Acting for Promotions vs Being Ready for Leadership
Over the years, I’ve noticed a type of people in organizations: those who spend more energy appearing ready for the next role than actually becoming ready for it.
I’ve worked alongside some who are always in the right rooms, speaking the right words, making sure their presence is noted. They’re skilled at optics. But when the real test comes — when hard problems need to be solved, when teams need to be led through uncertainty — the gap shows.
Why It Doesn’t Sit Right With Me
Leadership isn’t about theater. It’s not about stringing together a highlight reel of visibility moments. For me, leadership has always been about substance:
- Solving the hard problems that don’t always get headlines, but move the business forward.
- Supporting the team in ways that don’t show up on promotion packets but matter deeply to morale and performance.
- Building durable systems that last beyond me, rather than chasing quick wins for credit.
When the focus is just on getting promoted, the fundamentals of leadership — trust, judgment, technical depth, and people development — often get overlooked.
The Hidden Cost: Influence on the Team
There’s also a bigger consequence when people play the “promotion game”: it shapes the culture around them.
- For the team, it creates cynicism. When visibility is rewarded more than impact, people naturally shift their energy toward optics instead of outcomes. Motivation erodes, and collaboration suffers.
- For less senior engineers, it sends the wrong signal. Instead of learning that growth comes from craftsmanship, problem-solving, and ownership, they learn to mimic theater. They start optimizing for being seen rather than building real depth.
- For peers at the same level, it often shows up as erasure. I’ve seen people deliberately avoid mentioning other leaders’ names when sharing achievements, as if acknowledging peers’ contributions would somehow reduce their own chances. That behavior doesn’t just undermine trust — it poisons the culture of collaboration we depend on at senior levels.
Over time, this creates a shallow culture — one where true technical leadership is undervalued, and where promising engineers don’t get the right models to look up to.
How I Think About the “Next Level”
I’ve come to believe that the best way to prepare for the next level is to already operate at it:
- Own outcomes, not just deliverables.
- Think in terms of systems, not tasks.
- Lead with accountability, not optics.
If a title changes tomorrow, the work should already reflect it today.
A Reminder to Myself
I share this not as criticism of others, but as a reminder to myself. It’s easy to get pulled into the game of appearances — to chase visibility, polish narratives, and focus on external signals.
But the kind of leader I want to be is one who earns trust through consistent impact, not through performance for the spotlight. Promotions will come and go. What lasts is the respect of your peers, the strength of your team, and the systems you leave behind.
If you’re also in that place of aiming for the “next level,” my advice (to you, and to myself): focus less on looking the part, and more on being the part. The rest will follow.