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 Sarah, to protect her confidentiality. She’s been at her current organization for a decade after getting her MBA, and is starting to feel it might be time for a move.
SARAH: I feel quite certain in my mind that it’s time to make a change, and I think where I stall out a bit is for so long I’ve kind of gone to the right school and done the right prep and then taken the next role, and the next role, and the next role. And most of my career has just positioned me for what I guess is objectively speaking, kind of a traditionally big job. A C-level executive at a public company type role. And now that I find myself kind of at the precipice of that next logical step, I feel pretty uncertain.
MURIEL WILKINS: Sarah has achieved a lot in her career, but now that she’s close to getting to that next level of leadership, something is holding her back and she’s looking for guidance as to why, and what to do about it.
SARAH: There’s sort of a bit of a component of, or maybe guilt’s not quite the right word, but it feels like very few people do all this prep work to be positioned to the spot that I’m in, to be able to take this next big role and have all this scope and influence and all that. And it almost feels like a compulsion to do what’s next, versus necessarily a natural kind of ambition or desire. And so, I think what ends up happening is I think about it, I feel conflicted, I feel circular, I don’t do anything. A couple months go by, I think about it again, and I just find myself in a bit of a loop and it’s a very unfamiliar feeling for me to be in a place where I feel so conflicted that I just can’t seem to find the way to take the next first step.
MURIEL WILKINS: Sarah’s hoping to get some guidance on what she even should be aiming for, and to think deeper about that question, do I really want to reach the C-suite? But to understand where she is now, I first wanted to get a bit more of a sense of the arc that her career has taken so far.
SARAH: I think that the last almost 10 years at this company have taken shape in three forms. The first was this first chapter of kind of coming to the company to build a business, to transform a business, being inflow, working with a great group of people, feeling almost like the job was more than a job. It was like we were here to do bigger, more important work. But then not everything lasts, and there was a big organizational change, and there were changes made that I didn’t personally agree with a ton of them. And there was a period where all of my champions at the company left sort of in short order, and that kind of started chapter two.
Up until that point, I had been this really high performing all-star, which had to take a step back and re-prove myself, a whole bunch of new leaders, everybody being evaluated and reevaluated. It felt a lot like kind of pushing a boulder up a hill. But the reason I stayed at the time is that the company offered me this role, which in my industry is a very covet-able role, very difficult to get elsewhere. So I made the personal calculus to sort of stick around and kind of made it through that storm.
And now we’re really in chapter three, and the way that I kind of characterize chapter three is it’s a bit of stasis. I think I’ve weathered the storm, I’ve kind of reestablished my reputation, a lot of my strategies have come into fruition, and my learning has really stalled. And I think that even when I look around at the company I’m in now and I think about, what could that next role for me be here? I come up pretty short.
MURIEL WILKINS: It’s interesting to me that you even used the word stasis, right? Because I feel like as you outlined what your journey has been over the past 10 years, you were like, okay, the first couple of chapters were lots of learning, lots of growth, lots of activity, purposeful, really sort of working towards something that’s bigger than you. Then there was organizational change, and that kind of feels like the storming period. Right?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: And so you worked through that, and so that was adaptation to the changes. And then now it’s like you’re in stasis mode, which is sort of maintenance mode, right? And that is making you feel like, well, you tell me, how is the stasis piece making you feel?
SARAH: It’s interesting. I feel like nervy, I should be doing more, I should be doing something next. But I have to be honest, I think there’s a part of me also that is enjoying stasis a little bit, perhaps more than I thought that I would. I think there’s sort of two conflicting parts of me. One that is, your career has run its course here, it’s time for the next. You’re getting signals from the marketplace that you could be well positioned to do a next big job.
And then part of me is like, gosh, in some ways my job is so easy, not challenging with the learning, that it feels like any next thing has to have kind of a high bar for me to shift it, even though there’s a big part of me that wants to change and that learning and that acceleration and that ambition. I think also there’s probably a bit of being gun shy coming in. Right? I think some of the challenge of building this really linear, methodical career is it feels like taking next step could be tearing the castle down, even though I never thought that I would look at my career as this sort of thing that can’t have a right turn or a wrinkle, but it feels a bit like that because I’ve just done all the right kind of positioning things. So I think there’s a component of just risk calculus there as well.
MURIEL WILKINS: Gotcha. So as you said, it feels like you’ve done all the right things that have led you to where you are. And is the question, what’s the right next thing to do?
SARAH: Yes. I think the question is, is there an orienting statement or a way to sort of organize these many different worrying parts of my mind that just frees me to be able to take the next step? And I guess I think fundamentally my big question is, is the right next step for me to take that next logical path, which is to take a bigger, more influential, more visible role at a bigger company, where I just increased my scope and influence towards the path of taking the next bigger role and the next bigger role and ultimately becoming a CEO within the industry? Because I think when I look at my background and I know what sort of head hunters do, that’s the path. Right? That’s what I’ve sort of prepared myself to do and I think I’m just wrestling with, is that what I want?
