The Fixer’s Paradox: Leadership at the Edge of Failure
Author’s Note
For most of my career, I understood myself as having a particular kind of skill.
I walk into complexity without flinching. I pull systems apart, see where effort is misaligned, and put things back together in ways that make sense to the people doing the work. I steady teams while rebuilding what sits underneath them.
I was trusted with hard things because I was reliable under pressure.
What took longer to understand was not my capability. It was the pattern governing when that capability was called for.
What It Feels Like
By the time I stepped in, the project was already unstable.
Deadlines had slipped. Confidence had thinned. Two leaders had moved on, each exit framed as reasonable and complete. No drama. No postmortem. Just a quiet handoff, the organizational equivalent of clearing your browser history.
The language had changed. This was no longer about improving performance. This was about saving it.
I remember noticing the shift immediately. More accountability. Higher visibility. Less margin for error. Fewer resources. A lower level of investment than what had come before. And a deadline already looming.
At the time, this felt normal. It usually does. The system was fragile. The expectations were not.
A Skill That Gets Deployed at the Edge
I have always been considered the fixer.
The one who can stabilize a team, identify inefficiencies quickly, and realign people toward what actually matters. The one who finds the right people for the right seats at the right time, so the work can finally move. The one who carries ambiguity without spreading it.
This role showed up again and again across my career. Different teams. Different leaders. Different business problems. Each time, the moment felt like trust. Like recognition. Like an opportunity to do work that mattered.
It took time to see that this skill was being pulled forward at a very specific moment. Usually after performance had already slipped. When patience was thin and options were limited.
Over time, I came to see the Glass Cliff not as a separate phenomenon, but as the predictable outcome of accumulated competence, constrained choice, and scarce opportunity.
Why Change Arrives So Late
Once you see the timing, the next question is why it repeats.
The Glass Cliff persists because it resolves tension for the organization. A visible leadership change demonstrates responsiveness. Structural change tends to require meetings.
Men are also selected to lead in crisis. That has always been true. What distinguishes the Glass Cliff is not the existence of difficult roles, but the conditions under which women are more likely to be offered them.
Research shows that women are disproportionately selected after performance has already declined, when options are limited and the likelihood of failure is higher. They are more often appointed when the role is framed around repair rather than growth, containment rather than expansion.¹⁴
There is another layer to this timing. Some leaders are promoted earlier, with room to learn and adjust. Others are promoted later, once they have already demonstrated they can deliver under pressure. When the invitation arrives late, the learning curve becomes a luxury item.³
Experimental studies help explain why women are selected in these moments. During periods of crisis, they are evaluated as particularly suitable leaders, even when evaluations during stable periods show no meaningful difference. Qualities associated with steadiness, communication, and relational repair suddenly rise in value.¹²
This is not a shift in women’s capabilities. It is a shift in what organizations believe the moment requires. Selection changes. Conditions do not. The leader changes. The system remains largely intact.
What This Costs Women and Organizations
This is where the work quietly changes shape.
Glass Cliff roles are rarely framed as opportunities to learn or grow. They arrive with an unspoken expectation: fix this quickly.¹ The person stepping in inherits problems that were built over time. Missed decisions. Delayed investments. Structural cracks that everyone learned to work around until they couldn’t anymore.
None of that resets when leadership changes. Instead, the clock starts immediately. Progress is expected fast. Stability is treated as the minimum. Improvement becomes the baseline, not the achievement.
Research reflects this reality. A large meta-analysis found that Glass Cliff appointments cluster in high-risk environments where failure is already likely, which means outcomes are being judged inside conditions that were unstable before the new leader arrived.¹
At work, this looks like long days spent untangling issues that predate the role. It looks like explaining outcomes tied to decisions you didn’t make. It looks like being held accountable for a system you didn’t design.
Over time, something subtle happens.
The work stops being seen as leadership and starts being seen as containment. Competence turns into burden. Burden becomes expectation.
For organizations, this buys time. The appearance of control. A sense that something is being handled. For leaders, it absorbs consequence. Personal credibility becomes the buffer between the system and its failures.
