More training vs. more exposure, and why only one led to a promotion

👋 Hi friends, Marina Krutchinsky from UX Mentor Diaries ex-VP and Head of Design. This is a paid issue, where I take you inside one real coaching situation, start to finish, with the actual thing we built. This one has a downloadable template for your career self-diagnosis.

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In the last free issue I argued that most stuck careers are misdiagnosed careers, handed you the free self-coaching stack, and told you a coach should probably not be your first move.

Today I want to show you what that advice looks like when it runs for a full year. Twice.

Two of my clients arrived within weeks of each other.

Both lead-level designers, similar companies, near-identical review language, the same frustration.

Both got the identical first assignment from me (the template below, if you are interested to try it yourself.)

12 months later, one of them had turned a reorg into a promotion.

The other had two new certificates and his old title.

Everything here is real and anonymized, with details changed where they would identify anyone.

1. Session one x 2 → the same assignment handed to two people (the one-pager that came back in 4 days, and the question that came back instead of the other one-pager)

2. The designer who got promoted, month by month → the first attempts, the single ask that got her into the room, and the reorg that should have erased her year

3. The designer who stayed stuck → the 2 traps that ate 12 months, and why both felt like progress while they were happening

4. The two forks, with dates, so you can locate your own on the same calendar

5. The 15-minute self-test I run with every new client, in 3 simple steps

6. The “shrink” ladder → how to cut a scary career move down to 15 minutes without cutting the part that counts (the most important practical exercise)

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