32

HAPPILY EVER AFTER AT THE TOP

You are still shaking as you step onto the elevator. You have just come from “the meeting” with the VP of your department, Mitchell Browne, where you pitched to him the idea of you running the new department that is forming.

Although you were tempted to throw your manager Paul under the bus, a couple of informal mentors that you have built relationships with told you that this would only make you look unprofessional and untrustworthy, and that you should focus instead on your own ideas and strengths. Since the full plan hadn’t been rolled out yet, you went in to the meeting with Mitchell and presented the work you had done over the past several months to outline the strategy for combining departments and building an end-to-end solution, as though your manager hadn’t already pitched it to him. You also directly told him that you would like to step into a larger leadership role to drive the execution of this strategy.

Mitchell seemed impressed with the details you had worked through, and you felt that you presented your case well, after rehearsing it numerous times in front of the bathroom mirror, but he said that he would need to think about where you could contribute since your manager was already on point to run this.

You barely sleep the night after that conversation, running all of the details of what you said and scenarios of what could happen through your spinning mind. It turns out that losing sleep that night was fruitless because it takes two weeks for your VP to get back to you. By then, you’ve already assumed the worst, grieved, and arrived at a steady state of disappointment.

Despite the mental games you have played with yourself, the news is remarkably good! Although Mitchell doesn’t decide to circumvent Paul and put you in charge of the project, he was impressed with your strategic thinking and your initiative, and he asks if you would like to apply for a new director role that is opening up under him, running customer acquisition strategy.

You interview for that role and get the offer. Since you were woefully unaware of how to negotiate your salary in past job offers, like 68 percent of women in the US, you take a stab at negotiating this time around.¹ Your tactics are successful, and you land yourself a 15 percent raise as part of this promotion.

You stumble a few times, but overall prove yourself to be a valuable leader in this new role. A year later, when enough other employees do throw Paul under the bus for taking their ideas, not giving them credit, and generally being an unsupportive manager, he ends up exiting the company to pursue other opportunities. You are the clear choice to backfill his role, and you move to become the senior director of the organization that you originally thought up.

You have several more successful years at the bank and then take a job offer as VP of marketing for a media outlet. As you rise further in your career, you find that you have more time to give back—you start mentoring young women in their careers and do some pro-bono marketing for a local foodbank. You meet a lovely man named Phillip at the insurance agency; you enjoy his cooking and sense of humor enough to eventually move in with him.

You spend seven enjoyable years together, and two less-enjoyable ones, before you decide to break it off with Phillip. You continue to rise in your career to chief marketing officer, join a couple of nonprofit and corporate boards, enjoy a weekly Sunday morning brunch with a close group of girlfriends, and live happily ever after at the top.

The End

(Want to see what would have happened if you had switched to a journalism career instead of climbing the corporate ladder? Turn back to Chapter 22 and make a different choice. Or if you’ve explored all the paths, turn to the Epilogue.)