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Making the Decision

The big question you have to ask yourself in making the decision to dig your heels in or not is this: By leaving your company, are you running away from something or running toward something? Are you jumping ship because you just can’t “deal” any longer, or is the new opportunity something that really excites you and fulfills your career ambitions? If it isn’t, moving on may not be the right decision for you, at least not right now. And let’s be clear: I want to help guide and support you so that you make that decision with higher certainty and confidence.

It is important to consider whether that opportunity on the horizon is really all that it’s cracked up to be. At the very least, you are clear on the status quo in your current organization. What do you know about your new future workplace? What power will you have to eliminate the barriers and inequity you may face there? You’ll be working from the starting line to build up your reputation and operational knowledge—two key factors in creating change—so it’s important to know what you’re lining up for.

Last, what is the opportunity cost of leaving the company in which you have already invested so many years, developed so much institutional knowledge, and built so many key relationships? How far could you get if you decided to dig your heels in instead, using that equity to create a career path that works for you and your ambitions?

For Laura Vang, the opportunity to dig her heels in at IBM Watson Health Life Sciences has accelerated her professional development, which may not have come about otherwise. She is more apt to speak her mind and bring her authentic self to the job. In addition, the act of working on change has developed her capacity and reputation as an authentic leader.

Interestingly, advocating for my tenure at IBM has had a couple of side effects: I feel more tied to the culture and mission of this place because I speak up about it. And I can see the development ramifications: I’ve noticed that this is a leadership skill. There’s an individual contributor positivity that you are the “doer” who can implement change. Separately, there’s a leadership positivity that helps align the employees in the organization to the same mission and beliefs.

Obviously, the decision to stay or go is a very personal one, and there is no one “right” way to make it. Taking a full inventory of your situation, you may say enough is enough. If the job is taking an irreparable toll on your self-esteem, self-worth, happiness, and values, then it is not worth risking a better future elsewhere by hanging around. You’re not being “crazy” or “too emotional.” There is no shame in doing what is best for you. I did.

I was exposed to after-school and community leadership programs as early as elementary school. My mom was a single parent for the first eight years of my life, and it was really important to her as a working mother that I was engaged in activities that would strengthen my confidence and provide me with mentors to encourage my potential. She was also a phenomenal role model for taking risks and relentlessly pursuing developmental opportunities that could open doors and change our lives. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on a stack of telephone books in the copilot seat of a small Cessna airplane while my mom logged miles to earn her private pilot’s license. I was about two years old, and it felt as though I was in a real-life adventure movie. Juliette Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA, told girls in 1912 that they could “be anything they wanted to be,” including an aviator so it’s no surprise between my mother’s influence and my experiences as a Girl Scout, I saw no limitations in the pursuit of my goals. At eighteen years old, between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I pursued and earned my pilot’s license, which served as more than just an accomplishment but as a testament to my self-esteem, a declaration that I was brave enough to fly toward my goals (literally and figuratively).

My personal values around volunteerism and service, coupled with my mom’s influence, continued to be shaped throughout high school and in the bold moves I would later make in my career. These positive influences in my life were most critical during college and the launch of my career as I transitioned from volunteer to board member and from intern to founder, where I had the opportunity to be a role model to young women struggling to find their voice and navigate the tripwires of the corporate world.

The last corporate role I held before launching my business was in the global training and development department. For me, this is where the light bulb turned on, illuminating the possibilities of having greater, scalable impact on the topics that inspired me the most and those I thought most lacking in the workplace. The strength of my external network exposed me to the reality that many women and younger employees were struggling to advance to their potential and that they lacked access to growth and development sponsored by their companies. I was also learning how desperately women need an external confidante to discuss professional issues. We need someone to give us that outsider context and to confide in, someone who can cheer us on and get us fired up—that is what I wanted to be at a larger scale for more women. The energy building up inside me over time through my academic, community, work, and life experiences propelled my decision to run toward a bigger dream: to inspire women and early-career professionals to go after their dreams.

When I shared with my direct boss all the efforts I was leading outside the company to support and encourage millennials and women in the workplace, I was told I needed to stop talking about all that stuff and focus on the work in front of me. My boss was basically telling me to stop talking about my career goals, and that’s when the timer started ticking—enough was enough—and I had to go after my big idea.

