Page 147 - Free Yourself From

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

the meeting in another direction, using an idea that someone had
thrown on the table impromptu. Sarah was in effect downshifted from
meeting leader to meeting participant and she made the situation worse
by personalizing it, becoming quiet, and showing her frustration.

What Went Wrong?

Let’s take a look at how Sarah veered off course.
Unfortunately, Sarah had no idea that there was a predetermined
political agenda for her meeting that had nothing to do with her
plans. Why didn’t this come up on her radar? She was an authority
in her department and had a group of female colleagues she hung
out with, but she hadn’t made herself part of an informal network of
the key stakeholders. So she didn’t know that some of the company’s
key players had been talking for weeks about different products, and
those informal conversations unofficially set the meeting agenda.
Since she wasn’t in on those conversations, she had no opportunity
to informally let people know about her plans and to build support
for them. So she walked into the meeting ill-informed and with no
one in her corner.
But to make matters worse, Sarah also lacked the right presence.
She should have taken back control of the meeting. Her proposal was
supposed to be the basis for the majority of the meeting. But she
failed to read the room. Sarah was so engaged in making her points
that she failed to look around the table, read the faces of the key
players, and observe the direction they wanted to take. Hence, she
lost her bearings and her ideas crashed—without regard for how
good or bad they might have been.
This is just one example of that old adage: Success is less about
what you know and more about having the ability to connect with
people. It’s all about socializing your ideas, getting people to coop-
erate with you, and building bridges to meet others halfway.