your thinking, tailor your behavior, and demand the kind of professional recognition you deserve. There's even a section of fill-in charts and checklists at the end of the book to help you stay on track, in control, and on the rise.

Once you've freed yourself from life's sticky floors, there's nowhere to go but up.

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca Shambaugh is the founder, president, and CEO of SHAMBAUGH Leadership, which was recently selected by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the top entrepreneurial companies in the Washington, D.C. area. She began her career as a human relations specialist at General Motors and has worked for several major corporations.

Her Web site is www.shambaughleadership.com.

From the Back Cover

Break Through Your Fears-and Embrace Your Own Power

“Becky Shambaugh has written a wonderful book that should inspire women to believe in themselves and become great leaders in the 21st century. She believes women have to be courageous risk takers to reach their goals and to be self-motivating. She cites many of her own personal examples as the way to go. It's a great guidebook for women to step up the ladder.”-Helen Thomas, member, White House Press Corps., former White House Bureau Chief, UPI

“Insightful and thought provoking! Here is a guide to career and life success that is filled with practical tips to escape the career limiting 'sticky floors.' The effective use of real-world examples from strong leaders makes for a most enjoyable read. And the presentation of actionable items and practical tips sets her book apart from the many books in the market. As a hiring executive and a mentor I believe this is a must read for both businessmen and businesswomen!”-Tom Kendra, group president, Security & Data Management Group (SDMG), Symantec Corporation

“Becky Shambaugh's book, It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor is a valuable new tool to help women unleash themselves from their own preconceived notions and move to new levels of leadership and significance.”-Frances Hesselbein, chairman and founding president, Leader to Leader Institute

Reviews

Forget the old boys' club: women are the ones holding themselves back from top-level career success, advises Shambaugh, president and CEO of consulting firm Shambaugh Leadership. Though more businesswomen are in successful positions of power, they are still lagging behind men at the highest levels: more than a third of Fortune 500 managers and more than half of those with multidisciplinary master's degrees are women, yet women hold only 13% of Fortune 500 CEO positions. This lack of forward motion is due more substantially to women's own career-inhibiting behavior than to cultural impediments, Shambaugh claims. Women are more likely than men to shy away from leadership roles, to get bogged down in perfectionism and to avoid career-boosting changes out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. Through a series of exercises and self-appraisals, Shambaugh guides readers with executive suite aspirations through an evaluation of their own behaviors and skills, gauging which serve their ambitions and which are holding them back. Emphasizing strategic relationships, communication and the elements of executive presence, she writes in an encouraging tone with a refreshing lack of blame, making this a satisfying read for women stuck in middle management limbo. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

IT'S NOT A GLASS CEILING IT'S A STICKY FLOOR

Free Yourself from the Hidden Behaviors Sabotaging Your Career SuccessBy Rebecca Shambaugh

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 Rebecca Shambaugh
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-149394-9

Contents

Chapter One

Know Yourself—Be Yourself

"You must create your own roadmap to your chosen destination based on your values, beliefs, and strengths."

The Beginning ...

Things started out nicely enough. Shortly after graduating from Purdue University in the late 70s, I was offered a job as one of the first female managers on a General Motors production floor. But once I started, it didn't take long (by which I mean mere hours) to realize that I should have considered more carefully the role of gender in the workplace, and should have asked a few more questions during my job interview.

I arrived for my first day of work at 6:30 a.m. full of energy and excitement. I knew nothing about cars, except how to pull into a gas station and fill up my tank. That was not one of the job requirements, however. Instead I was expected to learn the 120 auto parts they used on this assembly line—and I had to succeed in an environment that had sent three previous managers packing in just 10 months.

I knew when I walked into the plant, and everything and everybody stopped, that I was in for a challenge. It was like one of those hushed movie moments. Everyone looked up and stared at me. At first, I wondered what was wrong with my appearance—did I have toilet paper dragging from my shoe or, worse yet, hanging from beneath my skirt? A glance down confirmed nothing was wrong; a glance up confirmed that I was the only woman in a sea of Teamster men.

