"There's just nowhere for me to grow here. I've climbed as far as I can in my type of position."

This is what a client shared with me in our session recently.

It's something I've long wondered: If you don't aspire to be a senior leader in an organization, how do you grow?

In the linear view of our careers, "success" means climbing up the mountain through job titles and rank to the height of the company in a progression that looks something like this:

This model assumes that we all aspire to and are suited for senior leadership, removed from direct service in an administrative role. This is what's most valued and rewarded — it's the way to make a bigger impact and bigger bucks.

In reality, we each have our own sweet spots on the spectrum from direct to indirect service, execution to strategy, and self-leadership to organizational leadership.

In other words, we're not all climbing a mountain and headed for the same peak.

Let's look at it through another lens, one that throws the linear path out the window: our careers are not a trajectory of forward and up. They are a portfolio of varied work.

The career portfolio view allows us to think of growth differently: we can grow over, diagonal, and wide. Instead of following the path up the mountain, we have the freedom to explore in all directions.

In the linear view, a "lateral" move has a bad rap—it's a waste of time; it might as well be a step back as we race to climb the mountain.

In the portfolio view, a lateral move is choosing any direction besides up.

We can move sideways, growing by learning a new skill set that will enhance our work.
We can move diagonally, integrating a new perspective that advances how we see our work in relationship to other modalities.
We can seek out a new position that challenges us in new ways, and allows us to apply our talents in new settings.

If you feel like you've gone as high as you can go, stop climbing up and consider new directions to develop your portfolio career.

Carole Ann Penney, Strategic Career Coach & Founder of Penney Leadership, develops mission-driven leaders who are ready to take the next steps in their career development. She is a member of The Lady Project’s Board of Directors and mentors emerging female leaders through Brown University's Women's Launch Pad Program. When she is not coaching, she’s developing the most important emerging leader in her life—her three-year-old daughter, Avery Jean. Connect with her at: LinkedIn, Instagram.

This post originally appeared in Carole Ann Penney’s The Strategic Leader’s Toolbox. Click here to learn more about Carole Ann’s work and sign up to receive her newsletter.

Step off of the Career Ladder