Episode 3: Chasing Growth, Not Promotions

In today’s performance-driven world, it’s easy to focus on titles, promotions, and compensation. But what if that focus is actually holding you back from long-term success and fulfillment?

In this episode of Mitchell’s Moments Coaching Podcast, executive coach Mitchell Schuckman challenges a common mindset among high performers: chasing the outcome instead of the growth that leads to it.

Drawing from his own career experience, Mitchell shares a candid story about leaving a role too early in pursuit of a promotion and higher compensation—only to realize the move was driven by the wrong priorities. He contrasts that with real coaching examples, including professionals who achieved the roles they wanted but found themselves unfulfilled because they focused too heavily on the destination instead of the journey.

Through these insights, Mitchell reframes career progression as something deeper than titles and raises. He explains why focusing on learning, experience, and personal development not only leads to better long-term outcomes—but also creates a more meaningful and sustainable career path. 

This episode explores:

• Why chasing promotions can lead to short-term wins but long-term dissatisfaction
 • The difference between focusing on outcomes vs. focusing on growth
 • How real career fulfillment comes from learning and experience
 • Why even achieving a promotion doesn’t guarantee happiness
 • How adopting a growth mindset creates better long-term success

Mitchell’s Moments delivers short, focused conversations designed to provide practical leadership insights you can apply immediately.

Learn more about Mitchell Schuckman and The Schuckman Group at
 theschuckmangroup.com

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Each episode delivers short, practical insights on leadership, coaching, business development, and navigating today’s changing business world.

