Should I Continue to Climb the Corporate Ladder?

MURIEL WILKINS: I’m Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network. I’m a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they’re facing. Today’s guest is someone we’ll call Carmen to protect her confidentiality. She cares about achieving success in her career and about the culture in which she works.

CARMEN: I’ve tried to maximize my impact, look for the roles where I feel like I can be the most successful and advance the most, while also having a really positive impact on the company that I’m with. I need to be strongly connected to the mission of my organization. When I think about the places that I’ve done my best work and I’ve felt the most engaged, I have that kind of dynamic duo of a place with a mission that I really believe in, and a team and a group of people and a culture that is one where I can really be myself, where you really feel like everyone has your back, you get to do the work that is mostly uniquely suited to your skillset and people are open and happy.

MURIEL WILKINS: Carmen has always been a high achiever, from her time in school and throughout her career so far.

CARMEN: I feel like every sort of step of the way I’ve done the predictable thing or kind of the right path, right? I’ve gotten the promotion on the right timelines. I’ve moved up. I’ve continued to kind of take on increasing levels of responsibility, increasing spans of control in an organization and kind of moving up the ladder, if you will. I would say I have always been a high performer most of my life and my career, from a young age encouraged to always get straight A’s, to always go to the best school, get the best degree. And I’m in a very interesting place now, because I feel like that has been so core to me and I’m starting to feel like it’s shaking up a bit.

MURIEL WILKINS: Carmen reached out because something seems off to her. While she feels she should pursue the next level at her organization, she’s also hesitating. And she’s not quite sure why. So I started the coaching conversation by asking her to share more of what she feels at this present moment.

CARMEN: I think during the pandemic, just pretty much every other company, we went through a lot of period of stress and a lot of very intense looking at our work saying, “Oh my God, we have to completely redo how we think of things, how we’re doing things.” Everyone was working incredibly long hours. And then, we got to the point, it didn’t feel good, around layoffs and consolidation of work, and then we found ourselves doing even more with less.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: And when I took stock in there, I really saw all of the signs of burnout. And I felt just completely overwhelmed and that I couldn’t keep going and I needed to pull back. So I sort of did some of the things that I felt I had to do around drawing boundaries about what I was able to bring to the job. And they weren’t successful, quite frankly. I found that I got a lot of lip service about taking time that I need, but when it came to peer support and kind of the culture of the organization, it wasn’t there.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: And I felt there were probably a number of missteps I made and didn’t feel like I came out of that supported, successful, or still on that kind of promotion track that I wanted to be in.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: And then, as I’ve just been kind of looking around the company, I see a lot of behavior rewarded that doesn’t really align with my values. So while on a day-to-day, I can be happy, it’s increasingly feeling like a place that’s going to be really tough for me to stay on this kind of promotion track. So I’ve sort of gotten to a place where I feel like I need to make a decision. Do I sort of pick myself back up and get back on this promotion track, which really does feel like pushing me again toward a place where we might be approaching burnout, where I really need to give a lot of myself to a company that I’m not as enamored with as I once was. Or should I sort of break with what I’ve done my whole life and say, “Now is the time to prioritize my work-life balance. Now is the time for me to sort of step back, remain highly competent, a solid performer, but maybe not trying to just keep moving up this ladder.” And so, I’m here, one, to think through what does framing up that decision look like for me? And regardless of which path I choose, how do I best set up myself for success? If I’m targeting a promotion track, how do I avoid burnout this time? How do I reset after some misses? But then, on the other hand, if I do try to take a step back, we live in a world where that gets described as quiet quitting.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: Right? How do I do that in a way that feels respectful, that resets expectations with my boss, and doesn’t make it feel like I’m over here trying to coast on the back of others?

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm. Okay. I understand, I think.

CARMEN: Yeah. Okay.

MURIEL WILKINS: What I’m hearing is up until a couple years ago, the predictable path was pretty predictable in terms of the results of it, right?

CARMEN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: You did X, Y, Z, and lo and behold, the output was as expected, X, Y, Z, usually in terms of promotion, self-satisfaction from a work standpoint, et cetera. And then, things changed, right? Circumstances changed.

CARMEN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: It wasn’t as predictable anymore, and the way you experienced that is starting to feel burnout. So you made some changes, created some boundaries, and lo and behold, the result of that is that it seemed like it wasn’t as well-received as maybe you had expected it to be.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. And so now you’re trying to decide, “Do I continue or get back on this track that I was on before, which is gunning for the promotion, gunning for the advancement,” knowing that what comes with it or thinking that what comes with it is basically throwing away the boundaries that you set. Or do you maintain the boundaries, but your thinking is that means taking a step back from the career path. And if you do that, how will that be perceived?

CARMEN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, a couple of questions. I’m curious how you experienced burnout. How did you know that you were headed down that way?

