Don’t start with a job title as your north star
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Today I want to talk to you about the pitfalls of title seeking. It’s a huge mistake that a lot of people make hunting for the next title, that next rung of the upward ladder.
You see the illusion is that the title gives us more leadership authority. It gives us more power, more ability to influence. And those things aren't true. If we're staying in that vertical route, we are missing the forest through the trees. In fact, you may rise faster, but then you may have a long plateau because you don't have that breadth.
I'll give you a very specific example of where I went to the left versus went straight up very early on in my career. I did this actually when I worked at Wegmans Food Markets and I started there working as a cashier and I worked at service desk and then I was a front end manager. I decided I wanted to go to the produce department. I went from managing a bunch of folks and doing performance reviews and all of those things to schlepping potatoes, literally.
But I learned a whole other skill set. I took it upon myself to create some training. It was wildly successful. So much so that I was supported to then go to the training and development department in corporate at Wegmans in Rochester, New York and develop that program for the entire chain.
We have tied our happiness and our contentment and our self-worth and our value with if we get that title that we wanted. This is a manmade construct. This is a conditioned belief of our worthiness based on titles that we get.
Don't start with a job title.
Let's start with what brings you joy. What are the conversations you want to be a part of? What is the leadership influence that you want to have in the world, in your life, in the workplace? What is the legacy that you want to leave behind?
If you have any questions about this or you want to talk about this more, please, I'm easy to get ahold of here.
