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

spire to convince some girls that perfect is what they need to be—
it’s the thing that gets reliable results.
If you doubt that this perfectionist behavior could be reinforced
simply by your being a girl, think back. Who doesn’t remember
checking to be sure their makeup was just right every time they
walked out the door?
So, it’s no wonder that the need for acceptance and recognition
at work plays out in some women as striving for perfection. These
high-achievers strive into the wee hours of the night to get that Pow-
erPoint presentation just right or rerun the numbers in a report ad
nauseam because they’re still trying to get to the head of the class.

A Case Study of Perfectionism and Mistaken

Perceptions

One of our Fortune 500 clients provides a great example of how the
perfectionism issue can play out for talented managers.
The CEO hired us to address several concerns that had come to his
attention about the company’s pool of women leaders. The company
was losing talent. Highly valued women across the company were leav-
ing. Additionally, the company seemed unable to promote women to
higher levels of leadership at the desired rate. And then the women
leaders with the most potential did not want the promotion opportu-
nities offered to them.
My team began to work with this organization and their top 150
women. We conducted a number of focus groups and extensive inter-
views. We found that there were organizational impediments and
assumptions that contributed to the concerns regarding the retention
and promotion rates, but we also found that the women had a lot of
self-imposed assumptions, traits, and behaviors that were clearly
impacting their ability to stay at the company, win promotion offers,
and take them.