Erica: Welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors podcast, the podcast where we get real about the challenges women face in work, life, and leadership. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, HR executive, keynote speaker, and executive coach, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. This is the space where we call it the paradoxes. Being told to lean in, but not too far. To speak up, but not too loudly. Be ambitious, but not too ambitious. Does that sound familiar? Yeah. We're over all that. Here, we break down the sticky floors that keep us stuck, from imposter syndrome and perfectionism to burnout and fear, and give you real strategies to help you shatter those glass ceilings once and for all. So if you're ready to rewrite the rules, own your power, and take your career and life to the next level, you're in the right place.

Alright, y'all. I am a little excited about today's episode, and you might be, I don't know, it might turn some of you off. Some of you might be like, hell yeah, I'm totally with that. But I'm not gonna be talking about a framework or anything like that. What I'm talking about today is my girl, Taylor Swift. Yes, yes, I know. You might be like, what the heck, Erica? But I want to talk about her song CANCELLED! And I'm gonna give a shout out to my girl Morgan, who said, you have got to dissect this song, because number one, I've already loved the song, but I didn't think to dissect it into a podcast. And it's just, it's brilliant, because every lyric in this song could seriously be an HR case study about women in the workplace. And y'all, that's what we talk about on this podcast. We talk about shattering ceilings.

So we're gonna talk about my girl T. Swift and her new song CANCELLED!, which I think everybody is hypothesizing is about Blake Lively, so just keep that in the back of your head. But we are gonna break down this song. We're gonna talk about what cancel culture looks like in corporate America for women, and then also how you can take that backlash and make it your breakthrough.

In her song, Taylor talks about girlbossing too close to the sun, and I don't know about y'all, but that line, I was like, oh yeah, hell yeah, because I've seen it, I've lived it. That was me. And as soon as I started girlbossing, let me air quote that, girlbossing too close to the sun, for some people I started becoming intimidating, right, and pushy. And that's when I really started to see these office politics come into play, because the real deal is when a woman starts climbing the corporate ladder and she builds influence, suddenly she becomes too much.

Now, a Harvard Business Review study actually found that assertive women are significantly more likely than men to be labeled as abrasive in performance reviews. First of all, can you believe that. But that's the number. Now I've been labeled assertive, absolutely, but in a good way. But then that started turning into you're intimidating, and they meant that not in a good way, and I'm sorry, but I was not here for that.

That is the exact cultural script that punishes women for enjoying their success. Now in my world, that's called reputational bias. And if this is the first time you're hearing this term, I'm gonna break it down. Reputational bias is a type of cognitive and systemic bias where a person's reputation, whether it's earned, assumed, or stereotyped, shapes how others perceive, judge, or treat them, in a current or future situation. So when a certain C level leader started talking about me and saying how intimidating I was, guess what happened? My visibility started turning into a vulnerability.

And the thing about reputational bias is it doesn't matter what my actual behavior or results were in that moment. It only mattered what someone else's image of me was and how it influenced others. So basically it's either the halo effect or the horn effect. It's either a positive reputation overshadows your flaws, or it's the horn effect, when a negative perception overshadows your strength. And then it's amplified by social and organizational memory. So for me, it showed up as someone calling me intimidating. But for others, it could show up as a high performing employee's mistakes being excused because he's always reliable, he always gets the deal closed, or a woman maybe who took maternity leave, maybe we assume her to be less ambitious because she's got kids at home, right, so we're not gonna put her up for that promotion. Or maybe a man is known as being assertive, he gets praised and it's confidence, whereas for someone like you or me, we're abrasive. Or perhaps someone who isn't seen as technical in the past isn't seen as AI capable, even if they've mastered new tools or gotten a certification.

Reputational bias is a form of hidden inequity, because it locks people into past narratives, and it reinforces gender and racial stereotypes. It distorts performance reviews and promotion decisions. It discourages risk taking. It undermines innovation. But most importantly, it undermines psychological safety, because teams stop seeing you with fresh eyes.

