Page 115 - Free Yourself From

98 It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor

Yes, They Can Get Along Without You

Sharon Allen, chairman of Deloitte & Touche USA, says that many
women stay put for too long because they feel guilty about leaving.
They feel they are abandoning those they have worked with for so long.
Sharon points out that this might come from the knowledge that
they’ve routinely helped their boss look good, or they’ve mentored
or coached someone on their team and feel responsible for their con-
tinued success. Sometimes they’ve progressed quickly enough to pass
others by and are concerned about hard feelings.
“The reality,” Sharon says, “is that once you move on, people will
thrive and grow more than you could have possibly imagined. By leav-
ing, you are creating a need that will have to be filled, but that gen-
erates opportunities for others to step up and grow.” Sharon recalls
a boss who mentored her well and eventually stepped out of his job
as managing partner, allowing her to fill his shoes. “He let me in and
he moved on,” she says. If he’d felt guilty about abandoning her, he
would have in effect put a cap on her opportunities at the firm.
It’s true that no one is indispensable. So take care of your career,
make the moves that you know you need to make to get yourself to
the executive suite, and trust that everything will take care of itself.
It’s also true that for anyone to grow and advance in a career,
they have to be willing to be uncomfortable from time to time. It’s
pivotal for women to understand that breaking their own glass ceil-
ing will sometimes require them to take calculated risks and step out
of their comfort zone. Finding yourself in this situation is not a sign
of incompetence—quite the contrary. It’s a sign that you’re going in
the right direction.
I encourage you to look for opportunities to leverage what you can
do into something bigger, or at least broader. Trust that the right peo-
ple will look up to you if you take control of your career and make the
moves that you know you need to get yourself closer to the executive
suite. And trust that everyone else will take care of themselves.