If like me you have a bigger dream you’re running toward that requires you to leave your company, go for it! Or if your current experience is robbing you of your ability to do your best work and thrive, and your chances of creating change are nil, by all means, do what you need to do for the sake of your well-being.

If you decide to speak up about harassment or discrimination you are facing in your workplace, I want to emphasize how important it is for you to understand your rights and the processes in your company for handling these issues. This is not my area of expertise, but in my experience, people are not often as knowledgeable about these specifics in their company policies and are discouraged from speaking up by hearsay from colleagues about similar situations that may resemble their own.

Please review your company’s employee guidelines to be clear on the process for reporting issues and the protocol for retaliation. You want to be very familiar with your organization’s philosophy and values along with the procedures and policies in place to protect you and your well-being as an employee. Know your rights. Know whom you should be speaking to and how things should be handled.

Navigating Your DYHI Decision

This section provides hands on guidance to support your process for making decisions that can change the trajectory of your life and career. It is not to be taken lightly, which is why I provide you with a diagnostic exercise and a set of reflection questions to urge you to make the time to really prioritize this decision process and think it through to your fullest capacity.

Diagnosing Your Company Culture

When making the decision to dig your heels in (or not), you have to figure out what you’re working with. You must diagnose the culture of your company. Culture is made up of the visible and invisible patterns that people follow to communicate, think, and act, which are typically a rear-view mirror reflecting the leadership’s preferred behaviors, values, and actions. In many global companies, you may experience a different culture as you move around and interact with different leaders and teams, but there is always a core culture that stems from the central values and mission of the company. Diagnosing your company culture can give you a clear perspective on your company’s current and future ability to empower women in an equitable, inclusive environment.

Three Ways to Diagnose Your Company Culture

1. Dive deeper into behavior. Reflect on how you and the others involved behaved in situations that made you want to walk out. Think about the people and their vested interests. Is everyone individually coming from a place of authenticity, compassion, and fair intentions?

2. Explore how people win. Observe how people gain support and recognition, and think about any potential patterns that are rewarded in your company. Do these appear supportive or damaging for women?

3. Determine how decisions are made. Watch closely for when, where, and how decisions are made. Look for trends around where people go to get work done and how meeting times and spaces are used.

The hardest aspects of assessing company culture are understanding how power is distributed (point 2) and how the organization operates (point 3). The hierarchy of decision-making, the career-path structure (rigid or fluid), the distribution of resources (budget, people, and attention), and the company’s industry reputation and relevance are factors that can contribute to your diagnosis.

DYHI Reflection Questions

Now that you have taken a deeper dive into your company’s culture, you are ready to consider the other important factors in making the decision to dig your heels in. To that end, I have created a DYHI assessment. Disclaimer: This is not an easy checklist that enables me to make the decision for you. There is no ultimate score that makes it obvious what your next step needs to be. That would be in poor judgment on my end, as I don’t know all the intimate details of your career and experience at your current employer. But what I have learned is how much we struggle with these decisions in our own head without any guidance and focus on what factors to consider. So the reflection questions shown in the following are intended to support you in gathering all the right data to make your decision, but the choice is ultimately up to you. I want you to own your power in every situation, including this huge decision that will impact on your life, career, and future.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

These questions are intentionally worded to give you time to pause and reflect on the range of factors that weigh on this decision. Thinking holistically about the total work experience and environment will help you determine where you have made progress and where you’ve experienced barriers. Think about each in terms of the outcomes but also as a test of how much energy you’ve invested in the areas where you have come up against challenges. Challenge yourself to think of both positive and negative outcomes resulting from the areas these questions explore, such as relationships, growth experiences, engagement, and advancement. Have you engaged all of your allies, the people you trust and those who share your values, in your vision of what the company could be and could do to better serve and support women? Can you rally the energy to push further and demand more in any of the following categories: growth and development, business impact, career advancement, industry involvement?

