The emerging theme on removing management layers has caught my attention lately. It’s framed as progress. As efficiency. As modernising the organisation.

What I hear less of is what happens to the work that used to sit in the middle.

I spent twelve years at Meta leading commercial and marketing teams. In that time, I learnt that management is rarely what people imagine it to be. I describe it as the ‘squeezed middle’: having to manage up, down and across organisations simultaneously. When it’s done well, it’s almost invisible.

You sit in the middle. You translate your team’s work into language senior leaders understand. You turn shifting strategy into something practical. You navigate politics so your team doesn’t have to. You absorb ambiguity and try to create clarity.

You also hold people accountable, develop them, have difficult conversations, manage performance, resolve conflict, and keep things moving when motivation dips or priorities change.

It’s not glamorous work. But it’s connective work.

And culturally, we don’t seem to value connective work very highly.

“Leader” has become the aspirational identity. Visionary. Strategic. Transformational.

“Manager” sounds operational. Administrative. Necessary, perhaps, but rarely celebrated.

Over time, that subtle hierarchy shapes how roles are designed, rewarded and sometimes eliminated. But it also obscures something important.

I’ve found it more helpful to think of leadership and management as different skillsets rather than different status levels.

In Strong Ground, Brené Brown and Ginny Clarke make a distinction that resonated with me. Leadership is about setting direction: where we’re going and why it matters. Management is about making that direction real, building the systems, clarity and accountability that actually get it done.

They aren’t opposites. They’re different forms of responsibility.

One without the other creates imbalance.

Vision without follow-through becomes inspiring but vague. Execution without direction can feel efficient, but it drifts.

In reality, most roles require some blend of both but not always in equal measure, and not always at the same time.

I’ve worked with people who were exceptional at setting direction and energising a room, but struggled to create clarity around priorities or ownership. I remember one VP who could electrify an all-hands with their vision, but whose team spent the following week in conflicting meetings trying to work out what to actually build next.

I’ve also worked with managers who built deep trust, ran tight operations and developed their teams beautifully but found it uncomfortable to define a bold new path.

The rare ones could do both and, more importantly, could recognise which was required in the moment.

What concerns me about the push to flatten hierarchies isn’t the idea of efficiency itself. It’s the assumption that removing management layers removes complexity.

It’s worth saying again: the work doesn’t disappear. It shifts.

Strategy still needs translating. People still need clarity. Accountability doesn’t organise itself.

When the middle layer is removed, institutional knowledge often goes with it. The informal networks, the understanding of how decisions actually get made, the awareness of where risks sit - these things aren’t captured in org charts.

The remaining managers inherit wider spans of control. Individual contributors are sometimes asked to absorb coordination work on top of their core roles. Senior leaders can find themselves surprised that strategy isn’t landing as cleanly as expected.

None of this is dramatic. It’s gradual.

And it raises a question that feels more useful than “manager or leader?”

What does this moment actually require?

There are seasons where bold leadership is essential, when direction needs setting and uncertainty needs steadying. And others where disciplined management matters more, when the work is about building systems, creating consistency and delivering on what you’ve promised.

Both are human work. Both take real skill.

If you’re in a management role and feeling undervalued, it may not be because the work lacks importance. It may be because it lacks visibility. The clarity you create, the conflicts you resolve, the context you hold: these rarely show up neatly in a strategy deck but they shape whether work actually works.

If you’re being asked to “lead” while also carrying the full weight of execution, it’s worth asking what support and structure are in place. Vision and execution together are demanding. Doing both well requires space and recognition.

People need direction. They also need clarity, feedback and support. Removing layers may make a diagram look simpler, but it doesn’t make the work simpler.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether management is outdated or leadership is superior. Perhaps it’s whether we’re prepared to value the invisible work (the translating, the clarifying, the connecting) that actually makes strategy real.

I’m not sure we’ve figured this out yet. But I do know that flattening a diagram doesn’t flatten the work, it just makes us less honest about where it lives.

