Glass walls can be just as damaging and soul-destroying as glass ceilings.
For me, glass walls are the things that stop us from growing in the role or situation we’re already in. When you start in a new role, you aren’t immediately ready for promotion. First you have to grow, develop new skills and behaviours, and master your craft in the role you’re in. But often, these glass walls get in the way, and we can end up feeling trapped or stuck. But are these glass walls built by others or do we build them ourselves?
I like to think that we mainly build them ourselves. We don’t speak up or say we don’t understand because we lack the confidence to do so. So we stay silent, we fear the judgement behind the classic eye roll of contempt from our colleagues and our questions remain answered. We use the ‘I’m too busy’ excuse to put time aside to learn something new. And so time goes by and we don’t learn something new, we don’t invest in ourselves. We may use the ‘I haven’t got time to teach that person how to do their job’ excuse so we never share our knowledge and reinforce to ourselves what we know, and we don’t develop empathy and generosity that are important characteristics of leadership roles. We don’t share our new ideas because we fear rejection, and so we don’t learn how to debate or critique in a healthy way. Those glass walls we’ve built around ourselves start to create a pretty small, dark, stifling space.
The problem with glass walls is that they aren’t always that noticeable. Sometimes our habits of holding ourselves back can be really subtle, built up over years, it feels normal. So we stay there. Even the walls built by others can be subtle, and so we just accept them.
Once you do become aware of them, then what? Well, that depends on you and if you recognise the choices you have despite the walls. Putting up with the status quo is one choice. That’s okay if it’s a conscious choice that serves you. Just remember you also need to accept the consequences of doing nothing.
Smashing the walls down is another choice. How might ‘smashing down’ look, because it doesn’t need to be as violent as it sounds! It could mean finally facing the reality of where you are, how much power you have in the situation (which is loads!) and really owning that power, getting curious about what you can learn, how you can do it, not waiting for permission, and then just bloody doing it! Action is needed to get out of your glass box! Action! Give yourself permission to break out. Liberate yourself! Once you’ve learned everything you can learn, stepped into your power, and taken control of who and where you want to be in your career and smashed those walls, then smashing through those glass ceilings will be an absolute piece…of…cake.
What glass walls have you built around you? What are you going to do about it?
