'I thought I got my dream promotion, until I realised I’d been handed a "glass cliff".'

Glass cliff promotions are by no means a new thing. But they've been thrust back into the public discourse ever since Sussan Ley was announced as the new leader of the Liberal Party on Tuesday.

As the Deputy Leader, Ley was the obvious choice. The problem, however, is the timing. Ley has been put behind the wheel when the party is at its lowest. Now, she will have to clean up the mess.

Some political commentators are comparing this to a "glass cliff" promotion.

"The glass cliff is the cousin of the glass ceiling for women in the workplace," explained journalist Patricia Karvelas on ABC's Politics Now podcast.

"When things have gone wrong and are really crashing, you bring in a woman to fix it all up, and then she ends up bearing the brunt of that. That's the glass cliff."

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It's a phenomenon not just reserved for politics. "Glass cliffs" happen in corporate boardrooms, non-profits, start-ups, everywhere.

Just ask Amy* who has experienced one first hand.

"I'd been in the company for years, doing solid work and getting good results, but kind of flying under the radar," Amy told Mamamia.

"So when they offered me this big leadership role, I was shocked and delighted that I'd been noticed. It felt like such a win. I called my partner and bought a really expensive bottle of wine to celebrate."

Amy, who still works in the industry, was moved into a different department, introduced to a new team, and ready to prove herself. But things felt off from the outset.

"There was no proper handover. The team I was stepping into had a really high turnover. Morale was low. People were burnt out, nothing had been delivered on time for months, and there was a massive client on the edge of walking away."

What she thought was a reward for loyalty and hard work started to feel like something else entirely.

"I remember thinking: 'What have I got myself into?'. I didn't know the term 'glass cliff' back then, but I do remember a friend saying something along the lines of 'they're setting you up to fail'. Which, in hindsight, seems pretty accurate."

Things became clearer, and uglier, from there.

"I wasn't getting any support. My requests for additional resources kept getting knocked back. And when I started pushing for bigger structural changes, which were clearly needed, I kept being told to 'just stabilise the team for now'."

What stung most was how preformative it all started to feel.

"It was like a poisoned chalice," Amy told Mamamia. "Putting a woman in charge, a visible woman, made the optics look better for the company. But, behind the scenes, everything was a mess."

The stress bled into her personal life too. Amy would find herself waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety. Until, finally, her partner said something.

"He just looked at me and said, 'Is the extra money really worth this? You're miserable'," Amy recalled. "That was when I knew I had to leave, it just wasn't worth it."

In total, Amy lasted eight months in the role before she moved on. Now, she is more wary about certain opportunities and knows the "red flags" to look out for.

"One big one is when they talk a lot about diversity in the PR material, but you look at the leadership team and it's still 90 per cent the same faces. Or when they say they want 'fresh ideas' but can't name a single process that they're willing to change."

For Amy, it's not that women, or any under-represented group, "can't lead in tough times".

"We can, and we do," she said. "But if that's the only time you're willing to put us in the driver's seat, that's a bigger issue.

"And if you're giving someone the keys to a burning building, you better be right there beside them with a fire extinguisher. Otherwise, it's just a smokescreen."

The danger of the glass cliff is that it's dressed up as an opportunity. It offers visibility, responsibility, and the illusion of progress, but without the structures of support or the conditions for success.

And when it all inevitably unravels, it's the person on the cliff who takes the fall.

Feature Image: Getty

*Names have been changed due to privacy.