CARMEN: I started to disengage from the work, just sort of look at my list and go, “I don’t want to do any of these things. Not one of these things is motivating to me.” And then, I also felt myself not being able to show up at the meetings and spaces where I needed to be present as the version of myself I wanted to present. And that was usually because I was under-prepare, thinking of something else, and needed the work to be moving faster, so showed up impatient and showed up under-prepared and trying to move things faster than was probably appropriate. And as a result, I was turning off my computer at night not feeling good about the day. And that sort of entered me into this spiral of feeling like, “I don’t enjoy this work. I’m dreading every day that I sit down five feet from my bed and have to log on. And I’m not feeling the connection with my peers that I used to have.” And just feeling, like I said, a complete lack of motivation to do a lot of the work that used to excite me and bring me joy. I take joy in challenge and succeeding at challenges, and I wasn’t finding that anymore.

MURIEL WILKINS: And at any point, or even now, were you able to pinpoint what was driving the disengagement or the lack of motivation?

CARMEN: I think some of it was the quantity of the work. Some of it was the support from my manager that was not present. And some of it was the interaction with a few specific peers that was particularly strained and difficult.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, all three of those variables, the quantity of the work, increased quantity of work I’m assuming.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Lack of management support, and then difficult interactions with peers. Were these all variables that did not exist all along this path?

CARMEN: Correct. Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: You had never faced those?

CARMEN: Probably I had a lot of work. I think I’ve always had lot of work on my plate, but it has felt achievable. I’ve prided myself on being able to just produce a lot of output and being able to manage a lot. And at some point, it got to be too much. And then, these other things kind of exacerbated it. But specifically, when we had layoffs, I had a lot of work added to my plate from people who were laid off.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, when you then decided, “You know what? I’m going to take care of myself during this by creating some boundaries.” Can you just share with me what that looked like? What were some of the types of boundaries that you put up?

CARMEN: Most of them were time-related.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.

CARMEN: They were, “I’m only going to work past 6:00 PM one night a week, and I’m not going to work more than two hours on the weekends,” which I felt was reasonable. I felt like I saw other people in the organization put those types of boundaries up, and I should be doing that as well. So that was probably the biggest one. I think there were other pieces around how I prioritized work that said, “There’s just some work that I’m not going to be able to get to. It simultaneously is not the most important work, and it’s work that’s not bringing me joy.” And so, that was a little bit of the other boundary I put up, but I don’t think I put that up as firmly as some of the time boundaries.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. And then, what happened?

CARMEN: I felt like when certain work that was left when I either was struggling to get it completed or when I needed help, that I didn’t have a lot of the peer support there. The expectation was, “You should have done whatever it took to get this done.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.

CARMEN: Or continued to work on that same level that I had been working at. And I think that it was more of just a complete lack of support or understanding that that was what these boundaries meant for me, was that certain things just weren’t going to get done and that needed to be okay.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So I’m hearing you say that it was like those boundaries were not important, that you should have gotten it done no matter what. Was that explicitly said or is that what you think was said?

CARMEN: It was not, but it was evident in some of the feedback I received, that there were sort of veiled ways of saying that.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. All right. And so, the expectation you think was what?

CARMEN: I think the expectation was that I continued to do that work and shoulder that work, and that if other people… It kind of feels like our company has sort of two mindsets, really sort of framed like this. There are the people who show up just before 9:00 and they leave right after 5:00. There are those people, and then there are the people who you get emails from them at 1:00 in the morning, you get emails from them over the weekends. And so, it was sort of this sense of, “You should be in that second camp.”

MURIEL WILKINS: And if you’re in that second camp, maybe am I getting the camps confused. So many camps. If you’re on the camp who answers the emails at 1:00 AM in the morning.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right?

CARMEN: Right.

MURIEL WILKINS: What does that mean in your company?

CARMEN: That’s sort of what I’m seeing. It doesn’t really mean anything. Those people are not more likely to get promoted; it just means that they work more. And I think that’s one of the things I noticed, was there’s not this connection between how much you work and whether or not you get promoted. I think you probably don’t move up the ladder unless you do that, but doing that also doesn’t guarantee that you’re being seen as a top contributor and getting recognized as such. And I think that was also one of the pieces for me, is I wasn’t feeling like I was getting recognition for a lot of the things I was doing and how much of myself I was giving. And so, I said, “These are the things that when I look at the situation, I think are definitely needed, that it’s very clear that this part of the work is very impactful and is needed by other teams, and needed to do their work. And this right here, this tranche, maybe a couple of people think it’s important. And in the past, just because they wanted it done, I would’ve done it. But now, no. Just because two or three people say, ‘I need it,’ and it doesn’t to me feel like there’s a larger purpose for the work, I need to cut that type of work out.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm. I just want to take a bit of a step back, right, because what I’m recognizing also is that you were also very predictable.

CARMEN: Yes, exactly.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: In what you just said. “If somebody needed something done, I did it, no questions asked. It didn’t matter whether it was on the high value priority list or not, I got it done.”

CARMEN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: Because you are the high performer who always got the A.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: No matter whether it was advanced chemistry or PE. And I’m not saying which one is more important than the other. Right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, you sort of broke the predictability pattern, too.

