Sticky floor stops women from climbing corporate ladder
Amy Joyce

What if, instead of a glass ceiling, it’s a sticky floor that holds down women in the corporate world? That’s the thinking of Rebecca Shambaugh.

Society has changed; the workforce has changed. But women still rely on old-school skills and leadership qualities to try to get ahead and into executive positions, says Shambaugh, president and chief executive of Shambaugh Leadership, a consulting firm. Women still practice unconscious behaviors that keep them in middle management rather than the executive suite. It’s high time they figure out what they have to do to let themselves thrive at work.

Women are well poised to rule the world, Shambaugh says (well, not in so many words). Baby boomers are retiring. Companies are eyeing the people next in line.

And women are making some strides: Women held 14.7 percent of all Fortune 500 board seats, up from 13.6 percent in 2003 and 9.6 percent in 1995, according to a 2005 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors of the Fortune 500.

Of course, if things keep going at that rate, Catalyst points out, it would take 70 years for women to equal the number of men on the boards.

But Shambaugh argues that 50 percent or more of the things holding women back are behavioral traits and "assumptions about themselves." And once they figure out what they are doing to hold themselves back, maybe then there will be more female executives and board members.

Lori Behrens is the senior director of marketing, planning and analysis. About a year ago, she began to attend coaching sessions with Shambaugh’s company. Behrens felt she had always been able to advance in her career and get the opportunities she wanted.

But lately she didn’t have time to even think about what opportunities she wanted next. "I wanted to step back and figure out what I was working toward and what I wanted to focus on," she said.

A major crystallizing moment: At one session, she was asked to take out her calendar and look at it. More than once a week, she was double-or even triple-booked. Her schedule on most days included meetings from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. How could anyone have a moment to figure out how to do things better for her own department with a day like that?

She was told by a coach at Shambaugh, "You have complete control of your calendar." In other words, it’s OK to say no. Or to delegate. A light bulb went on.

It’s hard to grow into a more senior position if you don’t have a minute to make new contacts, change things or think, she realised.

"It’s a hard transition to move into more delegating and seeing a bigger picture," Shambaugh says. As for Behrens, as with so many others, it was important to "set boundaries and expectations. And learning that the details, someone else can do."

Behrens now hands off some of those meetings to her employees, freeing herself while helping them to grow and gain new experiences. She also now simply skips some meetings.

With all that extra time, she purposefully carves out blocks to build relationships in other departments and integrate work between departments.

And with that, she recently formed a sort of partnership between her team and an e-commerce team to test online marketing strategies. In the past, each department would have worked on a similar project, but separately.

"We weren’t sharing with each other what we were doing," Behrens says. "Now we’re making sure we’re getting insights from each other."