Creating Space for What Getting the Promotion May Not Solve

Leading With VOICCE® Series.

I remember sitting in our beautiful office space, on the corner of 5th and Race in downtown Cincinnati. I was locked in. Desperate to get "just one more thing" done before I went home. And then all the lights dimmed. I didn't even know that happened. I guess if you stay in the office late enough, you find out.

And all I could think to myself was "what am I even doing?" I was a couple of months into a bigger title doing the same work I'd been doing for the past year or so. But suddenly, the pressure felt different. "I HAVE TO catch up." "I HAVE TO show that I deserve this title of Director."

I'd fought for the new title and the recognition because I believed that it would help give me more agency when facing some of the higher-level decision-makers and cross-functional partners. In my mind, they didn't take our projects seriously, but if they saw that the emails and meeting requests had come from a Director, then our team would face fewer roadblocks. Plus, who doesn't want to be compensated for great work?

My VP championed me, and I got the new title. But guess what didn't change. My mindset. The internal belief that I still had to do more, work harder, and grind it out in order to prove myself. If anything, the pressure got worse. My own expectations of myself increased.

The promotion was not my first time having my work acknowledged. My VP was very vocal about how she valued me. She'd championed me and had acknowledged my contributions in other ways. But to me, the acknowledgment had become more visible externally.

Yet once the thrill and validation of having my work "finally" acknowledged faded, the same patterns re-emerged. The relief never lasted. I constantly came back to:

"I must be doing something wrong."

"I'm not working hard enough."

"I'm not quite skilled enough yet."

"I just need to learn more."

None of these statements were about the work. They were about what I believed about my own "enoughness". I was fighting a losing battle internally, because when you have no measure for what enough means, nothing ever is.

What I have come to realize: achievement changes the outside. It does not automatically surface or challenge the belief systems that we measure ourselves against. That's deep work.

Even organizations and executives that are dedicated to supporting their leaders can sometimes miss this.

It took doing the deeper work to realize some things can only be resolved from the inside. Even after I'd fully left my career and stepped into my own purpose-driven work, I'd carried the same beliefs with me.

"I'm not working hard enough."

"I must be doing something wrong."

My environment had changed. My beliefs had not.

And it hit me. Until I learned to redefine what "enough" meant, and until I could learn how to count my wins without moving the goalpost, I would continue to struggle.

That moment of having all the lights dim was a real wake-up call that something was off.

But it wasn't until my own coaching journey shone a light into my thinking patterns that I truly identified the root cause.

If this resonates for you, you don't have to wait for someone else to recognize your self-limiting beliefs. Ask yourself these two questions today:

What does "enough" look like in this season?

Whose voice is contradicting this truth?

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Tian Philson - Leadership Transformation & Decision-Making Coach | Creator of the VOICCE® Decision Making & Empowerment Framework | Helping leaders go inward so they can go upward.