E54 The Tactical Trap: Why Your Competence Is Costing You the Promotion

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Lead with Spark podcast. The show where real women lead with authenticity, show up with presence, and live out their purpose. I'm Lindsey Molder, speaker, C suite executive, family gal, travel junkie, and a firm believer that your leadership starts from within. Around here, we go beyond the fluff. Uh, we talk about the real stuff no one teaches you in leadership training. Your values, your superpower, strengths, boundaries to stop burnout, and how to quit being the chaos coordinator of your own life. Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or just trying to stop feeling stuck in the daily grind, this is your space to get clear, get aligned, and finally lead with confidence. So let's cut the noise and reconnect with the spark that makes you you. Let's go get our spark on. Hey. Welcome back to Lead with Spark. I am, um, Lindsey Mulder. And I am so glad that you are here today. I want to start with a moment that you might know a little bit too well. You're the one who delivers. You're the person that your team leans on, the one that your boss hands the messy, high stakes thing to, because they all know that you're going to get it done. You make it look easy, and by every measure that you can actually see, you are excellent at your job. And yet the promotion keeps going someplace else. So you do the brave thing and you ask for feedback. And then you hear some polished version of we just need to see you operating at the next level. And you nod along while inside your head you're thinking, I already am. What exactly do you think that I have been doing all year long? If that lands anywhere close to home, then stay with me today, because we're going to name the thing that's actually going on. And here it is, the part that might sting for just a second before it sets you free. The problem is not that you're not good enough. The problem is that you're too good. You're too good at the wrong altitude. Let me show you what I mean. Think about how you got here right now in the spot that you're in. Every promotion that you've ever earned, you've earned by doing. You did the work. You did it well. You did more of it. And then you did more and more than anyone else. And somebody noticed and, uh, moved you up the ladder. You do the work, you get rewarded. You do it again. The pattern is wired into you. It's practically your personality at this point. And it worked right up until it quietly stopped. Because here's what happens somewhere between Kind of that manager level and the director or the senior level. That pattern flips on you. The very thing that used to be your ladder turns into your ceiling. Being the best doer in the room stops being the reason that you get promoted, and it starts being the reason that you do not. I call this the tactical track. It's the moment when your competence, the thing that you're proudest of, becomes the evidence that you're not ready to lead. Not because your work is bad, because the work itself is the wrong job for where you're trying to go. And here's the really unfair part that I don't like. Nobody hands you a memo about it, and there's no calendar invite title. The rules have changed. Please adjust accordingly. You just keep running the play that has always worked faster, harder, wondering why the scoreboard isn't moving. I work with people all the time that are in this position. They've made themselves indispensable in the role that they're doing, that doer role. Uh, and then they find themselves just quietly stuck exactly where they are. Every time that they try to get that next position, they, uh, hear, well, you're doing a great job where you're at, but you're just not quite ready. And yet they don't hand you a blueprint to get you there, a blueprint to show you what's going to get you ready at that next level. So if doing the thing is keeping you stuck, then why is it so hard to put that down? I want to give you three reasons. As I say them, notice which one is you. The first is that doing the work is certain. When your head's down and you're in that task, you know exactly what success looks like. You can see the finish line, and you feel very satisfied Clicking when it's done, leading gets a lot fuzzier. Uh, leading means that you've gotta sit in the ambiguity and you gotta trust the people that you're guiding and trust that they're going to deliver. So we run back to the task because the task gives us that clean little hit of accomplishment, that hit that it's done and that we did it. The second reason is that being needed feels like being valuable. Uh, I want you to really think about that, because being needed feels like being valuable. If you're the only person who can do the thing, then you matter and you feel like you're safe. So handing it off can feel somewhere deep down like you're making yourself disposable. The third reason, it's that quiet One underneath the other two. Letting go feels like a huge risk. When you do it yourself, you control the outcome. When you hand it to someone else, you're placing a bet on them. And let us be honest, high performers are not wild about betting on other people. We like the sure thing. We are the sure thing. Now, I want to connect this gently to our Imposter Syndrome episode, because these two are cousins. They're not twins, just cousins. Imposter Syndom whispers, you're a fraud and you don't belong in this room. The tactical trap whispers something a little bit sneakier. It says, you're going to lose your worth the second that you stop providing it by doing. And so you keep providing and providing and staying exactly where you are. So let me give you a different altitude, not a heavier load. It's that. That quiet shift that we need to think about when. Where we can actually start to open up. When you're reaching for the next level, your instinct is to do more. More project more hours, more proof that you're ready. You assume that your next role is just your current job turned up to an 11 speed. It's not, though. The next level is not a heavier version of your current job. It's a completely different job at a different altitude. Down on the ground, the job is doing. But up where you're headed, the job is judgment. It's deciding what matters and what doesn't. It's leading through other people instead of outworking them. It's being measured not by how much you personally produced, but by how clearly you saw around the corner. I think about it like this. On the ground, you're the best player. On the field, you score, you save the game. The crowd goes wild. But the role that you're reaching for is not even better playing. It's, uh, the coach. And you can't be a coach who keeps running out on the field to take the shot yourself. That's not what a great coach is. That's a player. That player shouldn't leave the game. The coach is on the sidelines, giving the guidance, directing them and, uh, empowering their team to be the best that they can. So when your boss says, I need you to operate at the next level, here's what they're actually asking. Stop showing me that you can take the shot and show me that you can shape the whole game. You have to be able to stand back, help guide people and lead them, help give them the strategic plan, but not do it for them. Show the directions, show the plays, tell them how they're actually going to win. But don't be the person doing it all. We do have to talk about something that almost no one will ever say to your face. It