The Career Breaking Point: Mid-Career Women’s Perceptions of Organizational Communication and their Career Disruptions

When women in leadership experience career disruptions, they and their organizations lose. Companies forfeit experienced, mission-aligned talent, while women face instability and professional setbacks. This qualitative study offers a diagnostic foundation for understanding how organizational communication contributes to these disruptions. Guided by the cultural approach to organizations and using a constructivist grounded theory methodology, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with 14 mid-career women who experienced career interruptions. Findings identify three interrelated communication-related factors: mission-driven overwork, gaslighting, and value incongruence. Rather than prescribing solutions, the study centers on women’s lived experiences to highlight the communication patterns they perceive as harmful. This interpretive focus is intentional: before designing effective interventions, organizations must recognize and reflect on the dynamics women themselves identify as destabilizing. Only by listening to these accounts can we begin to imagine more supportive workplaces, and only through this imagining can we keep women from reaching their career breaking points.