—

Catherine

Not everyone wants to make a big move right now. And not everyone can. Sometimes the role is broadly fine but something within it feels flat or constrained. Other times, the idea of a “better” role exists more in theory than in practice.

And when work feels like that, it’s very easy to slip into waiting.

Waiting for the right opportunity to come up.

Waiting for the perfect role.

Waiting for the unicorn.

I understand the pull. When something feels off, it’s natural to assume the answer lives somewhere else. But what I’ve noticed is how quickly that assumption can leave people feeling stuck - as if the only options are to stay put or leave entirely.

In reality, this is too binary. Most roles have more room for movement than we realise. The difficulty is knowing where or how to move.

Some of the most meaningful shifts I’ve seen didn’t involve a job change at all. In twelve years leading sales, marketing and product marketing teams at Meta, I watched people reshape the work they were already doing: taking on projects that played more to their strengths, expanding their remit slightly or letting go of things that drained them more than they realised.

These weren’t dramatic moves. But they were intentional ones. There’s actually a name for this: job crafting: the idea that you can actively redesign elements of your role to better fit your strengths and motivations, without waiting for permission or a new title.

Small changes can have a surprisingly big impact when they’re aligned with what actually motivates you. And that’s often the missing piece.

We tend to think of motivation as something abstract or emotional, but it’s also very practical. Understanding what motivates you helps you decide what to say yes to, what to push back on and where to focus your energy especially when things feel unclear.

A question I often come back to is this:

If three roles landed in my inbox tomorrow, would I know how to choose?

If the answer is no, that’s not a problem. It just tells you where the work is. And the work usually starts with a few simpler questions: What kind of work actually energises you? What drains you? What do you need from a role right now, not five years ago, but now?

Turning inward first to understand what energises you, what kind of problems you enjoy, what pace suits you right now can bring a huge amount of clarity. It also makes future decisions feel far less random. Instead of choosing between options based on status or escape, you’re choosing through a lens that actually fits you.

This kind of clarity is useful even if you never change roles.

When you’re clear on what motivates you, you can start shaping your current role more deliberately. You can anchor your priorities in work that genuinely matters, look for experience that builds towards what you want next and have more grounded conversations with your manager, not based on vague aspiration but shared context.

The idea of the perfect role is seductive. But it can quietly keep us passive, waiting for something external to change.

Sometimes the work isn’t to find a different role. It’s to understand how to make this one fit better, for now.

Not every phase of a career is about progression. Some phases are about learning, reshaping or creating space. And that isn’t settling.

It’s paying attention and using the levers you actually have.

It’s a question I hear constantly as a coach. And it’s one of the most common questions managers face from their teams.

There’s usually this particular kind of exhaustion when people ask it. Not angry, not confused, just tired. Like they’ve been carrying the question around for months, turning it over, wondering what they’re missing. I understand that feeling. I felt it myself earlier in my career. I was delivering, doing everything that was asked and still felt unsure about what actually made a difference when it came to moving forward.

When you feel stuck here, it’s easy to assume something is wrong with you. Or that the system is broken. Sometimes that’s true. But often, it’s neither.

What’s usually missing is clarity about how progression decisions actually get made.

Here’s the thing most people don’t realise: promotion isn’t a straightforward reward for performance. Hit your goals, exceed expectations, and progression will naturally follow.

It doesn’t work that way. Performance is only part of the picture.

Once I understood that shift, a lot of things started to make sense. I stopped waiting for recognition to arrive and started asking different questions: What does the next level actually require? Who’s already doing work at that level and what can I learn from them? Where am I already operating beyond my current role?

Having also been on the manager side of these conversations, I’ve seen how many factors sit in the background. Timing. Budget. Organisational need. Comparisons across teams. And, crucially, how easy it is to clearly explain someone’s impact beyond their immediate role.

