Yet this delineation doesn’t make implications simple to discern. What might appear as a personal strength, such as the love of new challenges and excitement, can actually be a career path distracter if it causes restlessness and the inability to stay with one company for more than three years. Therefore, interpretations had to be made based on the experience of the researcher. As a result, since the researcher fit the profile of the women studied, held numerous positions including a senior management position in both successful and flailing US corporations, and has 26 years of experience teaching management courses, designing leadership programs and providing executive coaching, she made the choices between what constitutes “positive” from “potentially negative” patterns. She included all patterns that could have a detrimental affect on career advancement in the eyes of today’s corporate leaders, the ones who are making the promotion decisions. The potentially negative aspect of each pattern is included in the description of each theme.
The themes and patterns presented below and in the next essay were matched to the assumptions defined prior to the research in the Hypothesis section (provided in a previous essay). Each theme is titled before the assumption, and then the results are given either validating or modifying the assumption. Following are the first three themes.
