Recognition Library
Twenty-four Recognition Examples across six categories. Each describes a recurring professional experience in which something important changed before it was easy to name.
The role still has your name on it.
Someone else is deciding what is still yours.
“The executive title remained, but the decisions moved elsewhere.”
Founder → Vice President
Read this example →“I still had responsibility, but I no longer had the authority to fulfill it.”
Vice President
Read this example →“The work became coordination after it had once been leadership.”
Senior Director
Read this example →“My team still reported to me, but the priorities no longer did.”
Regional President
Read this example →People still value your experience.
They no longer rely on your judgment in the same way.
“The organization still valued my experience, but no longer relied on my judgment.”
Chief Financial Officer
Read this example →“I had become successful at protecting decisions I no longer believed in.”
Vice President
Read this example →“The organization still needed my expertise, but it no longer needed my leadership.”
Senior Vice President
Read this example →“My experience had become something the organization wanted preserved, not something it wanted shaping the future.”
Division President
Read this example →You’re still leading.
Your contribution has quietly changed.
“I had become the person who made the organization work, not the person who helped determine where it was going.”
Chief Operating Officer
Read this example →“I was surrounded by people, but increasingly alone with the decisions.”
Chief Executive Officer
Read this example →“I was making increasingly important decisions, but they no longer felt like my decisions.”
Chief Information Officer
Read this example →You’re still succeeding.
The contribution the organization now needs from you may no longer be the contribution you most want to make.
“I kept succeeding in a role that no longer felt like success.”
Senior Vice President
Read this example →“I realized people were depending on my certainty more than my judgment.”
Chief Executive Officer
Read this example →“The role had become larger. My contribution had become smaller.”
Global Vice President
Read this example →Nothing is obviously wrong.
That’s exactly what makes the pattern so difficult to recognize.
“Nothing had gone wrong. I simply no longer knew whether I belonged there.”
Senior Vice President
Read this example →“I realized I had stopped bringing my best thinking to work because there was nowhere for it to go.”
Senior Director
Read this example →“I realized I was preparing people for decisions instead of helping make them.”
Executive Vice President
Read this example →You haven’t lost your capability.
Your judgment has outgrown the role that once fit it.
“The work still challenged me. It no longer changed me.”
Chief Financial Officer
Read this example →“I was still capable of more. The role no longer required more from me.”
Vice President
Read this example →“I realized I no longer knew what kind of executive the organization needed me to be.”
Executive Director
Read this example →“My judgment had become broader than the role allowed me to use.”
Managing Partner
Read this example →