For young women with ambitions of taking on leadership roles, Jade Floyd has a wealth of advice to share.
Throughout her decades-long career in strategic communications, Floyd has worked alongside some of the country’s most influential women, including executives, changemakers and innovators who have risen to the highest levels of business, philanthropy, finance and sports.
"I have really been privileged to be at the table learning from these accomplished women and helping guide their thought leadership and reputation work, and how they communicate to audiences and stakeholders that are impacted by their company,” Floyd said.
Her unique role allowed her to get behind-the-scenes insight into how these leaders maneuvered through day-to-day challenges in their personal and professional lives.
“I get to see the intricacies of how they manage their teams, how they're able to navigate complex decision-making, how they lead through change and uncertainty and other aspects of business. And I get to see them quite vulnerable in their personal lives and the intricacies of how they navigate leadership while managing life outside of work,” Floyd said.
Those experiences shaped her understanding of what it takes to be a leader, the unique obstacles women face along the way to powerful roles and how to overcome them.
“We have a responsibility as women in leadership to showcase these stories so that the women who come behind us will have an opportunity to see themselves in these positions and know what is possible,” Floyd said.
That belief inspired her new best selling book, “The Leadership Labyrinth,” which brings together lessons and stories from more than two dozen women at the top of their fields to help others as they chart their own career journeys. The women hail from institutions like JP Morgan Chase, Revlon, UNICEF, Rare Beauty, Good World, Framebridge, Salt & Sundry and more.
Across her conversations with these successful executives and leaders, Floyd noticed consistent traits and skills that helped them get to where they are—skills she recommends young women begin building now.
One statistic she often shares with the women she mentors is research showing that women are less likely than men to apply for jobs unless they meet nearly all of the listed qualifications, often holding themselves back because they don’t feel fully ready.
“It’s so important that women take risks and put themselves out there,” Floyd said. “I think oftentimes, as women, we are afraid of failure.”
She said that fear can come from a range of social and cultural pressures, including the added scrutiny women often face in professional spaces or feeling the weight of being the only one who looks like them in a room. But letting that fear win can limit your career opportunities, Floyd said.
The concept of “failing forward,” a lesson she learned from Jean Case, CEO of the Case Impact Network and Case Foundation, has reshaped how she thinks about risk and mistakes.
“Jean taught me that failing forward really is taking a risk, a leap of faith in yourself and recognizing that when you fail, there’s a lesson to be learned,” Floyd said. “To ask any female leader how she got to where she is now, she’s going to tell you there were ups and downs. It was a circuitous path.”
Another consistent characteristic among the women Floyd interviewed was resilience.
“You cannot lead teams without resiliency,” she said.
Floyd explained that leaders are expected to operate in high-pressure environments with multiple, simultaneous challenges and constantly shifting demands.
“And being able to adapt in those circumstances and still yourself, keep your composure, keep your optimism is so important,” Floyd said.
And closely tied to resilience, she said, is purpose.
“A core piece that every woman across all the interviews for this book had was a strong desire to do some form of good in the world. I think that's so important for everyone as they go into the workplace, to find something that you're passionate about,” Floyd said.
Because a sense of purpose, she said, is often what sustains leaders through difficulties and setbacks.
Another recurring theme throughout these interviews was learning that, despite their many accomplishments, many of the women she spoke to still described moments of self-doubt.
“These are women who were seated in positions of power next to presidents and global leaders. They themselves were global heads of business segments for Fortune 500s. They were running multibillion-dollar entities,” Floyd said. “But all of them, at different points in their careers, questioned if they should be there.”
That feeling of imposter syndrome, she said, will show up at different stages of your career, regardless of all you accomplish. And in some cases, it will be other people questioning your qualifications.
Floyd encourages young women to stay vigilant about those moments of doubt and to remind themselves that they belong in every room they enter.
And it’s in those moments of uncertainty, Floyd said, that the kinds of people you choose to have in your orbit are especially important.
“Those are the people who are going to provide you with guidance. They're going to give you the enthusiasm to keep pushing forward. Even when someone else tells you that it's not realistic or that you should pivot in another direction,” Floyd said.
She said building a strong network and finding mentors who offer honest feedback is essential.
As she reflects on her own career path, she credits a lot of her success to having mentors who put her in positions to succeed. Whether it was inviting her to sit in on executive meetings or travel with senior leaders while she was starting out, those experiences were instrumental in her development.
“I may not have been at the round table at every single meeting, but I was in the room,” Floyd said. “And I took a lot of that knowledge and soaked it up and used it in my own everyday practices. I don’t think you can become a great leader unless you have the proximity to leaders who give you those opportunities to sit in the same rooms with them.”
She also wants young women to know while hard work is important, so is rest and taking care of yourself.
She rejected burnout culture, saying, “That’s not a badge of honor anymore, that’s actually really sad as women we still feel the need to over perform and burn ourselves out to remain relevant.”
Floyd emphasized the importance of making your health and well-being a priority.
“Rest is your right,” she said. “You have to protect your energy. You have to set boundaries, you have to delegate, you really have to curate a strong support system and you have to find opportunities to ask people for help.”
And the main lesson she wants women to take away is that the path to leadership is rarely linear. The journey will be full of twists and turns shaped by risk, setbacks, opportunity and moments of reinvention. But by building necessary skills and a strong support system, even the most ambitious goals can become possible, she said.