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Is that what you want? That’s always the question, right? What is it that you want?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: And the what is it that you want, the timestamp that you put on that is up to you because it could be what is it that you want now? It could be what is it that you want five years from now? It could be what is it that you want 10 years from now? And we sort of tend to lump all those things in together.
And maybe a place to start is just as the way you outlined your career over the past 10 years, you sort of outlined it in chapters. Maybe it’s to think about, what is it that you want, in terms of chapters, right? What is the next year look like? Then what does the five-year horizon, if you can even determine? I mean, I don’t know what I want five years from now, so, right? And then what do you want 10 years, besides being healthy, that’s the only thing, right? And then 10 years from now. Everyone sort of has a different time horizon they can work with. So we’ll want to kind of take a look at that around, what’s your time horizon appetite and capacity to work with? Okay?
SARAH: Yep.
MURIEL WILKINS: But let’s go back to one of the ways that you frame this is sort of having these conflicting questions, right? Thoughts that go on for you in the way that you’ve been thinking about it, which on the one hand, and correct me if I’m not articulating it in the way that you think about it, but on the one hand it’s, hey, the right next step is for me to continue on this path that I’ve been on. It’s sort of what everybody’s expecting, it’s the calls that I get. It’s the natural sort of linear way of approaching it. So that’s one side. And then the other side that conflicts with it is, but you know what? This is pretty good where I am, I know I might not be learning, but there’s a certain comfort level with it that comes with it.
Okay, so let me ask you this. I want to kind of talk through, what’s the dialogue that you have with yourself around those different options? If we go with the first one, which is, I should take that next step, right? that path to the C-suite that I’ve been positioned for and I’m still positioned for, and I know if I went for it, I could pretty much get it, right? When you say yes to that, what are you saying yes to?
SARAH: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think in some ways it’s fulfilling kind of my potential, I guess is a bit of a narrative I have in my head that is if I don’t sort of completely utilize everything that I possibly could do and achieve the best of my abilities, that I’m somehow selling myself short or that somehow that would be wrong, I think. That right, just because I could, I could so I should, because not everybody can, I guess is where some of that is coming from.
And then I think more tactically speaking, it’s like there are elements of it that do appeal to me when I think about it around the prestige, the scope, the scale, all of these things, the impact that you can have on a bigger stage. And then just knowing a bit like, hey, I’m capable. Again, I could, I could do it so maybe I should do it, or it feels like, well, I got to do it. Right?
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, yeah. So on that side, we’ll name that the I could so I should. I love it. All right, and then when you think about the, this ain’t so bad, the stasis mode, the role that I’m in, the kind of position that I’m in. When you say yes to that, because again, you named it as conflicting. So when I think about conflicting is on the one hand, you’re saying yes to something and then you move to the other and you’re like, well, I’m saying yes to that, which means I say no to the other. So I’m just sort of thinking about the yeses for now. When you say yes to the stasis mode, what are you saying yes to there?
SARAH: I think I’m saying yes to comfort, I guess. I mean, ease in some ways. I guess I’ve never really considered too hard that I would say yes to stasis, even if I have. Maybe part of what I’m saying yes to is my lack of appetite for risk at the moment that I’m in. I think that’s probably what it is, like, gosh, it feels like it would really be turning everything upside down were I not to sort of stick around in my current mode.
MURIEL WILKINS: So it’s almost like, why mess up a good thing?
SARAH: Yeah, I would say so.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so going back to the I could, so I should. And you talked about that in terms of feeling like, well, if I have the potential, I need to go for it. Right?
SARAH: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: It’s like, I don’t know why this is what’s coming up for me, but it’s like what I’m thinking about is those, I’ve never been to one of these but I’ve seen them on TV. Those eating competitions-
SARAH: That is hilarious.
MURIEL WILKINS: … when they put a bunch of hot dogs, and I’ve always wondered, why do people do that?
SARAH: That is so funny.
MURIEL WILKINS: But maybe it’s they think, well, I could, so I should. I don’t know, but maybe they’re not thinking about the other part, which is the risk. I don’t know, but we’ll get there.
SARAH: I feel so sick, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: When you think about, I could, so I should, and this potential factor, how are you defining potential for yourself?
