When Success Starts Feeling Wrong

In my last episode, I had a great conversation with Michelle Davis. It was interesting as we talked about how you can be successful in a role and still be outgrowing it. That's a tension many people don't know what to do with. Maybe in your mind, success is supposed to mean staying. It's supposed to mean you've found the right place and that you've figured it out. And maybe even that you just keep going doing that thing. What happens when success isn't what you thought it was supposed to be? Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to Short Story Long. In this podcast, we discuss ways you can integrate who you are into how you lead. Today I am offering strategies for building your skills as a leader. Let's break down what's important as you evolve into what's next. Leadership growth comes from recognizing subtle misalignment before it becomes a crisis. Making a clear decision to move toward what matters and building the confidence to lead from who you are rather than performing who you think you need to be. So when something starts to feel off and it doesn't make sense, maybe there's no failure to point to and no clear reason to leave. There's just this quiet awareness that the role that once fit just doesn't fit the same way anymore. For many of us, that's when we hesitate. Not because you lack ambition, but because you've been taught to wait for a stronger signal, something obvious or that justifies the change. Sometimes the need for growth shows up as success that no longer stretches you. Are you willing to pay attention to that? When talking with Michelle, it made me think about how many leaders stay in roles that are technically working, but internally something has shifted. It's not dramatic, not in a way that would justify a big decision to anyone else. It's just enough to create that steady question in the background. Michelle described reaching a point where she was doing good work, she had built something meaningful, and still started to wonder about her impact and her connection to the work. That stood out because it's not the kind of moment most people recognize as an inflection point. It's easy to dismiss and easy to push aside. It also made me consider how often leaders wait for clarity to become undeniable before they take action. Michelle didn't do that. She talked about making a decision, even though that's something she tends to take her time with, and she trusted herself enough to explore what might be next. The other piece that stayed with me is how she described leadership feeling different now. It was less about performing and more about being settled in who she is. That shift means everything to her. It changes how decisions are made, how people are led, and how much energy gets spent trying to prove something versus actually contributing. From that conversation, there are a few things that really stood out to me that I wanted to go deeper into. One of those is even recognizing that misalignment. Because staying in a role long after it stops fitting happens a lot. What may not be obvious is when it's you. On paper, everything still works, so you aren't quite noticing it yet. Your title may be right, and your responsibilities are familiar and practiced. From the outside, nothing is obviously wrong. But internally, something shifted. The work starts to feel heavier than it used to, and decisions take more energy. Sometimes those conversations are off. Even when they go well, they feel a little bit awkward. There's a quiet friction that didn't exist before. You aren't feeling like you're failing, but it's something that's drawing your attention. That's the moment you might try and override and explain it away. You know, things like this is just a busy season. This is part of growth. Every role has hard days. Okay, all of that can be true, which makes it even easier to stay even when maybe it's time to shift. Time passes and the situation doesn't obviously change, but it does change. The misalignment grows, but gradually. And because nothing is breaking, there's no clear reason to act until eventually something does break. Your performance drops, your engagement fades, you can't even bear thinking of going to that meeting. Relationships get strained, or in some situations, the decision gets made for you with a timing that you didn't choose. Waiting that long removes a lot of options. When the misalignment is addressed early, there's space to think clearly. And you can have honest conversations. You can try to redefine the role or shift responsibilities to make a thoughtful exit or change. Then the decision is proactive. When it's delayed, the decision becomes reactive. It's driven by frustration, exhaustion, or urgency. And those are not the conditions that lead to strong choices. The real challenge is that misalignment doesn't come with a formal announcement. It shows up in all of these subtle signals. It's that lack of energy for work that I was talking about, a sense that strengths are no longer being used in the right way. You're just sort of plodding along and dragging yourself through the day. And it's a growing disconnect between what you value the most and what you're being asked to do. Those signals, they're easy to ignore because they don't actually demand action. They are information. Strong leadership includes paying attention to that information even when it's inconvenient. Okay, maybe especially when it's inconvenient. Michelle was reflecting on her experience with working independently and how she was enjoying it for a good amount of time. And then she was lonely. It was hard working for herself. She started to wonder how much of an impact she was really having. And so she started to consider that she might need to pivot. Staying too long in the wrong role isn't a commitment to resilience. It's often a delay in making a necessary decision. Several years ago, I was speaking to someone who was in an incredibly tough situation. The work was overwhelming, but that wasn't new. What was different was how his leadership was treating him. And it was rough. He'd had a long career in that same industry. He knew his stuff well. The change was the leadership around him, and that changed how and whether he was still aligned. I'm not saying that's fair. I'm just saying it was his new circumstance. His comment to me was, I want to prove I can do it. My question, haven't you proven that already? What else do you need to see? That got him thinking, and maybe you felt that urge too. I know I have. It's that ego of mine saying, You dare me? Watch me. Now I try to ask myself, who are you trying to prove it to? What I often find under the surface of that ego is uncertainty. What else would you do if it wasn't this? Even if you had an idea, it's the uncertainty of whether making that change feels possible. My question to that person wasn't to encourage him to leave his job. It was to encourage him to see he could. He had agency, he had a choice, which included choosing to