Glass cliff or breakthrough: four questions that tell you which one you're looking at

The phone rings on a Sunday evening, and the board chair is on the line. The division has been in the red for six straight quarters, the previous two leaders were both women, and each lasted under eighteen months. The job is yours if you want it: a larger title, a $90,000 salary bump, a place on the executive committee, and a directive that, read closely, amounts to "repair what two people before you could not, with the same funding and the same board." You are 53. Five years of getting ready for a job this large have left you clear on why it has landed in your hands at this moment. The chair wants your decision in hand by the end of the week.

Whether you're qualified is not the real question. Your real task is to work out whether you are looking at a trap or an opening, since an observer on the outside would struggle to tell them apart.

Option A: Accept the offer exactly as it currently reads

Picturing the worst outcome requires no effort at all. If the division can't be turned around, you join the list of leaders who didn't make it, and people remember the list. Few organizations pause to examine why three presidents in succession came up short here in Richmond. They start looking for the fourth, who usually shows up with a fatter budget and a more patient timeline. Russell Reynolds found, in a small sample so treat it as a directional signal, that women CEOs averaged 5.2 years in the job compared with 8.1 years for men. A short runway is a pattern, not bad luck.

Option B: Refuse

Taking this role carries a cost that others will notice. Positions at this level don't open up every year, and "she passed on it" becomes a story that spreads through professional circles, including across Richmond's business community. You protect your record, but you may also be walking away from your single best chance to show you can run something that is losing money. Sometimes a cliff really is a cliff. Other times it is the hard assignment no one else wanted, and whoever takes it gets the credit when it works.

Option C: Agree, provided it is on the conditions you set for yourself

Say yes, provided the conditions are spelled out on paper before anything gets signed. Those conditions could include a defined runway, a named board sponsor, a budget line that didn't exist for your predecessors, and a measure of success at eighteen months that goes beyond simply "profitable." You may hear no, and a no to reasonable conditions is one of the most valuable answers you'll get all year. It signals they were after a recognizable face for the role, not someone to rescue the organization.

What leaders who have lived through it say

Executives who accepted a cliff role in the Richmond area and came through it usually start by asking four questions.

1. In their own words, and not the chair's, what led the last two leaders to walk away? Call them. They will tell you.

2. What has changed since then? When the reply is that the fault lay with you, treat it as flattery and not as a strategy.

3. Who on the board owns this outcome with you? If nobody can name a person, nobody will defend you when the first quarter comes in short.

4. Eighteen months from now, what does success look like, and is it recorded in writing? Without a written measure, the board cannot evaluate you fairly, yet it will evaluate you regardless.

The verdict

It all comes down to the first question. If the two predecessors were set up to fail and only the name on the door has been swapped, walk away or push for new terms until something meaningful changes. If something has genuinely changed, take the job, with the terms on paper and a sponsor in place. Real progress frequently looks like a steep drop that arrives with money to cushion it.

Your choice

Which would you do: accept it, decline it, or accept it on your terms? Cast your vote below. We'll release the findings next week, including the question that the majority of you said you'd bring up first.