CARMEN: Yep.

MURIEL WILKINS: And yet maybe, I don’t know, maybe a little assumed that they would respond in the predictable way, which is, “Hey, Carmen. Great job. You’re such a trooper.” But they didn’t. They responded according, again, not saying it’s right or wrong or it’s okay or not okay, but they responded in a different way.

CARMEN: Mm.

MURIEL WILKINS: And you responded in a different way. So there’s a lot of unpredictability all around.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And you mentioned, “Why would I continue to do this if I’m not getting recognized, if I’m feeling burned out, if I’m just so…” That’s a great question. Why would you?

CARMEN: If I think about the company as a whole, there’s still a lot that I really like. I like the products that I work with. I like quite a few of the teammates that I have. And there’s a lot about my workplace that’s quite pleasant and that is enjoyable. And so, for me, it’s about reframing myself in that to say, “I thought I was part of a group that was kind of considered the elite performers and that were moving up the ladder to lead this company.” And now sort of shifting that, “Do all of these other things still hold true?”

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: So, I still do a lot. I think a lot of what we do as a company is good, is positive, and gives me pride in what we do. And it’s still a good place to work. I think I still would, if I were on the outside looking in, would still pursue a career here.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: I just often wonder if I were to start over again, how I would approach it differently? It kind of feels like I did all of those things you’re supposed to do in your first 90 days of kind of overachieving and setting your reputation. And I never stopped doing those. I just kept doing those, and I feel like no matter what, there are a lot of reasons to stay.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: I enjoy my job, I enjoy the work, I enjoy my team. And if I do stay, then it’s just about making sure that I don’t end up in some crazy spiral where I’m back on the burnout train. And how do I reframe it and rethink my years here to say, “What would these have looked like or what can they look like in the future, where I still feel the joys of success, the joys of contributing, and feeling like I am making a difference here without making it feel like the only way to do that is at a personal expense or at the cost of breaking boundaries that I’ve think I’ve set in good faith and for a very good reason.”

MURIEL WILKINS: So far in this conversation, we’ve been looking at the specific ways that Carmen has felt burnt out. As someone who’s always checked the boxes, so to speak, always moved ahead in her career, she’s now struggling with whether that’s the track she wants to be on. Carmen is clear on what makes her feel fulfilled in a job, and she also is able to acknowledge her longstanding need for achievement. But these two things seem at odds with each other for Carmen. So I was curious about how she defines success for herself.

CARMEN: I think in the past, I would’ve told you a promotion.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right.

CARMEN: And I think I probably need to go through that exercise of saying, “If you take that out of equation, what does it look like to succeed in my day-to-day work?” And I do wonder if I am in the right role in the organization for me to feel that way. I think if promotion is off the table, I wonder if the day-to-day work that I do and just kind of succeeding at that every day is enough for me to feel fulfilled or this is a job I want to have.

MURIEL WILKINS: There’s a bit of hedging that I’m sensing here, in that you’re sort of trying to paint the picture of, “If I make believe that promotion is out of the equation,” right?

CARMEN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: “What would it look like? And would that make me feel okay?”

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I’m going to suggest that we start with is your definition of success promotion? And it’s okay if it is, it’s okay if it isn’t. I just think we need to nail that to sort of understand whether how you’re defining your success moving forward is the same as how you’ve defined it up until now, which as you said, up until now or up until recently, the way you were defining success was advancement and promotion.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, now going forward for whatever, X period of time, is that the success metric or is the success metric different?

CARMEN: Yeah. And I think that’s hard for me, because I’ve always been in a role where every two to three years there is the promotion, sometimes even less. And I think early on in my career, one of my resume bullet points was “successively promoted three times in three years.” And so, I think that that for me, in every workplace I’ve been in has been the marker, the badge, the indicator. There was no sign of good performance without that conversation of what a promotion is. And so, up until the position I was in before I came to this company, that for me was the definition. So now I’ve been here, and because of layoffs, my work has expanded, but there was never that title change. And for me, that external sense, not external to outside of the company, but within the company, external to me or to my team, that badge that said, “Yep. We believe in Carmen. We believe that she’s doing the job well and that that’s the right marker.” And so, I think for me, some of that is thinking through, “What’s that intrinsic definition? And what can I be satisfied with without that kind of supplemental thing.”

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s exactly it. Because I think what you’re basically saying is, “If getting the A is not a possibility, I don’t know if I can be motivated.” And what I’m saying is, “So what if grades were off the table?” They might be, they might not be. I don’t know. Right? But what if you had gone to school where there were no grades? You were there for other reasons, right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: What would’ve kept you motivated to work as hard as you did that did get you the A?

