I spend most of my working life making sense of people’s ideas. I’m a freelance writer, and people come to me for their writing needs, some with clear requests, others with vague ideas that they’re not sure how to put on paper or if they’d even sound good.
There’s a moment that doesn’t make it into the congratulatory emails. You’ve earned the title, the announcement has gone out — and underneath the celebration runs a low hum of disorientation you can’t quite name. Most new executives call it “adjustment.” Often it’s something deeper: a developmental gap the job description never mentions, and the reason so many high performers struggle in their first year at the top.