A friend recently had some devastating news. The career she had invested all her life in was basically shutting the door to the top job in her face. She felt frustrated, resentful, tired and lost.

All her life’s work seemed to have gone to waste without this one final step that would take her to the boardroom.

Our initial response to situations like this would be to resign and find another job in a different company where her skills would be appreciated much more and she would have a better work life balance – her current job literally took over her life leaving little time for anything else.

But the issue was that her heart wasn’t in seeking another option.

She loved her current job and had worked hard to get where she was. Nothing else felt right at that moment.

This week I’ve read two contradictory reports on women on boards. One reports positively that Women on FTSE boards is forecast to reach Lord Davies 25% target by October 2015 whilst another reports that the U.K. campaign for women in the boardroom hits a wall.

What do you make of these reports?

The reality is that a lot of women are still facing a lot of challenges in progressing their careers to the next level, whether that be the board room or not. Organisations, and particularly the leaders of these organisations, still have a lot to do in creating nurturing environments for these women.

We have some ideas on what might work but that’s a post for another day.

Today it’s all about us women and how we choose to respond to these real everyday challenges. What do you do when faced with such a dilemma? What should my friend do?

Should she:

1. Take the opportunity to try something new with the open mind that sometimes life throws you a curve ball and leads you down a different path than you ever imagined which can also lead to success you never imagined.
2. Quit and find a new job.
3. Or should she stay and fight, believing that there are many ways to achieve that goal of making it to the board room.

We want to hear from you. What have you done when faced with a similar situation? What do you think you would do?

Have you been faced with a similar dilemma before in your career or business?

How did you deal with it? Looking back what would you have done differently?

Click here to leave your comments

by Griselda Togobo