In the last Saturday’s issue I made the case that your own company is the worst place to try to become Director. Simply because your own company keeps seeing you as the person you were when you just started there, so you can already be doing the bigger job and still get read as “not ready for it”.
This client came to me when her title was “lead designer” (which is technically a super senior IC title), but in reality, she was the only actual design leader there.
She was sill doing all of the hands-on design work on her projects, plus carrying the leadership load for the entire design team of 5 - she owned the strategy, prioritization, and resourcing. And of course, she was the person the executives called in when a big decision got messy.
What she wanted was simple to say and hard to get.
She wanted to formalize her leadership responsibilities and become an official team leader shaping strategy rather than pushing pixels. Unofficially, she already had earned that shift but nobody has officially given it to her.
To make matters more complicated, her manager had just changed.
Now, she reported to the Chief Product Officer. From the get go, he was giving her leader-sized work: present a bigger vision to the CEO, help plan and onboard new hires, etc. BUT there was still no timeline for her getting the formal title and no real proof she was going to get it either.
She said she felt “in between.” She would stay if the company moved her up. But was ready to leave if it didn’t happen.
We all know good designers who sit in that exact spot for years without moving.
Why “already doing the work” is the most dangerous place to be
How to make the one person who decides your level form their own read of you
The exact fill-in-the-blank we used to write one line that gets repeated when you’re not in the room
The reframe that turns you from a line item into a leader, with the before-and-after scripts
The delegation shift that actually changes how you’re seen
Why I told her to start writing in public even though she wasn’t job hunting
The 3 things she walked out with, copy-ready, plus the one question I told her to ask her boss
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