stay. But it is a more powerful position when you're choosing to stay instead of feeling stuck. Recognizing misalignment early doesn't mean immediately changing things. It means getting honest about what's different and what needs to happen next. It creates the chance to move with intention instead of waiting for fate or someone else to choose for you. I often talk about making decisions with incomplete information. Generally, that's about making operational decisions. The thing is, it's also true about moments for yourself. It's the point of knowing you want to change, but the uncertainty is uncomfortable. That's where many people stall. It's where you fall back into those rationalizations. You may even recognize the cycle. It sounds like I can't handle this anymore. It's just too much. I'm going to make a change. This just can't continue. I'm over it, and I'm over them. And then time passes, short or long. Then, I mean, what would I do anyway? Job market is tough. There's nothing posted inside the organization I want to do, and I'm too old, young, inexperienced, inexperienced. Reason, excuse, justification, yep, rinse and repeat. Hey, I'm not judging. I've been there. Waiting for full clarity feels responsible. It feels like the right way to make a choice. Knowing exactly what the next role is, knowing how it will work, knowing that it will be better, that's when we like to act. The problem is that clarity rarely shows up like that. Clarity is often a result of movement, not a prerequisite for it. Staying still in the meantime doesn't create answers. It usually creates more noise, more overthinking, and more second guessing. It's time spent trying to force certainty where it doesn't exist. The shift happens when the focus moves from what is the next perfect step to what is a meaningful next step. That might look like having a different kind of conversation with a leader about how the role is evolving. It might mean asking for exposure to work that feels more aligned, even if it's not a full transition. It might be stepping into something slightly uncomfortable just to gather better information. None of those moves require complete certainty. They require a decision to try. There's a tendency to treat decisions like final answers, as if choosing a direction locks everything in. In reality, most decisions are simply positioning and you could walk them back. Those decisions do create new data. They offer different paths that you might follow. And sometimes they make the decisions a little bit clearer. Leaders who grow don't wait until they can see the entire path. They choose a direction they can stand behind. They take a step and then adjust based on what they learn. That approach creates momentum. It replaces hesitation with progress, and it gives perspective to what alignment does and doesn't mean. Readiness is often something that develops after those first steps are actually taking. Framing a next step doesn't require having the full answer. It requires being honest about what's no longer working and your willingness to explore what might. And she recognized that what she needed to do in that moment was to simply make the decision to make a change. And what she observed about that was that once she saw it, she couldn't unsee it. She said it just felt like maybe I could just try it. And if you're a regular listener, you know I'm often a leap and then look sort of person. I say yes and figure it out from there. That doesn't mean I haven't stayed when I had poor alignment. Like Michelle, I too have stayed in a decision for longer than hindsight told me I needed to. Several of those leap-then-look situations actually resulted from me staying in something that didn't fit anymore. I didn't know what to do, so I took risks that where I was going would change it up enough. Some of it was repeating that cycle I talked about. I changed divisions or companies, but not the misalignment. I liked so many things about my HR career, but there were many things that dragged on my soul too. I've talked about painfully architecting layoffs and how that drained me. It was also trying to fit myself into someone else's structure. Like that guy I spoke with, it didn't occur to me that I didn't need to stay and prove myself. I could choose my own stars. I had to choose to chart my own path to feel the alignment. That didn't occur to me until I was around so many people who had already done it. I didn't know I could be successful, but I suddenly realized it was an option. Interestingly, once I saw the option, it kept pulling at me. Like Michelle, once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. It was the exposure to new possibilities that lit the match, and it was the recognition that repeating the old cycles wasn't going to help me feel that fit. The shift came from recognizing that certainty of how isn't the requirement. Movement is. Once that decision is made to shift, the rest becomes something to work through, not something to solve up front. Sometimes we have this assumption that before stepping into a new role, leading at a higher level, or taking on something unfamiliar, there should be a sense of readiness, a feeling of certainty, proof that the capability is already there. That belief keeps people in place longer than necessary. Confidence isn't something that arrives and announces, I'm here. It's built through experience. And more specifically, it's built by choosing to step into situations that require growth before feeling fully prepared for them. Waiting to feel confident usually leads to staying in environments that no longer challenge or develop the right skills. The work becomes familiar, even comfortable, but not necessarily aligned with where growth needs to happen next. The trick is treating development as something active, not passive. Instead of waiting for the next role to provide new challenges, those challenges can be created now. That might mean taking on work that stretches decision making beyond your current responsibilities, or leading conversations that make you uncomfortable. It might mean even asking for exposure to areas that haven't been part of your role before. And those experiences start to build the evidence. Not theoretical confidence, but real proof. Proof that new situations can be handled. And that ambiguity, it can be navigated. Those skills can expand when they're actually used and not just considered. That's where your belief in your capabilities actually starts to strengthen. And it doesn't come from affirmations or waiting for a moment where everything feels aligned. It comes from seeing, repeatedly, that movement is possible and that growth happens through doing. There's also a difference between preparing in isolation and preparing in context. Reading, planning, and thinking have value, but they don't replace the learning that happens when something is applied in a real situation, real stakes, real people. That's where leadership begins to develop more. Your goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty