The Title Trap

You finally get the role you’ve been working towards. The excitement lasts a few months. Then, almost without noticing, you’re already thinking about the next move.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Psychologists call it the arrival fallacy, the belief that reaching a milestone will bring lasting fulfilment.

Research on hedonic adaptation suggests we often return to our usual level of satisfaction surprisingly quickly after positive life events, including career achievements.

The problem isn’t the promotion itself. It’s that we often expect a job title to tell us more than it actually can.

What’s inside the container?

I often think of job titles as containers. They tell us roughly what’s on the label, your level, your responsibilities, perhaps even your salary band.

What they don’t tell you is what your day-to-day work will actually look and feel like. Will you spend your week solving interesting problems or sitting in back-to-back meetings? Will you enjoy managing people, or would you rather be creating, analysing or building?

Those are the things that determine whether a job suits you. It’s also why organisations don’t rely on job titles alone. Behind every role sits a competency framework outlining the technical and interpersonal skills expected at each level. The title is the headline; the competencies are the detail.

Being skilled doesn't always mean you're suited for it.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see is assuming that because you’re good at something, you must be well suited to it. The two aren’t always the same.

You can become highly skilled in work that leaves you feeling drained. Equally, there are certain types of work that seem to give people energy even when they’re challenging. That’s the difference between a learned skill and a natural talent.

When I use assessments such as TMA or Hogan assessments, I’m not looking for a perfect answer. I’m looking for patterns, alongside someone’s experience, values and career history, to understand where they’ve consistently done their best work and where they’ve struggled.

The signs are usually subtle.

People rarely wake up one morning knowing they’re in the wrong role. Instead, it tends to show up gradually. You feel a little flatter than you used to. Work takes more energy than it gives. You find yourself wondering whether another promotion or another company will finally make things feel different.

Sometimes that’s exactly the right move, and other times it’s worth asking a different question instead.

I’ve fallen into the title trap myself. I chased what looked like the logical next step rather than stopping to think about how I actually wanted to spend my working week. Rather than “What’s my next title?”, try asking:

• What work makes me lose track of time?
• What consistently makes me anxious before you’ve even started?
• What do you naturally contribute in meetings without being asked?
• What kind of work leaves you with more energy than when you started?

Think of it like gathering data on yourself. The answers are likely to keep evolving as you evolve. Your career history already holds more clues than you might realise. Sometimes you just need to look at it differently.