Advocating for someone without evidence is hard. Advocating for someone whose contribution is well understood (by more than one person) is much easier. This is where having more than one advocate for your work makes sense. Building relationships with stakeholders, teammates and cross-functional partners means your manager isn’t the only one who can speak to your impact. That’s not politics: it’s building evidence and advocacy. It’s how decisions get made in complex organisations.

Another piece that’s often underestimated is behaviour.

You can be delivering on paper but if people find you difficult to work with, resistant to feedback, or narrowly focused on your own outcomes, that shows up. Not loudly. Quietly. Over time.

This isn’t about being nice. It’s about trust, judgement and how others experience working with you. Reputations form whether we’re paying attention to them or not and they don’t reset each review cycle. They compound.

The same is true of “visibility”. There’s a belief that being on the most visible projects is what moves you forward. In my experience, those projects often generate noise rather than signal. What tends to matter more is work that’s clearly connected to real priorities, with outcomes that can be explained simply and recognised by others.

When your work is anchored in something meaningful, you don’t need to manufacture visibility.

One thing that does consistently help is being explicit. Managers aren’t mind readers. Most are balancing constraints and competing demands. If progression matters to you, it’s worth naming it early and talking openly about what would actually help you get there: what experience is missing, where to focus, what “ready” really looks like in your context.

And finally, feedback. Not the formal kind that arrives once or twice a year, but the quieter, ongoing kind. The people who seem to navigate progression best tend to be curious - asking for input, learning as they go, adjusting rather than defending.

They don’t always have a five-year plan. But they usually have a sense of what they’re good at, what motivates them and what kind of experience they want more of.

Progression isn’t a simple reflection of effort. And it’s rarely a judgement of worth.

It’s the result of many moving parts: performance, behaviour, timing, organisational need, readiness. Understanding that doesn’t make the process perfect. But it can make it feel less personal, and a little easier to navigate with intention rather than frustration.

A Practical Way to Use This

When someone on my team said they wanted to be promoted, I nearly always asked the same question:

Why?

It often caught people off guard. Not because they didn’t want the promotion, but because the obvious answers (more money, bigger title, progression) were right there on the surface. When you gently set those aside, what usually emerged was something more useful.

Clarity about what mattered to them at that point in their life.
What kind of work energised them.
What experience they wanted more of.
What they were actually trying to move towards.

That conversation almost always shifted things (for both of us).

If you’re navigating this yourself, it can help to start in a similar place. Not with how do I get promoted, but with a quieter version of why does this matter to me right now?

From there, a few questions can help ground the thinking:

- What would this promotion give me beyond the title or pay?

- How does it fit with my priorities at this stage of my life?

- What kind of experience am I hoping to build next?

- If promotion weren’t immediately available, what would still feel worth pursuing?

When things felt unclear for me, particularly around goals or priorities, I found it helpful to add one more layer.

Rather than trying to invent the “right” objectives, I’d step back and look at what senior leaders were actually outlining: company goals, strategic priorities, where the organisation was trying to head. I used that as an anchor, and then shaped my own focus in a way that made sense in that wider context.

It meant I wasn’t plucking priorities out of the sky.
And when I sat down with my manager, the conversation started from shared ground, not personal aspiration alone.

None of this guarantees progression.
But it does make the process feel more intentional and the conversations easier to have.

Sometimes visibility isn’t about being seen.
It’s about being understood.

Catherine

That reaction makes sense.

Performance reviews aren’t just abstract exercises. They’re often tied to pay, progression, and a sense of security, particularly now when the cost of living is high and many people are already feeling stretched. It’s not unreasonable to care deeply about how this process goes.

If performance reviews feel emotive for you, you’re not overreacting.
You’re responding to something that has real consequences.

What Shifted Things for Me

I spent almost 12 years at Meta and went through 22 performance review cycles first as an individual contributor, and later as a manager.

Early on, I dreaded them.

Writing about other people’s work was fine. Writing about my own felt awkward and unnatural. I struggled to articulate what I’d contributed and often felt like I needed a creative writing degree just to get through the self-review.

What eventually changed wasn’t the system, it was how I approached it.

