# The myth of the linear career climb - **Episode:** [114](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/114.md) (2024-07-10) - **Type:** interview - **Tags:** career-path, linear-career, career-myths - **Time:** 16:48–21:03 (start 1008s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/114?t=1008](https://truthliesandwork.com/114?t=1008) --- [16:48] Cate Luzio: I love that you said that. I think we, and again, it doesn't matter your gender. I think we've been fed this sort of the only route to success is if you become the C-level, right? And we see it in particular for women quite a bit. I would argue, do you know what that— what comes with getting to the C-level? And the reason I say I would never want to be the CEO of a bank, not that I don't think that I could do it, is that I don't want that responsibility. I don't want to sit in regulatory meetings day in and day out. I like to be with clients. I like to be with people. So it's— I don't I don't want a life of compliance. That is what, for me, thinking about a CEO role at a bank today would entail. So when you think about why, you know, this— I would have had the same perspective as you, and I did have the same perspective as you, call it 7 or 8 years ago, until I walked into a room with a gentleman that worked in my organization. He didn't report to me. He was sort of underneath one of my managers and managers. And I was visiting him. I was visiting clients and teams up in Buffalo, New York, and upstate New York, and got in a meeting with him one-on-one versus a roundtable. And he said to me, Cate, I'm never going to hit a home run or a grand slam. So that's a baseball analogy, right? But I'm going to give you consistent doubles. Now, my immediate reaction was, why would you tell your boss that if you're trying to impress them and you want them to think that you're the superstar and a rising star and you want to get paid more? I left that conversation with that same feeling that I just mentioned. And then I started to really contemplate, like, why would he tell me this? One, I looked at his performance. And over the past several years, and I was a relatively new person at the organization, so I was doing a listening tour, if you will. Consistent performance every single year, never wavered. He never had a down year. He had consistent performance. 2, in the office, people liked him. People went to him even though he didn't want to be a manager. He had no aspiration to be a manager, and he never wanted to move to the head office. He wanted to be acknowledged and rewarded for what he was contributing in that office in Buffalo, New York. He could still be seen, and he was seen as a leader without being a manager. He also had influence. He had influence amongst his peers. He had influence within the management, and then certainly for those below him. And so I watched him over that course of that year, consistent doubles. He never— his performance never wavered. And so I realized that there are plenty of those people. We tend to forget about them because they're not the rising stars or the superstars or the rock stars. There can— there has to be both because you can't have all rock stars and you can't have all all rising stars. You need others around you. They also help really build that culture. And they never have the ups and downs. Totally changed my perspective on performance management, investing in talent. And I use air quotes there because talent is often seen in organizations as the top talent. We're looking at it in my perspective and in the incorrect way. Talent should be everybody in your organization. How you treat them, how you invest in them. Some will stay, some will go, some will rise up, and some will just continue to perform at the level over and over and over again. And that was Richard, and he totally changed my perspective [20:45] Al Elliott: So just as— just before we leave this idea, then, for someone who's going, okay, I get that there are some people who don't want to become— don't want to progress, but I want to know what other avenues are there? How else are they going to measure their success in their career if it's not progression?