CARMEN: It’s so funny, my business school had grade nondisclosure. And so, I think even when I worked in the alumni group to talk about why that was so important to us, it was because it meant that you could just do so much more and be so much more exploratory. So for me, that meant really doing more. I started two businesses when I was in business school, because I had that freedom and I didn’t have to worry. And I never knew if I was going to get an A or a C. You showed up to class, you did the classwork, you learned as was appropriately motivated. You did the work up to what you felt was your standard, but then you had all this freedom. And so, I think to me, that even speaks more about why for me, the work-life balance then becomes so much more important.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: Because if it isn’t about the promotion and the grade at work, work starts to take more of a backseat of my life, because I have a lot of crazy fun interests. There’s another business on the side that I’ve always wanted to start or to run. There’s hobbies or my family that I want to be with and around. And to me, it then becomes about exploration, entrepreneurship. And so, I think either I need to tap into that in my job and say, “Where’s the space for me to have more time to explore that?” Or all the more reason why there needs to be that boundary up, because I need that somewhere in my life. And if it’s not going to come from work, it needs to come from outside work.

MURIEL WILKINS: I understand. I understand. And I think it is sort of a different version of the question, “If money was not a factor, what would you do with your life?”

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I think for you it’s if the grade was not a factor, if the promotion was not existent, there was no guarantee. It could happen, it couldn’t happen, but it was not a factor. You’re good. You already know that you are good career-wise.

CARMEN: Yep.

MURIEL WILKINS: What would it give you permission to do? How would it enable you to be?

CARMEN: Yeah. I have friends that talk about having specific days of the week or specific pieces of their work that are dedicated toward passion projects. They have to be related still to what the company’s mission is and what the company does, but they can be outside of their day-to-day. I don’t know if there would be space or permission to do that at my company. I hope there would be. I think in general, especially if we compare ourselves to progressive popular organizations where people work, sometimes that helps. But I do think there might be an appetite to give that kind of freedom, especially if I can couch it in saying, “This is why. This is what I have spent some time thinking through and ruminating on and coming to the conclusion that I need this in my life. And is there a space for me to have it at work? I think it would make me a better worker. Or is this something that I need to find outside of work? And if so, here might be the implication for what that looks like about my motivation here.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

CARMEN: Maybe that’s going too bold. I’m trying to think through how my boss would take that.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Look, that is a possibility for the conversation. And whether it’s too bold or not, I don’t know. I think it’s fresh in your mind right now, but I think we need to sort of, before we even start thinking about what the tactical conversation sounds like, it’s continuing to unpack this notion of if you gave yourself permission to think over and beyond the promotion, then how are you then defining success? In the same way that you did for business school, right? When it was like, “Oh, the grade, yes, it’s nice that it’s nondisclosure. Therefore, it doesn’t really inform one way or the other what’s going to happen next. It doesn’t inform what it says about me.” Okay?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: “So, what are the other things that I’m going to focus on that will make my business school experience a ‘successful one’?” So when you think about your career path, at least for the foreseeable future, if promotion is not the leading indicator anymore or we’re putting that to the side for now, we don’t know yet whether it’s the most important indicator or not, what are the other possible leading indicators for you, that if I spoke to you a year from now, two years from now, you would say, “You know what? I’m feeling pretty good.” That are in your control.

CARMEN: I think the within my control is the tough part for me to answer.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: If I think about how I framed this up at the beginning of this conversation, there were two big pieces that I said in the roles that I’ve been happiest in. The team culture is there and the mission is there. I think there’s a third piece around how I show up and being proud of the person I am at work. And I think that that comes from both the work that I am doing, whether it be the type of work that I’m working on or the company itself. And then, there’s also this piece of the culture. And I don’t think I can really at this point shape the culture. And there are some flags around our culture.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay.

CARMEN: And I don’t love that, but it’s like can I get past that if I’m doing work that I really love and have the space to not be overworked so much that I’m finding myself not showing up the way that I want to. So if success isn’t the promotion, to me, it almost feels like it’s the day-to-day. I don’t love being in charge of things sometimes. And I know that it’s really hard to get into the ins and outs of, “Well, that great idea that we went and did, that was my idea. I invented that or I thought of that.” While sure, that would be nice to me, I find that that type of culture that promotes those types of I statements are not a culture I want to work in. I want to work in somewhere that’s much more collaborative.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: And so, working on the things that are most meaningful to our company, the biggest strategy projects, “What’s the most important problem that this organization is facing and how am I helping them think through that and lead through that?” And so, I think I could probably try to position myself so that I am working on that type of work that brings me energy every day and excitement every day. And that sort of starts the wheel, if you will, of feeling good how I show up every day, and therefore producing good work. I feel like I’m in the opposite flow right now, where I don’t feel good about how the workday feels, and therefore it impacts my desire to do more of the work. And I want to be more in that forward flow that I feel like I’ve been in before, and that’s when I’m really at my best.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And I think let’s be careful of completely attributing how you show up and how you feel to the type of work that you’re doing and your circumstances, right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Because that completely takes away your sense of self, your sense of ownership. So while I want to acknowledge that it can be difficult to consistently, continuously be in an environment that may not align with your values, where the work is not of highest interest to you, how you show up, what version of yourself you bring, there is no version. You’re bringing yourself.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: What you’re bringing at that particular situation is who you are bringing whether you choose to or not. So I think the question really becomes can you show up in the way that you want to, regardless of the circumstances around you? Or are you basically going to allow circumstances to dictate how you show up?