The production manager waved me off with, "Good luck. See you at six!" By 9 a.m., the shop steward had come by with the first grievance against me. One of my quality control guys said he missed his coffee break because of a defect in one of the parts he caught running off the line. He had not missed a coffee break in 10 years and made it clear he wouldn't miss another one again. Later, after going through the third grievance procedure that morning, someone lit a fire in a garbage can in my department. By the end of the day, I had accumulated a record 25 grievances. Not much else could go wrong, right?

That afternoon, I walked into my first management meeting. Seventeen men in suits looked up. Seventeen mouths dropped open, and seventeen pens fell from their hands. I placed my meticulously prepared reports on the table in front of me, only to hear this: "Becky, you take notes."

That Which Doesn't Kill You ...

This experience was one of the greatest leadership development programs I could ever put myself in. At the tender age of 24, I had to learn how to build a diverse spectrum of relationships, to effectively manage the blue-collar men who were so different from me, and to play the middleman in negotiations between the union and management staff. You can bet my social and emotional intelligence were stretched daily—and I loved it. However, after three years and my fifth promotion, I realized that I had reached a peak at GM. I could have stayed on and advanced to be a head of plant production or even head of headquarters for human resources in Detroit, but in the long term, I didn't want to stay in manufacturing and production.

Fortunately I had a new opportunity presented to me. I was offered a job more aligned with my long-term goals at Amax Inc., a billion-dollar energy company, where I worked for its coal mining division located in Indianapolis. It provided me with broader human resources responsibilities, more opportunities to work with senior executives, and the chance to rotate through jobs that taught me about business activities company-wide. I had a supportive and experienced group of colleagues, mostly men, who served as helpful mentors along the way. I was fortunate to have a boss who was receptive to my ideas and willing to put me in a variety of diverse projects—all leading me to a promotion in my first year.

Then—4 years later, to my great surprise—I got a pink slip. I was shocked and in denial. Despite watching layoffs happen to others, I never thought I would be one of the victims.

How could this happen? Everything had gone so well. Like so many others in this situation, I was struck with self-doubt. I wondered about my abilities and my skills. And the problem was worse than it seemed. It was a bad economy, with a local unemployment rate of 15 percent—and Indianapolis wasn't exactly a booming metropolis in good times. What would I do?

Standing in the unemployment line with 50 folks who had many more years of experience than me, who were looking for the same type of jobs I was seeking, an important realization struck me. Job opportunities in that town were slim, and no one was going to single me out from that long line of talented and credentialed executives to hand me a golden opportunity. I needed to create change for myself and take responsibility for my future. I could use this as an opportunity to pursue my dream job. This was a chance to push out of my comfort zone, take a risk, and take control of my destiny. If I didn't, I would most likely be visiting the unemployment line for some time.

I knew this was what I needed to do to solve my immediate problem of getting a job. But I also had a glimmer of understanding that I was taking an important step toward building a career.

This was the beginning of my appreciation that it's important to have a vision of who you want to be and to continually take small, mindful steps toward that vision.

I began thinking of my job search as a process for self-evaluation and set out to learn about all the different aspects of who I was. What were my strengths, beliefs, fears, and motivations? I decided to pull over for about six months and take a hard look at what I wanted to do, as well as at my key drivers and decide how they would help to determine my next job. I found a book about managing your career and there was an exercise on identifying and living your values that I began to fill out. What was fascinating was that the top five values I had listed—relationships, creating and building new business opportunities, taking risks, continually learning, and helping others—were the very things that had motivated me in my first two jobs.

I then began to reflect back on the conversations I'd had with my father, Max Shambaugh, at the kitchen table when I was a little girl. I was always fascinated by the fact that he had built a third-generation family business into one of the largest construction companies in the country. My father instilled in me an approach to work that I still value today. Specifically, he encouraged me to take risks but to be prudent about it, to build on my strengths and relationships, and to follow through on things I'm passionate about.

I used these things I had discovered about myself to focus and expand my job search. And within six months I had three job offers—two in the Midwest and one on the East Coast. I ended up taking the job in Washington, D.C., as head of human resources for the corporate headquarters of Fairchild Industries.

