I need an outside perspective please:
I have been with my current company for a number of years. In that time, my boss's manager was sacked, here one day, gone the next. My boss stepped up and was asked to take on his manager's head of department role in addition to his own role as team lead until a more permanent replacement could be found for the head of department. This went on for a while. The board then decided that while they were thankful for my boss stepping up and filling the more senior role as well as his own, he wasn't up to the bigger job. The board approached me to see if I was interested in replacing my boss, in his new, expanded role. I said wasn't interested in replacing my manager - on one hand, because in the head of department role he leads a very large team, and on the other hand, because my manager is a nice person and it was unclear what would happen to him if I said yes.
As no suitable internal candidate was found, they kept my boss on while they conducted an external search. An external candidate has now started, but they have still kept my old boss on, but he's effectively been demoted and been given an administrative role with an empty title. I imagine the board hopes he'll resign of his own accord sooner rather than later.
Now the new head of department has approached me to ask if I want to take on the original team leader role my boss used to have. It's still a sizeable team, and it would still be somewhat awkward working side by side with my old boss as equals - he tells me believes his new role still puts him in charge of the team, even through the board is telling me his is not the case, and that I would not be reporting to him in any way, and that he'll be just a colleague/peer.
So: Do I take the bigger job? Reasons for not taking it include a) much more responsibility and b) the awkward situation with my demoted boss and potential confusion over who's in charge. Reasons for taking it include a) more money and b) very good future career prospects.
The board is telling me I'm being silly: I'm supposed to be 'high-potential', yet when they throw opportunities my way, I say no. I'm told this is typical female behaviour and part of the reason why there are few women in senior leadership positions. Truth is I just feel somewhat uncomfortable or undeserving of the bigger role. I know I could to the job, but still feel it's outside my comfort zone and I'd need to change the way I present myself in order to grow into this role and be perceived as a leader by both the team and the board. Also, I'd need to undo a lot of things my previous boss put in place, in order to put the team on the right track; there'd likely be a need for redundancies or needing to manage people out for performance reasons.
Should I stay in my current role or go for the promotion? I feel if I don't go for it, that might be the last time I get asked - I'd be marked as having no ambition and no appetite for a leadership position. If I don't go for it, they'll recruit someone external who I'll be reporting to and I might well end up being the one who gets made redundant in the medium term.
Do I go for the uncomfortable promotion, OR stay put and accept I'm not cut out for senior management, OR get a job at a different company and start from scratch there and hope to eventually rise to senior management there?