CARMEN: I like that framing and that sort of push on me to do that. I do think there have been points where I have said, “I’m not showing up my best because that takes effort, and I’m too burnt out to put forth that effort. And I’m not feeling like the work I’m doing and the culture of the company or the people I’m doing it for with are worth it.” And that was a pretty dark place, and I don’t want to be there again. But I want to acknowledge how much I do feel like I feed off of the energy either of others or of the work itself. And I’m not sure I have a clear picture of how to kind of still put on the rose-colored glasses if I don’t like the work and I don’t like the people.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. I get it. Look, I don’t think this is about putting on rose-colored glasses every day.

CARMEN: Yeah. Okay.

MURIEL WILKINS: I think it’s about waking up and deciding which color glasses are you going to put on, because it’s what you want to do rather than because you’re defaulting because of circumstances.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: What I’m saying is what you just described in terms of a very dark time where you put up boundaries because you felt too burned out to do that extra push, that was a choice that you made.

CARMEN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: And that’s okay. I think the discomfort is that you made a choice, and then the result of that choice and the implications of that choice didn’t sit well with you, because they weren’t the implications or the consequences that you used to get.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: There’s something that we have pretty much tattooed into my kids’ brain since the time they were born. We have always told them, “There is a consequence to every action. You choose.” Not, “You choose the action.” Yeah, you choose the action, but think about what the likely consequence is, and be okay with the consequence, right? Be okay with the likely consequence before you take the action. So it’s not about being okay with the action, it’s about being okay with the consequence of the action.

CARMEN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: Everything is cause and effect.

CARMEN: Yep.

MURIEL WILKINS: Could it have had a different effect? Absolutely. You could have walked in and been like, “I am setting up boundaries. I’m only working from this to this and I’m only working this much.” And everybody would be like, “Oh, my God. Thank goodness. Hallelujah. We’ve been waiting for somebody to take the charge in doing this.”

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And, “Oh, we’re all going to do the same thing.” Right? And it would’ve turned out great, but that’s not the way it turned out.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I think right now the question you laid out of, “Do I get back on my promo path or do I take a step back?” Those are the actions. I think what you’re really trying to determine is, “Am I okay with what the possible consequences of those actions are, my hypothesis about what the consequences of those actions are?” And what I’m suggesting is the only way you’re going to try to hypothesize, I use the word hypothesize because who knows, right?

CARMEN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: Hypothesize whether you’re okay with them or not, is do they fit the definition of success that you have for yourself right now? It’s not, “Oh, I just need to have the rose-colored glasses on all the time.” It’s making the choice. So I said a whole lot. Tell me what lands with you there, if anything.

CARMEN: My family’s mantra is, “We all make choices.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Hm. Good job.

CARMEN: So, I say that to people all the time. “We all make choices.”

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right.

CARMEN: And so, it does resonate. And I think it’s making me also think through the other side of, “Okay. You get on this promotion track and then you get a promotion and then what? Is this the hamster wheel you want to be on of, okay, so then you burn yourself out in your new role for two years. And then, you’re right back here of, Well, what’s the next thing? And so, I think I’m also probably at a point in my career where the closer you get to the top of the ladder, the further away the rungs are. I can’t necessarily assume that that is always going to be available to me. And so, I think it’s an important exercise for me to think through, what is my definition of success if promotion is no longer there? And I think that would be good for me to do, regardless of which path. Because even if the promotion comes, there still needs to be a definition beyond, “You got promoted, now you’re in this role. What do you do?” Because probably not another two years, there’s going to be another one and another one.

MURIEL WILKINS: Carmen brings up an important point here about the reality that many people face the further they are in their careers. As you climb the ladder, the rungs get farther apart. While many high achievers might be fast-tracked earlier in their careers, it’s natural for the speed with which promotions come to slow down. So if your success is only determined by promotion, it can cause some serious angst. At the same time, leaders still need a definition of success. And so, for Carmen, this is an opportunity to rethink success and lean in more to many of the things she says are important priorities for her. I think what’s happening, Carmen, is that up until now, your identity has been wrapped up in, “I perform, I get promoted. And then I perform some more, and I get promoted. And then I perform some more, and I get promoted.” Until that formula didn’t work anymore.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay? So we’re trying to come up with a new formula. The new formula doesn’t need to be, which I think is sort of when you laid out the two paths, they were kind of black or white, right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: It was like, “There’s either the promotion or there is not.”

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: I don’t think that’s the case. I think what you’re saying is, “Huh. Maybe there are other things beyond promotion that would make me feel recognized, like I’m making an impact, this is meaningful, that would give meaning to my work life.” Up until now, it feels like promotion is what gave it meaning, plus mission plus… But without promotion, right?

CARMEN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: I wonder whether the mission and culture would’ve been as meaningful.

