This came up in a conversation with friends recently, and I realised I’ve heard different versions of the same story from other people over the years.
Someone works for a company for years, grows with the team, takes on more responsibility, and then at some point they’re told they’ve “reached their ceiling.” That they’re not the person the company sees leading a new project, so they need to hire someone from outside who has more experience and knowledge. And then basically, find another role you might want to do instead. I get it. I really dooooo.
Sometimes companies need people from outside. They need fresh perspectives, different experiences, or knowledge that the current team simply doesn’t have. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But what I don’t understand is, what happened in all those years before that?
If this person has been working with you for so long, why weren’t they being prepared for something bigger? Why weren’t they given opportunities to learn the things they were missing? Why weren’t they trained, mentored, challenged, or at least told, “Hey, if you want to lead something like this one day, these are the things you still need to work on.” Perhaps they still wouldn’t have been ready. And that’s okay. But there’s a big difference between telling someone, “You’re not ready for this yet,” and telling them, “You’ve reached your ceiling.” Because how do you even know that?
Perhaps they’ve reached the ceiling of what they can do with the opportunities you’ve given them so far. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve reached the ceiling of what they’re capable of. And I think that’s the part that bothers me the most.
Of course, employees also have a responsibility for their own growth. You can’t expect a company or a manager to do everything for you. You have to ask questions, take initiative, learn things yourself and make it known that you want to grow. But managers also have a responsibility to develop people, especially when someone has been with the company for years and has shown that they want to take on more. So to suddenly say, “You’ve reached your ceiling. Find another role you want to do,” feels kind of fucked up to me. Not because that person was entitled to the position. They weren’t.
But because if someone wasn’t ready, I would rather hear why. Tell me what I’m missing. Tell me where I need to improve. Give me the chance to work towards it. And if after all of that I’m still not the right person for the job, fine. At least we both know we tried. But deciding that someone has simply reached the end of their potential? I don’t know. I find that incredibly discouraging.
Perhaps instead of telling people where their ceiling is, good leadership should be helping them figure out how much further they can actually go. And if there really is a ceiling, shouldn’t we be helping people break through it rather than telling them to stop when they reach it?
And perhaps before telling someone they’ve reached their ceiling, we should ask whether we ever gave them the tools to break through it.