You’re Not Stuck—You’re Avoiding the Real Issue

Feb 18

Feeling Stuck? Here’s the Hard Truth.

We all hit moments in leadership where we feel trapped. Maybe your team isn’t responding. Maybe you’re second-guessing your next move. Maybe you’re questioning if this is even the right place for you.

And when you feel stuck, it’s tempting to blame external factors—your boss, the company culture, the market.

But most of the time, you’re not actually stuck.

You’re avoiding the real issue.

What Are You Pretending Not to Know?

Whenever I’ve felt stuck in my career, it wasn’t because there were no options. It was because I was avoiding a hard decision.

Maybe I knew I needed to have a tough conversation but didn’t want to.
Maybe I knew I was in the wrong role but didn’t want to admit it.
Maybe I knew I was holding myself back out of fear.

The moment I faced those truths, I wasn’t stuck anymore. I was just scared.

One of the toughest examples for me came 5 years into my management career. I wanted to be promoted into a leadership role and continue to build my region and revenue number. Two of my team were promoted to managerial roles and I believed I should continue to lead them and grow the number.

When I asked why I wasn’t awarded the promotion, it was explained to me that I had never personally achieved $500k in revenue. To this day I don’t know if this was a line I was fed or a true reason. Regardless, had I not asked why that decision was made I would never have known what was keeping me stuck. It wasn’t their responsibility to tell me if I didn’t ask. I had blindly been assuming the role would be mine without qualifying what the leadership were looking for. As a result, I ended up moving into sales to prove I could do it - to myself and to senior leadership.

12 months later I hit nearly a $1 million in revenue and was asked to move to New York to set up the new office. They knew my agenda was leadership and I had proven I was more than capable.