Breaking the Glass Ceiling Is a Behavior Change Problem, Not Just a Confidence Problem

For years, we’ve been telling women they need to be more confident.

Speak up. Raise your hand. Negotiate harder. Take up space. Believe in yourself.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that advice. Confidence matters. But after more than a decade leading in professional hockey, an industry where very few people in positions like mine are women, I think we’re missing a big part of the conversation.

The glass ceiling isn’t just a confidence problem. It’s a behavior change problem.

Before anyone comes for me, let me be clear: the external barriers are real. Bias is real. Unequal access to opportunities is real. Being the only woman in the room changes the experience. Women in male-dominated industries can encounter obstacles their male counterparts simply don’t have to think about.

I know. I’ve lived it.

But I’m increasingly interested in what happens when some of those external barriers begin to move, yet our own behaviors don’t.

I became General Manager of the Kalamazoo Wings, a men’s professional hockey team, in 2015. I didn’t come from professional sports. The first half of my career was in banking and economic development. I wasn’t a former hockey player, and I hadn’t spent years working my way through the traditional sports pipeline.

There were plenty of reasons I could have looked around and decided I didn’t belong. And there were certainly people willing to question whether I did.

What I’ve learned since then is that getting the opportunity doesn’t automatically eliminate all the behaviors we developed while trying to earn it.

Women can get the title and still shrink. We can get the promotion and still over-explain our decisions. We can lead the meeting and still apologize before sharing an opinion. We can have authority and still seek permission. We can be exhausted and still say yes. We can be incredibly accomplished and still believe everything has to be perfect before we put it into the world.

That’s why I believe women’s leadership coaching has to go deeper than telling women to “be more confident.”

We have to look at behavior.

Think about the high-achieving women you know. Are they really lacking confidence? Or are they repeating patterns that have been rewarded for years?

People-pleasing, perfectionism, over-preparing, overcommitting, avoiding difficult conversations, making ourselves endlessly available, waiting until we’re 110% qualified before pursuing an opportunity, and trying to be liked while simultaneously trying to lead.

Those behaviors didn’t appear out of nowhere. In fact, many of them probably helped us become successful.

Being dependable gets rewarded. Working harder gets noticed. Being agreeable makes you easy to work with. Getting everything exactly right earns praise. Saying yes creates opportunities.

Until one day, the behaviors that helped you climb become the very behaviors keeping you stuck.

Perfectionism is a great example. It may have helped you earn excellent grades, land the job, impress your boss and build your reputation. Then you become a leader, and suddenly that same perfectionism makes it difficult to delegate. Your team waits for your approval. You spend time working on things someone else could handle. Without realizing it, you become the bottleneck.

People-pleasing works the same way. Being likable and accommodating can help you build strong relationships early in your career. But eventually leadership requires you to deliver difficult feedback, hold someone accountable, make unpopular decisions and, yes, occasionally disappoint people.

The behavior that once protected you can eventually limit you.

That isn’t a character flaw. It’s simply a behavior that needs to evolve.

I’ve had to do plenty of that unlearning myself.

One of my core leadership philosophies today is macromanagement. I want to hire talented people, make expectations clear, give them the resources they need, hold them accountable and then get the hell out of their way.

That sounds simple. It isn’t.

Leadership like that requires trust. It requires being okay when someone approaches something differently than I would. It means allowing mistakes. It means resisting the urge to swoop in and fix everything. And it requires recognizing that my value as a leader doesn’t come from having all the answers.

In fact, one of my six leadership pillars is to go to the experts. I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. I need to know how to find, trust and empower people who know things I don’t.

Those are behaviors. Intentional ones. And that’s the point.

Leadership isn’t something we magically become because somebody gives us a title. It’s something we practice through our behavior over and over again.

That’s also why I’m not a huge fan of framing every conversation about female leadership around fixing confidence. It subtly suggests that the woman herself is the problem. She’s not confident enough. Not assertive enough. Not visible enough. Not good enough at negotiating.

What if, instead of immediately trying to fix ourselves, we got curious about ourselves?

What behaviors helped me get here, and which ones still serve me? Where am I shrinking? Where am I waiting for permission I don’t actually need? Where am I saying yes when I want to say no? Where am I trying to make something perfect when good enough would move me forward? Where am I allowing my fear of being disliked to influence how I lead?

Those questions create something much more useful than another pep talk. They create awareness. And awareness gives us choices.

The fascinating thing about behavior change is that it doesn’t usually begin with one enormous, courageous act. It happens in the tiny moments.

It’s saying what you think in the meeting before you’ve perfectly formulated it in your head. It’s delegating something and resisting the urge to take it back. It’s applying for the position when you don’t meet every qualification. It’s giving direct feedback instead of softening it until the message disappears. It’s saying, “I disagree,” without spending the next five minutes explaining why you’re allowed to disagree.

It’s leaving the email unanswered until tomorrow. It’s saying no without providing a dissertation. It’s asking for the money. It’s taking the opportunity. It’s allowing someone to be disappointed in you.

Those seemingly small choices, repeated consistently, begin to change how we show up. And eventually they can lead us to a much bigger question: What do I actually want next?

Not what should I want. Not what would look impressive on LinkedIn. Not what my boss, spouse, parents or colleagues think I should want.

What do I want?

That question is at the heart of the work I do through my Career Disruption coaching. Despite the name, disruption doesn’t necessarily mean quitting your job, launching a business or dramatically reinventing your life.

Sometimes the disruption is internal.

Maybe you want the promotion. Maybe you want to lead differently. Maybe you want to build something alongside the career you already love. Maybe you are ready to leave. Or maybe you realize you’re exactly where you want to be, but you want to experience your career differently.

There isn’t one right answer.

The work is separating what you genuinely want from what you’ve been conditioned to pursue and then identifying the behaviors standing between you and that next version of yourself.

And none of this lets organizations off the hook.

We absolutely need to continue dismantling systemic barriers for women. We need equitable hiring and promotion practices, pay equity, better representation, sponsorship, family-friendly workplaces and leaders willing to examine bias. Women should never be expected to behavior-change their way around discrimination.

But I don’t believe we have to choose between addressing the external barriers and examining the internal ones.

We can do both.

Because sometimes the next glass ceiling isn’t entirely above us. Sometimes it’s made up of behaviors we’ve practiced for so long that we’ve forgotten they’re choices. And perhaps the most rebellious thing we can do is become aware enough to start choosing differently.

If you’re questioning what comes next in your career and want help separating what you actually want from what you’ve been conditioned to pursue, my Career Disruption coaching was created for exactly that conversation.