Page 55 - Free Yourself From

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

you? How do these answers compare to what you would
want the answers to be?

All of the areas you explored in this chapter make up you as a
“whole” leader. Great leadership means believing, being, and living
out your role in an integrated way. It is about blending your beliefs,
values, professional goals and desires, and all the other dimensions
that make up work and life. It is not easy and many of us are lead-
ing in a very stressful and fast-paced environment. John Donahue,
president of eBay Market Places and former worldwide managing
director of Bain, stressed that it is important to maintain a sense of
self no matter where you are. He warned, “The world can shape you
if you let it. To have a sense of yourself as you live, you must make
conscious choices. Sometimes the choices are really hard, but you
make the right one in the end.”
There’s a saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any
road will get you there.” To not have a vision is to not know where
you’re going. You can meander, or worse, you can wind up letting
someone else navigate your career according to their terms rather
than your vision.
Don’t wait for someone else to set a destiny for you. Life is too
precious. And you have too much to give to waste it on an agenda
that might not be in your best interests or fulfill your desires or be
aligned with your values.

On to the Sticky Floors

This soul-searching is a great and essential warm-up exercise. Now
that you’ve got the muscles that deal with introspection, assessment,
and self-improvement in gear, you’re ready to move ahead to the main
part of the book, the sticky floors. Plunge ahead, or if you have a par-
ticular issue that needs dealing with, turn to page 46 for a guide to