Wake-Up Calls

Every woman has wake-up-call moments when she decides to make a huge shift in her life, whether it is to dig her heels in and fight for change in her workplace or find a new opportunity that is more deserving of her talents. This section focuses on those critical moments that prompt women to consider walking out. If they do choose to leave, the exercises in the previous chapter are intended to empower them in the decision process so they are not haunted with the regret of lost opportunities for years to come. And if they stay, the stories that follow and throughout the book can fuel their confidence and commitment to their decision.

A wake-up call can strike like lightning; it’s experienced quickly, in a fleeting moment in time. After an event or a piece of news, something just clicks in our minds, and suddenly we feel a strong sense of clarity around a decision or situation that may have caused us difficulty or challenged our progress for some time.

Remember Diane, associate dean at Tufts University and former professor at the United States Military Academy? Here’s the story of Diane’s wake-up call, which she leveraged to dig her heels in while in the army.

Before Diane went to the 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for her second assignment she had felt very competent and very confident in her expertise. But now she was faced with a different culture and a different environment, and although her technical skills had some degree of relevance, this job was very different. She told me she affectionately used to call the 82nd division “the he-man women-hater capital of the universe,” and her arrival signaled quite a culture shock from her previous assignment in Europe.

This is where special forces and the most elite troops reside. It is one of the most testosterone-laden places in the world. They are highly confident as a result of a very exclusive mission.

Although her assignment ended up being an amazing experience, at first Diane was intimidated and felt out of her depth. When she showed up on the first day she realized she was one of only two women out of about a hundred people who worked in her building. At that point, women comprised only 2 percent of the entire 82nd. Diane worked in an office called “the fish-bowl” because it was in an old, converted officers club where the backside was all glass; her office was next to one of the big floor-to-ceiling windows. Anybody else looking up from the windows across the courtyard could see Diane sitting there prominently in the middle of the organization.

For my first few years in the army, it didn’t occur to me that I was worth less than others simply because of my gender. It wasn’t until my second assignment where it became evident that women were getting a raw deal. Your second assignment as an army officer is probably the most important one. It’s going to basically determine your career trajectory, where you’ll go, and the types of future opportunities open to you. It’s the time when officers get selected for company command. You’re basically auditioning the entire time.

This is where it became very clear to me that I was going to be perceived as a woman first, and as a soldier second, and that everything I did was representative of my entire gender. I felt this tremendous burden that if I didn’t do a good job it would reflect on many more than just me.

I thought it was so important for me to establish myself in knowing all the ins and outs and the minute details of the job that I undervalued the relationships. I failed in establishing those up front and figuring out how I connect with key influencers that would help me make up for the fact that I didn’t have a lot of expertise for the particular tasks that I was responsible for.

One day Diane came into work and no one was there. The entire office was a ghost town. She had been really focused on a big project and was working independently, just sending her boss updates from time to time. When she showed up on that fateful day, everyone had departed on a major field exercise for two weeks. She hadn’t been included in the planning and wasn’t even on the periphery. She had no details at all.

I just came into work and everybody was gone. Everyone. My boss was gone. Our senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) was gone. My peer in the office was gone. All the other NCOs were gone. I was the stay-back person. The phone rang and it was my boss’s boss who was also my senior rater.

When it is time for the annual performance review, the senior rater’s opinion is the only one that matters. Your boss has to be the person who’s lobbying for you, advocating for you, and making sure your senior rater knows what your contribution is, Diane told me.

Diane’s senior rater told her that there was a big crisis and listed six people in her office he wanted to help with it. He went down to every level stopping just short of the secretary. Diane let him know that everyone was gone to the exercise and she was only person available but ready to help. He paused for a moment then said, “Huh. I guess they took all the heavy hitters, didn’t they?”

This was Diane’s second interaction with the person who in six months was going to determine her fate and she realized that he did not find her to be a value add.

I was second class or the JV squad, clearly. That was a huge wake-up call to me.

It became very clear to Diane that she needed to engage with her boss when he returned to explain what happened. When she did, he told her she was too focused on her other project and needed to be branching out to establish herself and have a seat at the table. She asked her boss for help with this and to be more involved in other higher-visibility projects. She asked to be kept in the loop of key meetings and to at least be aware of what was going on. Not only did that help her work on those relationships but also it helped her to realize a huge career truth: when you’re going through transitions, you need to focus on who can help you fill in the gaps as opposed to just putting your head down and trying to learn everything yourself.

