I'm Muriel Wilkins and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBRR podcast network.

I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road.

My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals

and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease.

I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a

one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing.

Today's guest to someone will call Sarah to protect her confidentiality.

She's been at her current organization for a decade after getting her MBA, and it's starting

to feel it might be time for a move.

I feel quite certain in my mind that it's time to make a change.

And I think where I stall out a bit is, you know, for so long I've kind of gone to the right school

and done the right prep and then taken their next role and the next role and the next role.

And most of my career has just positioned me for what, I guess, is objectively speaking, kind of a traditionally big job, a C-level executive at a public company-type role.

And now that I find myself kind of at the precipice of that next logical step, I feel pretty uncertain.

Sarah has achieved a lot in her career. But now that she's close to getting to that next level of

leadership, something is holding her back, and she's looking for guidance as to why, and what to do

about it.

There's sort of a bit of a component of, maybe guilt's not quite the right word, but it feels like

very few people do all this prep work to be positioned to the spot that I'm in, to be able to take this next big role and have all this scope and influence and all that.

And it almost feels like a compulsion to do what's next versus necessarily like a natural kind of ambition or desire.

And so I think what ends up happening is I think about it.

I feel conflicted.

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