Episode 254 | Watch on YouTube | Listen on Buzzsprout
This week I got an email from a listener named Denise. She’s 44, she’s been at her company for 11 years, her performance reviews are excellent, and her director has told her directly that she’s one of the most dependable people in the building.
She’s also just been passed over for promotion for the third time in five years — this time for a man who’s been at the company for three years.
Her question to me was simple: is something wrong with her, or is something wrong with the system?
Neither. What’s happening to Denise is common, predictable, and fixable. Here’s the framework.
Why reliable people get stuck
There are four things going on underneath every one of these stories:
1. You were hired for a job. Companies get very good at seeing you as the thing they already know you can do — because that’s what they hired you for. 2. Reliability becomes a trap. The better you are at your current job, the harder it is for the people above you to picture you doing a different one. 3. Promotions aren’t rewards for past performance. They’re investments in future performance. Companies promote the person they believe can solve next year’s problem, not the person who’s earned it. 4. Waiting is a strategy — it’s just usually not a good one.
None of this is about office politics. It’s about how careers actually work, and most people are never taught it.
Four things to do this month
- 1. Get the real answer, don’t guess. Find two or three people who already have what you want and ask one question: “You’ve done something I haven’t been able to do yet. Can I buy you coffee and ask what it took?” Ask everyone the same question and compare the answers.
- 2. Fix a problem leadership already knows about. Not a project you invented — something outside your normal lane that leadership has already complained about. If they already knew the problem existed, fixing it gets noticed. Invented projects don’t.
- 3. Watch for three signals in the next 60 days, not 12 months. Are you invited into rooms you weren’t invited into before? Does your boss mention what you did to someone else without being asked? Are you asked for input above your current role? If none of that happens in two months, push harder on step one — don’t sit quiet and wait.
- 4. Open one outside conversation now. A recruiter, a former colleague, someone in your industry. Not because you’re leaving — because you’re a company of one, and your employer is your customer. If a customer stops buying, you find out what you’re worth to somebody else. That’s how “I could leave” becomes a real option instead of something you say and never do.
The bigger point
The promotion was never really the goal. The goal is becoming the kind of person who has options — so that one missed promotion, from one manager, at one company, doesn’t get to define your future.
If you’re in the same spot Denise is in, start with Moving Past Obstacles, a free resource at dalecallahan.com built for exactly this situation. It’s the first concrete step off the sideline.
Book a call with Dale: https://calendly.com/dalecallahan/30min
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📄 Download the free Moving Past Obstacles guide to help you work through what’s actually in the way:
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