You can also learn more about Mitchell Schuckman and his coaching and leadership programs at
www.theschuckmangroup.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Mitchell's Moments Coaching Podcast, episode three. As you know by now, this podcast is aimed to be about 20 minutes or less to focus on one topic, to get some learning, and move on with the rest of your day. I'm Mitchell Shuckman, founder of the Shuckman Group, where I do executive coaching, leadership development, team coaching, business development consulting, and training around all of these things. You can find out more about what I do at theshuckmangroup.com. That's S-C-H-U-C-K-M-A-N, or look me up online, you'll find out all about me. Today's episode is about the topic of chasing growth, not promotions. Now, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart for a couple of reasons. The reason one is I spent a good, and anyone who I used to work for who's listening to this podcast will attest to the fact that I spent probably way too much time focused on getting promoted quickly and how much of a raise in a bonus was I getting? Like focusing too much on the outcomes and not the experiences leading to those outcomes. Today I coach a lot of people in professional services firms. Sure, a lot of them work for my former employer, but there are ones that work across industries. And this issue of looking for a promotion, looking for a leadership role, you know, making sure that they get like the extra good bonus or stock award is something at a large number, I'd say more than half of the people I coach start with the end game. How do I get this promotion? How do I get this title? How do I get this role? And, you know, I want to start back to what I tell my kids. Um I always say to them, you know, even when they were trying to figure out, you know, what they wanted to do after high school or what they wanted to do in college or what they wanted to do post-college, the issue always came up like, what's going to be the best career for me, and where is my future? In fact, I I talked to a friend's son just last week, college student, goes to a great university, business major, and is concerned that they may not have a long career in business. And okay, look, I get the fact that college is expensive and that maybe there should be an end game as it relates to that. But what we talked about was really there's a lot you can learn. And whether it's in college or whether it's in a first job or whether it's in a job where you're having a successful career, the learning in the personal growth is immense. And too many people look past the personal growth and look to the promotion. So I'm going to tell you quickly, I made an in look, I'd like to say I made a mistake. I didn't make a mistake because I learned from it. But when I was five years into my career, which is now like well over 30 years ago, so it goes to show you how old I am. But when I was five years into my career, I was completely annoyed about not getting a promotion quick enough and not getting a raise and a bonus that I thought was big enough. And I went to my boss and I said, I should have gotten promoted, I should have gotten a bigger raise, and I was told you have to trust the process. And I said, screw the process, I'm gonna look to leave. And I did. I went on a bunch of interviews, called the head hunter who I had a relationship with because he kept calling me every six months to see how I was doing, asked him to find me interviews, and I left my job in order to get a quick raise and a quick bonus and a promotion. And I have to tell you, within a month of being at the new job, I was miserable. It was, I did not give any thought to the organization, the people I'd be working with, the the the um growth opportunities, the learning opportunities. I gave, I considered one thing. What title would I have? How much money would I make? And I I ended it it was a mistake. I I should not have made the move. Now, I made lemons out of lemonade. I made relationships with the people I worked with, I learned a lot while I was there, but it was I was mostly unhappy, and I mostly didn't need to do this. I really should have stayed where I was and collected experiences. I was getting a lot of great experiences, grown from them, and kept moving forward. But I didn't, I left, I wasn't happy, I did end up looking back on it, learning, but I should not have been motivated by promotion and raise first, and I should have been focused on career growth and personal growth first, and the other things would have come. So now let me tell you a quick story about someone who I coached, and this is a really interesting story. Now, this is a person who I took on as a coache before I left my my corporate job. So I retired June 30th from a long career at PWC, June 30th, 2025. So that's about eight months ago, as of the date of recording this podcast. And I knew I was retiring, it was it was a date that was on the calendar for a long time, and I started my own executive coaching practice. Now, since I knew I was going to be retiring, and since I knew I wanted to do coaching when I retired, when when people within the firm would ask me to coach them, I just did it because I wanted to practice and I wanted to get some uh experience, and I also wanted to build um a cadre of people who thought I was a great coach so I could use them as references and have them refer others. So um it's a big firm. I'm not gonna use names, I'm not gonna use anything other than a common situation that I was coaching, and this is a person who wanted to be partner. Shocking. Happens all the time in professional services firms. Person wanted to be partner, and this person said to me, Mitchell, can you coach me to be partner? I'm being considered this year, and I'd really like to make it, and I need your guidance. So this is about maybe six or eight months before my retirement date. I said yes, and I worked with her. And we talked about her case for partner and you know what she would put in her report to leadership about why she should be partner. We helped her with her presentation skills so she could present herself well. Uh, I helped her uh with a potential client she was trying to land work from to get that work in the door so that she could talk about her ability to grow the business. And that's another reason why she why she should make partner. We worked pretty hard over the course of eight months. And as I was retiring from the firm, she was making partner in the firm. And we we were um she she didn't live near me, it was a long-distance relationship. Um, but we toasted champagne on the phone to my retirement and to her promotion to partner, and that was it. It was it was a happy ending until I got a call about two months ago from the same person who said, excuse my French, oh shit, this isn't what I thought it would be. I'm not having any fun. I don't like it. I thought I was going to be all the things I dreamt the partner was, and it's not that. A lot of hard work, a lot of different kinds of administrative things that I was that I wasn't used to before being a partner, a lot more responsibility in terms of buck stopping with me with my clients, people whom I'm responsible for, financial, you know, financial considerations that I didn't have to manage as closely. This is a lot, and I don't know if I like it. And I I left. I kind of said to myself, you see, you were chasing the title, you weren't chasing the experiences, and then you got the title, and you were like, it's not what I wanted. Now, good news, I ended up taking her on as a uh, I thought I wasn't going to be coaching her anymore. I took her on to coach, and we worked together to figure out why she, well, what about sorry, we figure out what about her new role was really making her uncomfortable, and what could she learn from that experience, and what could a better future look like, and we helped her begin to think along those lines and frame things with that kind of mindset, and proud to say she's in a much better place right now, but um it's a it's a journey, and my point is it's really important to learn about everything you're doing. Tackle every opportunity, whether it's an easy, whether you're asked to do easy work or hard work, whether you're put on a difficult case or an easy case, there's always something to learn. And there's always ways to grow. And you know, my favorite, one of my favorite quotes, I have I have like a handful of quotes I use all the time. Nelson Mandela, I never lose. I either win or I learn. Learn, collect experiences and learn. I'm coaching a different person right now who's also up for partner now, she's up for partner a year from now. And she came to me very wisely and said, I want to be best in the best possible position so that no matter what happens, whether I make partner or don't make partner, I don't lose a stride. I continue to be a happy, continue to be fulfilled, and continue to pick my spots in my career and my life that continue to help me grow and feel like I'm becoming a better person and a better professional. It was the most mature thing I ever heard from someone who is a director of the partner. She wanted to prepare herself to be in a good spot no matter what happened. And the good spot revolved around growing as a person, growing as a professional. That's a place that very few people get to, but when you get to it, it's life-changing. It really is. It's liberating. So, bottom line, we work today in a very tough environment. There's a lot going on, and there's a lot of stress. If you're a high performer, you're fortunate, and there are opportunities. The thing is, focusing on the destination instead of focusing on the journey, focusing on the promotion or the bonus or the new role instead of focusing on what I can learn and how I can grow as a person and professional along the way is the wrong thing to do. Don't focus on the goal as much. You might have it out there as a North Star, but let your day-to-day behaviors be on growth and becoming a better professional and a better person. And the good stuff's gonna come, the promotions are gonna come, and you're gonna be better and happier during your journey. So, with that, that's episode three of Mitchell's Moments Coaching Podcast. You can find me at my website, theshuckmangroup.com. You can email me, Mitchell at the Shuckman Group, and I would love to explore coaching with you, especially around this particular issue. Especially if you're a high performer and you believe that there's a promotion, a raise, a new role available to you. I'm not going to tell you not to have that as a goal, but I'm going to tell you how to have a fruitful journey that that will serve you well, whether or not, or whenever you ultimately meet the goal. So that's it for today. Thank you for joining me, and I'll see you next time. Take care of the