10 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 5
One of the more surprising conversations I’ve had over the past few years has been with people who tell me they feel as though their career has reached a plateau.
What makes those conversations particularly interesting is that, from the outside, there is often very little evidence that anything is wrong. These are experienced sustainability professionals who have built respected careers, continue to make meaningful contributions, and are trusted by colleagues and senior leaders. If anything, many are more influential than they have ever been.
Yet despite this, they often describe a growing sense that something has flattened. The work still matters, but it no longer stretches them in the same way. The familiar signs of progress have become harder to recognise, and they begin to wonder whether they have simply reached the limits of what their current career can offer.
For a long time, I assumed these conversations reflected a lack of opportunity. Looking back, however, I no longer think that is what people were describing.
Instead, I began wondering whether something else had changed.
Throughout this series, I’ve explored how our definition of success can evolve, how our understanding of impact changes, how our professional identity gradually outgrows our role, and how the work that captures our curiosity often reveals a different way we want to contribute.
If all of those things can evolve, why would our definition of growth remain exactly the same?
That question has gradually changed the way I think about career plateaus.
The plateau is often not the end of growth. It is the end of recognising growth in the way we always have.
Why we mistake change for stagnation
Much of our early career teaches us to recognise growth through visible progression. We become more knowledgeable, take on greater responsibility, influence increasingly important decisions, and gradually earn the trust that opens new opportunities. Progress is relatively easy to recognise because it leaves tangible evidence through promotions, larger teams, more complex projects, and expanding responsibilities.
Those markers serve us well for many years. The difficulty is that we often continue using them long after they have stopped reflecting how we are actually developing.
Looking back on these conversations, I have come to believe that this is precisely where many experienced professionals begin feeling as though they have reached a plateau. They continue looking for growth in the places where they have always found it, while their development has quietly begun taking a different form.
This made me wonder whether many career plateaus are not really periods of stagnation at all. Perhaps they are moments when our internal experience has moved ahead of the external markers we have always used to evaluate ourselves. The work has changed. We have changed. Yet the scorecard we continue using belongs to an earlier stage of our career.
Why this seems especially common in sustainability
Although I suspect this experience exists in many professions, sustainability has characteristics that make it particularly visible.
Many professionals entered the field at a time when almost everything was changing. New regulations emerged, reporting frameworks evolved, organisations created sustainability functions for the first time, and topics that once sat on the margins of business became central strategic priorities.
For many years, the profession itself created a constant sense of momentum. There was always another framework to understand, another capability to develop, another organisational challenge to solve.
In many respects, the profession matured at the same time as the people working within it.
As both matured, however, the nature of the work inevitably changed. Instead of building entirely new capabilities, experienced professionals increasingly found themselves integrating existing ones. Instead of introducing sustainability into the organisation, they helped embed it. Instead of developing their own expertise, they spent more time helping others navigate complexity.
These are signs of both a profession and its practitioners entering a new stage of maturity. Yet because this growth looks different from the growth that came before it, it is remarkably easy to mistake maturity for stagnation.
When growth becomes less visible
One of the ideas I have found myself returning to is that growth seems to become progressively less visible over the course of a career.
Early in our careers, growth is largely additive. We accumulate knowledge, develop new capabilities, gain experience, and gradually take on greater responsibility. Progress feels tangible because every step adds something we did not have before. We become more knowledgeable, more capable, and more confident, and the world tends to reward that development in visible ways.
Over time, however, growth begins to change its character.
Rather than continuing to accumulate, we increasingly learn to integrate. Experience becomes less about knowing more about an ever-expanding range of subjects and more about recognising patterns, exercising judgement, connecting ideas, and understanding which complexities genuinely matter.
The shift is subtle but significant. Early career growth expands our capabilities. Later career growth increasingly refines them. It becomes less about doing more and more about seeing more clearly.
None of these developments are immediately visible. They rarely appear on a CV, they are difficult to measure, and they seldom receive the same recognition as a promotion or a larger team. Yet they represent a profound form of professional growth.
Perhaps this is why so many experienced professionals mistake maturity for stagnation. They continue to evolve, but they are evaluating that evolution through measures that belonged to an earlier stage of their career.
The plateau, then, is not asking us to grow faster.
It is inviting us to recognise that growth itself has taken on a different form.
The question to sit with
If this reflection resonates with you, perhaps the question is not:
“How do I get my career moving again?”
Perhaps it is:
“Has my definition of growth quietly changed without me noticing?”
The answer may not immediately tell you what your next role should be.
It may, however, help you recognise that the plateau you have been experiencing is not necessarily evidence that your development has stopped.
It may simply be inviting you to measure it differently.
Continue Exploring
If this reflection resonated with you, it may not be the only question you’re asking.
What’s Next? Eight Reflections on Career Transitions in Sustainability explores seven additional questions that frequently emerge as sustainability professionals navigate leadership, career transitions, and professional growth.
If you’d like to continue exploring these reflections, you can download the guide free of charge.
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