“I wish I had slowed down to reflect more deeply on this opportunity before saying yes.”
That’s what Tanya told me in a coaching session. Even though she had just been promoted, she was close to burnout. Tanya was only a few months into her director of client management role at the technology-focused consulting firm where she’d spent 15 years. She was overwhelmed and exhausted at a time when she expected to feel accomplished. While she said yes to that promotion, she wished she had slowed down to ask a few questions first.
Tanya was an early employee, and she’d risen from business analyst to product manager and eventually to director. Tanya’s leaders had consistently supported her career journey, and her deep loyalty led her to accept nearly every role they asked her to take on. However, her latest role felt more taxing. Recent studies show that promotions often increase job satisfaction temporarily, usually for less than a year, until new stressors and demands of the role kick in, causing the temporary high to fade. Tanya was worried that this misalignment would affect her performance, tarnish her personal brand, and hurt the likelihood of future promotions. Her experience is far from unusual.
Misalignment in a role can lead to a unique type of burnout called rust out. Researchers found that rust out reveals itself as feelings of disengagement, boredom, and a quiet pursuit for more engaging work (read: daily job searches). This happens when we are understimulated at work because our best talents and skills are underutilized. In Tanya’s case, accepting this misaligned promotion led to her feelings of overwhelm, exhaustion, and boredom. The work itself wasn’t hard, she just wasn’t using her best talents of product innovation and process improvement.
If you’re wrestling with whether a promotion is truly right for you, here are some strategies to consider before accepting.
PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BODY
I have coached a surprisingly large number of leaders who believed they wanted a promotion, only to find that when the offer arrived, they felt dread. They had been influenced by colleagues, bosses, and sometimes even family members into believing that this was the best next step for their career. Science suggests that our bodies are often the wisest voices in our decisions. A 2025 study confirmed this at the neural level, showing that your body’s heartbeat, breathing, and gut signals actively steer which choice your brain lands on before you are consciously aware that you are rationalizing options.
When I’m working with a client, we begin by clarifying the realities of the role. Consider the daily work, decisions and challenges that will be encountered. Any job can look perfect on paper, so what hidden stressors might emerge? Next, how does your body respond to saying yes to this? Does it feel expansive and exciting or heavy and restrictive? Try to assess whether you feel nervous yet excited, or a sense of dread. Name as many of the feelings and sensations that your body experiences as you consider this opportunity and consider them as data to aid in your decision.
IMAGINE YOURSELF IN ONE YEAR
A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that people who pause to anticipate how they’ll feel in a role after one year, and not just whether they want it now, make more considered decisions and report higher satisfaction afterward. Those who skip this step are more likely to rationalize a poor fit once they’re in it. So before saying yes, fast-forward and imagine yourself one year into this role, after the “new job smell” has worn off and you are living the reality of the work.
I encourage my clients to visualize the following. Imagine sitting in the recurring meetings, making the decisions, and experiencing the demands on your time and identity. Do you feel energized or depleted? Are you using the skills that make you feel most alive, or the ones that drain you? You may find that you’re genuinely happy where you are, that the work-life shift isn’t one you want to make, or that a senior role would crowd out personal priorities that matter to you.
You also may not always desire the demands of a higher leadership position. This can be because you are happy in your current role, you don’t want a shift in work-life balance, or you are pursuing personal interests or additional education.
THINK ABOUT JOB CRAFTING
I often hear from clients that they’d never want a certain leadership role, because the previous leader always seemed stressed and in the weeds. What they’re really noticing is a leadership style, not the role itself. Most people step into a promotion assuming it comes as-is. But so long as you deliver results, how you get there is often yours to define.
Emerging research on job crafting reveals that people who proactively reshape the tasks, relationships, and approach to their work experience better alignment with their skills and interests and report higher engagement. As Tanya clarified her talents and goals, she summoned the courage to communicate to executive leadership that she was a mismatch. But more importantly, she also defined and communicated the type of work she enjoyed most, while linking the value this work would bring to the organization. They offered her an option to lead strategic project implementation across the organization in a way she could craft to her skills, which turned out to be a good fit.
Instead of viewing the opportunity as a good or bad fit, explore how much room you’ll have to lead the role your way. You can do this in the interview process by discerning how much flexibility you’ll have in selecting the strategies and projects to pursue. You can also ask what the previous leader did well and what approaches could be adjusted for more success. And finally, you can share details on how you would lead in this role, and ask if it aligns with the team culture and expectations.
ACT FIRST, GET CLEAR LATER
Successful career transitions don’t always come with a perfectly planned map and execution plan. Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, has spent decades studying career transitions and professional identity. She notes that career transitions are fundamentally identity decisions. A promotion can mark a shift in your identity, which fuels uncertainty and stress. Ibarra’s work reveals that we don’t figure out what we want and then act. We act, experiment, and test “possible selves”, and the clarity follows.
I’ve been here myself. When my HR director role was eliminated in a merger, I was offered a role that didn’t match my identity as a human resources leader. When I looked outside the organization for similar work, the acquiring organization encouraged me to stay. I assessed my skills against the requirements, checked in with my body, and asked how much I could shape the role. Feeling nervous yet excited, there was only going to be one way to find out. Take the opportunity, do the work and check in with myself. I ended up loving the role.
In my conversations with clients, they often overthink themselves into paralysis. However, clarity comes from taking action. If this promotion aligns with your values and fills you with nervous excitement, then that is your sign to move forward. Tanya took the role, shaped it to her strengths, and led a company-wide system implementation that improved client engagement and retention, all while actually enjoying the work.
Feelings of loyalty and ambition can make it hard to pause when a promotion opportunity arrives. Before saying yes, check what your body is telling you, be honest about whose goal you’re actually chasing, and ask whether the role aligns with your skills and values. And if it doesn’t fit as written, you may be able to shape it into one that does.
