WHAT IF? Being Good at Your Job Isn't Enough to Get Ahead

Competence is useful. It isn't a strategy.

What if being good at your job is one of the most overrated career strategies?

Now, before anyone emails me, I'm not suggesting you should be terrible at your job. Competence is useful. Getting results is useful. Not being the person everyone quietly hopes will call in sick on the day of a big presentation? Also useful.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up this idea that if we're good enough at what we do, career growth will naturally follow.

Work hard. Deliver results. Be reliable. Keep getting better. Eventually, someone will notice, reward you, promote you, or offer you the next opportunity.

And sometimes that happens.

But what if being good at your job isn't the same thing as having a strategy for getting where you want to go?

"Good" depends on who's deciding, and the next level asks for different evidence

First, there's the question of what it even means to be good at your job.

Good according to whom? Your manager? Your colleagues? Your customers? The person who decides who gets promoted? The person who has the budget to create a new role?

Those people might not all have the same definition.

You can be exceptionally good at the work you're doing today and still not be demonstrating the capabilities someone is looking for at the next level. You might be great at executing, but the next role requires you to set direction. You might be the person who solves every problem, when what the organization needs from its next leader is someone who builds a team that can solve problems without them.

And even when you're doing everything right, career progression isn't a perfectly calibrated meritocracy. Timing matters. Relationships matter. Opportunity matters. Sometimes the person who gets the opportunity isn't better than you. They may simply have been more visible, better connected, or in the right place when the opportunity appeared.

None of that means your competence doesn't matter. It means competence is only one part of the equation.

So here's a question worth sitting with:

Are you being evaluated for the work you're doing today, or are you building evidence that you're ready for the work you want to do tomorrow?

Those are two different things. And they might require two different strategies.

A big gap is usually a strategy problem, not an effort problem

I was listening to a recent episode of The Weekly, where Brooke Castillo, master coach and founder of The Life Coach School, shared a story that really stuck with me.

She was thinking about how much money she wanted to make and comparing that desired future with her current reality. The gap was enormous. She recognized that she couldn't simply keep doing what she was doing, only harder. She would need to make some drastic changes.

And she asked herself a question:

"What could I do that would make it impossible to fail?"

I love that question because it interrupts a very familiar pattern.

When we want something bigger, our first instinct is often to increase our effort. Work longer. Get another certification. Take on another project. Become even more indispensable. Surely, if we just become a little better, a little more productive, a little more impressive, we'll eventually close the gap.

But what if the gap isn't an effort problem?

What if it's a strategy problem?

What if the way you've been getting results is not the way you'll get the next set of results?

And what if the answer requires you to change something fundamental about how you're approaching your career?

Maybe you need to build relationships with people who don't know what you're capable of yet. Maybe you need to stop doing work that keeps you valuable in your current role but leaves you with no room to grow. Maybe you need to pursue a different kind of opportunity entirely.

Or maybe you're working toward a goal that requires you to stop being the person who's excellent at everything you're already doing and start becoming a beginner at something new.

The next level may need a different version of you, not a better version of the current one

That's uncomfortable. Especially if you've built a lot of your identity around being capable.

And maybe it's not about being more capable at all. Maybe it's about being more visible. When we're trying to get to the next level, we're often so focused on doing more of the same, better, that we can't see the skill gaps we have or who we need to become. Because we've never been her before.

When you're used to being the person who knows what to do, deliberately stepping into a situation where you don't know can feel like a professional identity crisis.

But sometimes, the next level of your career requires a different version of you, not just a more accomplished version of the person you already are.

And to be clear, no question can guarantee that you won't fail. That's not the point. The point is to stop assuming that your current approach is the only approach available to you.

Start with the gap, not the to-do list

So here's what I want you to try.

Think about a career goal you have right now. Maybe you want a promotion, a leadership role, a different kind of work, more money, or an opportunity that feels just out of reach.