SARAH: Capacity, I would say. So capacity to sort of succeed and achieve and get the next, next. I think it is sort of rare, and really, I don’t mean this to sound arrogant at all, but I have been thinking about it and it’s like, I do think it is sort of rare to in the industry I’m in and sort of have the intellectual capability, have the leadership capability, have the strategic know-how, have the ability to lead a large team. I do have a lot of the raw materials that you need, and it feels like if I don’t use them to sort of grow myself, then I’m shortchanging myself, I guess. When I think about potential, it’s those sort of factors that I think about. I have the capability to be really successful in this context, so I don’t know, it goes back to the could and the should.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. This feeling of shortchanging yourself, in terms of not living up to the success that you could have. How are you defining success?
SARAH: Yeah, I guess I liken it to sort of, this sounds a little torturous, but it’s like you’re running a race and you’re running just as far as you can before you collapse. I know that probably has all kinds of mental health alarm bells, but in my head, that’s sort of how it is. It’s like, I haven’t collapsed yet. I still have more to go, I still have more to give, I still have more to push. And so when I think of success, it’s sort of just all the outside entrappings. It’s really just title and scale of impact is kind of how I think I get there. Just like, can you really be the ultimate leader of a large scale organization that touches people’s lives?
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, that’s the success that you see in terms of, if I get there, that it is a success?
SARAH: Yes. Check, I would’ve done the full potential option.
MURIEL WILKINS: And then what would happen after that?
SARAH: I haven’t spent one second thinking about that.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, okay.
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: As we started our coaching session, I noticed that Sarah said something about the choices in front of her, that she was feeling conflicted and circular about where she should go next, what path she should be on. She noted that she’d think about it for a bit, put it on the back burner, then come back to the idea. Sarah also had an organized way of looking at her previous phases with the company, and so I dove into the coaching conversation looking to parse out exactly what kind of narratives she kept coming back to about her future, and how she was defining and outlining some of her terms. When people get stuck, this can be a useful exercise to really organize how they’re defining success, the boundaries of the different options they have in front of them, and even sometimes, what is the story they keep repeating to themselves? Now that she’s had the time to clarify her thought process a bit, it was time to kick up the coaching session a notch and really dig deeper into what motivates her in her career and work, to help start matching her motivations with what her near-term career plan might be. So, where did that definition of success come for you?
SARAH: I mean, I think I come from, I’m a first-generation immigrant family. I think there’s always been a lot of pressure to succeed academically and also feel like there’s a lot of sacrifice made for me to have the opportunities that I did. Gosh, it’s really important that I take those gifts and I use them, fully utilize them. I think growing up, for me, the definitions of success were always sort of these external kind of milestones around here’s who you could be, here’s what you could do. Right? Like ringing this New York Stock Exchange bell, speaking on speaker circuits, all of these sort of outside-in flags of what success looks like. I think now hearing myself say it, it feels like, gosh, a pretty sort of soft-mark understanding of what success means. But when you’re asking me what’s in my head, what do I see when I think of, okay, what would success look like? It is all that kind of stuff.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, and look, we all kind of start with the outside-in definition of success, particularly when we start going to school and all of those things. Right? And I think I’m hearing you clearly and I love your discernment around, this is what I’ve sort of understood to be success, and you framed it as outside-in, and that is a definition of success. It’s not a good or bad or wrong or right, it’s a definition of success, and you framed it as outside-in. So now I’m wondering, I’m curious, and maybe this is a little bit of brainstorming here for you, what would be your inside-out definition of success
SARAH: Yeah, in a career or just in life?
MURIEL WILKINS: However you want to frame it, yeah.
SARAH: Define it, yeah. I think it’s sort of somehow creating that feeling of building bigger than myself and feeling like I have been able to have an impact on an organization where I have taken it in this current sort of a state and grown it and built it to be bigger than it is, and in the course of it, done innovative things and help people grow their careers and had transformative impact on an organization, because I think that is the part of business that does appeal is like, business is changing and it’s dynamic and it can sometimes have a mind and a pace of its own. And being able to shepherd something from what was to what it could become, that’s where I think I really get true satisfaction. And I think when I sometimes think about that next step and where I think that hesitancy is in the next bigger role, it’s a bit of dichotomy between what it means to be more senior and have a bigger scope and bigger scale, can sometimes be at odds with some of pulling and moving the levers of getting things done.
And I could be sort of overgeneralizing it, but I think part of the hesitancy is sort of taking that next senior role and the CEO role is like you become a little bit more of the figurehead, and there’s more, at least at a large organization, which is where I’ve had my career, more incrementality and the pace isn’t quite so fast. And I think part of me is just, if I think about inside out, it’s that touching and building and growing and impacting on a day-to-day basis. That is where I kind of get real satisfaction. But every job I get, every added responsibility I get, every increase in scope, you’re more removed from that type of action. You’re leading in a different way, but truly when I think about success and times I’ve been most proud, it’s been kind of that cultivating and shaping and transforming.
