Chapter 7:
Quinn is stepping into discomfort
Quinn closed the door to her office, buzzing with anticipation. It was noon on Tuesday and she finally had an hour to tackle the second module of the course: ‘Working more strategically’.
She laid out her pens and highlighters. There was a short instruction video about the purpose and format of the exercise, which she watched carefully, though she was more excited to get to the accompanying worksheet. Quinn’s process-driven brain loved a good worksheet, and after the fluffier strategic thinking exercises of the first module, she was relieved to have something concrete to work through.
The worksheet looked like a strategic planning exercise, scaled down from an entire organisation to one person. No one liked planning more than Quinn.
The first section was called ‘Back to basics’. It required her to examine her role’s purpose and vision before identifying her focus areas.
That shouldn’t be too hard, she thought. She grabbed her current job description and started copying the objectives into the purpose and vision boxes.
Then she stopped.
It felt too easy. There had to be more to it.
She glanced back at the instructions, which noted: ‘If you’re looking to step up, try drafting this for your future role.’
Quinn paused. This was Claire’s exact suggestion: to approach the exercise as if she was already in the senior director role. It had sounded like a good idea in the café, but staring at the blank boxes now, she felt a knot in her chest.
How am I supposed to know the purpose of the role? Steph hasn’t finalised the job description yet.
Suddenly, the exercise wasn’t so fun.
Quinn took a sip of water to compose herself. She had been a steady performer throughout her career. There wasn’t a piece of legislation she couldn’t unpack. Why was this any different?
She spent fifteen minutes searching similar job ads online, but they were all generic and out of context. She wouldn’t be able to copy-paste her way through this.
She re-read the prompts: ‘What problem does your role exist to solve? Who benefits from what you do? How does your role specifically add value?’ Okay, maybe I can start there.
She listed the three teams the new role would look after: Risk, Corporate Policy and Corporate Compliance. As she considered each team’s focus and how the senior director would interact with them, it became clear the role wouldn’t involve doing much technical work. The senior director would focus on leading the teams, enabling executives to make better decisions and partnering with regulators. As the list of key stakeholders grew, she could see why starting with whom the role served made sense.
The purpose statement started to take shape: To provide the executive team with frameworks for navigating compliance and taking calculated risks for the agency.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.
Next was the ‘Vision’ statement. The unease returned. This felt even more ambiguous.
The instructions asked her to define success not just for the organisation, but also how it looked for herself, incorporating her values, ambitions and wellbeing.
She had never worked in Risk or Corporate Policy and wasn’t sure what great service or results would look like from their perspective. She felt like an impostor.
She re-read her draft purpose statement, reminding herself that she didn’t necessarily need to be the expert in all those fields to lead the experts. As she jotted down ideas about what success could look like, the words ‘leadership’, ‘influence’ and ‘partnership’ kept appearing on her list. The uncertainty was still there, but the knot in her chest was loosening as she focused on the list-making rather than on how the ambiguity made her feel.
She also thought about her own wellbeing. She was organised, but a broader role would test her boundaries. She wrote: Success is leading a high-performing team, with one day of white space in my diary for strategic thinking and built-in resilience.
Her instinct was to spend more time wordsmithing the two draft statements, but she resisted the urge. She had intentionally allocated only her lunch hour to the exercise so she wouldn’t get carried away and lose her whole afternoon.
With her foundation set, she moved on to the SWOT analysis. She liked the simplicity of this framework.
She started with her ‘Strengths’, forcing herself to look past her usual modesty. She wrote: Knowledge of relevant legislation. Internal networks. Organised. Able to turn chaos into clear, repeatable processes.
Under ‘Weaknesses’, she was equally honest. She started to write ‘executive presence’, but stopped. That felt too vague. She made herself be specific: Tendency to dive into the ‘how’ before explaining the ‘why.’ And: Presentation style currently too technical for an executive audience. She sighed with relief, realising that she now had a specific problem to solve: learning how to transfer her knowledge in a more engaging way.
She then looked at ‘Opportunities’. If the senior director role is advertised, it will be a clear path to promotion. And the working group could be a way to showcase her new mindset to the executive team. She jotted both down.
Finally, she moved on to the ‘Threats’. She hesitated before writing the last one: The risk that the executive team already views me as ‘just a technical expert’ and might look externally for a ‘leader.’ That one stung to write down. But it was true.
To close the exercise, she distilled everything into three focus areas: Communication—less detail, more big picture. Networking—build relationships with the Risk and Corporate Policy directors. Capacity—delegate more of the technical work to make room for the working group.
She also identified three concrete actions for the next ninety days, as the exercise instructed. The first one was something concrete she could tackle this month: Coffee with Quentin (understand the Risk team’s top three challenges).
Writing this down felt like a promise and Quinn always kept her promises. She looked at the plan. For the first time, she didn’t feel overqualified or underprepared. She felt like a senior director in training.
She pulled up her calendar and sent meeting invites to Steph and Claire with the subject: ‘Strategic focus plan – for review’.
Quinn glanced at the next section of the module: ‘Building your strategic rhythm’. It seemed to be about productivity hacks and time blocking. She smiled to herself—she was already a master of the colour-coded calendar. That section could wait. For now, she had a plan to share.