Ascending the Leadership Ladder: Balancing Growth, Expectations, and Joy in Your Career - 193

Ever find yourself caught in the whirlwind of climbing the professional ladder, only to realize the view at the top brings its own set of vertigo-inducing challenges? I'm Sean, your battle-tested guide through the trenches of leadership growth. Today, I unfold my journey from a white belt in Jiu-Jitsu to blue belt, paralleling the experiences of clients who've stepped up to the daunting plate of senior leadership. We tackle the pressures and expectations that morph with every promotion, weighing the thrill of advancement against the burdens it can add to our shoulders. As your comrade-in-arms, I'll share strategies to keep the fire burning for your craft, even when the heat seems overwhelming.

Navigating career transitions or belt advancements isn't just about sporting a new title; it's an emotional odyssey. From sharing the raw sting of being fired to the unforeseen benefits that surface from such trials, I dive headfirst into the emotional undercurrents that steer our courses. The journey prompts us to question our perceptions of success and the role setbacks play as inadvertent mentors. This episode isn't just about licking wounds; it's a clarion call to recognize opportunities clad in the guise of failure and a reminder that our greatest lessons often come at the price of our most challenging experiences.

And what of the pressures that come from the outside world, those that sneak into our psyche and nudge us towards places we might not venture alone? I summon the wisdom of the legendary Victor Frankl to dissect the double-edged sword of external expectations and intrinsic values. As we ascend to new heights, the challenge lies not in shouldering the weight of responsibility but in balancing it with the weightlessness of joy that once drew us to our fields. Stick around for insights on harnessing the power of focus to navigate the maze of post-promotion life, ensuring your professional evolution is as rewarding as it is relentless.

Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Hey there, all right. So recently I've had a couple of clients who are new to the senior leadership team rank, and what that ended up prompting was some reflection on promotions. And on top of that, not too long ago I ended up being promoted myself in Jiu Jitsu, and so this is going to be another one of those on again, off again installments of the what have I learned from Jiu Jitsu, or combat sports series? Now, to weave in my personal anecdote here, recently I received my blue belt, which means that I suck a little bit less at Jiu Jitsu, but I'm still very, very new and trying to learn this, this very complex martial arts, and who knows how long I'll be doing this, because it is pretty rough on the body, but at least for now it's proving to be quite the object lesson for me, and convincingly or conveniently, I should say it is also proving to be useful for the show, because there are a number of parallels between what happens in Jiu Jitsu and what I noticed happening in the lives of my clients. Now to go to this promotion that ended up happening. What's interesting is that you know so if you're unfamiliar with Jiu Jitsu oftentimes you end up having your training day or your training hour or whatever it is, and then at the end of the class there's sort of a little bit of time where everybody lines back up and you know there's sort of some quiet admin time at the end of what is typically a very high-paced class and in that moment the instructor calls out the individual who's being promoted and you know you get to be acknowledged, basically, and then class ends and you all file out and or at least off the map, and there you go. And so what was interesting for me in this experience is that you get the sort of routine congratulations. And then a couple of people came up to me and said can you feel the target on your back? And this is really the tie-in with what I've noticed with some of my clients recently who have also been promoted into this next higher level of authority and expectation, also Because in Jiu Jitsu it's a very competitive environment, as you might imagine.

Speaker 1: 3:07

It's a combat sport where it's a martial art and competition is very much baked into the formula. You are competing against, even in training, you're competing against your classmates and they are attempting to submit you, either to choke you or to do some sort of joint lock on you. That is typically very uncomfortable and, granted, we are attempting to keep each other safe, but we're also trying to go for the quote-unquote win. And so this competitive environment, when you start to put on higher and higher authority or rank, you often have people gunning for you because they are attempting to prove themselves on you, and then, additionally, the people that are still at higher rank start to recognize hmm, okay, well, this person is no longer a white belt, which is the lowest of the low, or most novice of the novices, and therefore they're going to turn the heat up. It's no longer this environment of oh, okay, well, you know, so-and-so is just a lowly white belt and we'll take it easy on them, because they have their head so far up their ass they don't know what they're doing. Like blue belts, you are showing to the group that you have some sense of what should be happening. You're starting to gain some degree of proficiency, and so there is this increase in acknowledgement because you're no longer one of those lowly white belts.