MURIEL WILKINS: So let me reflect on what you just shared. So one is I want to acknowledge that you sort of named it as a conflict, this conflict between what you should do, and we just named two parts. There’s probably a bunch of other gradients in there, and so I’m going to sort of reframe it a little bit around, they are two parts of how you’re thinking about your career that just right now are in dissonance with each other. And so the question is, can you find alignment or an intersection between the two, rather than us seeing them as opposing parts that can never coexist, right? There’s a framing there that I’m going to offer to you around, I think what we’re trying to solve for is where might there be the intersection?
The other thing is when we look at those two parts, in terms of how you define success, that piece of it and the outside-in and the inside-out, what was interesting to me in the way that you share it is, they’re actually not that different from each other. I would say that they’re kind of close cousins. Okay, and let me tell you why. When you talked about the outside-in, you talked about it from the perspective of role and position, and you said it’s a senior role and position that would provide me with scope and impact. You led with role in position, inherent in role and position, it would allow you to have a certain level of impact. Okay, and that’s how you define success from and everything that comes with that. When you defined it from the inside out, your starting point was impact. You talked about flow, right? You talked about being able to do something that’s a bigger purpose, and oh, by the way, maybe the way that I can have that, I don’t know what kind of position would allow me to have that. There’s a certain, I’m not sure if I do one of those senior roles, whether I can have… I can have the level of impact, but I don’t know about the other things it comes with, whether it will remove me from the things that I like. Okay, but the common thread between the two is this notion of impact.
SARAH: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: The other thing is for the outside-in, you talked about fulfilling your potential, and what I heard you say in terms of the inside-out approach is more about fulfilling your purpose. So I’m going to ask us to sort of play around with that a little bit, starting with the last thing I just said, the two P’s. Okay? When you think about fulfilling your potential, how different is that from fulfilling your purpose?
SARAH: That’s a good question. I think purpose in the context of sort of, what am I here to do? Why am I here? Why am I working? Is that how-
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, or even, why am I leading?
SARAH: Why am I leading? Ah, I see. I don’t know that they are super different, I guess. I think what you sort of said about impact and being the common thread is resonating with me. Yeah, I guess perhaps, so when I think about my purpose, it’s sort of what I described, just sort of to grow and transform, and whether that’s a business or the people that I’m working with or touching other people that the industry or that the product or the company is impacting. When I think about my potential, I guess maybe what the worry is, is that I get so distracted by the fulfilling of the potential that my purpose is less consequential maybe, or it has never sort of risen as as important as the potential or the trappings that come with it, but maybe… How different is my purpose for my potential?
MURIEL WILKINS: If at all.
SARAH: Yeah. I think, why do I lead? Is it bad that part of why I lead is because I can, I guess? It goes back to the can, and I should. I think I like to see things grow and transform and I think that’s the work that I do, the consumers that our product touches, and the people that I lead. I think that is truly why I’m here. And when I think about, why don’t I just hang it up and go wander the desert? I think that’s where that is. When I think about my potential, it’s how big of a scale, I guess, can I do all those things in, right? Maybe that’s where the differentiation is, it’s like I could do that with my family, I could do that with my neighbors, I could do that at my kid’s school, I can do that in many different contexts. I think that where the potential comes in is perhaps just the scale of it all and the context in which I do that purpose work. Is that-
MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right.
SARAH: … tracking? Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: No, no, that makes a lot of sense. Right? So let’s backtrack a little bit because you said, “Is it bad that I think I should do it just because I can?” Well, there’s a lot of things you can do. I mean, you could quit and not do anything, right? You could go roam the desert, as you said, right?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: Does that mean you should?
SARAH: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: I don’t know, that’s up to you, right? That’s the piece, it’s up to you. And so, I really think part of this is coming back to this question of, what do I want? Not, what do I think I should do? And when you said, “I like to see growth and transformation,” I feel like unless I didn’t pick up on it earlier, I feel like that’s the first time that I actually heard you make a statement that was about what you want, where you used an I statement. I like, right? Rather than objectively, this is what it should be.
SARAH: Sure.
MURIEL WILKINS: So if we were to put aside the linear path, what the expectation is, what seems like the natural thing just because I can, and really focus in on, what do I like? What do I want? If you were to just look at that, what do you think your answer would be?
SARAH: I think that I would probably purely what I like and what I want, I think I would probably quit trying to climb a corporate ladder. I think I would try to find a senior influential or decision maker-y role as I possibly could at a smaller company where I could see impact and manage the pace and still sort of set the vision and do all of those types of things. But I guess what I’m saying is, I think I would sort of stop worrying about the climbing and the linearity and just kind of move to a company in the same industry but that’s a bit smaller where I could have a lot more seniority and just start to play with those levers faster and more quickly, versus sort of taking the step and the next step and then just kind of following the path. And not really so much worry about the ultimate scale I would get to, because it would be enough scale, I guess, for me to feel happy about. And then just do that a bunch of times, I think. Right?