I realised my performance review was mine.
And if I didn’t take ownership of it, no one else would.

From Pressure to Perspective

One simple reframe helped:

No one will care about your career more than you do.

That isn’t a criticism of managers, it’s just a reality of how organisations work.

Performance reviews tend to go better when:

• there are no surprises

• your manager isn’t hearing about your impact for the first time

• the case for your contribution is already clear

Seen this way, the review itself isn’t where decisions are made.
It’s where earlier conversations are formalised.

That shift alone reduced a lot of the emotional weight for me.

Using Reviews as Information (Not a Verdict)

For a long time, I experienced reviews as something to be judged.

What helped was treating them instead as a source of information:

• What work am I proud of and why?

• Where did I have the most impact?

• What does this tell me about what motivates me and how I like to work?

Those questions didn’t just improve how I approached reviews they helped me make better decisions about where to focus my energy.

At one point, working through the Bold Vision exercise from the Fast Forward Group gave me language for what I wanted more of in my career. That clarity fed directly into some very practical outcomes over time: moving to work in London, contributing to award-winning campaigns and stepping into team development and leadership roles.

It wasn’t about having a perfect plan, it was about understanding direction well enough to make intentional choices.

Keeping the Review Itself Practical

As a manager, the most effective performance reviews I received were clear and simple.

They answered three questions:

• What did you do? (projects, targets, responsibilities)

• How did you do it? (collaboration, influence, decision-making)

• What was the impact? (results, outcomes, learning)

This clarity coupled with quality peer feedback made advocacy easier and feedback more useful when promotion or pay outcomes weren’t what someone hoped for.

More detail didn’t help.
Better signal did.

Taking a Longer View

The people who got the most value from performance reviews weren’t always the ones with rigid plans.

They didn’t necessarily know exactly where they wanted to be in five years. But they had a reasonable understanding of:

• what they were good at

• what they wanted more (or less) of

• what kind of experience they were trying to build

They used the review as a checkpoint not a verdict on their worth.

Closing

Performance reviews aren’t perfect and they’re rarely neutral.

But when you approach them as something you can work with rather than something done to you, they become more useful, and a little less personal.

Not a judgment of your value.
Just one data point in a longer career.

The punchline lands simply:“You’re still going to be you.”

Different location. Same internal experience.

It never fails to make me laugh and remind me how true it is when I’m working with people on career change.

The Promise of “Elsewhere”

Many career decisions are built on an unspoken belief:

If I just change the job, the company, the title… things will feel better.

Sometimes they do, at least for a while.

But often, after the initial relief or excitement fades, something familiar returns:
the restlessness, the dissatisfaction, the quiet sense of “Is this it?”

The external change happened.
The internal experience didn’t shift in the way we expected.

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Change

There’s nothing wrong with wanting better conditions, more money, or work that uses your skills more fully.

However external improvements can’t do the work of internal alignment.

If you don’t like how you’re working…
If you’re disconnected from what matters to you…
If your sense of worth is tightly tied to performance or approval…

You can carry all of that into the next role.

Same job, new logo.
Same pressure, different context.

The Part We Often Skip

Career conversations tend to focus on what to change: the role, the organisation, the path.

Less attention is paid to how we relate to work: what we’re chasing, what we’re avoiding, what we’re hoping the next move will finally resolve.

That doesn’t mean change isn’t needed.
It means change works best when it’s paired with awareness.

A More Useful Starting Point

When people feel stuck at work, the instinct is often to move quickly: update the CV, scan job boards, make a change. That momentum can be helpful but without some reflection, it can also lead to very familiar outcomes in a new setting.

A few practical questions I’ve found useful, whether you’re actively planning a move or simply feeling restless:

1. What am I hoping this change will solve?

2. What feels hardest about my work right now and is that something a new role would actually change?

3. What patterns have followed me from role to role?

4. If nothing external changed, what would I still want to work differently this year?

These aren’t questions to answer all at once.
They’re prompts to help separate what needs to change externally from what needs attention internally.