before the next step. Strong leaders look for opportunities to practice at the level they want to reach, even if their current role doesn't formally require it yet. That's the process where the next step becomes less about hoping it will work and more about knowing it can actually be handled. Michelle really spent some time reflecting on her growth, and she shared that she was feeling much more confident and that she recognized that she had coaching skills and she was qualified to do those things. She feels like an expert. And she talked about, I feel like I have something to offer. There's value in it. Even the most confident people have moments. The nerves come up and the risks feel high. There's a difference between being capable and believing it. Early in my career, I relied more on preparation and effort to compensate for that gap. As I built specific skills and saw them work, confidence stopped being something I chased and something I operated from. I've also watched several of my clients move from, can I do this? to how will I approach this? It's legitimate when some of them say there isn't an opportunity to do things differently or get exposure outside the team. Sometimes you truly top out in an organization, and that's given structure or attitudes. And look, I could talk about how both could change, but let's save that for another day, since you can influence but not control that change. What you can control is what and how you do your work, how and where you spend your time. But Becky, I'm in back-to-back meetings and have no choice. Okay, but first test how true that is. Who drives those meetings? As in how many are set by you? How often are you clearing away that time you saved for yourself because someone asked if you could be free? The way you spend your time shows what your priorities are. If your priority is to please everyone else and not yourself, well, keep doing that. If you want to create a shift and find better alignment, you need to ask yourself why those meetings exist. You also have opportunities to grow within a misaligned role. I had one position where I embraced the challenged. Okay, not from the joy, but from a commitment to bridge a gap until the next thing. Every day I looked for something to learn or experience. I looked for a way to grow as a person and as a professional. Some of my personal growth was learning to manage and direct my emotions, which admittedly was a bit of a struggle in that role. But it was a constant test, something that I had to take on on a daily basis. And so I needed to learn how to manage myself differently. Some of my professional growth was creating long-term plans that didn't require me to be a player in the game. Another edge was to influence others to make changes that would never ease my experience. It would for other people, but not for me, because I planned to be gone. I discovered the power of letting go in that process. It's truly amazing how influencing others changes when you let go of the, but I'm right and I want this for me components. If you are misaligned, think about the areas that would help you in that place you want to be. What is the knowledge and skill that you need to gain or grow to get to that place? Incremental growth is still growth. And sometimes you find that each small step builds, and suddenly there's movement because you are tuned into it. Okay, so what am I saying in all this? I'm saying what I always say. Lead is you. Yes, show up as your whole self in those moments when you can. That's great if and when you can do it. The work is leading as you when you have to hold back on some of those whole self components. Even now, I own my own practice. I choose my clients as much as they choose me. I'm still not operating as my whole self every day. Other people are involved in my work, and I choose to integrate their style with mine, too. Leading as you means that you know who you are and feel settled in that. You recognize when you feel a bit off. And when those patterns keep coming, showing you that it's not just a phase. Michelle talked about how it feels to be aligned. She talked about how it was more settled within herself to be in this different role. She talked about how leadership doesn't feel like I need to perform it. It's just who I am. I didn't choose internal like Michelle did. I chose to be outside. Please don't let anyone tell you that being an entrepreneur is better than being an employee. No one can say that except you. What I can say is no one should ever hire me for a corporate job ever again. That doesn't fit me. It did fit Michelle. For me to do my best work, I need the space to discover what that is day-to-day. My commitment to my autonomy is too strong for me to flex that far. Others appreciate the structure and I rebel against it. It took me so long to recognize that truth. But during that time, I gained knowledge and skills that prepared me to be the entrepreneur I am. What are you doing to prepare yourself for your future? Maybe your future looks like your today. If you love that idea, hold it close to your heart. If not, start looking at what it takes to get you to that next level or the next step and build toward it. If you already have everything it takes, consider why you haven't taken the step. One step is to assess where you are right now. So here's your skill builder challenge if you choose to accept it. Identify one area that feels slightly off, but maybe not urgent. Something you've noticed but haven't acted on yet. I invite you to take five minutes to write it down clearly. Set a timer. Five minutes is way longer than you may think it is. You may need to pause to think about what else might exist, but keep going. You can ask yourself, what have you been ignoring? And then take a moment to evaluate what you wrote. What exactly are you seeing? Where is the friction showing up? And be specific about it. This isn't about solving it. Just describe it. Then add one line. What is one next step that would help you understand this better? Not a full fix, just a place for movement. If you don't have an idea for a next step to take, I invite you. Share what you wrote with me, and I'll send back a couple of ideas for you. The thing is, you can be successful and still be outgrowing where you are. If something I shared today resonated with you, don't brush past it. That resonance is a signal worth paying attention to. You don't need the full answer right now or a perfect plan. You can start by getting honest about what's shifted and what's no longer a fit. Then you can take that one step. It can be a conversation, a new experience, a small change in how you show up. And that's how you can create that movement. Because staying where you are isn't neutral, it's a decision. So choose it intentionally. You get to choose what comes next. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who could benefit from it. Until next time, I'm Becky Fraser, reminding you to integrate who you are with how you lead. Okay, bye.