Speaker 1: 4:58

But then there is also this leveling up, where things do get harder, from both the top and the bottom, and what that can do is it can create this environment of pressure where we begin to feel the expectation and we begin to feel the responsibility. There are assessments that I do with every single client, and every single one of my clients has maxed out this prompt that asks about how much weight they feel, and all my clients, every single time, max that out and, like I mentioned, these two clients that I've been dealing with, most recently dealing with working with sorry coaching that I've been coaching with recently they have noticed that, as they have stepped into this senior leadership team role that they're recognizing in themselves, oh wow, I sense a great deal more pressure, I sense a great deal more expectation and also this increased responsibility, this weight on my shoulders, and it follows me around everywhere. And then, on top of that, for my clients that are first time CEOs, there is yet again another sort of leveling up in magnitude, in order of magnitude more, because they begin to recognize I have all the eyes on me all the time, and that can be incredibly stressful. And so these two situations the increase in rank in Jiu Jitsu and then also the increase in rank in the corporate world to me they have certain similarities that make this a worthwhile topic In theory.

Speaker 1: 6:58

In both scenarios we want to be able to do the activity for a prolonged period of time. We want to be able to have longevity in our calling or our craft or career or pursuit. Now, if you don't, that's totally fine and you know you can turn this off but send it to somebody that actually will benefit from this. But ultimately, if we are interested in trying to maintain longevity and we don't just want to flame out really, really quickly, then I think it's worthwhile for us to begin to look at okay, how, how am I going to stay connected to this when there is legitimately an increase in expectation and there is legitimately an increase in responsibility? Now, one option is to just put our heads in the sand and say, ah, la, la, la, la la. No, there's no expectation, everything is the same. I don't have any extra responsibility here. I do have increased authority, which is nice, yay, I'm more powerful, but then there is no cost that has come with that, there's no trade-off that has come with that. We could say that, and that would be most likely total fantasy. And if you want to live in a fantasy world, go ahead, nobody's going to stop you. But I submit that your external experiences might not end up lining up with your fantasy. So, for those one or two people who are still listening, let's dig into what we can do from a practical, pragmatic perspective, while still concurrently trying to stay connected to mindset mastery, to an inner resolve to stay connected to this activity.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Now, my belief and again, if I look at both my professional career and also this recreational endeavor that I'm doing with Jiu Jitsu, one critical element is keeping connection to enjoyment. Now, enjoyment doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be fun 24-7. We can enjoy an activity that is hard and that challenges us. Now, for some people they might refer to that as fulfillment, but I do believe that there is an element of joy in there. When people talk about being fulfilled, the carriage of their presentation, in their body language, their tone and their voice, their emotion that comes with it is. There's an uplifted element in there, and so I do believe that joy can actually still be part of a difficult experience, and that is contrasted with fun, as in oh yay, this feels so good. All the time it's just warm and fuzzy. But no, we can dig deeper into a sense of true joy and the mix of ingredients that create that recipe of joy. Sure, some of it is going to be fun levity, laughter, lightheartedness but some of it is also going to be more weighty. It's going to be on that element or that end of the spectrum of fulfillment.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Oftentimes, in many of the intense physical activities that I've done over the course of my life, people will refer to type one fun and type two fun. And type one fun is fun. Right now Feels good, yay, warm, fuzzy, everything's exciting. It's just, oh, you know, right now it's making my body feel good, it's making my spirit feel good, it's making my mind feel good. And then there's type two fun, and type two fun is fun. Later, in the moment, it often feels like it really sucks, it's really hard, your body hurts, your spirit feels broken. In the moment, you know, think about just some giant slog, whether that's a big, intricate, complex project at work or whether that's slogging up some mountain, when it's cold and it's wet and the wind is ripping and it's cutting through all your layers and you're just freezing your ass off. So this type one and then type two fun, they still go into the basket of enjoyment and there are some questions that I think are worth asking in order for us to.

Speaker 1: 11:58

When we take that next level of responsibility. When we are promoted and in the corporate world, there are times when you are asked to step into that next level. Now, whether you feel that that is an ask that you can refuse or not is also, I guess, the subject of maybe another podcast. But there are times when you get caught off guard when someone says hey, we want you to run this, we want you to be the leader of sales or the leader of business development or whatever. And so when we are caught off guard, it behooves us to ask Okay, do I have to say yes? And if I choose to say yes, what about this? What about this?