Risk doesn’t disappear. It relocates.
Why Opting Out Isn’t Neutral
This is where well-meaning advice often misses the mark.
“Just say no” assumes that opportunities are plentiful and interchangeable. For many women, they are not.
Leadership seats are limited. Visible stretch roles are rare. Advancement often depends on being seen as willing, capable, and ready when the moment arrives. That means choice looks different.
Turning down a high-stakes assignment is rarely interpreted in isolation. It gets folded into a broader story. She’s not ready yet. She’s not hungry enough. She’s hard to staff. These impressions travel faster than résumés.
None of this is usually said outright. It doesn’t need to be. These impressions shape who gets asked next, and who quietly stops being considered.
Over time, the effects compound. One declined role narrows the next set of options. One moment of hesitation becomes a pattern in someone else’s mind. The range of acceptable choices shrinks.
So when a Glass Cliff role appears, it often isn’t one option among many. It’s the option. The visible one. The one that signals seriousness, capability, and commitment.
Accepting it isn’t recklessness. It’s a rational response to a constrained landscape. Choice exists. But it carries unequal consequences. Under scarcity, discernment has a price.
Competence Is Not the Problem
Women are not being selected for Glass Cliff roles because they lack skill. They are selected because they have already demonstrated it. Repeatedly.¹⁴
They’ve delivered under pressure. They’ve stabilized teams. They’ve earned trust in difficult conditions. Their track record becomes the reason they are called when something is already wobbling.
The problem is not that organizations doubt women’s ability to lead. It’s that they often wait to rely on that ability until the situation is already compromised.¹
This creates a familiar pattern.
Healthy roles go to leaders who are expected to grow into them. Risky roles go to leaders who are expected to perform immediately. Over time, the same competence that proves readiness also narrows the kinds of opportunities that appear.¹
Instead of being invited early, women are invited late. Instead of being given room to build, they are given responsibility to repair. Instead of being partnered with, they are handed the outcome. This is how competence gets misused.
Organizations delay structural change, lean on their most capable people to absorb instability, and mistake short-term stabilization for long-term design. The work gets done. The system stays the same.¹
The Glass Cliff is what happens when proven competence is treated as a safety net rather than a signal to invest earlier.
Personal Note
I still love fixing things. I love untangling systems, rebuilding trust, and helping people regain their footing. I love the moment when a team that’s been bracing itself finally exhales.
What has changed is my relationship to how and when that work arrives.
I think back to that quiet handoff. The absence of questions. The urgency wrapped in reassurance. At the time, I read it as trust. Now I also read it as information. Not about my ability, but about the state of the system I was stepping into.
Being chosen no longer substitutes for clarity. I pay more attention to timing, to terms, to what is already broken before I’m asked to fix it.
That shift hasn’t made me less willing to do hard work. It’s made me more deliberate about which hard work I take on, and under what conditions.
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Notice who you call when something is failing and who you trust with something healthy.
Name the condition of the system before assigning accountability.
Align authority, resources, and support with the risk being assumed.
Reward leaders who prevent crisis, not only those who manage it once it arrives.
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Critical roles require proportional investment.
Resilience cannot replace resourcing.
Relying on crisis leaders instead of repairing systems weakens organizational learning and reinforces avoidable failure.¹
Equity shows up in conditions, not rhetoric.
References
Morgenroth, T., Kirby, T. A., Ryan, M. K., & Sudkämper, A. (2020). “The Who, When, and Why of the Glass Cliff Phenomenon.” Psychological Bulletin.
Bruckmüller, S., & Branscombe, N. R. (2011). “How Women End Up on the Glass Cliff.” Harvard Business Review.
Hewlett, S. A. (2008). “Are Women Leaders Often Set Up to Fail?” Harvard Business Review.
Ryan, M. K., & Haslam, S. A. (2005). “The Glass Cliff.” British Journal of Management.
Dorsey, K. D. (2023). “From Glass Ceilings to Glass Cliffs: A Guide to Jumping, Not Falling.” MIT Sloan Management Review.
