The Glass Ceiling Was Never the Ceiling

The Drop-The-Mic Moment

This morning, while watching a video, I experienced one of those rare moments where something that had sat quietly in the background for years suddenly became crystal clear. It was a micro moment, but one that connected decades of observations, conversations, and leadership experiences into a single insight.

For years I have heard conversations about breaking the glass ceiling. Most often, the discussion centred on women reaching executive positions, becoming CEOs, securing board seats, or gaining access to spaces that had historically been unavailable to them.

While I understand the importance of representation, I have often found myself questioning whether this was truly what breaking the glass ceiling meant. The realisation that my definition had always been different arrived quite quickly.

For me, breaking the glass ceiling was never about becoming the CEO of someone else's company, obtaining a title, securing a seat at an existing table, or proving that I could succeed within a structure designed by someone else.

I had always viewed it through an entirely different lens: I never wanted a seat at the table, I wanted to build new rooms.

The difference may seem subtle, but it fundamentally changes how we think about leadership, growth, and impact. Many leadership models focus on progression within an existing framework where success is measured by how far we can climb, how much influence we can accumulate, or how many barriers we can overcome on our way to the top.

My aspiration was never centred on climbing, instead, it was centred on creating.

I saw leadership as building something that did not previously exist. I saw it as creating new floors of innovation, new opportunities, and new environments where others could continue to grow long after I had moved on. Perhaps this is why I never resonated with the idea of fighting for a seat at a table as tables have always felt limiting to me.

People gather around them, become comfortable, and often remain in the same conversations for years. I was more interested in creating spaces where people could continue expanding, learning, and challenging what they believed was possible.

What fascinated me most was never how high one individual could rise. It was how many people could rise together. That shift in perspective changes everything.

When leadership is viewed through a scarcity lens, knowledge becomes something to protect, influence becomes something to defend, and opportunities become something to control.

Many leaders operate from an unspoken fear that if they teach others everything they know, those people may leave and become competitors. They may take ideas, clients, opportunities, or influence with them but what if that was exactly the point? What if leadership was never intended to create dependency?

What if leadership was intended to create capability?

The greatest leaders I have encountered throughout my life were never concerned about being surpassed. They shared generously, they opened doors, they invested in people without expecting ownership of the outcome, they understood that real leadership is measured by the people who continue rising because of what they were given.

Growth has never been about self-expansion alone, growth is about breadth and about creating conditions where others can flourish. It is about building environments where knowledge is shared, opportunities are created, and people are encouraged to become more than they believed possible.

That is where abundance lives.

• Where scarcity asks how we can hold on, abundance asks how we can contribute.

• Where scarcity fears people leaving, abundance celebrates people growing.

• Where scarcity protects knowledge, abundance understands that knowledge shared creates possibility.

The ripple effect that follows cannot be measured in titles, positions, or organisational charts as every person we develop influences another, every opportunity we create opens a door for someone else and every act of generosity expands what becomes possible for a community, an organisation, or even a generation.

This is how meaningful change occurs: not through accumulation but through multiplication.

The drop-the-mic moment for me was recognising that I had never been looking at the ceiling, but I had been looking beyond it.

Breaking the glass ceiling was never about reaching the top floor of someone else's building, it was about having the courage to build new ones, creating opportunities for others to rise, and then standing beside them as they do the same.

That is how we create abundance. That is how we create impact. That is how we shape a better tomorrow.