Throughout our careers, often without even realizing it, we build a kind of personal formula for success.
We look at what we did before achieving something we wanted, and we tend to repeat it.
If technical training helped us progress, we pursue more training.
If speaking languages opened doors, we learn another one.
If working longer hours made us stand out, we work even longer.
If solving problems quickly made us valuable, we try to solve them even faster.
And if selling more helped us advance professionally, we try to sell even more.
It makes perfect sense.
What has worked for us also tends to become familiar territory. We know how to do it, we feel confident doing it, and we receive recognition for it.
And that is where the first side of reward appears.
A reward confirms that we are doing something well.
But it also has another side: every reward strengthens our tendency to repeat the behaviour that earned it.
And the context may have changed.
Our age changes. Our responsibilities change. The company changes. The market changes. The people making decisions about our careers change.
And, above all, what is expected from us in order to reach the next level changes.
Think about a brilliant salesperson.
They have built their career by winning more clients, selling more, improving margins and consistently exceeding targets.
Every new success reinforces the same formula:
sell better = progress.
Until their next ambition is to lead the entire sales department.
Their natural reaction may be to demonstrate even more strongly what they already know how to do: win another major client, beat another target, close another exceptional deal.
But the person deciding whether they are ready to lead the department may be looking at something very different.
Can they develop others?
Can they make ten salespeople better, even if they personally sell less?
Can they delegate?
Prioritize?
Manage conflict?
Build a reliable forecast?
Influence other functions?
Create a sales system that works without depending on them all the time?
You can be the best salesperson in an organization and not yet be a great sales leader.
Not because there is anything wrong with continuing to sell exceptionally well.
But because the next challenge may be rewarding something different.
That is why I find one idea particularly useful: benchmarking not only our current performance, but also the role we want to move into.
What do the people who already succeed in that role do well? What capabilities do they use? What behaviours do decision-makers notice in them? And, most importantly, what will we need to start demonstrating that perhaps was not required from us before?
There is another dimension I find particularly interesting from a coaching perspective.
Language does not simply describe reality. It also helps create it.
When someone in authority gives us an award or recognition, there is an implicit declaration in that act:
“What you do has value.”
And almost always, there is also a judgement attached to it:
“You are very good at this.”
That message does not remain only in the plaque, the bonus, the promotion or the congratulatory words.
It can also begin to shape the way we see ourselves.
From “I have achieved outstanding results in sales,” we can move, almost without noticing, to:
“I am a great salesperson.”
The difference may seem small, but it is not.
In the first case, we are describing something we do.
In the second, we begin to turn it into something we are.
And when we blur the distinction between being and doing, letting go of — or even simply reducing the importance of — something we have been excellent at can begin to feel like a threat to our own identity.
If I am “the person who always solves the problems,” I may struggle to let others solve them.
If I am “the hardest-working person in the room,” it may feel uncomfortable to discover that my next level of responsibility requires me to do less myself and enable others to do more.
If I am “the technical expert,” deepening my technical expertise may feel far more comfortable than learning how to influence, delegate or navigate organizational dynamics.
In this way, a reward can unintentionally become an anchor.
Not because what it rewarded has lost its value.
But because it can reinforce a particular version of ourselves precisely when we need to give ourselves permission to build a new one.
Perhaps, then, there is another way to look at our own rewards.
Instead of asking only:
“What did I do to earn this?”
we can step back a little further and ask:
“Was there a time when I did not yet know how to do well what I was later rewarded for?”
Probably.
There was a time when we did not know how to sell that way.
We did not know how to lead that way.
We did not understand the business that way.
We did not have that technical capability.
We did not know how to handle those conversations.
We learned.
We experimented. We made mistakes. We found new reference points. We changed our behaviour. We left some things behind. We built capabilities we did not previously have.
Perhaps that is the most valuable part of our past success.
Not proving that we are the thing we were rewarded for.
But remembering that we were capable of becoming someone we had not yet been.
The real asset may not be the formula that brought us this far.
It may be our ability to change the formula when the next challenge requires it.
And from that perspective, the second side of reward stops being only an anchor.
It can also become evidence that we have changed before.
And that we can do it again.
What has been your “success formula” so far? What makes you think it will still be the right one for your next stage?
I’d love to read your experience in the comments.
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