Speaker 1: 13:02

Next level intrigues me. What are the unknowns that I find potentially exciting? Change can be very, very difficult and, in fact, most of the time, if not all the time, change is difficult, even when it's beneficial change or we believe that it's beneficial change. But in that newness, in that novelty, we have the capacity to discover something that we have never had before and that can be extremely exciting. There is something generative, something in this creative space that we have never explored before, and that's where this sense of intrigue comes in. And if you were to write this out literally write it out then quite likely it will become more concrete for you. And, just as a quick disclaimer, if you are already a few months into the new thing, you can still write this out. It might be a little bit retrospective. What was it that I thought would intrigue me about this? But I would say that you're still new enough in the role that you can legitimately ask yourself okay, what about this intrigues me? What about this is unknown and exciting? Or what about this is unknown and scary? Often, the only difference between scary and exciting is our perspective on it. They tend to be two sides of the same coin.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Another question that's worth asking in terms of keeping your enjoyment when you step into that next higher level. What is it about this next level that inspires me? For many of my clients, fulfillment is a big deal. Most of my clients are not the kind of people, rightly or wrongly, who just want to have fun. Now, I would say that most of my clients would benefit from focusing a little bit more on just having fun. I think that that would actually benefit their ability to be effective in the world and to make the contributions that they want to make. But it is that sense of contribution that is very motivating for them, and oftentimes the reason that they want to take higher levels of authority, to amass more power, is not so that they can sit at their mahogany desk with steepled fingers thinking about the empire that they're building, but so that they can affect in a positive way, at least to the best of their ability, the lives of others. Their ability to contribute to a cause bigger than themselves is something that is very inspiring. So, again, asking oneself, what about this next level? That inspires me? Can the appropriate context be something that really connects you to that next level? And they can, I guess, be a bit of a buffer when things become stressful, and they will, they most definitely will. Another question is what about?

Speaker 1: 16:43

This next level presents new opportunities, and here there's some, I think, some common elements with the first two questions. New opportunity is often exciting. As I talked about before, new opportunity can also inspire some fear in the fact that, well geez, I don't know if I'm going to be able to capture that new opportunity. But asking oneself the question about opportunity what I believe that does at least what I've seen it do for clients of mine when they do ask themselves that question is it widens the aperture of what they believe is possible. So a big part of my work is to try to help people recognize in a very tangible way that they have more options than they believe are possible, than they believe actually exist, to be able to help them recognize oh gosh, yeah, I don't actually have to live my life the way that I have been. I don't have to tolerate certain conditions or certain relationships if they are toxic. It is not necessarily my law in life, my fate, to suffer.

Speaker 1: 18:10

And so purposely targeting your attention on new opportunities and the difficulty here that a lot of people struggle with is it falls under the category of blind spot Well, I've never been here before, no shit. Yeah, I get it, and I have empathy and sympathy for that because I've faced that so many times myself. And so part of this is to do some creative thinking, some imagining what might be the opportunities of this new position. How might that play out? And, of course, some of that is going to be backed up by your initial forays into that new level. Are you going to have some missteps? Yeah, yes, indeed, you are going to definitely have some missteps, which in and of themselves are opportunities if you allow yourself to see it.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Now, what's difficult there is that those missteps are often associated with stress. People are upset, you might feel like you're dumb or that you are completely ignorant. You should have seen it and maybe you should have. Whatever the misstep happens to be, maybe with your level of intelligence and prior experience you could have possibly forecasted that. Oh yeah, maybe I shouldn't have talked to that customer that way, or maybe I shouldn't have talked to my new boss that way.

Speaker 1: 19:43

But if we're willing to give ourselves a little bit of grace and we're willing to say, well, I've never been here before and maybe maybe I can allow myself to I don't know recognize that I can learn and I don't have to make the same missteps over and over again, and that I can extract a great deal of wisdom from the missteps that I do make, even if you get fired, for instance, okay, that sucks, but I bet you learn really, really intensely from that experience. And if you were able to go beyond fixation of oh I suck, I suck, I got fired, I'm terrible. And you're able to actually, in a sort of more objective and dispassionate way, think about okay, how was it that I was showing up there? If I, for instance, was fired from that, from a particular role, what was it that I was not demonstrating that the role called for? You know as hard as it is for me to communicate this, because oftentimes some of my combat anecdotes, I think, are a bit of a miss for a lot of people, because the experience is just so extreme and as difficult as it is on a human life perspective. Some of the most valuable learning lessons that we had when we were in combat in Iraq came from when people got killed.

Speaker 1: 21:31

You know, human beings tend to be very negativity focused. We much prefer to avoid punishment than we do to achieve reward. There's a disproportionate waiting. We would much rather avoid punishment than we would achieve that reward and from an anthropological perspective I think it makes sense because if there is something that's going to end your life, there is no future chance to get a reward, and so that disproportionate priority. As much as we might try to live in a more enlightened way and I do I am an advocate for that, because most of human life, at least in America and Europe and many nations around the world, most of that existence or that life, does not actually entail life or death decisions, and so I do try my best to make sure that I'm not operating from a negativity bias, and I think it's something that is worth factoring in that okay, yeah, a lot of our ancestry is based upon running. Whenever you see something that is not 100% friendly.