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, okay.
SARAH: I think what that would necessitate for me is sort of somehow letting go that part of my psyche that is saying, Hey, Sarah, there’s not that many people that can do that linear path. Gosh, you’ve worked so hard. I guess that is this sort of rock inside where it feels like I would have to let it go. And then there’s always sort that worry of, well, maybe it feels like, is it enough to just be able to do what you like versus sort of what you could? And I think that is also weighing on me. I’ve never really felt free enough to do just what I like. I’ve always been thinking about what the next thing is and how to get to the next sort of step. And so maybe there’s some work to be done around kind of the exercise of even feeling like you’re allowed to do what you like, versus what you could and should do.
MURIEL WILKINS: I mean, according to whom though? Is it enough for who?
SARAH: I guess me?
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, I can’t answer that for you.
SARAH: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: Again, it goes back, maybe there was a reason I was thinking about that eating exercise because I could after two hot dogs be like, enough for me. I’m full, I’m good. And you might say, “No, give me more.” Right?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: Because I have the capacity, I’m still hungry. I’m still, I love this food or I want to win. I want to win the hot dog eating championship. Right?
SARAH: And so Muriel, is there some type of… and I’m sure everyone is different, but you have to eat that one extra hot dog and it makes you sick and then you know you’re at your limit. Right? Or, because I feel like a little bit, I’m looking at all the hot dogs and I’m like, is it five, is it six? Obviously not, but is it seven? What is it? And it’s like, it almost feels like maybe there’s just a part of me that has to eat that additional one, just sort of know where the break point is. But I know that that feels like more reactive and not thoughtful or proactive in managing your career. But to some extent, I feel like it will be hard for me to, and that’s where I get back to kind of that concept of aiming and where I’m aiming. It’s almost like I feels like, how will I get that feedback loop, that here’s where I’m at, here’s where I’m at, here’s where it’s like it’s enough?
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. So I think one way is exactly what you said, you’re reactive, right? You just say, “Let me give it one more push and see if I collapse.” You used a word, collapse, earlier in our conversation, that’s why I’m coming back to that. And when I collapse, that means I need to stop. That’s certainly one way and it has its consequences. Typically, the way that we see it is in burnout, right?
SARAH: Right, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: And burnout has all different ways of looking. Okay? So that’s one way. The other way which is not being reactive, but being more proactive is to say, “Okay, here’s what I think I want.” So testing hypothesis, okay? And that’s when we talked about, well, what does success look like, even if it’s a year from now, two years from now, whatever it might be? That’s what I’m going to go for. And then when I get there, I’ll see how I feel, but that’s going to be my stop, right? So it’s like, I know I talk a lot about or I share a lot about running. When I go out for a run, I don’t just go out and say, Okay, I’m just going to try to run as many miles as I can today until I collapse, and then call somebody to come pick me up or Uber, or I’ll call an Uber to get me home. No, before I start my run, I check my, how do I feel today, or what’s my training program, or what’s the ultimate goal here? Am I going for fun or am I training for a race? Whatever it is. Okay, today I am going to do whatever, seven miles, that’s it. And then maybe I get to seven miles be like, oh, I can eke out another little extra half a mile or a mile, but I’m not going to be like, oh my God, let me just keep going and going and going and going. You could, but I know what the consequence of that will be, right?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: And so I think what you’ve been doing up until now is sort of taking the reactive approach, right? Something is put in front of you. It’s like-
SARAH: Totally.
MURIEL WILKINS: Oh my God, I can get that, I’m going to do it because I can, so I should. And now you’re sort of saying, “I don’t know if that’s the path I want to take.” So, what’s the other alternative, or one other alternative? Is to say, “Okay, what do I think I want to do or what I want it to be like? And let me try it and then make a decision from there.” When I frame it that way, how does it resonate with you?
SARAH: It resonates well, I think part of why it feels so high stakes at the moment is with that particular linear path, if once you get off, it’s hard to get back on. In this is very specific instance, it feels like also up until now there has been optionality. You could do this, you could come back, you could this. But I’m sort of just at this pivot point where if I’m going to go big, it should probably be another big company and a big role and a big whatever. And so to some extent, it feels like it’s probably also the first time in my career where if I take a turn, which I think I could, it’s a door that’s closed and I have to be kind of comfortable with that, I think, if that makes sense. I’m sort of not so naive to know that there’s multiple different careers, multiple different ways to have impact, multiple different things to learn, places to go. It is just this particular kind of path that I’ve been on, were I not to take the next next, I think it’d be hard to get back on. And I think that is sort of also one thing that’s uniquely in this moment that hasn’t been in the past because it’s been like, you could probably come back and do this or that or different company or whatnot. But that’s why I think there’s also some feeling of high staked-ness about it, if that makes sense.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, no, of course. And I want to acknowledge the risk or the high stakes that you see with this, and I don’t, no way am I going to be naive and say, “Oh, of course not. You can always do whatever.” The reality is, you’re at a level at your career where there are fewer and fewer positions of that level and scope and scale, and you’re realizing, this is the path that’s expected and so if I take a detour or get off the highway, will I ever be able to get back on? And so I think when we reach these inflection points, there’s never going to be a right answer. Right? It’s going to be like, what’s the best choice for me? And the “for me” is very important.