Leveraging Your Wake-Up Call

Wake-up calls or epiphanies—and whether and how we learn from them—have been studied by psychologists at Ohio State University. They created a game and then monitored external behaviors such as pupil dilation as their subjects started to play against their opponents. Some of the players based their strategy on reading their opponents and guessing their next moves; others based theirs on reacting quickly to new information that appeared on their computer screens during the game. The psychologists found that the players who were focused on reading their opponents showed little physiological change during the game; by contrast, the players who reacted to information change had significant pupil dilation (which indicated epiphany moments) as the information registered on their screens and triggered their next action; the dilation disappeared after they had committed to their next move. Ian Krajbich, a coauthor of the study and assistant professor of psychology and economics, concluded that it is better to think carefully about how to solve a problem than to spend time paying attention to what opponents or competitors are doing.¹

Here’s my takeaway: We derive value from an epiphany or wake-up call by looking within. We can use our wake-up calls to make the right decisions for our lives if we are aware of our true feelings and instincts around the situations in which they arise.

Three Steps to Leveraging Epiphany Learning as a Compass for Your Career

Step 1: Avoid any knee-jerk decisions and slow down to allow yourself the time to evaluate the situation. (Me to you: “Did that just happen?!”)

Step 2: Acknowledge that the wake-up call or epiphany struck a nerve and therefore deserves your attention and is not something to sweep aside (Me to you: “You are not crazy.”)

Step 3: Reflect on the factors surrounding the wake-up call or epiphany to determine your best next move. (Me to you: “You’ve got this; your next move matters most.”)

My Wake-Up Call

After a series of disappointing exchanges with one of my senior leaders back in the days of my corporate career, I was ready to walk right out the door forever . . . but instead I hit the pause button. I took a step back to acknowledge that something wasn’t right for me and that this was a feeling that I could no longer ignore. I took inventory of several occasions when I had felt the same pit in my stomach and heaviness on my heart. But I also wanted to make a smart decision, as it would have a huge impact on my career and life. I couldn’t quite pinpoint whether it was the culture, the leadership, or the systems that frustrated me most when I thought about my future in that organization. By allowing myself some time to evaluate and reflect on the situation, I realized that I had experienced the compounding impact of several different occasions leading up to this most recent wake-up call.

Two months earlier, I had been asked to develop and facilitate a two-day training program on cystic fibrosis, a disease state that had actually killed two members of my family before they both turned thirty-five years old. Had I been tapped intentionally as an opportunity to invite my personal experiences into the learnings and help the company leverage my insights to better serve patients and our colleagues who would be working on a drug to treat it? Nope, it was purely a coincidence; but, nonetheless, I still approached senior leaders suggesting that, during the training sessions, we open up the dialogue to include the journey of families who had also encountered this disease and share its impact. Regrettably, I was told to stick to the “science” and not involve my experience. This was all about “execution, not inspiration.”

Have you ever felt a really strong disconnect between your personal experiences and how it was leveraged to influence the work or services of your company? I certainly felt that because of my own family’s struggles and lack of resources and knowledge, I could add much more to our efforts to be what our patients and their families needed.

There was also the time I had been made to feel guilty for not wanting to attend a leadership meeting scheduled to take place in Florida the week prior to a critical product launch in New York. This launch was an enormous undertaking and the highest priority, yet I convinced myself that this all-male team must really value my perspective to make such a big deal about my attendance. I can still hear my internal little-girl voice: “They need me!” So I booked my flight and headed south, full of ideas and the data to support them, only to realize within the first half hour what my true role was meant to be.

Phew, Joan made it. Can you flip-chart and record the takeaways from the sessions?

Literally, and with straight faces, this had been their expectation for me, despite the fact that I was the third most senior person in the room. My boss actually followed me out and indirectly apologized for the situation while offering to discuss my career interests upon our return to New York.

I let that dangling carrot distract me from my frustration at the time and was only reminded of it during a conversation with Neela Montgomery, CEO of Crate and Barrel, whom I recently interviewed for ForbesWomen. Neela shared the moment when she made the decision to dig her heels in.