Speaker 1: 23:07

But if you are able to recognize, hey, maybe there were some things in the way that I conducted myself that were not appropriate for the role that led me to, in the case of this example, get fired from a position or from a role, then that can be a tremendous opportunity to learn about yourself. Now there may be that opportunity where you say, okay, I learned this about myself and now, when I apply for the same level of role, I will know how to shore up that gap. Alternatively, you may find, huh, yeah, what I learned about myself is that I actually don't want that level of responsibility. I don't want that level of authority, and that's perfectly valid as well From my perspective. It's not necessarily about making sure that your career is just a ever up into the right progression. It's about you becoming really attuned to who you are and what you want and then matching your calling or your profession and your activities to that so you can be truly deeply aligned with yourself.

Speaker 1: 24:32

Now the flip side of this whole conversation about promotion and increased expectation is to look at where am I making this next level feel too somber and serious, and what's causing me to make it so serious? Now, if I look at my own history, one of the things that I took from my upbringing was an intense need, psychological need, to be prepared to be top of class, and predominantly this influence came from my father, and there are some. I mean, he never hit me or anything like that. I have a great dad. You know, when you're little and you have a father who's big and intimidating looking or at least in your eyes he is. When he communicates certain standards of performance, like you will get straight A's, that has a very profound impact on essentially what you think is the target for your life. The compass needle is set to a certain direction based on some of these formative experiences.

Speaker 1: 26:00

And I had a few of these formative experiences with my dad where he was pretty intense and let it be known in no uncertain terms that I would perform at the highest levels. And so the interesting thing there is, I don't think that my dad had anything but positive intention behind that. I think what he saw in me was tremendous potential and he wanted me to tap that potential as deeply as possible. So I truly believe I choose to believe that he had my best interest at heart, that he wanted me to grow into a man who was independent and autonomous and capable of being powerful. And as a child that was a lot. And the way that I internalized that was that I had to be the best. And some funny anecdotes that came out of that internalization of needing to be the best is that I would actually practice, let's say, soccer, for instance. I would practice soccer before soccer practice, so that when I was in practice I already looked like I knew what I was doing.

Speaker 1: 27:20

Another one that is even sillier. I cannot believe I'm about to say this, but I actually harangued my mom. This was the day before high school started, I believe. So it was going to be a freshman, it's going to a new school and I felt that it was imperative to practice my locker combination for an hour before the next day, monday classes started. That is pretty ridiculous in hindsight, but as a kid, as a freshman, there was a lot of stress that I was perceiving about fitting in with the new school and performing at top level, and something inside of me was convinced that if I did not have my locker combination mastered, that I would somehow inadvertently lock all my books in my locker and Then that would start a chain reaction that would cascade through the rest of my life and I would somehow become an utter failure. Yes, this is how neurotic I was. May still be and who knows, but that was part of what made this Drive for performance a double-edged sword. On the one hand, yes, I did perform at top levels and on the other hand, it felt really burdensome, felt really heavy, felt like there was no option but to just constantly grind and to constantly be seeking Optimization.

Speaker 1: 29:08

So many of my clients they want to optimize every single fucking second of their life and I understand they have a lot of demands on their time. Now I would argue that some of those demands they could actually just drop and and others they can delegate to somebody else. So I think they hold on to more than they actually really need to or should, but they are connected. I think, in a very similar way that I used to be, to this notion of being the best and that every minute of their day has to Be top level. And when we look at why it is that individuals want to be optimized, what I found in the in the coaching work that I do with individuals, is that it is often motivated by fear instead of love of mastery.

Speaker 1: 30:06

They are afraid that if they do not optimize their day, they do not optimize their performance, then they're going to be last, because inside they're connected to this notion that they're either first, they're either in first place or they're in last place, and that false duality or that false polarity Creates real pressure because it creates a sense of consequence that's not real. I mean it's real in the sense that they perceive it to be real, but they'll put themselves through the ringer and they often talk about I have to get there as fast as possible, and there could be any number of things Proficient in getting up to speed on the new role, getting their team together, getting their department to operate at a higher standard, whatever you know, in my case going back to that blue belt jiu-jitsu example I have to get to being a purple belt as fast as possible, and this one of the things that I used to do, and it's one of the things that I'm attempting to avoid Avoid in this recreational endeavor that I'm engaged in where I want it to be fun. I mean, shit, it's already hard enough because I have people trying to like choke me out. I don't need to make it any harder by putting this extra pressure on myself to say, oh well, I need to figure out how to optimize my path to Purple belt, which is the next higher level. Because guess what, once you hit purple belt, well then there's brown, and then there's black, and then there's various stripes, and then there's, etc. Right, so there's always going to be the next level and the next set of expectations. We don't have to rush that process. We can actually chill out and Enjoy some of what we're going through in the moment the hard stuff, the good stuff, the things that we're learning about ourselves in this new role, in this new environment, instead of being so dogmatically fixated on having to get to the next Manifestation of optimal performance as fast as possible.

