Are You Growing, or Just Advancing?
On paper, everything seems to line up. Your title grows, the responsibilities multiply, and your calendar is packed. Your résumé becomes a checklist of progress, signaling to the world that you’re moving forward in your career and leadership journey. From the outside, it looks like success. But here’s a question I frequently hear from high-achieving leaders: Why doesn’t it feel the way I imagined it would?
You won’t often hear it spoken in the boardroom. It usually surfaces in a quiet moment, completely unexpected. All your goals are met, the metrics achieved, and the promotion secured. Yet something feels off. That quiet discomfort isn’t about being ungrateful, and it’s not just burnout. More often, it’s the deeper realization: you’ve been advancing professionally, but not truly growing personally.
Advancement vs. Growth
Advancement builds your résumé, but growth builds who you are.
Advancement is external. It’s measurable, visible, and easy for others to recognize. It shows up as a new title, a bigger team, a higher salary, or more influence. It becomes just another talking point to use at networking events and family gatherings to explain how well things are going.
Growth is different. It’s internal, subtle, and deeply personal; only visible to you. It shows up as clarity, grounded confidence, and alignment between what you say yes to, and what truly matters to you. It’s the feeling of walking into a room with executive presence and being fully yourself, not just performing the role you think you should play.
What most don’t realize is that you can advance for years without ever truly growing. I’ve worked with leaders and professionals who have all the credentials in the world and still feel disconnected from their own lives. They’ve mastered performance and learned how to say the right things, wear the right things, and hit every target. But underneath it all, they’re exhausted. Performing success and embodying success are two very different experiences.
When Achievements Outpace Personal Evolution
Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern in leaders. It often sounds like this: I should be happier. I’ve worked so hard to get here. So why does it feel heavier than I expected? That’s usually the moment something important is uncovered: achievements have outpaced personal evolution and leadership growth. They keep saying yes to what looks impressive or expected, without pausing to ask if those steps still align with who they are becoming.
So they stay busy, productive, and responsible, but quietly misaligned. Often, the body knows before the mind does. Work that once felt meaningful starts to feel mechanical, and you’re completely drained of energy. You wake up already tired because you’re carrying a role that no longer fits.
When Ambition Becomes a Disguise
Ambition is a beautiful thing. It pushes us to grow, stretch, and try new things. But sometimes, ambition becomes a distraction. It keeps us chasing the next milestone so we don’t have to sit with the harder questions:
Do I actually want this, or am I just proving that I can achieve it?
Is this role aligned with my values and purpose, or is it just meeting other people’s expectations?
Am I building a life and leadership path that feels meaningful, or one that only looks impressive from the outside?
I know this tension firsthand. When I left an established career in television, many people thought I was walking away from success. On paper, everything was working. But inside, I knew something had shifted. My growth required courage. It meant facing uncertainty and letting go of an identity that had defined me for decades. But it also gave me something advancement never could: true alignment.
Having the Courage to Be Honest
Stop letting performance reviews or productivity metrics dictate how you really feel about your progress in life. Instead, it’s time to be honest and reflect. Pause everything and face the questions that most people avoid:
Who am I becoming?
What feels heavy or forced?
What parts of my life feel energizing?
Where am I operating out of habit instead of intention?
These questions require courage, but they lead to inner clarity and awareness. This is the first step towards real growth and intentional transformation. When you understand yourself more deeply, your decisions become more aligned with who you are. Take the effort to clearly understand what fits and what doesn’t, and then you can make conscious choices about what to carry forward and what to let go.
The Real Measurement of Growth
After decades in front of the camera, on stages, and coaching leaders across industries, here’s one takeaway that I want you to leave with today: real growth changes how you show up. It transforms your presence, the energy you bring into a room, and how grounded you feel when things don’t go as planned. It’s the quiet confidence that comes from alignment and self-trust, not just achievement.
Advancement might take you higher, but growth is what makes the journey meaningful. Before you chase the next title, the next role, or the next milestone, pause and ask yourself: Am I truly growing, or just advancing? Your next chapter shouldn’t just look better, it should feel like you.
Interested in Taking Yourself or Your Executive Team to the Next Level?
Brunner Communications assists high-profile individuals and organizations in sharpening and developing top-level business communication, executive presence, and public speaking skills. Our passionate team provides one-on-one executive business coaching and runs specialized business workshops. Through customized training, clients learn the necessary skills to become great communicators and build a marketable reputation.
If you enjoyed this blog post, here are some other resources you might enjoy:
My book, Dare To Own You: Taking Your Authenticity and Dreams Into Your Next Chapter, the winner of two Feathered Quill Book awards, a Book Excellence award, and recommended by Forbes in 2022 as “a teaching memoir”.
My work as a keynote speaker, executive coach and communication expert. You can read more about more of my services here.
My podcast, the "Live Your Best Life with Liz Brunner" podcast: An award-winning and internationally streamed show that highlights powerful stories of re-creation and reinvention from guests who have taken their life experiences, and used that knowledge to create their “next chapters” and live their best lives.