CARMEN: Yep.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, when we talk about the defining success, I think in your case, it’s being able to kind of sit with the, “What does it mean for something to be meaningful for me now?” And that doesn’t mean you turn away a promotion, right? “If it were to happen, great. If it were not to happen because I’ve been chasing meaning, I’m okay, because I got this.” And that’s not to say promotions are bad. If you were to tell me, “No. Getting promoted is what’s most meaningful for me,” then we have our answer.

CARMEN: Yeah. I think why you’re hearing me get stuck is that to me, those often are wrapped up as well. So I think about the things… I’ve been working on actually quite meaningful work lately, really a very important project for my company. And so, I think in the past that has been associated, right? “You did this really impressive thing, and so you get this promotion.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: And so, for me, it’s trying to think through, “Yes, that might be work that gets me promoted, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because it’s the work I love.” And I actually do think that that’s what drew me to it in the first place. “You like this.” This is why I’m in this job that I’m in right now and why I took it, because it did seem to be meaningful and things I’m proud of, things that I could talk about outside of work and feel good about and feel like I made a difference to my company.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.

CARMEN: Even without the promotion, it is the same thing. It’s working on the projects that are the most important, biggest, and most motivating.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. And so, there’s a lot of association, right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I’m glad you articulated that. In the past, when you’ve done the meaningful work and that type of work, it has led to promotion. And you also, early in our conversation, articulated another association, which is if you work really, really hard and go above and beyond, that also leads to promotion. So it’s not just the meaningful work.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: It’s you’ve got to work on important stuff.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And you’ve got to work your behind off.

CARMEN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: And again, that formula worked. It all worked very well for the Carmen formula of life, until you decided, “Huh. I don’t really like one of those variables anymore. I’m taking that out of the picture.” So we can’t selectively choose the association.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: What it sounds like you’re saying is pretty much if somebody came in the door and they were to ask you, brand spanking new, “Hey, how do I advance here quickly?” It sounds like what you would say to them is, “Work on important stuff and go above and beyond. And that increases the chances of you getting promoted.”

CARMEN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, you can either wait and hope that that formula within your company changes. Option number two is you can change how you deal with those two variables, i.e., work on important stuff, how much you work, knowing that then the output from that equation is likely to change, possibly. Or you can explore whether there are any other types of equations that could work for you either in terms of the variables, what’s the X plus the Y? Or what it equals on the other side. Right? So, something has to change. Either the goal changes or the way you’re getting there changes. But you already know what sort of staying the course looks like. Again, it’s very predictable. It’s what you’ve done. You’ve done it well. And so, now it’s, “Do I do something different?” But if you’re going to do something different, you’re going to possibly get something different.

CARMEN: And I think I’m okay with that, as long as that piece around doing the meaningful work and getting that recognition in a different form is there in a way that it hasn’t felt like it’s been there for me recently.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: And so, I think there are ways, if you’re still thinking about the most basic equation of time + work = reward, and saying, “I’m willing to swap out that reward if I lower the time and increase the importance of the work.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Look, you’re in business, right? It’s pretty simple. Revenue – expenses = profit.

CARMEN: Yeah. Right.

MURIEL WILKINS: Equals margin. So one are the three things, you either decrease your profit goal or change the profit goal, and then you can tweak the revenue and expenses, or you increase revenue or you lower expenses. At the end of the day, what you and I probably didn’t need to go and spend a ton of money on business school to figure that out, but at the end of the day, that’s what it is. And yeah, there are drivers. So I think that’s exactly it. Now, what I’m curious about is this recognition piece. If that were to look different, how could it look different in a way that would still make you feel recognized?

CARMEN: I think there are some frank conversations I can have with my boss about that. I do think that we do have a pretty hierarchical organization, and so I would need him to be taking some actions that establish my credibility in the company. So I want the ability to have more opportunities to work on these types of exciting projects. And so, I think for me, that means ensuring that whether it be at sort of the larger company gatherings or whether that be presenting to the board or something like that, those opportunities to showcase my ownership or my contribution. If I think what was I getting from a promotion? Money and credibility. We can put the money aside for a period and talk about what else creates credibility? And I do think there are opportunities to do that and to still be recognized as a strong performer and as an expert without necessarily getting the promotion.

MURIEL WILKINS: Mm-hmm.

CARMEN: We have a lot of people who have been at our company for years and stayed at their level and are very well-respected and seen as experts and are quite satisfied and happy in their role at their level. And so, I think it’s how do I continue to work on some of those exposure and reputational pieces that get me the recognition I need? And I think one of the ways to notice that as well is just what’s the new set of work that comes down the pike toward me when this set of work is done? When this project is starting to wrap, what are the things that other people are seeing are a good use of my skillset? And aren’t those things that are challenging and of strategic importance to the company and to the board, to the CEO?

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.

CARMEN: And so, if that’s the case, then that’s a sign that I’m still getting all of the benefits of people knowing that I have a lot to contribute, without it necessarily needing a title bump to do that.

