Career Success: Stop climbing. Start dancing.

Fill your leadership role in a way that sets you up for success. Don’t chase a pre-set game plan.

Agile, effective executives have figured out a secret: the career ladder is gone.

A life and career that energize—rather than drain—you and the people you serve begins with acknowledging the dynamic nature of success. It's a moving target, and it’s not stopping any time soon. So what’s a hard-charging, goal-oriented, leader-of-the-group-project to do?

Release the frustration.
Stop expecting the goalposts to stand still.
Get out on the dance floor and start grooving to the movement.

You could call this a moving target—but a better metaphor might be the giant chess game from the first Harry Potter book. My dear wizard, there are three pieces you must learn to move. Quickly. Success depends on your ability to shift from reacting to taking strategic control of each one.

Let’s explore them in order of ease—but to underscore the importance of your own well-being, I’ll number them by their impact on your overall experience.

In third place: Priorities.
How quickly can you identify shared priorities—both a need of the business and an area of personal credibility?

This is often the spark that leads leaders to hire a coach or bring in a facilitator for a team retreat. The most effective executives take their time here—first, by learning the priorities of those around them, including those inherited from their predecessors.

Leaders tend to struggle not because they can’t identify what’s important, but because they fail to fully own it. When this dance move is off, you’ll feel it. Your team may report confusion, asking you to be “more decisive”—but what they’re really asking is: Name what success looks like, and let us know you care about what you're measuring.

To start moving, try these prompts—whether or not your current role is new to you:

• If a wildly talented, energetic new leader took your position today, what would they change first?

• When you leave this role, what are 2–3 accomplishments you want your team to proudly claim?

• What has your team already mastered that no longer needs your focus?

• If your resources were cut in half, where would your team concentrate its energy?

The second moving piece: Personal style.

If most leaders hire a coach for help with priorities, they often discover that the deeper work isn’t what they do—it’s how they do it.

Many executives have lost sleep or questioned their sanity because they failed to take ownership of their style. This piece is especially tricky, because the chances that you lead like anyone else are close to zero. Most of us have to break existing expectations of our role while we are creating and claiming our own unique dance moves.

Personally, most of my work with leaders comes down to helping them understand and communicate their style in ways that provide both trust and stability. At the same time, we’re constantly experimenting—learning what works, stretching outside our comfort zone, and refining our approach. Style isn’t a static definition. It’s a living experiment in energy, clarity, and collaboration.

Want to know how well you're claiming and sharing your own style? Pay attention to what people ask of you. If you’re often surprised by the requests coming your way, frequently scrambling to learn on the fly, or feeling emotionally off-balance in peer interactions, chances are there’s a gap in how you're advertising your style.

Advertising your style means telling people who you are—getting ahead of your own talent before it introduces you.

To do that, first know your talent. These questions are especially helpful after a high-stakes leadership experience:

• At your best as a leader, how would others describe you?

• What specialty, framework, or skill could you speak to without prep today—and how does that relate to what your team needs?

• In your strongest partnerships, what role do you play?

• What do you expect of yourself and others when you’re on vacation?

• When evaluating a team’s success, what do you look for?

Next comes the challenge of communicating your style—especially if you’re trying to shift perceptions or realign your strengths with new responsibilities. These subtle power phrases can help:

• I am in the business of…

• I am here to…

• Please come to me when…

• I love it when my partners…

• _________ is something I care deeply about.

Even better: add a short story. Consider a formative moment that shaped your leadership style. Who influenced you? What changed as a result? Sharpen that story to 30 seconds or less, and you’ve got a powerful way to share your style—one that both carves out space for your leadership and invites others to know which song is yours.

Finally—the most surprising and perhaps most essential moving piece:

Name the prize.
What do you really want?

In an ever-evolving world, not only is there no clear path to “the top”—there’s no agreed-upon top at all.

Many effective leaders have built meaningful success by spotting a goal and chasing it. So the idea that your own career goals might be shifting can feel disorienting.

I can name a few moments in my own career when I realized this. These are rare and significant shifts—and if you haven’t felt the need for a coach before, this is the piece that often makes it crystal clear.

Success can take so many forms. The gig economy, new technologies, and the increasing individualization of career paths have upended the models many of us started with. So it’s worth asking: What does the top of your career look like now—and who put that goal there?

Maybe you believed real success meant a “C” in your title. Or that writing a book, giving a TED Talk, or expanding to a larger market were inevitable steps. But let me gently challenge that: if you haven’t chosen those goals for yourself, they’re not automatically waiting at the end of your current path.

Try these questions:

• From where you are now, what would most people see as a logical promotion? Do you agree?

• If your next opportunity paid exactly the same, what would excite you about making the move?

• Who do you know in a role you once wanted—what do you admire about them?

• What belief do you hold deep within you about your potential? How are you living that belief today? What could it mean in the future?

• If you retired today, what would you feel was left undone?

This part takes courage—because it requires you to truly captain your own career.

But really, don’t all three moving pieces come down to that same thing? Ownership.

A wise mentor once told me that the best in any role might deliver the same results—but they do so in wildly different ways. And those differences don’t just exist between leaders. They exist within us, across seasons and shifts in our own lives.

Things change. And if you’re focused enough to be an effective leader in the first place, you’re already noticing the call to adapt.

It’s not easy. It’s better with friends, coaches, and colleagues.
And it’s exactly what you’re cut out for.

Let’s dance.