When Leadership Means Not Getting Promoted
About six months ago, my client - let’s call him Jeff - showed up for coaching. When I asked what he hoped to get out of our time together, he shared that his goal was to move from individual contributor to people manager. This desired outcome was similar to many of my other emerging leader clients from fast-growing tech firms in Silicon Valley. Jeff felt he needed to “up-level” and gain the skills necessary to move into a leadership role. He wanted to focus on giving feedback, managing up, and having difficult conversations with his peers.
“Jeff, what’s important to you about leading other people?” I asked.
He was quiet for a few minutes, and then he said, “I actually don’t know.” More silence. “I guess that’s the path I’ve been put on, but yeah, I have no idea why this matters.”
It was at this moment that I knew we could do our work. In an instant, this seemingly confident and focused young leader was ready to question himself and his goals.
While Jeff’s aha moment created an important awareness around his lack of a why for this goal, he still remained focused on the promotion. In subsequent sessions, I’d ask again what was important about the promotion, and while this question seemed to weigh on him, he’d often try to brush it aside asking for a framework or leadership article he could use to tackle an upcoming conversation or assignment.
Jeff gained comfort with giving - and receiving - feedback and his relationships with his colleagues grew stronger. Interspersed between growing his competency as a manager, we also began to tackle the questions around what mattered to him as a leader and as a person. We talked about his values - what he holds most central to who he is and how he lives everyday - and what was really important to him as a leader.
Jeff began to feel more confident at work and was excited about his upcoming performance review where he was certain he would get that much desired promotion. We used our coaching session before the review to focus on his strengths and where he had grown over the past several months so that he could emphasize those with his manager. He felt prepared and excited for the conversation. Before we hung up, I asked Jeff to reflect once again on what was important to him about leading other people? He said he’d think on it (again) and I wished him luck.
I was eager to hear how things went for Jeff during our next call. As we began, however, I could tell something was different. “So, how did it go?” I asked. Jeff took a deep breath and I could almost hear him smile on the other side of the phone. “Great, really really great.” There was a long silence before he said, “I told my manager that I wasn’t ready for the promotion yet.”
Again, we sat in silence. Jeff shared that until he was fully ready to answer my inquiry, he was not ready to lead other people.
It was in that moment that I knew Jeff was ready, that he was stepping more fully into his leadership than ever before. Jeff was taking responsibility.
Responsibility is often thought of as a burden or obligation, but notice what shifts when you define responsibility as “being able to respond,” being able to respond to the world around you, whether it be your community, your team at work, your family, or even yourself. Responsibility is having the conscious awareness to respond to what is needed in the moment. To be a leader is to be responsible, to be able to respond. Jeff took responsibility by responding - by responding that he wasn’t ready for the promotion in that moment, that he had work he needed to do. He put his ego on the backburner in service of the people he would one day lead.
Jeff recognized that he needed both the outer game of leadership - the competencies, frameworks, and skills we had been building - and the inner game - further developing his values, his sense of self, and how he wanted to be for the people he would one day lead. Responsibility is being aware of your inner and outer game and ensuring that they are congruent.
“Wow,” I said to Jeff, “You’ve come a long way.”
“Yes, and I have a ways to go, so let’s get down to business.” He knew that something was missing from his inner game but wasn’t quite sure how to build it. As we continued our work, we identified three key areas in which he needed to gain clarity:
Self-awareness - We often think of self-awareness as understanding how others perceive us. But external awareness is only half the battle; we also need to gain awareness of how we see ourselves (internal awareness). Jeff had already gathered a lot of external awareness through our 360 and by having honest conversations with colleagues. Now he needed to learn what he believed about himself. He needed to further uncover his values and his purpose, why he wakes up every morning and what he’s trying to do and be during his time on earth (no small question!).
Self-compassion - As you gain self-awareness, you can find yourself suddenly doubting your thoughts and decisions. Often you learn some hard truths about how you’ve been showing up and decide it’s time to make some changes. If you’re playing the long game, you’re going to learn this again and again. We all have parts of ourselves that we’re not proud of and behaviors that have developed from our environments, and often from our childhoods. Self-compassion is about learning to find the wisdom in and appreciation for those parts. No matter how much Jeff couldn’t stand his critical nature, it would always live within him. He came to discover, however, that his critical side served a purpose: it allowed him to think strategically and ask probing questions. By acknowledging this part of himself and allowing the good of this quality to shine through, he was able to tame the parts that were less effective (and not ruminate when he messed it up).
Choice - As you gain awareness and have compassion for all parts of yourself, you begin to be at choice with how you lead. Over time, Jeff was able to bring a new level of consciousness and intentionality into all of his interactions - at work and in other parts of his life. He found the importance of taking a breath before walking into a meeting and thinking about how he wanted to show up and what was really important. At home, as he felt himself launching into a fight with his partner, he’d grab a glass of water and collect his thoughts. Choice is about recognizing what’s happening for you and responding with creativity and consciousness.
Toward the end of our coaching engagement, I asked Jeff how he felt about the work that he had done over the past year, noting that he had not achieved his original goal of getting a promotion.
“I’ve done the most important work of my life. I know more about myself and who I am becoming than ever before. The goal of getting promoted was a shadow of who I once was. I know that it will happen - probably soon - and when it does, it will not be about the position or the salary; it will be about so much more.”
Jeff’s story reminded me of a powerful quote by Warren Bennis:
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.”