#52 The next step was never a given
A client spent most of an hour last week making the case for his next role. Airtight. Logical. Exactly the thinking that got him promoted five times.
Then he heard himself. What he'd just described — a bigger P&L, more scope, more people — was his current job with the volume turned up. Including the parts he couldn't stand. The reviews, the reporting, the managing of managers: all of it scales with scope. He wasn't describing a dream. He was describing his current misery, supersized.
He's not a careless human. In fact, he's quite the opposite - the methodical approach to defining his target list is solid, defensible, and most certainly logical.
And therein lies the trap.
The obvious next step runs on the old system's defaults. For ten years, progression only came in one shape — scope, a bigger team, the next level — so that's the shape you reach for now. Not because you weighed it and chose it, but because it never occurred to you there was a choice to make. The next step was a given.
But it was never really a given. It was a decision the whole time — you just never got handed the moment to make it.
So, the harder part, and the part almost nobody says out loud - it might not be how you've defined the next rung but that you're reaching for it at all.
The next thing does not have to be up. It can be sideways. It can be smaller, with more of the work you actually like. It can be a different game entirely. But you've spent a career measured by one number that only moves one direction, and stepping off that ladder feels like losing — because the level was how you knew you were winning.
Defining your own version of success isn't conceding that we can't hack the "real path." It's taking ownership - perhaps for the first time in years - of what you want without the scoreboard. It's disorienting as hell. It's also where you actually meet yourself.
One thing to try this week:
Describe your next move without a title and without a level. Just the work, the problem, the people. If the move disappears the second you take the rung away, the ladder is still choosing for you.
If your target list is just your current job one level up, that's the conversation I'd want to have. Book a time here: https://calendly.com/mfdcoaching/clarity
Chat soon,
Mel
P.S. Sideways is not a step back. Some of the happiest people I've worked with took a "lower" title and a better life, and never looked back at the ladder once.