MURIEL WILKINS: All right. So a couple of things. One is it sounds to me like you look for signs. And we should look for signs, absolutely. Sometimes the signs are looking for us. They’re looking for us to make a move to see whether it should respond. So, what I mean by that is even in that example you just gave, “Well, let’s see what kind of work comes my way to see if they really mean it.” It’s like, “Hmm, let me wait to see if they give me flowers to show if they really like me.” Or do I say, “Hey, if you really like me, you should give me flowers.” “Oh, okay. Yeah. Boy, we didn’t know that. We thought you wanted cookies. But yeah, we’ll give you flowers if that’s what…” Or “No, we can’t.” “Oh, okay. Well, now I understand.” So just be careful of always waiting for the sign, and know that sometimes a lot of times it’s helpful to say, “Hey, here’s what would make me feel recognized.” And then, wait to see if there’s a response to what you’ve actually put out there. In the same way that you just said, “Maybe I should be having these frank conversations with my,” I think you said your boss or your manager, “around the type of work.” Right? It’s very hard for others to react to what you want, particularly if it’s not on the predictable path, if you haven’t articulated what you want. If every day what I want is a cup of coffee, and I’ve had a cup of coffee every day for 20 years. And my friend brings me a cup of coffee every day. And then, one day I’m going to secretly want a cup of tea, and they bring a cup of coffee, it would’ve made life a lot easier if I had said, “Hey, do you mind bringing me a cup of tea instead?” Now they have a choice to say yes or no. All right? So be careful of the signs. The other thing is we started off this conversation and you framed the question as, “Do I get back on my promotion path, which means grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, or take a step back from the promotion path and break with what I’ve done my whole life?” And it was sort of simplified to, “Do I follow the promotion path or not?” And actually, I think as we’ve been talking, the question is a bit broader than that. That it’s not necessarily about the promotion path, it’s what is the career path you want to take moving forward that is most meaningful to you? It is much more about how do you shape your career for the foreseeable future in a way that is meaningful to you? There can be a promotion in the works in any of it, but that’s not what’s defining the path anymore, unless what you determine is what’s meaningful is a promotion. Do you see the difference?

CARMEN: I do.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I’d encourage you to think about it much more as career path rather than promotion path. And if you do it in that way, what does that allow you to do moving forward?

CARMEN: I think it makes the conversations with my boss much more open and less one-sided because it’s about how can I forge a career at my company that will bring the best to both of us? As opposed to I was sort of coming into it saying, “How do I frame up for my boss, who very similar background to me, ‘Hey, I don’t want to work 70 hours a week anymore.’“ And so, I think it brings to me the opportunity to have a conversation that also feels much more sustainable with him about, “This is the work I love. This is what brought me to this job. This is what you hired me to do. These are the things that sustain me. These are the things that have been particularly painful over the past couple of years. In order for me to not feel like the pain part has overtaken the good part, I need to rebalance these scales and start from a place around the work that I’m doing and how that influences how I show up?” And then, what is a manageable workload as well for me to not start to go down a downward spiral of burnout, and also be a better employee, and be bringing more and be bringing some of the work product and the insights that I think he expects from me, having seen me do that in the past and having hired me. And then, from there, “Well, in order for this to continue to sustain and for me to continue to feel motivated to make the choice every day to show up happy and giving it my best, then these are the types of things I expect. And here are going to be the things further down the road that I’ll be asking for in terms of projects or type of work or type of recognition.” And am I continuing to pursue work that is up to my standard of what’s really meaningful? And what are the things that motivate me? Because I do think I also have high standards for the work I want to be doing and the work that does motivate me to show up every day excited, enthusiastic, and willing to give it my all within comfortable boundaries. I think that’s always been part of the problem as well, is I’ll give it my all and I’ll give it my all, all of the time. And now I’m saying, “It doesn’t have to be just because there are boundaries, that within those boundaries I can’t still excel and succeed.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes.

CARMEN: “Putting up boundaries doesn’t mean turning off.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes. And that’s the decision and choice and realization that you’ve come to. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the realization everyone else has come to.

CARMEN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: I would like for it to be, but I don’t want to sit here and globally say, “Oh yes, since you’ve realized that, everybody else realizes it.” I think that’s the rub.

CARMEN: Yes. And I think there’s some work I can do resetting and understanding there are still some of my peers with whom I need to reset, because they are still looking at me going, “What happened over here?” And so, I think that’s something for me to also think through is where do I need to go back and mend some?

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And so that’s… You asked at the beginning of the conversation, “If I was to reset, if I was to kind of take a different path, how do I do that in a way that then I’m not going to be perceived as,” I think you said, “quiet quitting?”

CARMEN: Right.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, that’s a lesson learned. And I think in general, whenever you’re about to do something different than what you’ve typically done in the past, you kind of want to give people a heads-up and give them context. Because what happened before when you didn’t follow your typical, which is, “I’m going to work, work, work, work, and I’m going to deliver, deliver, deliver and over-deliver and over-deliver,” is, it’s kind of like you didn’t meet your brand promise. You know?