That distinction matters. It’s often the difference between a change that brings short-term relief and one that genuinely shifts how work feels day to day.

Closing

Career change can be powerful.
But it works best when it’s driven by clarity, not escape.

Without understanding what’s actually asking to change, it’s easy to recreate the same experience in a new role just with different people, pressures, or expectations.

A different job can change your circumstances.
But changing how you approach work is often what changes how it feels.

It’s dark.
Everyone is broke.
The excitement is over.

For me, it’s the opposite.

After the hectic build-up to Christmas, recovering from the holidays themselves, keeping two kids entertained, and squeezing every dry day out of the weather, January is when things finally slow down. My nervous system exhales. There’s less noise, less expectation, more space.

And I’ve learned not to rush past that.

A Different Way to Use January

A few years ago, I made a rule:
I don’t set new goals until after my birthday.

My birthday is in January, and instead of starting the year in overdrive, I use this month to reflect, organise, and gently plan. No big declarations. No forcing clarity.

I know I’m lucky to work for myself and have flexibility. But the mindset isn’t about taking time off - it’s about how you relate to this quieter part of the year, even if you’re already back at work.

Before You Set Goals, Close a Few Loops

January advice usually focuses on adding:
new goals, new habits, new ambition.

But career clarity often comes from subtracting.

Instead of asking “What do I want this year?”, try this:

What am I complete with?

Not what you’re quitting.
Not what you need to fix.
Just what no longer fits the version of you now.

A way of working that keeps you constantly “on”.
A role you’ve outgrown but haven’t named.
A definition of success that once mattered but doesn’t anymore.

Naming this doesn’t require action - only honesty.

A Simple January Reset

Even if you’re back at work, this month can still be useful.

• Notice what’s quietly draining your energy and what still gives it

• Close open loops and half-finished things

• Create one small piece of space: a boundary, a conversation, an expectation you let go of

You don’t need a plan yet.
You just need room.

A Gentler Start

If January feels flat or uninspiring, you’re not behind.

You may simply be in a necessary pause - the kind that allows you to hear yourself again before deciding what’s next.

So before you rush to build momentum, consider this:

What if January isn’t for pushing forward, but for creating space?

That’s the work of The Career Space.
Not fixing.
Not forcing.
But letting the next chapter emerge in its own time.

At this time of year, that idea feels especially relevant. December has a way of inviting reflection whether we like it or not. The pace slows just enough for the noise to drop, and suddenly the questions we’ve been avoiding have room to surface.

What worked this year?

What didn’t?

What am I carrying that no longer fits?

For much of my career, I avoided these questions. Reflection felt indulgent or uncomfortable. Unnecessary. Even risky. Pausing meant I might discover that the path I was on wasn’t quite right and that felt far more uncomfortable than staying busy.

But without reflection, we repeat.

We stay in motion, but not necessarily in the right direction.

In The Messy Middle, I wrote about that in-between space - the phase where the old no longer fits but the new isn’t yet clear. Reflection is often what ushers us into that space. It’s what helps us notice the quiet dissatisfaction before it becomes full-blown burnout. It’s what allows us to see patterns, not just events.

And this is where slowing down becomes an act of courage.

Career reflection isn’t about fixing yourself or drafting a five-year plan. It’s about paying attention. Noticing what energised you this year and what depleted you. Where you felt most like yourself and where you felt like you were performing a version of yourself that no longer feels true.

When we don’t slow down, our careers tend to default to momentum. We take the next role because it’s there. We say yes because it’s expected. We keep climbing ladders without checking whether they’re leaning against the right wall.

Reflection creates choice.

It allows us to move forward with intention rather than urgency. To make decisions from clarity instead of exhaustion. To recognise that progress doesn’t always look like acceleration, sometimes it looks like alignment.

As the year comes to a close, I’m not interested in resolutions. I’m far more interested in questions.

What do I want more of next year?

What am I willing to let go of?