SARAH: For me, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yes. And the word choice is very important, because in every choice there are trade-offs that you make. There just are, it’s the reality of it. And you seem to understand what the trade-offs are for yourself, even though we haven’t dissected all of them, you’ve brought up quite a few. I think the question really is, what’s the trade-offs that you feel most comfortable with that you could go to sleep at night with and be okay with? Not that they would be perfect, just that you would be okay with, at peace with.
SARAH: Yeah, and so is sort of the idea that if an individual can get kind of better about articulating the choices, the trade-offs, etc, that that can lift some of the overwhelm of just taking action?
MURIEL WILKINS: I don’t know if it will lift the overwhelm. I can’t, I can’t sit here and say it’ll lift the overwhelm, right?
SARAH: Yeah, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: But what it will do is provide you with more clarity around what the choice is that you’re making. Okay? Does the overwhelm ever-
SARAH: Ever change? Yeah, right.
MURIEL WILKINS: I mean, That’s a really interesting question because I think what inherent in that, is that you’re, and correct me if I’m off here, but what I’m hearing in that is, gosh, I want to make a decision, but I don’t want this decision to be uncomfortable.
SARAH: I think it’s, I don’t want the decision to be uncomfortable in a way that I can’t make peace with, I guess, is sort of the addendum I would put there. Right? It’s-
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so how will you know if you can make peace with it? What’s your process for making peace with something?
SARAH: I think it has been, to your point, quite reactive. I don’t think too hard about the trade-off, right? I think if you go back to sort of that inflection point between chapters one and two, the company was going a certain way, I didn’t love it, but hey, I had this sort of role dangled in front of me. And I was like, well, that’s the thing. Right? And I sort of took the consequences that came with it, which was that it was a very hard couple of years. I was fairly miserable and I might not have made it through that storm. I think it goes back to that purpose work. Right? I think I have been overly oriented on the potential. I haven’t really honestly weighed the different options in the context of purpose. And so perhaps what will be clarifying is feeling like any decision that I would opt to take checks enough of that purpose box, versus just the potential because I don’t know… Look, I know myself, I don’t know if I’ll ever be totally comfortable with painful trade-offs, but I am feeling, Muriel, like it’s time to do something kind of different. And I guess what I would also say
SARAH: …what I would also say is, versus in the past where it’s been like, should I stay, should I go? You and I aren’t having a, should I stay, should I go, conversation, right? I know it’s time to go, it’s time to do something different. I think there’s something to be said around reframing the idea of taking a leap and being reactive to sort of the next great job that great, I’m putting great in quotes, is put in front of me, to having it be more hypothesis driven. Like, here’s what I’m trying to solve for, here’s what I think I’m going to get. Here’s what it may not happen, and here’s the catastrophe scenario, and would I be comfortable with that? But I am feeling kind of more confident after this conversation to be more action-biased. I think that has been what has been really weighing on me, is I don’t want to spend another six to 12 months stewing in my own thoughts around all this. I want to get out there and give it a go, whatever it looks like.
MURIEL WILKINS: You don’t want to spend another six months stewing over it, and yet, if you are not ready, that’s what you’ll do.
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: We’ve reached an inflection point in our coaching conversation here, because Sarah has now said that it is time for her to make a change with much more conviction than she had at the beginning of our conversation. Now that we’ve taken the time to explore Sarah’s perspective about her career and start to parse out what is her purpose versus what is her potential, it’s time to start thinking about real action steps she could take coming out of the session, to start really working through the trade-offs available to her so she can be at peace with whatever comes next. And that starts with thinking not about what she doesn’t know, but what she does know.
I think one of the first steps is kind of like, what do you know for sure right now? Let’s start with that, because I think we’ve been focusing this whole conversation on what you don’t know. Let’s look at the flip side or the other side of that, or the other side of the sheet, which is, what do you actually know for sure at this moment?
SARAH: Yeah. So I know that I have built a mass of great experience in the industry that I’m in that is marketable. I know that I have a role now where I am almost through the learning curve of this particular role. I know that I don’t feel challenged enough at work, and I know that I have a strong desire to kind of accelerate my next learning curve in a way that just would be impossible in the same kind of company, in the same industry that I’m in. And I know that I feel eager to sort of spread my wings in a different context, I guess. I know I had that sort of feeling inside of me.
