Have you ever wondered why some professionals plateau while others keep growing?
I used to think it was skill. Then I thought it was opportunity. Now I think it's something subtler. The strategies that got us through the early challenges of our careers, the ones that felt essential for survival, often become the very things that cap our growth later. The hyper-competence that made you indispensable as an individual contributor becomes micromanagement when you try to lead. The conflict avoidance that kept you safe in a volatile workplace becomes an inability to have the hard conversations your senior role demands.
I see this pattern constantly. The leader who can't delegate because deep down they believe nothing gets done right unless they do it themselves. That belief wasn't arbitrary. It was probably formed in a specific moment when something fell apart and they swore never again. So they became the person who handles everything. It worked. Until it didn't. Until the thing that made them successful became the thing preventing them from scaling.
The tricky part is that these patterns don't feel like patterns. They feel like personality. They feel like "just who I am." The person who over-prepares for every meeting doesn't see anxiety management; they see thoroughness. The person who never asks for help doesn't see an old wound around being seen as incompetent; they see self-reliance. We mistake our adaptive strategies for our identity.
What would happen if you saw these strategies as choices rather than facts? Not wrong choices, necessary choices at the time. But choices nonetheless. Choices that could be updated now that the context has changed. The qualities that got you here aren't bad. They're just not automatically the qualities that will get you where you're going next.
I don't have a tidy answer for how to outgrow these patterns. Awareness helps. Noticing when you're reacting from an old strategy rather than responding to current reality. Noticing the gap between who you were when that pattern formed and who you are now. Sometimes that's enough to loosen the grip. Sometimes it takes more. Either way, it starts with seeing that these patterns exist, that they served a purpose, and that their time might be passing.