And what might become possible if I gave myself permission to pause?

If you find yourself in the messy middle right now, know this: slowing down doesn’t mean you’re falling behind. Very often, it’s the first step towards moving forward — properly.

Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do for your career is to stop.

From the outside, everything looked perfect. Nearly 12 years at one of the world’s most influential tech companies. A career trajectory that had taken me from working with global brands to leading teams and product marketing strategy across EMEA.

But inside I felt like I was standing at the edge of something unknown, trying to convince myself to jump.

This is the part of career transitions nobody talks about. We celebrate the announcement. We toast the new beginning. But that space in between—where you’re neither here nor there, where doubt creeps in at 3am—that’s where most people get stuck.

Having coached many professionals through career transitions and navigating several of my own, I’ve learned something important: the messy middle isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s proof you’re doing something meaningful.

Why Transitions Feel So Disorienting

When you’re in the middle of a career transition, you’re not just changing jobs. You’re changing identities.

For years, you’ve introduced yourself a certain way. You’ve built expertise that gives you confidence. Then suddenly, all of that gets questioned.

During my own career transition to becoming a qualified coach, I had moments where I genuinely didn’t know how to answer “What do you do?” My old identity didn’t fit anymore. My new one hadn’t fully formed.

Here’s what I’ve learned: this discomfort is necessary. You can’t become someone new while clinging to who you were. The messy middle is where transformation happens.

The Three Phases Every Transition Moves Through

Phase 1: The Ending

You recognise something needs to change. Maybe you’ve outgrown your role. Maybe your values have shifted. Maybe the work that once energised you now drains you.

The mistake people make here is rushing through this phase. They want to immediately jump to the solution—the new job, the career pivot, the next chapter. But endings require grieving, even when they’re your choice.

When I left Meta, I had to acknowledge what I was losing: the prestige, the financial security, the identity I’d built over more than a decade. Until I named those losses, I couldn’t fully move forward.

What to do:

• Write down everything you’re leaving behind, both good and bad

• Talk to someone who understands—a coach, a trusted friend, a mentor

• Stop pretending you’re fine when you’re not

Phase 2: The Neutral Zone

This is the messy middle. For most, the hardest part as there isn’t an obvious action attached. You’ve left the old behind, but the new hasn’t fully materialised. Nothing feels certain. You question your decision daily.

I spent months here. My coaching training was underway, but I wasn’t fully qualified yet. I had left Meta, but I hadn’t yet built a practice. I existed in limbo.

Here’s what I wish someone had told me: the neutral zone isn’t wasted time. It’s where you discover what actually matters to you, stripped of all the external markers of success.

What to do:

• Create small experiments—take a course, have informational interviews, write about your ideas. You don’t need a five-year plan. You need the next obvious step.

• Find your anchor—one practice that stays constant while everything else shifts. For me, it was my coaching supervision sessions. Yours might be a morning routine, a weekly call with a friend, an exercise practice.

• Talk to people who’ve done it—the best antidote to feeling alone is connecting with someone who’ll say “Yes, it felt like that for me too.”

• Track the small wins—keep a record of the moments that gave you clarity, the days you felt excited, the realisations that changed your thinking.

• Give yourself a realistic timeline—career transitions take months, sometimes longer. Having a realistic timeline removes the daily panic and lets you focus on the work itself.

• Practise self-compassion; this phase is supposed to be uncomfortable

Phase 3: The New Beginning

This doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It emerges gradually as you take small steps forward.

You start to feel more confident in your new identity. The work begins to feel less foreign. You realise, almost without noticing, that you’ve become someone slightly different.

For me, this happened when I started calling myself a coach without immediately following it with my Meta credentials. When I could talk about my business without feeling the need to justify it.

What to do:

• Acknowledge how far you’ve come

• Share what you’re learning—blog, LinkedIn, conversations

• Help someone else who’s in the messy middle

What Keeps People Stuck

Waiting for perfect clarity before taking action. Clarity doesn’t come from thinking harder. It comes from doing something, seeing what happens, and adjusting. You need 60% certainty to move forward, not 100%.

