Finding Your Highest and Best Use

Olivia was frustrated.

She had rapidly advanced in her career and found herself managing a large team spanning multiple sales-related functions. She was climbing the corporate ladder. Her base salary was at an all-time high, and her bonus opportunity was significant. By all outward measures, everything should have been great.

Except it wasn’t.

Olivia is a talented and prolific business developer. But she no longer had time to cultivate clients and referral sources because she was consumed with managing people. Her personal production was down, and her team was, frankly, a mixed bag.

For the first time in her career, she found herself worrying that others might view the value she brought to the company as falling short of her compensation. She also came to an important realization that she loves selling. Managing people? Not nearly as much.

Olivia had fallen into a common trap - she was pursuing what is viewed as the “traditional” career path without stopping to evaluate where her highest and best use to the company actually was.

To optimize your career path, it is critical to regularly evaluate two things:

1.       Where are you most valuable to your organization?

2.       Where do you actually want to be in 3–5 years?

The intersection of those two answers is often where the best opportunities exist. And importantly, that analysis forces you to consider non-monetary factors as well, including whether you are genuinely happy in your role.

Olivia and I discussed building a clear analysis demonstrating how much more valuable she is to the company as an individual business developer without personnel management responsibilities. She is now prepared to have that conversation with her supervisor and pivot into a role that will both maximize her value to the company and make her happier professionally.

She caught the issue before it became a much larger problem. Many people do not.

One of the major benefits of peer executive coaching is that it creates intentional space to step back and think strategically about your career. Too often, professionals spend their lives reacting. Coaching can help you become more proactive, more intentional, and ultimately more aligned with the career and life you actually want.