Not Everyone Grows With You

Why leadership sometimes means outgrowing people — or places

There’s a quiet moment in your growth where something shifts.
👀 Not inside of you — that’s already happening or happened, it’s around you.

You start noticing it in small ways:
🤔 You’re thinking ahead while others are stuck in the weeds.
📗 You’re hungry to learn while others cling to what they know.
🏆 You see potential — they see problems.
📈 You’re Growing, they’re not

Then you start to wonder: Does something need to change?

In coaching leaders through this, I’ve seen time and again that it often comes down to one thing:
💡 Recognising when your environment no longer fits with who you’re becoming.

One of my private clients started our coaching journey buried in operational chaos — constant escalations, a failing platform, and relentless firefighting.
Slowly, he began to shift.
✅ He started delegating.
✅ Built better stakeholder relationships.
✅ Began thinking strategically.
✅ Drafted team goals.
✅ He even mapped out his own development plan.

He was growing.

Then something else became clear:
The organisation wasn’t and the platform was still broken.
The wider leadership decisions clashed with his values and despite his personal progress, the environment kept dragging him back.

Eventually, he faced a choice:
Accept the status quo, or find somewhere he could keep growing.

Growth doesn’t always come with applause.
Sometimes it comes with a heavy truth:

💡 Not everyone and not every place, will grow with you.

You can ❤️ love your team. 🫡 Respect your manager. 🤩 Appreciate your company.

💡 Sometimes the realisation is that it’s time to move on.