The Dilemma of Growth

As personal and professional growth happens, there are times when you haveto decide between being content, and being hungry for more.

I'm in one such situation right now, where I have been in a strong growth position for quite a while, demonstrating new skills and abilities to influence entire organizations and technology strategies. Having shown this now consistently for some time, I feel it is now time to look ahead a little bit. My next personal goal is to become a manager, and I have received a fairly large amount of feedback that my senior leadership team thinks I have demonstrated enough leadership talent to be ready for that. Great- the stars are aligning, right?

Not so fast. Our group just had a pretty massive re-organization last week, and I had some amount of hope that this re-org would shift things to the point where a management job would be made for me. Now I don't know all of the details behind the decisions on how the org would be structured, so I can't say for sure why, but I was not given a manager position. I was told about one manager position, along with the information that it wasn't a great fit for me, which I generally agreed with after hearing about what that job's goals are, but also told I could apply for it if I wish.

But now, a week after the organizational changes, the dust starts to settle- and I feel a little disappointment. Could the leadership team, and my manager, have found a way to get me into a lead type role? If I had made a big enough statement with my talent and work, would it have forced them to figure that change out? I haveto think so. Now I'm stuck a little bit where half of my professional advice I read tells me to be content and satisfied, always confident, and the other half tells me to go take what I want and push the boundaries constantly.

I don't want to seem ungrateful to my boss or my management chain- they are the ones that have provided me the stage I am currently using to showcase what I can do. But now that I've done that- when is the output? What is the output? I'm sure they probably will give me a promo during this review cycle, they'd be insane not to, but I'm not focused on that so much as being a manager...

I guess the next step is just to sit down with my manager sometime soon and make it clear where I see my next career move, and ask if she can help me with that or not.