The glass cliff
New Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson is just the latest in a long list of women who've taken on leadership of companies during difficult times.
By now most people are familiar with the concept of the "glass ceiling" — the struggle women face in getting promoted to leadership roles.
But a related, lesser known and slightly more complicated phenomenon is the “glass cliff”. That's when women are promoted to CEO roles in times of financial distress or a crisis. And today Qantas served up what looks like a textbook example of it.
The national carrier's board elevated Vanessa Hudson to the top job after Alan Joyce fell on his sword, retiring two months early.
There are plenty of recent examples of the glass cliff in US business. Linda Yaccarino was appointed CEO at X (formerly Twitter) by Elon Musk earlier this year, and many believe it is a role in which she was set up to fail, conveniently providing an excuse for Musk when X tanks. Ellen Pao’s appointment at Reddit, Jill Abramson at the New York Times, Mary Barra at GM, Carly Fiorina at HP and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo have also been cited as examples of the glass cliff in action.
