#467 Pressure to Progress? Why Staying Where You Are Is Good For Career Growth

Squiggly Careers

The Squiggly Career

Management, Careers, Business

5 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pressure to move up, take on more, and chase promotions can leave a lot of us feeling like success only comes from climbing the ladder. But what if staying where you are could be just as valuable for your career growth? The truth is, success doesn’t actually mean seniority.

In this episode, Helen and Sarah explore why staying in your current role can help you build a stronger foundation for long-term career success.

They share why staying put can actually be a smart move, how you can continue growing without constantly seeking advancement, and 3 practical actions to increase your impact in your current position.

(00:00) Introduction

(00:47) Why staying where you are is good for your growth

(02:36) Success doesn’t necessarily mean seniority

(04:37) Why you shouldn’t quit your job too soon

(05:55) How to deal with progression pressure

(08:21) Idea for Action #1 - How to increase your impact

(17:03) Idea For Action #2 - Grow yourself by growing others

(21:33) Idea For Action #3 - Practice Your Positioning

(27:00) Summary

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen and this is a squiggly careers podcast. Every week we talk about a
0:08.1	different topic to do with work and share some ideas and actions so that we can all navigate
0:12.8	our squiggly careers with that bit more confidence, clarity and control. And one of our values in
0:18.2	our company is to be useful and so in order to be as useful as possible
0:21.5	to you, we've also got lots of extra resources to help you in your squiggly career. So as well as
0:26.5	the episode, there is a one-page summary, the Squiggly Careers Podsheet that you can download.
0:30.8	And we also have Squiggly Careers in Action, which is a weekly newsletter that has all the links
0:34.8	you need related to this podcast, but also lots of other things like Sarah's Borrow Brilliance, Helen's How Toes, and also some squiggly careers behind the
0:42.4	scenes stuff, which is probably just for the people that really like squiggly careers, but it's
0:46.3	like an insight into our world. So today we're talking about why staying where you are can be really
0:51.9	good for your growth. And I think this is probably a topic
0:55.1	that is relevant for all of us for most of our squiggly careers, because most of the time,
1:00.1	we're not moving roles and we don't want to do something different. We are staying in the
1:05.2	jobs that we're in. But what that doesn't mean is being kind of passive or just waiting for
1:10.7	the next moment to do something different. is being kind of passive or just waiting for the next moment
1:11.5	to do something different. It means kind of creating, not waiting and actually being really
1:16.8	intentional. Because when you actually ask people sort of what motivates people in their jobs
1:21.1	and why people leave, it's not necessarily always, oh, I've not been promoted. It's, oh, I don't feel like I'm learning and
1:28.3	growing anymore. So I always feel like that's everybody's first priority. When you're thinking
1:32.7	about the job that you do, how are you going to learn? How are you going to grow? And there's also
1:37.4	this sort of funny challenge that I think we can hold around, is it okay to stay where we are?
1:43.4	Is that okay to say out loud? What will other people
	...

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