Comparing your middle to someone else’s highlight reel. When you compare your behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s showreel, you’ll always feel like you’re failing.

Trying to skip the emotional work. You can’t logic your way through a transition. There’s grief, fear, excitement, and uncertainty all mixed together. Until you acknowledge those feelings, they’ll keep you stuck.

What’s on the Other Side

I won’t lie: the messy middle is hard. There were days during my transition when I questioned everything (still do!). Days when I missed the clarity of my previous role. Days when I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake.

But here’s what I found: work that feels purposeful. A business I built from scratch. The privilege of supporting others through their own transitions. A life that aligns with my values, not just my CV.

And here’s what my clients have found: roles that actually fit their strengths. Career pivots that reignite their passion. The confidence to negotiate for what they want. Clarity about what matters most.

The messy middle isn’t where transitions fail. It’s where they succeed—if you’re willing to stay in it long enough to do the work.

The question isn’t whether you’ll get through it. You will. The question is: what will you discover about yourself along the way?

Catherine

It’s the question everyone asks at parties, networking events, random encounters at the weekend. And for the first few months after leaving Meta, I didn’t have a clean answer. I was becoming a coach. But I was also unraveling an identity I’d built to date.

For nearly 12 years at Facebook (now Meta), I led high-performing Sales and Product Marketing teams across EMEA. I worked with global brands like Burberry, Nike, Rolex, Estée Lauder, helping them transform their digital presence across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. I led multi-million-dollar growth strategies. I built teams. I had the job title, the impact, the career trajectory that looked perfect on paper.

I was exhausted.

I was anxious.

I had lost the sense of purpose as the company grew exponentially. My best days were the ones where I helped others succeed in their goals. That gave me more satisfaction than any personal goals.

I remember saying “all the things I want more of are free - time with my family, time for fitness, space to gather myself and reassess”. I was also very aware of how privileged I was to be able to ‘step out’ at this point in my career.

When I announced I was leaving people said I was brave. It didn’t feel brave but it did feel right. I had an amazing experience working with fantastic people and it was time to move on. I felt the company was getting more from me than I was getting from it and the next chapter couldn’t begin until I closed the current one. But that didn’t mean I didn’t second guess myself between making the decision to leave and actually leaving,

What people didn’t see were the months before I left—the growing feeling that something wasn’t right. The Sunday evening dread that crept in earlier and earlier. The realization that the work that once energized me was now just... work.

Even after I made the decision to leave, the messy middle didn’t end—it intensified.

Some days I felt clear and confident. “This is exactly what I’m meant to do.” Other days, I questioned everything. “What if I’m making a huge mistake? What if I can’t do this? What if I’ve just thrown away a career I spent 12 years building?”

The doubt sounded like: “Who are you to call yourself a coach? You were good at sales and marketing—why would anyone want your coaching?” And the scarier one: “What if you become irrelevant? What if you can’t get back into corporate if this doesn’t work?”

Nobody tells you that leaving a job you’ve outgrown can feel like grief. I wasn’t just leaving a company—I was leaving an identity. The person who led teams. The person with the answer when people asked what I did. The person who knew exactly where they stood. But that job was what I did. Not who I was.

For years, I was the leader. The strategist. The person who drove results and built teams. My identity was tied to the work, the title, the companies I worked with, the deals I closed.

Becoming a coach meant stepping into a completely different role. Not the expert with all the answers. Not the person driving the strategy. Instead, the person creating space for others to find their own answers.

I had to let go of proving myself through external markers. No more quarterly results. No more big brand names to drop. Just me, my experience, and the belief that I could help people navigate their own transitions.

The hardest part was sitting with the uncertainty of building something from scratch. The vulnerability of putting myself out there. The patience required when growth is slow and non-linear. But what I discovered was that the skills I’d built during my corporate career—understanding people, seeing patterns, asking the right questions, creating clarity from complexity—they didn’t disappear. They just showed up differently.

