provide summary for the given case study

CASE STUDY: A case of mistaken identity?

By Beverley Honig, CEO, Honeylight Enterprises Pty Ltd

Catherine was a seasoned state government executive at the Department of Education who had always held senior

positions across a variety of industries, something of which she was very proud. She was a high achiever and,

although it had been over 20 years since she had finished high school, she was still keen to tell people she had been

school captain at a good school. Clearly, she had a very strong self-concept and a high level of self-esteem, and

was not shy of self-promotion.

As an ambitious executive, every two years or so Catherine would seek a new, more challenging position in

which she felt she had to reassert her self-image and reclaim her seniority. Often, personal references from past

positions weren't flattering, so she relied on her network of contacts to move from place to place, and occasionally

left behind a trail of soured relationships. As her rsum listed ever more impressive titles, her private life became

hampered with broken relationships, including a failed marriage to a well-known businessman. Nothing seemed to

hold her back, though; on the contrary, she was as motivated as ever to climb the corporate ladder. She made a

point of joining prestigious ladies' clubs and made sure everyone knew how often she was there. At least once a

week she lunched at the Lyceum Club, and would later talk about the prominent women with whom she had dined.

She was also a member of her local country club, playing tennis there every Sunday.

Recently, Catherine had landed a very senior role at the Asian headquarters of an Australian telecommunications

company, Telco Ltd. Her role was all-encompassing but she wasn't familiar with the industryshe was to help Telco

Ltd diversify into other areas, such as education, which was her background. True to character, she found herself

speaking out brazenly about what could be done better in terms of getting into the education market in Australia.

However, she did not make it clear why she knew so much about it; indeed, many of her senior colleagues were not

even aware of her background, working for the government in education. She corrected her Asian colleagues if they

made a faux pas on an Australian cultural level, such as not looking people in the face, and the more she did this,

the more she was disenfranchised from her senior work colleagues.

Her role, however, was quite undefined and open-ended. Although Catherine liked to be autonomous and selfdirected,

this made it hard for her, especially without a telco background. She quickly discovered that most of the

other senior executives, who were based in Asia, were steeped in knowledge about the company and the industry

and were largely male. At first she thought this was an advantage and she prided herself on being one of the single

most important links between the Asian headquarters and the Australian base. However, she soon found that

despite her strong work ethic and long working hours, her usual networking ability was dampened. Her undefined

job role also hampered her ability to illustrate accountability and left her scouting for goals that were unattainable,

certainly in the short run. She found herself on a treadmill of global conferences, presenting a seemingly endless

round of white papers.

Catherine's visibility on social media pages such as LinkedIn and Twitter became more obvious. She was a

woman on a mission, and was keen to uphold her reputation as senior and savvy, while at the same time defining

who and where she was, and where she was heading. She ensured she was linked to senior executives of other

telcos as she postured for a new role. She renewed her Harvard group membership as well as those for other top

universities; if you were to 'follow' her you would see obvious signs of desperation and angst, even though her

outward face was always upbeat and self-approving.

Catherine's final day at Telco Ltd came too soon for her to prove them wrong. She was swiftly replaced by one

of her Asian counterparts and given 20 minutes to collect her belongings. She hadn't found a new job, had been

there less than a year, and didn't have her 'story' ready as to why she was leaving. She wasn't sure whether to go

to her social media and blog about 'needing to spend more time with family' or just disappear until she had sorted

out her next move in the job market.