Rather than immediately making a list of all the things you need to do to get there, look at the gap.

Where are you now? Where do you actually want to be? And how far apart are those two things?

Then ask yourself Brooke's question:

What could I do that would make it impossible to fail?

Don't worry about whether your answer is realistic yet. Don't immediately edit yourself. Let yourself think beyond the obvious options.

What would you do if you weren't limited to the strategies you've already tried? What would you stop doing? What would you need to learn? Who would you need to know? What conversation would you have? What assumption about how careers work would you be willing to question?

Maybe the most useful answer isn't a new thing to add to your to-do list. Maybe it's a thing to remove. Maybe it's a decision you've been postponing because making it would require you to let go of a path that feels safe.

Being good at something can keep you doing work you've outgrown

And here's another question I want you to consider:

What if you're so focused on being good at your job that you've stopped asking whether you actually want the career you're building?

Because that happens, too.

You're good at something. People recognize it. They reward you for it. You get more opportunities to do it. So you do more of it. And before you know it, you've built an entire career around a capability you may no longer be interested in using.

Being good at something can open doors. But it can also keep you in rooms you've outgrown. I call this the golden handcuffs. You get so far down the path of typical success in a field that you end up building a box around yourself. And outside that box is possibility.

So let's look at three things.

What are you good at? Not just your technical skills, but the problems you solve well, the things people consistently come to you for, the work that uses your strengths.

What is needed? What problems are organizations, industries, or customers trying to solve? What capabilities are becoming more valuable? Where might your strengths be useful in a different context?

And what actually interests you? What are you curious about? What would you like to learn even if nobody were going to congratulate you or pay you for it? What kind of problem would you enjoy spending your time solving?

Those three things, what you're good at, what's needed, and what interests you, don't have to line up perfectly. This isn't a personality test that's going to reveal your one true calling.

But looking at them together might reveal possibilities you couldn't see when you were focused exclusively on performing well in your current role.

A great review that changes nothing tells you what you actually want

Here's one more experiment.

Imagine you receive an outstanding performance review tomorrow. Your manager tells you you're doing exceptional work. You're valued. You're appreciated. You're one of the strongest performers on the team.

But nothing else changes. Your responsibilities stay the same. Your opportunities stay the same. Your future looks exactly as it does today.

Would you be happy?

Not grateful. Not proud. Not relieved.

Happy.

If the answer is yes, wonderful. You might be exactly where you want to be, and your strategy might simply be to keep doing what you're doing.

But if the answer is no, that doesn't automatically mean you need to quit your job or blow up your career.

It means you've learned something. You may have realized there are possibilities beyond where you are right now.

Maybe you need a different conversation with your manager. Maybe you need to build a new skill, develop relationships, or pursue opportunities outside your current team. Maybe you need to reconsider the goal itself.

The point is that you get to question the strategy instead of automatically questioning your worth.

Because sometimes we interpret a lack of progress as evidence that we aren't good enough. We respond by trying harder, proving more, and becoming even better at the thing that isn't moving us forward.

But what if you don't need to become better at your current strategy?

What if you need a different one?

Being good at your job is the foundation, not the strategy

You can be talented, hardworking, and exceptional at what you do and still need to make a deliberate decision about where you're going next.

So take ten minutes today. Look at the gap between your current career and the one you want. And instead of asking what you can do more of, ask yourself:

What could I do that would make it impossible to fail?

Let the question stretch your thinking before you start narrowing down the answers.

And if you're doing great work and still not moving, take the Career Signals Quiz. It takes two minutes, and it tells you whether you're dealing with a Plateau or something else, so you're not solving the wrong problem.

Then ask yourself one more thing:

Is what I'm getting better at actually taking me where I want to go?

Because being good at your job is great. But building a career you actually want? That's a different job altogether.

And that's something worth getting good at.

This post is adapted from Episode 73 of The Bold Life podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or at theboldlife.coach/podcast.