glass ceil·ing

noun

1. an unofficially acknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession, especially affecting women and members of minorities.

I remember my mom’s glass ceiling pin. In 1991. Back when career women wore brooches.

It was white lady art, honestly, not very attractive. I think my grandmother bought it for her –my mom was kicking corporate ass at that point and dealing with all sorts of crazy (the CEO’s wife offered sympathetically to “take her shopping” i.e. you dress like a working class girl pull it together honey).

We were all proud of her. Anyway that’s how I learned about the concept –that there is a firm but invisible barrier preventing women, working class people and people of color from attaining the highest roles in any private company.

My parents, meanwhile, tacitly encouraged me to head towards the non profit industry –which turned out to be meh and riddled with barriers to advancement.

I left that world and launched what would become six years of women’s circles throughout Seattle. Focused on women entering their 30s I led gatherings for those who wanted to regroup, heal and strategize for their advancement.

I began to see that there was more than one glass ceiling.

Here’s an expert from my upcoming book, from the time of those circles, as I began to articulate ‘the first glass ceiling’:

“…the first glass ceiling is about being seen as young and/or attractive, to the point where your leadership is irrelevant. If you’re a woman in your late twenties, early thirties you’ll often see an unpaid increase in responsibilities at work because your leadership is coming on strong. You can feel that your full adult capacity to lead and execute are on fire, you’re twice as effective as you used to be and you are ready to be given more complex and high achieving projects. To be promoted. You just naturally take on more work because it’s a good fit. And you would be promoted, if you were a guy. The rewards for being attractive and social have been high since you were quite young and now they are biting you in the ass, it now counts against you. Your presence, which brought such joy to the office is not promotable, sorry. If you want a promotion you’ll have to fight long and hard in attempt to overcome the psychological barriers that senior managers have against bringing you into the leadership fold.”

Continuing forward, my life coach clients who took the career hit of having a child (bad move in the US) or aging over 50 (bad move again) will tell you about being sidelined, underestimated, and being discounted.

I was recently approached after a leadership development event by a woman over 50 who announced “this is the first year I was removed from the ‘high potential’ list where I work, no bonus. They are putting me out to pasture and I’m not having it!” she announced. “I’m going to hire you as my life coach.” I nodded and mentally opened a case file for her: respected and credentialed, a successful career at a brand name corporation, executive presence, this high value candidate had made the mistake of aging. There was nothing ‘low potential’ about her. Women who age over 50 experience the glass ceiling of ageism which is designed around them becoming invisible. She was being erased. “Let’s get you in my office” I replied.

You have to muster real strategy and stamina to re-enter the fray and push against the invisible barriers that you discover are standing between you and your advancement.

Advancement was not originally designed to be accessible to women, people of color, transgender people, working class people, people who are aging, people with children. Females in male dominated fields such as women in tech or women who have moved up a rung or two on the corporate ladder often hit the ceiling. You were not originally intended to run the show, in case you missed that memo.

At certain points in your career the sting you feel is the hard smack of the glass you just walked into. You can see the people on the other side. They seem to be doing well.

With every barrier, fewer and fewer people make it to the other side. By design.

The mistake at any barrier would be to blame yourself.

We are each primed to see our own flaws and wonder if our personal flaws are actually what’s getting in our way. I assure you, its not a personal flaw. The people for whom the barriers don’t apply have flaws too.

Those glass ceilings are structural, baked into the design of the building.

You just hit them because you are growing and are ready to step up your game.

Game on.