It was a darn good decision that would set me on the long-term career path I really wanted for myself. I took the position knowing it was a leap of faith to move to a new city in order to accept a job for which I was not totally qualified. But the job at Fairchild had everything I was looking for and I knew that whether or not it worked out, at least I was taking it for the right reasons. When making the decision on whether or not to move, I asked myself what would be the worst thing that could happen and I realized that I had nothing to lose and much to gain. The job that would provide the right stretch and allow me to form a greater level of inner competence and confidence down the road.

By going through that decision-making process to determine my next move, I learned that knowing yourself first and then having the focus, courage, and commitment to take action toward your goals is the key to success, as well as to satisfaction and fulfillment. However, let me emphasize that there is not always a linear path to success, even when you know your goals and have your roadmap charted out. This is why it's so critical to be aware of the person you are—your core values, beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses. You need that self-knowledge to navigate the twists, bumps, and detours you'll no doubt encounter along the way.

Does This Situation Sound Familiar?

Have you had points in your career where you felt perpetually exhausted and burnt out, or where you knew your performance was not at its peak because the fit wasn't quite right, or where you were handed that awful pink slip and felt at a loss about what to do next? Maybe you're there right now. Take comfort in knowing you are not alone. Everyone hits a career cul-de-sac now and then.

The trick to finding your way out is to avoid getting caught up in a sense of crisis (a very sticky floor). Instead, appreciate that you are poised at an opportunity for change. Think about the kinds of changes you would like and consider how you would go about making at least one of them happen.

If you've never done it before, take some time out to go through the kind of self-evaluation and life planning I did. You don't need the six months I could afford to take as a young woman with plump savings and few responsibilities. Even one evening session of intense career planning can get you started. There are resources right in this book to help you, and myriad resources online, in other books, and with people like career coaches if you'd like to go further.

Know Yourself, Be Yourself

So, why all this fuss about knowing and being yourself?

I believe that great leadership is so much about knowing who you are. Successful leaders know their strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, motivations, and intentions.

In short, self-knowledge is the starting point for absolutely everything else; the successes you want and, equally important, the setbacks you're bound to encounter.

I spend a lot of time talking with women who are in a transition, who feel like they have no control of their destiny, or who feel frustrated or ready to give up because they did not win some plum job for which they recently interviewed. I know how frustrating this can be, but at the end of the day, I tell women that the key to coming out ahead in these types of situations is to have a steady, reliable self-image to fall back on. Once you have that grounded and mindful self-awareness, you can channel it into whatever you want to be.

The fundamental questions for all of us are: Who do you want to be and how do you manifest that in your life and work?

There are hundreds of books on this topic in bookstores and probably on your shelf at home or in the office. But, there is more to it than just knowing yourself—there's also being yourself.

Identifying and being yourself is critical for great leaders and a chief reason why they succeed or derail. I believe that the ability to know and be yourself has a direct correlation to your ability to have an impact on things around you and create results that matter to you and your team, customers, organization, family, and community.

Having a critical awareness of your motivations and intentions channels your behaviors in the right direction and ensures that you are always taking the right small steps toward those big-picture goals. Maybe you want that next promotion, or to influence key customers on a proposal, or have a difficult conversation with your boss about why you can't take on that next project. Knowing why you do or don't want to do these things, and where you ultimately want them to get you, will help you to motivate yourself and persevere.

The exercises and liberating solutions I will provide, along with my story and those of other women, will help you to develop this self-knowledge that is fundamental to successful leadership. This book should help you to know yourself, understand your strengths and weaknesses, get clear on your goals, face your greatest fears, and use this new inventory of knowledge to develop a personal action plan.

Along the way you will discern, assess, and perhaps reframe your personal belief system, break free of old patterns that are undermining your success, and learn how to take control of your future.

How Do You Get to Know Yourself?

Leaders who don't have internal self-awareness peak soon after they've gotten the top jobs; or worse, derail their careers before they even get close. Why? When you know who you are and are true to that, your actions and reactions are consistent. As a result, others feel more comfortable approaching you and more willing to place their trust in you, share their views with you, and support your ideas. When you know who you are, you feel and project inner confidence, which enables you to build credibility and identify with others. You are the leader who projects a sense of stability during crisis, change, debate, or conflict. You project a centeredness that others pick up and, in most cases, create this magical focus and alignment for others.

