Advice for someone who has been passed over for promotion
by Sarah Friar / © 2022, Fast Company. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
My greatest mistake was thinking success looked like a specific thing. For me, that was making partner at Goldman Sachs. When I didn’t, it set me free.
One morning in 2011—after 11 years on the partner track at Goldman, where I had been a very young VP and just assumed partner was the natural next progression for me—I got a call.
I was told, “It’s not your year.”
Determining partners is an every-two-years decision, so it was “not your two years.” I was in shock. I went through all the stages of grief in about five minutes. Then I called my husband David, who’s one of my best mentors and listeners. We went outside and walked, and I started to cry. He let me talk it out and rant. My first thought was, “I’m gonna get back on this track and prove them wrong.”
Then I envisioned staying for 24 more months, and I just felt exhausted.
David stopped me and said, “You know, they just set you free.”
It was a really incredible moment, thinking maybe this was a sign that I should be doing something different.
The problem with a career checklist
At that time, I felt that I had checked every box. A lot of women have a checklist and a scorecard that keeps us asking, “Are we doing everything right?” And it’s not just work for women. It’s “Are you being a good mom? Did you make a good dinner?” It’s expected of us, and we also fuel the fire of perfectionism, not viewing ourselves as successful if we’re not firing on all cylinders.
We think striving for perfection is an accelerant, but, in reality, it makes you risk-averse, emotionally bound to your scorecard. It’s too hard to live under that.
I grew up in a small community in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Coming to the U.S. for business school, then taking a job at Goldman with a boatload of debt and a need for a work sponsor, I had the immigrant psyche that I had to be perfect.
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Advice for someone who has been passed over for promotion
by Sarah Friar / © 2022, Fast Company. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
My greatest mistake was thinking success looked like a specific thing. For me, that was making partner at Goldman Sachs. When I didn’t, it set me free.
One morning in 2011—after 11 years on the partner track at Goldman, where I had been a very young VP and just assumed partner was the natural next progression for me—I got a call.
I was told, “It’s not your year.”
Determining partners is an every-two-years decision, so it was “not your two years.” I was in shock. I went through all the stages of grief in about five minutes. Then I called my husband David, who’s one of my best mentors and listeners. We went outside and walked, and I started to cry. He let me talk it out and rant. My first thought was, “I’m gonna get back on this track and prove them wrong.”
Then I envisioned staying for 24 more months, and I just felt exhausted.
David stopped me and said, “You know, they just set you free.”
It was a really incredible moment, thinking maybe this was a sign that I should be doing something different.
The problem with a career checklist
At that time, I felt that I had checked every box. A lot of women have a checklist and a scorecard that keeps us asking, “Are we doing everything right?” And it’s not just work for women. It’s “Are you being a good mom? Did you make a good dinner?” It’s expected of us, and we also fuel the fire of perfectionism, not viewing ourselves as successful if we’re not firing on all cylinders.
We think striving for perfection is an accelerant, but, in reality, it makes you risk-averse, emotionally bound to your scorecard. It’s too hard to live under that.
I grew up in a small community in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Coming to the U.S. for business school, then taking a job at Goldman with a boatload of debt and a need for a work sponsor, I had the immigrant psyche that I had to be perfect.
...
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