Speaker 1: 32:51

Now on the notion of external expectation. It's tough. On the one hand, one of the things that I try to coach people on and help them see is that we don't have to be a slave to external expectation. And here again I will cite man's search for meaning by Victor Frankel, and the key message out of that book is that no matter how difficult, no matter how insane the external circumstances are, you have a choice in how you respond. You don't have to blindly react. You don't have to quote-unquote play along. Now you may experience and suffer Some external repercussions of not playing along. For instance, you make it fired.

Speaker 1: 33:50

In Victor Frankel's case, he was a prisoner of the Nazis and was in a couple different concentration camps and Was close to being executed on more than one occasion For standing up for what he believed in. And that's part of why that book can can be quite powerful is that the circumstances in which he and others were choosing how they they were choosing their response and they were choosing to stand up for what they believed, even though they were prisoners In a Nazi concentration camp. That's that's why that book is such a powerful example is because that is a really extreme Scenario. Their lives were on the line, the lives of their families were on the line. It wasn't just a job, it wasn't Just getting a promotion or not getting a promotion that real consequence there. It's not to say that being fired is not a real consequence. It is. Obviously it's connected to how we make our living and provide for our families, right so? But I think there is a Tangible difference between, hey, we might get physically executed here and my family might get executed with me if I stand up for what I believe in and I'm getting fired and Ostensibly I can find another job. So, on the one hand, I do help people recognize that they don't have to play along with external expectation and not or but, and it's potentially very motivating.

Speaker 1: 35:31

Yes, on the one hand, it is a source of pressure, or can be, and on the other hand, it is also a call to level up, and I've seen it play out again in Jiu Jitsu, but I've also seen it play out in the corporate world as well, which is where most of my clients come from and what it is. You are now this new thing, you are now the CEO. You are now the CEO. You are now the vice president. You are now the blue belt. You are no longer a white belt. Stop talking like you are a white belt. Stop behaving like you are a white belt. You know more, you have more potential in you level up.

Speaker 1: 36:20

And what's interesting for me to observe is most people on the planet granted, I don't know most people on the planet, so I'm speculating here but my belief based on the, I guess, the examples that I've seen and the studies that I've read, etc. Etc. Most people do not level up without some sense of pressure to get them going, and that pressure often comes from our external environment. When we are, when we have all of our physical needs met in terms of food, water, shelter, we have a certain amount of luxury well often we can kind of just coast, and it's not until some external pressure shows up that we begin to recognize I am going to, I'm going to do something about this, and so being promoted, often in the external expectation that comes with it, is often a pretty powerful motivator. Now, I think where it goes astray is when we are not internally aligned with that next higher level of authority and responsibility, and that's part of what I was saying earlier about knowing yourself and really truly knowing and being aligned internally with what you want. And it may be that stepping into that next level of authority isn't actually what you want, that you would much rather not have to deal with the ins and outs of that next level, and that's fine. But know thyself and keep your eyes open about the truth of that.

Speaker 1: 38:23

And one of the things that I often see, especially with my CEO clients, is they often talk about how it's part of their responsibility to put pressure on others to level up, to perform it at the highest possible standard, and that they often struggle with having people putting pressure on them. So there's a little bit of a double standard there that I've seen play out. And if you are the team leader or you are the CEO or you are the person that's at the top of your respective pyramid, I don't know maybe take a look at that and see are there areas where you are doling it out? You're putting that pressure on others. You're talking about how they need to level up and then recognize where you are not leveling up or where, when critique comes back your way, you think that they're just not seeing it clearly that the problem is really them. I think that in recognizing where it is that we are living in double standards can be tremendously powerful, and it can also again serve as kind of internal pressure to do better.

Speaker 1: 39:47

All right, well, that does it for today. Hopefully this has been helpful for you, especially if you are facing a situation where you have recently been promoted and you're trying to get your feet underneath you and ultimately, I think, helping to stay connected to this next, higher level of responsibility. How do we do this for the long term? How is it that we keep connection to enjoyment even when we're in the middle of all of the external pressure? Where we put our focus often determines how we feel about a given situation or any situation. So, if you've been enjoying the show would love it. If you would like follow, subscribe, share, thumbs up. Whatever we're doing these days, on whatever app you're listening or don't, don't lay up to you, but until next time, take care of each other.