feels a little bit too soft to write it into a performance review, but I want you to know that is presence, executive presence. And here's the uncomfortable truth about it. A, uh, promotion at the senior level is a bet. The people in that decision are not really asking, is your work good? They already know that your work good. You've proven that time and time again. That's not the question on the table. The question is, when the room gets hard, how does she show up when the conversation is going to be really difficult? Can she handle it? When we have to create a plan that might be uncomfortable, it might be difficult, but we know it's going to get us to the next level. Can she have her team execute? Can she envision that plan? Can she actually put the plan together? Can I put her in front of the board, the clients, if we're in crisis mode, can I trust that she's going to carry it out? All of those things demonstrate your executive presence. And it's not about being the loudest voice or the most polished one. It's about how you think out loud when the stakes are high. The single most useful shift that I can give you today is to develop that executive presence. When we feel the pressure to prove ourselves, our instinct is to reach for certainty. That's being the doer, right? We want to be the one with the answer. We want to be fast because being right has always been our currency in the past. But here's what certainty actually signals in a senior room. It signals that you're tactical. It signals that you're still the player who needs to take the shot. Rather than leaning on the team. The leaders who rise up are going to do the opposite. They're going to lead with curiosity. They can sit inside a hard question without rushing to slam it shut. They ask, what are we not seeing yet? Instead of firing off the fastest answer. And here's the paradox. The person asking the sharper question reads at a more senior level than the person who blurts out the quickest solution. It's the same intelligence and the same person. It's just coming from a, uh, completely different altitude and perspective. So if you carry one phrase out of today's conversation, make it this one. Take curiosity over certainty. Every time. The next time that you feel the urge to prove that you already know the answer, get curious instead, it's going to change the Room and it's going to change how people perceive you. M so rather than being faster, I want you to ask a curious question. Cast. I love to give you things that you can actually start to implement right away. So here's four moves. You don't have to do all four of them right away, but I want you to have them in your back pocket for your skill set. Move one hand off the thing that you are best at. Uh, that's a big one, right? I know I can feel you tensing up from all the way over here. But this is the whole game. The task you're proudest of, the one that feels like it is yours. It's very often the exact anchor that's holding you on the ground in your current role. Give it to somebody else. Let them be a little bit imperfect for a while. That discomfort that you feel, it's not a warning sign. It's the feeling of you making room to rise up. Coach them through it. Teach them what you do. Free up space for you to be able to lead from a different position. The second move is speak in outcomes, not activities. Listen to how you answer a simple question. What are you working on? If your answer is a list of tasks, then you're narrating from that ground level, so translate it up. Not am I cleaning up the reporting process, but I'm making sure that leadership can trust the numbers they are betting on this quarter. It is actually the same work. It's just a different level. You're teaching people to hear you as a strategic leader rather than a doer. Move three is get really visible above your manager, above your current leader. So many brilliant people pour everything that they have into impressing that one person that's directly above them and then they stay completely invisible to everyone else. The decision about your next level is rarely made by your immediate manager alone. So find genuine, useful reasons to be in rooms with people 1 and 2 and 3 levels up. Not to perform or contribute, but to let them experience how you think. Ask for those two up, uh, one on ones. Ask to be in the room with those kinds of leaders. Show them how you're operating that last move, Move four, and this one ties the whole thing together. Trade the answer for better questions in your next high stake meeting. When you feel that familiar pull to jump in with the solution, pause your brain. Instead of jumping in, ask the question, what would have to be true for this work to move forward? What are we really optimizing for here? Then watch the room. Watch what happens to the way they look at you notice none of these are dramatic moves. That's the point. You don't climb out of the tactical trap with one big, huge leap. You climb out with small, repeated moves that slowly retrain the room to see you at that next level, which is what you're ready for. One of my clients, we have made her pause and before she offers any solution, she goes down a curiosity stem. Basically, when she's in a meeting, she's listening and coming up with two or three questions that she can ask as a follow up. It shows her leaders that she's thinking strategic, she's looking at the big picture, she's looking for opportunities and she's looking for risk. It has helped her to be seen in a completely new level and it's also gotten her invited to meetings that she hasn't been invited to previously, simply because the perception has shifted. Here's what I want you to think about. If you are stuck a level below where you know that you belong, it's likely not because you're falling short. It's because you're succeeding at the wrong altitude. The doing that got you here simply can't carry you up and forward. And the way out is not to do more. It is to rise above where you're at today, to lead through other people, to speak in outcomes, to to choose curiosity over certainty, and to let yourself be a little bit uncomfortable while you're in the room that catches up to who you're becoming. Your one action this week. Just one. Pick one of those single movements and figure out how you can implement it. Hand a task to someone else and coach them through it. Then pay attention to what fills the space that you just opened up. I promise you it's work that you're actually meant to be doing. Now, if this episode stirred something up in you and you want to be a partner for the climb, that's exactly the work that I do with leaders every single day. Come and find me@lindseymolder.com and grab a free discovery session. We will figure out your current altitude and how to get you to the next one together. Thank you for spending time with me today. Go out there and keep leading like only you can. Keep that spread spark of yours burning bright. I'll talk to you next time. Well, that's it for today. Thanks for being here and for doing the work to lead yourself first. If this episode sparks something for you, take a second to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with another woman who's ready to own her leadership. And remember the way you lead your life is the way you lead everything else. If you or your organization are looking for a speaker, an impactful workshop, or an executive coach, head over to lindsaymolder.com and let's connect. Keep showing up. Keep leading with Spark. You got this. I'll see you next time.