I also know that I have a strong reputation at this company, I am valued. I’m in a business where it’s so dynamic that you can’t help but learn a little bit, right? I’m not just pushing paper around, right? And I know that I want to make sure I’m running to something and I’m not in a position where I’m running away from something. It’s a good foundation, and so that potentially allows me to be fairly selective, but not too selective in where I go next.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, and this running to something, I mean, you just articulated what it looks like. Right? It might not have an exact name and company and position with it, but you articulated all of the elements. And so, what would you need to be able to move to action towards fulfilling those elements?
SARAH: I think I would probably need to put pen to paper in a very honest way around, what component parts does a next drill need to have, could have, doesn’t need to have? And if I’m being really honest, I think I need to do one version with the potential swirling in my head, and I probably need to do another version where I’m just really thinking about more purpose and then sort of seeing, to your point, how they track and where’s the commonality? Because my guess is if I did those exercises, they might… I’m not sure, I’m curious to know how sort of similar versus different would they be and how might that impact that list of trade-offs that I would or wouldn’t be comfortable with? So I think it’s a little bit of that homework of writing it down and seeing what it says back to me a little bit.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.
SARAH: There are pieces I know, geography, general industry, general type of function, but I think some of what you and I have been talking about is the purpose and the scale and the transformation. And how does a potential next role tick those boxes, versus just being about where I started, which is what you said, a position and title?
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting, Sarah, because I am not convinced that there is not an intersection. Right? I think it’s more a matter of what is driving you, what’s motivating you. And again, I think for up until now, the potential piece is what’s been the driver, and we don’t want to throw that in the trash, necessarily. We just want to ask, should that be the leading character in your story at this point, right?
And I think the question is, if purpose was now the leading character and potential was the backup dancer, right? I’m mixing different metaphors and analogies up here, but you get it. What would that look like? Okay? So up until now, it’s kind of been like lead with potential that’s put in front of you, and then if it fulfills the purpose, great if it doesn’t, it’s okay because I’m fulfilling my potential. And I think the pivot now is, what if I led with purpose? And oh, by the way, if I lead with purpose, is there a way that I can also fulfill my potential at the same time? And if there isn’t, I’m still going to lead with purpose, but if there is, great. Right? Maybe it accomplishes both, because it might be that you’re not necessarily ready to let go of the potential piece altogether. And you may never have to. I think it’s more around who’s in the driver’s seat right now, and let’s make sure potential comes along, but potential is not driving.
SARAH: And just to make sure I’m playing it back correctly, that is because having had potential in the driver’s seat for so long, it can lead you to be reactive. It can lead you to have burnout. It can lead you to be sort of ending in a place where you don’t want to go. Right? Is that-
MURIEL WILKINS: Well, I think you named it earlier when you talked about potential, you said that it was very much outside-in.
SARAH: Outside-in, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: So I think it’s externally driven, right?
SARAH: Right.
MURIEL WILKINS: Everything that you talked about kind of around what’s challenging you and where you feel conflicted, etc, it’s all an internal sort of knowing.
SARAH: Yes.
MURIEL WILKINS: Right?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: So my sense is from what you’re sharing, is that you’ve got to make a bit of room for the inside out to also have a say in this. And the inside out is this purpose piece, that what you shared about being inflow, being able to just focus on growth and transformation and impact. And as long as that’s there, then you know you’re doing what you need to be doing. As you said, you could express that in a multitude of ways. You could do that as being a parent, you can do that as being a CEO somewhere, you could do that gardening, right?
SARAH: Yeah, right.
MURIEL WILKINS: And so the question is, is there a way that you can fulfill this inner purpose that you feel you have, right? So it’s still fulfilling living up to it, living it, not even living up to it, living it, while at the same time fulfilling this external potential of role and prestige and scale and impact until you may not want that anymore. You may or you may not, right?
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: That will be completely up to you, but the driving factor, who’s in the driver’s seat, there might need to be a little bit of a switch. Okay?
SARAH: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
MURIEL WILKINS: So this, writing it down, I’m almost imagining two sheets of paper or two columns with living my purpose on the one side, fulfilling my purpose on the one side, and then fulfilling my potential on the other side. And then writing them both out, and then looking at them both side by side and seeing, where’s the commonality? And maybe going through the exercise of, if the potential piece is in the driver’s seat, where would that lead me to? What would be the natural next step? And if the purpose side is in the driver’s seat, but not neglecting the potential, what would that lead me to? And do it for both. So let’s not abandon one for the other, I don’t think that’s the case here.