So if you get caught girlbossing too close to the sun, guess what happens. Harvard Business Review and Deloitte actually showed that managers often rely on those reputational heuristics, the shortcuts, under pressure, meaning that bias is going to seep in when decisions are fast and based on memory rather than actual data. And for any of you who are familiar with my story, that's exactly how it went down with me. So if you've ever been told, girl, that maybe you're not a culture fit after you've spoken up, or you watched a male colleague get praised for the same behavior that gave you a side eye, you have been living your own version of Taylor Swift's CANCELLED!, whether you like her music or not.

But let's talk about what this really looks like. Cancel culture at work, it's not a crazy Twitter mob or anything like that. It is a slow erosion of credibility. So it looks like being left off the meeting invite, or that feedback that says you're intimidating when really they mean you're effective. Now McKinsey's 2024 Women in the Workplace report found that a majority of women leaders experience microaggressions that call their competence into question. Y'all, that ain't cancel culture on social media. That's cancel culture in the system, and it's what keeps women down the ladder. It's what keeps us oppressed.

I hear the way Taylor talks about her canceled friends as a reclamation. It's not that I've been exiled, it's I've been initiated. It's a hell yeah, it's a battle cry. Because being a woman who's underestimated, y'all, in my world, that is not a death sentence. That's a freaking credential.

So if I've learned one thing, it's that you cannot build a bold career without getting some criticism. You can't lead with courage and expect everyone to clap for you. And that's where most of us get stuck, right, the sticky floor of needing to be liked. And let me tell you, that's been one of my most challenging sticky floors, and data backs this up too, right, women's job satisfaction drops 20% when they perceive disapproval from their peers or their leaders. And I attribute that to women really seeing connection as their currency.

But what Taylor reminds us is that being canceled does not mean that you're over. It doesn't mean that you're done. It means that you are finally free to stop performing and stop conforming. So if someone cancels your leadership, your voice, or your ambition, pull a Mel Robbins and let them, and then do it anyway. Just do it louder.

I love the way Taylor talks about her canceled friends as the ones with matching scars, because y'all, that is her collective in one lyric. Every woman in our community has some sort of corporate scar, whether that was a layoff or rejection or a season where she was told no one too many times. But what we have learned over the past year in her collective is those scars don't define us. They actually form a really strong connective tissue. And psychologist Dr. Kristin Neff, who I love her work, she calls it common humanity. And that's that recognition that the struggle is part of being human. It's not proof that you're failing.

So here's your brave bite for the week, right. And brave bites are an exercise that I do with my clients where I have them write down one small thing that they are doing with courage to take that next step. And I want you to think about a moment you were canceled. So maybe someone gave you a bad review because they didn't like you, maybe you made a mistake in public, or maybe you got frozen out by some colleagues. I want you to ask yourself, what did that moment teach me that made me stronger? What scar am I hiding from other people that could help me help another woman?

And gosh, when we're talking about hiding scars, it makes me think of K-pop Demon Hunters, because I am all up in that space with my seven year old daughter. But when I think about my corporate scar story, looking back, it really made me who I am today. Every single time I was mansplained to, manterupted, backstabbed, tall poppy syndrome BS, it brought me closer to my most favorite community in the world, her collective. And if I hadn't been through that, her collective wouldn't exist.

But I'll leave you with this. My favorite therapist of all time once said to me, and it stuck with me, that everybody loves a comeback story. Nobody loves a story that is just all rainbows and sunshine, because we've all been through something. So if you have the scars, if you've been through it, if you've girlbossed too close to the sun and they caught you having a little too much fun, I want you to say too bad so sad, I'm with her.

Alright y'all, if today's conversation lit a fire under you, share it with a woman who's finding her voice again. Leave a review, tag me, and come join us inside her collective, where ambitious women gather to get real, get resourced, and get reenergized, because your potential is limitless, and the only thing standing in your way are those sticky floors. But guess what, guess what, you have the power and the data to break through.