The best leaders I work with are not chasing a bigger title. They are trying to find their way back to the person who once loved the work. Purpose, meaning, fully engaged in their J-O-B.
I promise this story will come to loving the work that you get to do, but I am starting with one of those parenting moments when your entire job is to say nothing and watch it unfold…
This summer, somewhere outside Traverse City, Michigan, my teens and I were pretending calories don't count on vacation, when my soon-to-be-a-senior daughter asked me, "Do you think I could get a private volleyball lesson?"
As the parent who is guiding, not dictating, I know that showing too much excitement might make her change her mind quickly. So, I nodded and said something restrained and totally cool, Mom, like, "Sure thing. We can do that when we get back to Colorado."
Volleyball had been part of her life for years. Recreation became club, club became high school, and somewhere along the way, it became all volleyball. Then last year she injured her shoulder. She was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, so she quit. At the time I thought, good for her, she needs the break. What I did not see coming was how much I would miss watching her play.
I will not pretend I missed spending my weekends in echoing gyms. What I missed was watching her. That version of my daughter who completely disappears into the thing she loves.
This weekend was her first tournament back. Her team won every match until the semifinals, and I could not tell you a single score. What I remember is her smile between points, the way she celebrated with her teammates, the way she lost herself in the game again. Somewhere around the second set, it hit me that I was not watching her play volleyball. I was watching her find a piece of herself she had misplaced for a year.
It is the same conversation I have every week with executives. People come to ReflectionPoint convinced they are looking for their next job. Most of the time, they are not. They are looking for themselves.
Somewhere between promotions and deadlines and restructurings and layoffs and AI and Zoom calls and calendars that require three different colors just to survive the week, they drifted away from the work that used to make them forget to check the clock. They did not stop being good at it. Life quietly pulled them somewhere else.
I see it most clearly in the leaders who look the most successful on paper. The senior vice president has not felt genuinely challenged in three years. The founder who built something remarkable and now spends most days managing it rather than building it. The operator who kept saying yes to the next promotion until the work stopped feeling like theirs. From the outside, nothing looks wrong. The compensation is good, the title is impressive, and the calendar is full. And that is exactly what makes the drift so easy to miss. There is no crisis to point to. There is only a slow, quiet distance from the version of themselves that used to show up energized.
The turning point, when it comes, rarely arrives as a bold declaration. It sounds almost exactly like my daughter asking for that private lesson. "You know, I've been thinking about..." Maybe it is teaching, building something, leading again, writing, starting a business, or joining a company they actually believe in. It starts with a quiet ache to find the version of themselves they have not seen in a while.
The people who love us usually notice long before we do. They see us when we are lit up, and they see us when we are simply getting through the day. The same is true of the teams we lead. People can feel the difference between a leader who is present and one who is enduring, even when no one says it out loud. When you find your way back to work that engages you fully, your judgment sharpens, your presence steadies, and the people around you feel it immediately. Clarity is not a soft benefit. It is a business advantage.
Watching my daughter this weekend reminded me that the best career decisions are not always about climbing higher. Sometimes they are about returning to the place where you remember who you are. And when you do, the people who love you and the people who work alongside you get their favorite version of you back.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. This weekend, I think it did something better. It reminded me of what was worth coming back to in the first place. It also reminded me that a mother can hold a completely straight face while her heart is doing cartwheels in the bleachers.
If you are quietly sensing that drift in yourself, that is worth paying attention to. A Clarity Call is a complimentary, no-pitch conversation about what your next season could look like. http://reflectionpointadvisors.com/clarity-call?src=newsletter
#Leadership #CareerClarity #CareerReinvention #WorkWorthDoing #ExecutiveSearch #FutureOfWork #ClarityForWhatsNext #ReflectionPoint