What is the biggest difference in the way men and woman view their paths to promotion?

It comes down to one word: confidence.

For professional men, confidence is rarely an issue. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, Are You Promotable? most professional men do not doubt whether they have earned a promotion, or whether they are worthy. For men, a promotion is akin to a rite of passage. We see it as something we will naturally achieve unless unusual circumstances come into play. We view the path to promotion as the default. In other words, a professional man says to himself, "Of course I will be promoted as long as I don't screw up."

What if we do screw up? Do men and women act differently when they make a mistake?

Men rarely look back on past failures as anything but a learning experience. We do not assume prior mistakes would hold us back from being promoted, unless it was truly catastrophic. Women, on the other hand, seem to obsess over mistakes and assume it will be...