No body prepares you for the fact that 'up' isn't the only career direction anymore.
I was scrolling through job listings with a friend last week who was recently laid off and about ten minutes in we were both frustrated. Not one of the postings clearly said "senior manager" or "director" the way we're used to seeing them. They said "head of," or "lead," or "officer," or some awkward stitched together combinations of skills that did not exist five years ago. One wanted a specialist in change communication, project delivery, and prompt engineering... literally all three in the same three lines, like that was obviously one job and not three. My friend sighed and closed her laptop saying she feels defeated because of AI she doesn't even know what she should be searching for. That moment called for a deeper conversation. If the ladder doesn't have the same rungs anymore, the real question isn't "what's my next title." It's "what am I actually climbing toward now."
On Tuesday this week, out of curiosity I sat down and calculated how many hours in a normal week go toward tasks that have nothing to do with the expertise I've spent over 25 years building. Status reports, meeting decks and recaps I don't even know if people are reading. The number was bigger than I wanted it to be. So I started handing more pieces of it off to AI, looking at all the additional things I wasn't already using AI for including automating some more research and reporting.
What I didn't see coming was that my chest actually tightened and my breaths quickened the more I planned to hand off. I realized in that moment it wasn't because the work was hard to let go of, it was because AI was on the other end of that handoff and not a person. Hand that same task to a trusted colleague and I wouldn't have felt that same anxiety.
Somewhere along the way we've all absorbed a subconscious fear of AI that has almost nothing to do with the technology itself and everything to do with the stories we've been telling for decades. Every rogue robot movie, every Start Trek Borg episode, has quietly trained us to ask how humans fit into an AI world instead of how AI fits into ours. The stories are old. The tools are new. And once I could actually see the difference between the two, delegating got a lot easier, and the hours I'm getting back are going straight into the conversations that need me in the room, the ones AI won't ever own.
One Thing This Week
Pick one task on your plate that has nothing to do with your actual expertise. Ask yourself honestly, would handing that off to a person feel different than handing it to AI? Consider how you feel about that and what are the underlying stories you've heard or you've been telling yourself. Whether you're looking for your next role or just looking to get back more quality time this an internal reflection that I highly recommend. What do you want to lean into and what are you ok with partnering with AI on or letting AI take over entirely.
🩵 One Thing I'm Loving
I've created a prompt that's been helping me with sorting through what's human and what get's handed off to AI, what's actually mine to do versus what isn't. I shared this one with my friend who's job searching right now and she was tremendously grateful so I thought I would share it exclusively with my Change Anchor subscribers. Grab the free prompt here.
Redefining what "up" even means for your career is not a small thing, especially when the ladder itself is being rebuilt right underneath you while you're still standing on it. So I'll ask you what I asked myself. When you picture your next chapter, is it truly an "up" move, a lateral move, a bigger title, or is it something that doesn't look like a title at all?
Warmly,
Heather
Anchored in Possibility™ | The future belongs to those who know who they are when everything changes.
