Developing skills and insight to achieve more than one thought possible was once the domain held exclusively for star performers and in many cases, in the not too distant past, those plucked for that trajectory were exclusively white males.  In my younger days, girls did not have the same opportunity to play team sports as males did.  Instead of being on the field of play, girls were only given the opportunity to cheer the team to victory from the sidelines.  This focus on gender variables is not to ignore the injustices of race in our lifetime (a subject for another day).  Those were simpler times when our professional and social identity had certain expectations – especially in Southern cultures.

Has gender bias disappeared?  In many cases, with the encouragement of changes in the laws like Title IX, gender discrimination became risky business.  We owe a real debt of gratitude to the female trail blazers.  Pioneers take all the arrows and we stand on the shoulders of those giants.  My mother was a professional trail blazer; a woman ahead of her time.  Courage could have been her middle name.  She made me a believer by her example.

If you aren’t convinced that we girls are the instigators of our own career-limiting habits rather than having them thrust upon us, it may surprise you how big a shift there has been in who holds the wealth these days.  In 1970, only 4 percent of household’s wives’ incomes exceeded that of their husbands.  By 2007, that figure had grown to 22 percent.  It is likely within the current economic climate that rise has grown even more substantial.  Currently, close to 50 percent of all top wealth holders are women.  We earned it.  We wanted a level playing field and it appears we have got it – now, if we can just stay out of our own way.  Overall, $20 trillion in investments are controlled by women – an increase of over 16 percent in one year. More than 9 percent of the world’s billionaires are women!  How’s that for progress?

The emerging workforce can’t identify anymore with how hard it was to crack that glass ceiling but, in a way that’s a good thing.  However, for all we have heard about intergenerational differences in the workplace, the workforce still relies on many of us ‘ole gals and we unfortunately still struggle too often with our ingrained career-limiting habits holding us back.  Guys have career-limiting habits too, but they manifest much differently.  I’ve been in the workforce since 1969.  Like many of you, I have experienced biases of all stripes.  I worked over a decade in a totally male-dominated environment and now over a decade in a female-dominated environment.  In my opinion, neither has the answer to the Holy Grail.  An environment of mutual respect, where we all believe that what we are trying to achieve is worthwhile, is the key to success.  One gender is not better than the other – just different.

But for now, just between us girls, it’s time we put on our big girl panties and leave a positive legacy of good example for those who shall follow us (male and female).  Here are a few career-limiting (and sometimes career-ending) habits of women that I’ve experienced along the way.  I’d like for us to bury these somewhere under a rock never to resurrect again:

·         We take things too personally (the single biggest career limiting habit that holds us back)

·         We worry too much about whether someone “likes us” or not

·         We withhold information valuable to the group if someone hurts our feelings or fails to acknowledge what we bring to the table

Fear and self-doubt can thrive in our heads:

·         We assign bad motive to a person just because they disagree with us

·         We sometimes allow process to override results driven implementation

·         We allow our emotions to overpower our intelligence

·         We fall for the passive-aggressor’s sucker punch (been there/done that)

·         We spend far too much time letting negative self-talk dominate the thoughts in our heads