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Think about, I don’t know what your favorite brand is, but I have a favorite hotel, a hotel brand, and if I go to one in a different city and I’m like, “Ugh, what happened?”

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: “It’s not like the other. What?” The disappointment is even more than if I had gone to my not-so-favorite hotel.

CARMEN: Right.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, consistency, people follow and trust consistency, good or bad.

CARMEN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, what do you do when you’re going to change what the brand represents? You have a better chance of giving a heads-up.

CARMEN: Yeah. And I think, I don’t want to make it sound like it was an overnight decision, that just one day I woke up and I was like, “You know what? Computer’s going to get shut at 5:30 today.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Right. Yeah. It doesn’t need to be overnight. But any reset, if you’re operating in a vacuum and not impacting anybody else, then who cares? You can reset all day long, all the time. You don’t have to tell anybody. But when you’re changing something in the system, which you’re part of the system, you’re part of the ecosystem, and the rest of the organisms don’t know or aren’t part of the flow or haven’t even noticed, or are not changing themselves, then it causes disruption. It causes a break. So, the fact that you even said, “Should I break with what I’ve done my whole life?” You already broke with that. The break has happened. And so, now it’s, What’s the path moving forward? So we’ve talked about quite a few things. Let me just calibrate. What do you feel your action steps can be, based on what we’ve discussed?

CARMEN: I think the most important thing for me is to spend time thinking. And I do well thinking and then committing to writing a definition of success where a promotion is an optional or an icing on the cake, not the crux or the definition of it. And then, from there, what about that definition is possible and feasible within my role right now, and what isn’t? And start to map out what that looks like and bring that to my boss and have probably a meaningful conversation that says, “Here’s what I need to feel successful and to feel like I am positioning myself to be my best here, to give the company everything I have to offer, while also protecting myself.” And then, probably after that with his support, having some maybe difficult but frank conversations with my team and places where there might still be some areas of tension or discomfort that say, “This is how I’m going to operate. These are the things that are core to me that you’ve always known, but these are things that might feel different. And I’m acknowledging that. And I’m apologizing for not having broached this sooner.” But kind of getting back on the right footing with where I feel like there might be some places where there’s still some rifts with my peers and hope that they accept it. I think that’s also out of my control. All I can do is set expectations. If they decide that they don’t want to work with someone that they think doesn’t work more than 45 hours a week, 50 hours a week, then I can’t help that.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And what I appreciate about what you’re saying is you are letting the ownership of the choice lie where the ownership belongs. So even after the conversation with your boss, if it seems like the role or the path and the way that you have now envisioned it for yourself in terms of what brings meaning to you is not possible in this environment, then now you’re at the next step of having to make a choice. Is this the environment you want to operate in, knowing clearly then what that would look like. Or are you choosing this other path that you’ve envisioned, and seeing if there’s another environment where it’s possible. But it does sound like there’s a bit of validating what’s possible first before moving to, “Do I stay, or do I go?”

CARMEN: Yep.

MURIEL WILKINS: How do you feel?

CARMEN: I feel good. I feel like we went somewhere different than how I had framed up. And I’m perfectly fine with that, because I didn’t really love this sort of catch-22 I had presented at the beginning, where neither of them really felt like a win. And I feel like this reframes it in a way that allows me to not feel like I’m having to choose between two compromises.

MURIEL WILKINS: Good. It sounds like you’re, at least for now, unstuck.

CARMEN: Feeling unstuck, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: When we redefine what career success looks like, as Carmen did, we also need to establish the boundaries that enable us to pursue that success. But boundaries can be so tricky. As the writer Prentis Hemphill has said, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” I’ve often thought about how this applies in the workplace, that boundaries at work are the distance at which I can pursue what’s important to the organization and me simultaneously. The place to start for Carmen and many others is by understanding what’s important to you. That’s it for this episode of Coaching Real Leaders. Next time…

NEXT EPISODE’S GUEST: I received some feedback that the team said they didn’t feel like they were being recognized. There was feedback that they felt fearful to push back and that they couldn’t express their opinions.

MURIEL WILKINS: If you love the show and learn from it, pay it forward, share it with your friends, subscribe, and leave a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to hear more about each episode? Join the Coaching Real Leaders community, where I host live discussions to unpack the coaching sessions you hear on this show. Become a member at coachingrealleaderscommunity.com. You can also find more from me on LinkedIn at Muriel Wilkins. And if you’re dealing with a leadership challenge, I’d love to hear from you and possibly have you on the show. Apply at coachingrealleaders.com. Thanks to my producer, Mary Dooe, sound editor, Nick Crnko, music composer Brian Campbell, my assistant Emily Sopha, and the entire team at HBR. Much gratitude to the leaders who join me in these coaching conversations and to you, our listeners, who share in their journeys. From the HBR Podcast Network, I’m Muriel Wilkins. Until next time, be well.