On a personal level, the impact of not knowing yourself is that you might take the wrong job, or make other decisions you'll regret down the road. You might make ill-considered choices that leave you having to repair an important relationship, or that undermine other people's trust in you. Knowing how you want to appear to others and then being that person, versus being someone else, is critical to every leader's credibility, influence, satisfaction, and overall fulfillment.

In the early part of my career, I listened, watched, and got to know people who rose to high levels of leadership and success. I observed that, aside from being competent in their field, they had something else in common. They actually took time out to examine themselves. This allowed them to access their strengths and intentions when important opportunities and challenges presented themselves. They also applied these insights to the daily onslaught of difficult decisions every executive faces. Finally, they knew their weaknesses, and that helped them to understand and manage the assumptions and behavior patterns that could get them into trouble when they were under stress or pressure.

Lydia Thomas, Ph.D., president and CEO of Mitretek, a not-for-profit research center in Falls Church, Virginia, observes, "As a leader, you need to be your own person—you can't pretend." She points out, quite correctly, that no one can act all the time. "People should know what they are getting when they get you and you should be happy about what you are providing to others."

The next chapter will take you through the roadmap for personal discovery that I have incorporated into my own life. Even if you are already familiar with some of these areas of introspection, it is still important to reflect on them from time to time because the one thing constant in life is change, and it's important to revisit our values and goals as the context of our lives change. If they're new to you, they should help you to look at yourself, your day-to-day work, and your career in a more clear-eyed way.

Chapter Two

Taking Action for Knowing and Being Yourself

The Value of Self-Awareness

In the first chapter, I talked about the importance of knowing yourself and the notion that if you don't have that awareness it will be hard for you to know where you might get stuck. So now, I want to build on that concept and talk about the "how" of knowing yourself.

Over the past 16 years, my organization has worked with thousands of leaders from a cross-section of industries, such as financial services, technology, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, biotech, lodging, retail, nonprofit, government, and professional services. We are in the business of helping people learn and develop as great leaders. To do that, SHAMBAUGH starts from the premise that leadership is not just what you do, but also who you are.

SHAMBAUGH's research indicates, over and over again, that the number one factor that distinguishes highly effective leaders is self-awareness. We are seeing that more and more organizations are recognizing the value of self-awareness and are increasing the opportunities and experiences to enhance the self-awareness of their leaders and executives, which can have a positive impact on their level of performance, commitment, focus, and with the alignment between the individual's personal goals and those of the organization.

We use guided self-assessments to have leaders understand who they are and recognize the impact they have on others. Our goal is not to turn them into leaders, but rather to create an environment where they learn to be more aware of their own behaviors/traits and to understand how their intentions and actions can make them either assets or liabilities to themselves and their organization. Once they have that level of awareness, they are equipped to accept account-ability for their behavior and impact, and they have what they need to make leaders of themselves.

Taking Action For Knowing and Being Yourself

Here is an example of someone who learned and applied how to re-frame her self image and belief system. She was a successful physician and saw herself as competently independent. She had all the expertise to work independently and make all the right decisions.

While she was passionate about her profession and the kind of work she did, she worked long hours and had no personal life. She realized she had to make a decision—did she want to stay in the role as a physician and give up her work/life balance or did she want to reshape her role working in an industry where she might actually have a better personal life. She had always believed that she would be a great physician and wondered how she could ever reshape her role into something as different as working as a leader in industry.

When she received a job offer from a major bio tech company, she decided to take on the new challenge of heading up an important area of their research department. She soon realized that what would make her successful in her new job was quite different in her past role as a physician. Soon after she joined the company, she was promoted to a leadership position. She quickly learned that she needed to rely on others to make decisions and to work in a collaborative way. She was responsible for managing a small team of individuals which required her to be on top of their day to day performance, communications, and overall development. This was quite a contrast from being in the operating room and going from one crisis to another.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from IT'S NOT A GLASS CEILING IT'S A STICKY FLOORby Rebecca Shambaugh Copyright © 2008 by Rebecca Shambaugh. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071493948
• ISBN 13: 9780071493949
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240