You know that feeling when you leave one school as one of the biggest kids, only to arrive somewhere new and suddenly be the smallest again? Welcome to promotion.That’s the funny thing about promotion: everyone else sees the step up. It just makes you realise how much you don’t know, again! I was speaking to a client recently who had just been promoted. She deserved the promotion but she was struggling. The game had changed and she felt she was falling short. Emails she hadn't answered quickly enough. Work product that didn’t match her prior standards. Things she would once have picked up without thinking.
And the more she noticed them, the more overwhelmed she became. This is where imposter syndrome (confident humility) can creep in. Not because you aren't capable. Because your definition of what “good enough” looks like hasn't caught up with the role you've stepped into. The higher up you go, the less you can be involved in the detail. Not ideal when you’ve spent years being rewarded for being the person who knows the detail. You’re no longer measured by how many things you personally accomplish. You’re now measured by how well you lead, influence, prioritise, make decisions and create the conditions for other people to succeed. That is a very different skill set. Remember starting a new school? Think back to the end of one school and the beginning of the next. You'd spent years knowing where everything was, you knew the teachers, the rules, the playground politics. You were confident. Then suddenly, you arrived at the next school and you were the youngest again. You didn't know where anything was, the teachers, the politics, the who’s who of the playground. You had a whole new set of rules and a whole lot to learn. Professional life is no different. We become really good at one level, build our confidence, understand the environment, know how to get things done. And then we get promoted and suddenly we're back in the playground. Only this time the playground has better coffee, more expensive shoes and considerably more complicated politics. There will always be people who are louder than you, more confident, those who seem to know exactly what they're doing. People who will happily tell you what they think, whether you asked or not. And, yes, there may even be bullies. The temptation is to believe that because we're adults, we're somehow immune to all of this. Wouldn’t that be nice!? Perhaps one of the hardest things to accept as you become more senior is that you aren’t going to catch everything. You will miss a detail, delegate something and wish you hadn't, send an email later than you wanted to. And none of those things mean you aren’t up to the job. The trick is learning to distinguish between something that genuinely matters and something that simply feels like it matters because you are used to being the person who catches it. That distinction becomes increasingly important as your responsibilities grow. If you try to hold every detail and see the bigger picture and support your team and manage relationships and deliver your own work and bring in the money, something has to give. And usually, it's you. You don't wake up the morning after a promotion suddenly knowing what you’re doing. You’re still you. So if you’ve recently stepped up and are finding it harder than you expected, please don't assume the struggle is a negative. Be confident enough to know how you got there and humble enough to know you have more to learn. Which you will. Because you always have. From the first moment you started your first school! This week, start by giving yourself permission not to do everything and ask: What actually matters here? What needs my attention now and can’t be delegated? What am I holding onto because it genuinely matters and what am I holding onto because I don’t want to let it go? What would “good enough” look like if I wasn't trying to prove that I deserve to be here?
You were promoted for a reason. You don't have to become perfect to justify it. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, questioning yourself, or wondering why everyone else seems to be coping better than you... You’re not alone and you’re doing great! Michelle
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