What helped wasn’t having a perfect plan. It was giving myself permission to be in the mess without rushing through it.

I learned to sit with the uncertainty instead of treating it like a problem to solve immediately. I stopped comparing my behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel. I started trusting that the path would become clear by walking it, not by mapping it out perfectly first.

The turning point hasn’t been a moment of clarity—it was accepting that there wouldn’t be one big moment. It has been a series of small choices to keep moving forward even when I can’t see the full path. What I wish I’d known earlier: The discomfort of transition isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign you’re doing something real. Growth doesn’t happen in comfort zones—it happens in the messy middle.

The messy middle is valuable and necessary because it challenges us to really clarify what matters. If this is where you are I would love to hear from you. How are you using your messy middle to move forward?

Catherine

Space to figure out what’s next. Space away from the noise of LinkedIn perfect-career posts and well-meaning advice from people who don’t really get it. Space to sit with the uncertainty without someone trying to fix it immediately.

That’s why I’m calling this The Career Space.

The Career Space is where we talk about what modern careers actually look like—not the polished LinkedIn version, but the real, messy, non-linear journey most of us are actually on.

This isn’t about “10 steps to your dream job” or “How I made VP by 30.” It’s about the in-between moments. The transitions. The times when you know something needs to change but you’re not sure what. The decisions that don’t come with a clear right answer.

It’s a space to explore, question, and figure things out—not because I have all the answers, but because I believe you have more answers within you than you think.

We spend our careers being evaluated, assessed, and measured. Performance reviews. Interview panels. LinkedIn profiles that feel like permanent records of our worth.

Space is rare. Space to think without judgment. Space to question without having to justify. Space to feel stuck without someone immediately trying to unstick you.

In my coaching practice, I’ve learned that change doesn’t happen when I tell someone what to do. It happens when I create space for them to discover what they already know but haven’t had room to hear.

I know what it’s like to need this space because I’ve needed it myself.

When I left Meta after nearly 12 years—a career that looked perfect on paper—I entered my own messy middle. I had moments of clarity followed by weeks of doubt. Days where I felt confident in my decision, and days where I questioned everything.

People would ask, “So what are you doing now?” And I’d have to sit with not having a neat answer or describing what I used to do. I was becoming a coach, yes, but I was also figuring out who I was outside of the identity I’d built for over a decade.

That in-between space—between who I was and who I was becoming—taught me more than any job title ever did. And it showed me how rare it is to have someone who just lets you be in that space without trying to rush you through it.

This space is for you if you’re navigating a transition—whether that’s a career change, a return to work, a leadership shift, or that nagging feeling that something needs to change but you’re not sure what.

Maybe you’re in a job that looks great from the outside but doesn’t feel right anymore. Maybe you’re between roles and the LinkedIn scroll is making you feel worse, not better. Maybe you’re considering a career break but afraid of what it means. Maybe you’re thriving but want to be more intentional about what’s next.

Wherever you are, you’re welcome here.

In The Career Space, we’ll explore what real career transitions look like—the messy middle, the non-linear paths, the moments of doubt and clarity. I’ll share insights from my own journey and from working with clients navigating their own transitions.

We’ll talk about leadership, returning to work, making decisions without certainty, and building a career that actually fits your life—not someone else’s definition of success.

My approach is honest, practical, and human. I’m not here to be your guru or tell you what to do. I’m here to create space for you to figure it out for yourself.

So welcome to The Career Space. I’m glad you’re here.

Whether you’re in the middle of a transition, thinking about one, or just trying to make sense of where you are right now—this is your space too.

I’ll be sharing new posts weekly. If you’d like them delivered to your inbox, subscribe below. And if something resonates, I’d love to hear from you. Reply to any email or reach out—this works best when it’s a conversation, not a monologue.

Here’s to the messy, beautiful, non-linear journey of figuring out what’s next.

Catherine

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