When I was twenty-seven years old, I presented at my first board of directors meeting for my organization. I was extremely prepared and optimistic, but the experience was horrible. They weren’t constructive, to say it mildly. And I literally walked out of the room full of men and said, “I am done. I will never be spoken to like that again. I don’t aspire to be like anyone in that room.”

The CEO came out of the room and apologized. He said to me, “If you just stay angry or leave in frustration, it won’t make the difference. Your job is to change this and one day be in that room. You can choose to stay and fight for change from the inside.”

No judgment either way, but I was motivated to ensure that none of the women to follow me would ever feel the way I had and be treated in that manner. Ten years later, I became a board member and full circle prioritized my mission to ensure the experience for women at that company was incredibly different.

With her eyes wide open to the critical need to be an advocate for equality and inclusion at the most senior levels, Neela continues to be a trailblazing leader for women in her organization and industry.

Think about the worst thing to happen when you take a risk: You might fail, and you might fail visibly. It’s easier to take a risk when you realize that what you do is not who you are. The more successful you are, the more risk you have. It’s important to encourage each other when you think you’re playing it safe and lean into your network to push you. A former boss said to me that leadership is what other people need from you, not what you need from them. That’s the difference between management and leadership: use your energy to give to others what they need, as it’s the only way you can succeed as a leader.

At my crossroad, I also reflected on a story that was not just my own but had impacted on me equally as much. Britt was a highly gifted communicator, invaluable team player, and all-around high-potential creative contributor on my team. Despite two bouts with cancer, she had completed her MBA at night (unsponsored by our employer) and was way overdue for a title promotion. Britt and I had met on a number of occasions to discuss the impact of her work so that I could write a six-page document detailing examples of her stellar performance. As I reflected on the email trails and on the numerous meetings I had hustled to schedule with anyone who could remotely influence or control the process, I realized that this grueling effort had panned out. Finally. After eight months. Britt had patiently waited for an update, all the while continuing to execute all of her goals and work her responsibilities beyond expectations. The topper for me was that even though she had been granted a promotion in title, the company had decided it didn’t justify any bump in her pay. Britt had been pleased to finally have her title match her talent, but it hadn’t been enough for me. I knew that she deserved more, but I felt helpless without any control or capacity to give it to her.

This was the epiphany moment that inspired Britt and me to launch a Lean In Circle, a small group of women who meet monthly to share their ambitions and support each other.² We invited women at our peer level and those at earlier career stages across diverse industries. At the time, I was seven months pregnant with my first daughter. The preparation in advance and experience of coming together monthly were encouraging, enlightening, and even emotional. We covered such topics as negotiation, work-life balance, managing gender bias, and leadership. I’ll never forget the first meeting held a couple months after my daughter was born and the stories we all chose to share beyond motherhood but related to life transitions that impact on careers. Being a part of a tribe of women supported by the incredible resources from the Lean In organization gave me career confidence and enhanced my clarity about the big bold changes I wanted to lead for more women.

Clearing Some Headspace for Positive Self-Talk

I know the world has told you that your flighty and emotional reactions make you a risky bet when it comes to promotion, advancement, and increased authority. Yet there is no significant evidence to imply that women make their decisions based on some inexplicable feeling or inner hunch. In thirty-two studies that looked at how men and women thought through a problem or decision, twelve of the studies found that women were more analytical than men.³ Clearly we can be confident about our ability to use our natural judgment and critical thinking skills. This research found that women systematically turned to the data, whereas men were more inclined to go with their gut, hunches, or intuitive reactions. The other twenty studies found no difference between men and women’s thinking styles.⁴

A marked strength that women bring to decision-making is their analytical perseverance and shrewdness, which may often start with a wake-up call and be followed up with careful research. This knowledge should give you some breathing room to understand that you are just as data driven and analytical as a man, if not more so. I hope that this awareness gives you confidence in your ability to control the outcome you want.

Don’t dismiss your own voice when you have a wake-up call. If you find yourself in one of those moments when you feel as though you’ve reached your limit, trust your ability to decide what is truly best for you. Embrace the lesson rising within you and know that it is important, albeit uncomfortable, right now.