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Dr. Christina Frederick, a professor in the Human Factors Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, shares her story of climbing to one of the highest levels within her university and how she made the difficult decision to step down. Part 1 is available here. A video of the full interview is available here.

In Part 1, we discussed what led to her leadership trajectory, the challenges with both remaining and leaving her leadership roles, and how she made the transition successful.

In this second part, Dr. Frederick delved further into unexpected challenges and positive outcomes, her advice to women about how to make these difficult career decisions, and advice to organizations about what is needed to support women in leadership roles today.

Did you experience any unexpected challenges or positive outcomes?

On the personal side, this is not just a logistic struggle. You know you are going to get criticized for leaving a leadership position and you have to let it roll off your back and keep moving forward. And you have to really wrestle your ego down and realize that the institution will go on without you. So, there’s some internal humility work as you make this transition. If you don't, it's going to eat you alive, always wondering what you could have done differently. You have to find a way to develop humility and let things go.

That's probably the piece that I probably struggled with the longest, in addition to how this was impacting the people that worked for me. I wasn't going to be there to protect them anymore, I wasn't there to advocate for them and they were good people and some of them were transferred into positions they weren't suited for and some of them left and on and on. I really felt some responsibility for that even long after I left.

On the positive side, my department was thrilled to have a senior person coming back—it was not without its benefits to have a senior person coming back who knew everybody at the University, knew how everything functioned and every person to accomplish this or that or the other thing.

Looking back, do you ever miss certain aspects of that leadership life? Or do you feel relieved to no longer be in it?

There's a little bit of both. I miss certain projects like the government relations work—it spurred my creativity differently. There was probably some more potential there that I didn't fulfill had I done something different or got into another role.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for really enjoying and developing a life outside of work. We (Americans) define ourselves by what we do and what level of power we have. But I realized I had a lot more time to focus on my personal life, develop myself to be a better person, and re-establish some friendships that for eight years I had very little time to devote myself to.

I would say now that I'm very fortunate that my life is not my work. It's part of who I am, but I have this whole other part that I really enjoy, full of deep rich fulfilling friends and family and that's something that I'm very thankful for.

What leadership challenges do women still face today, and do you see any gender differences? If so, what do you think might be contributing, or what do you think we still need to do to support women?

While some organizations have certainly gone further in welcoming women into leadership ranks, I think there are a lot of institutions that have not and they do make it more difficult.

Some of the very obvious and basic things are recognizing that women tend to have many more home responsibilities that they have to balance with their professional responsibilities. Even the very latest literature that I've seen shows that women do 20 plus more hours a week of home stuff, childcare cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, whatever it might be, as well as tending to the primary schedule for doctor’s appointments and things like that.

That's a whole other job outside of your professional responsibilities and I don't think most organizations recognize that, so they don't want to discuss the fact that you might have children and those children pull you away sometimes.

If you look at the corporate suites in the boardrooms and the boards, it's a lot of older men. In the organization I worked in, there were also a couple of younger guys that had children, but their wives didn't work. So none of the people that I worked for had wives who worked outside of the home, and if they had kids, the kids were grown. So oftentimes you would see their wife acting as their home admin. Women don't get that and I think that's still a reality that makes it much more difficult for them.

There are some other dynamics, as well. For example, people that I worked with played golf and they would golf together on the weekends. I never had eight hours on a Saturday to golf (nor did I want to). Also, I don't suspect it was intentional, but even their dialogue would create a barrier for women: we’d go into a cabinet meeting and they’d start talking about their golf games to the point that I and the other women in leadership were shut out of those conversations.

There's a lack of awareness that even that kind of dialogue between the guys creates a dynamic where you're not making women, people of color, or anyone who's different feel accepted, welcomed, or valuable.

I have hope that as we get more of the Gen Xers and Millennials into leadership positions, that will change.

Do you think social distancing has affected inclusion efforts, either making it more challenging in some ways or increased insight in other ways?

I think there's some good and bad. It might be good because when you're on the Zoom call with your colleagues, you see their messy kitchen, or the kid that runs by, or their pet that wants some attention.

We see people more in their natural environments and we see that they may have some of the same concerns and issues and responsibilities at home.

In that way, I do think it might humanize us all a little bit, even allow us to relate to people that we haven't been able to relate to, maybe.

How can organizations increase the number of women and minorities in leadership and better understand what it's like to truly include them when the lack of representation currently limits understanding their needs?

You know this is such a tough question. Part of me really believes that change-resistant organizations are not going to change unless you mandate inclusion in hiring. Unless you get 30% of a group included, it's not going to work. You have to have a certain base percentage of women in the organization for them to be accepted or have a voice or be treated more fairly.

So the first place to start is getting enough diverse people in the organization.

I have a really good friend and her company has pushed for more diversity especially in higher levels of leadership. One of the things they're doing is stripping all identifying information off someone's resume so you can't tell what the gender, race, or ethnicity is or where they're from.

I hope it works and it has potential, but I also think that it can’t only come from the bottom up - the push needs to come from the top down. Your middle management and your higher leadership can push all they want for diversity, but if you have a board that has no diversity, you're still sending the wrong message.

It’s gotta be a bottom-up and a top-down process. And it’s not just about what you're saying but also about what you're showing:

What does your board look like?
What does your senior leadership look like?
Do you have family-friendly policies in place? Do you have family maternity/paternity leave? Do you have some kind of childcare options?
Are you looking at flexible work schedules?
What are the other policies in place?

Any last pieces of advice that you'd like to share with women who are considering making a transition out of leadership?

One thing I think women need to realize is that oftentimes the stereotypical leadership trajectory of moving from one [hierarchical] position to the next—like in academia from faculty to assistant dean, then dean, assistant provost, provost, and finally president—is male-based.

Women oftentimes find that their trajectory goes up, then maybe sideways a little bit, then goes up and then sideways again, and may even go back down at points. That's okay.

Sometimes a sideways move is the perfect move. It does not mean that you have permanently sidelined yourself. This linear projection was very traditionally masculine and it doesn't work for women and it doesn't work for younger people anymore either.

The experiences that you're gaining are important, even if you're not getting the title and we've got to learn to recognize that better.

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As part of this blog series focused on new perspectives on women’s leadership, I share real women’s stories about their leadership experiences. Each interview is structured around a similar set of questions to allow for the emergence of some comparisons and commonalities. However, each woman’s perspective, struggles, and lessons learned will be different as I will focus on underserved/underrepresented female leaders, emerging female leaders, mid- to senior-level female leaders, and thought leaders and researchers in this field.

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