SARAH: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think it is really helpful to hear it, sort of the two camps be articulated with the name, purpose and potential, because I think it makes it feel more manageable to then go and sort out a little bit. I think up until this point has felt like, I’m just confused. I don’t know why I can’t act. I feel paralyzed, but why? And so I think this has been really great framework for me to think about. And when I take a step out looking at myself and I’m like, gosh, I wonder what she will do. I wonder what she’ll do next. I think that sometimes, so yeah, I think there’s some work to do.
MURIEL WILKINS: And then how do you make a decision, right? I think that if you think about what you have framed around this inside-out and outside-in, purpose and potential, internal and external, if you can’t find alignment between the two, because I think that’s, again, there’s some dissonance right now. And so if you really just can’t find the intersection between the two alignment or integration between the two, then what it sounds like you’re ready to do today, which isn’t what you have been doing up until now, is that you’ll follow the purpose path.
SARAH: Yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: Right? I think in the past you followed-
SARAH: Potential, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: Potential and just assumed the purpose was going to be there. You didn’t really think about it, as you said. But before you make that step, let’s see if there’s alignment. And I’m not saying there will be, sometimes there isn’t. Then at least you know what decision you need to make, but let’s try to find the alignment and the overlap first.
SARAH: Yep, I think that sounds like a good plan. Onward.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so how do you feel now versus when we first started our conversation?
SARAH: I think I feel optimistic. I think I feel a bit, I think the fantasy was that it could all, it all will work out. There are no trade-offs, right? That’s always the fantasy is just like, I’m going to come in and they’re going to say you can do it all. But the reality I think, is that there are trade-offs, and it’s clear that there’s sort of two different sides of me that are needing to kind of get more in line. So I do feel like I have a plan. I think my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t sort of see a path to action, and I feel like I do see where that could go. I don’t think it’s going to be easy and I think also hearing you sort of describe the journey in chapters, I wonder if this is something I come back to a couple times over the course of my career, because as you said, it doesn’t always have to be 50/50 or whatever. It can wax and wane, and so what I’m really thinking about is kind of naming it, processing it, and then just recognizing that this is who I am and there’s probably going to be some negotiating between the two parts.
MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, I love that. I love that it’s the negotiating between the two parts, because I think that what I’m envisioning is, at the beginning of our conversation, the two parts were not even seeing each other.
SARAH: Oh, yeah.
MURIEL WILKINS: One was hidden and the other was like, I’m here, fulfill that potential, you should because you can. And now it’s like, oh, well like I said they’re cousins, so let’s have a little family reunion. Let’s bring them together, have them shake hands and hug it out and say, “Okay, we both want to be here, right? What does that look like?” Okay? And then see what happens, and then revisiting it as you said, because just like your career up until now, it has evolved and there has been change, and it’s going to continue to do so, just as you do.
SARAH: Yep, perfect.
MURIEL WILKINS: Okay?
SARAH: Thank you so much.
MURIEL WILKINS: Thank you. Thank you.
SARAH: I really appreciate it.
MURIEL WILKINS: Let me know how things net out for you.
SARAH: I will. Well, I’ll keep you posted on how the family reunion goes. Hopefully it’s cordial and amicable.
MURIEL WILKINS: It will be great.
While not everyone can make it to the C-suite, Sarah’s experience is common for many high-achieving leaders. They might continue to move up the ladder just because they can, always focused on reaching the next rung. But it can be really helpful when at pivotal career moments or potential transition periods, to really think deeply about why you do what you do, what you get out of it, and how much of it is about purpose versus potential. This is a distinction that Sarah has only just begun to really think about, and the answer is yet to be determined. But starting to put pen to paper is a great first step because it’s easy to avoid asking yourself these kinds of questions when you’re chasing the next product launch, the next quarterly financial returns, the next promotion. Sarah still has a lot of work to do on her own when it comes to deciding what trade-offs are worthwhile for her. She’ll still need to figure out what parts of her job are about purpose versus just potential. And it’s not my job as a coach to answer that for her, or anyone for that matter. What is my job is to help them see they have different ways of navigating the choices in front of them so that they can reach and answer to that question for themselves.
That’s it for this episode of Coaching Real Leaders. Next time-
NEXT EPISODE’S GUEST: I think that the company now has a very unhealthy consensus culture, meaning that whenever we are making decisions that we are trying to making consensus from every party of the organization, and people just don’t take responsibility to moving forward. We just don’t get things done.
MURIEL WILKINS: I have a really important ask of you: if you love the coaching conversations on Coaching Real Leaders, it would mean the world to me if you could head over to Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and subscribe to the show. And while you’re there, leave a five-star review. And of course, if you think others would learn from these episodes, please share it with them. If you want more of Coaching Real Leaders, join me on CoachingRealLeadersCommunity.com, where I host exclusive live discussions to unpack every episode and answer your questions. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Muriel Wilkins, and on Instagram at CoachMurielWilkins. 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 Sofa; 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.
