I almost didn't go.

I'd been invited into an executive women's leadership program. Several days. Residential. Fully away from work.

My team had too much going on. I couldn't make the calendar math work in my head — several days away now, another session a few months later.

So I said no.

Then I sat with that answer. And changed my mind.

Not because the timing got better. It didn't.

I said yes because I realized something uncomfortable: if I couldn't make room to invest in myself the way my company was ready to invest in me, that wasn't a scheduling problem.

That was a leadership problem. Mine.

So I went.

The Program Wasn't the Point

I regretted it for most of the first two days. The curriculum was fine. The real value, I figured, was the other women in the room, not whatever was on the agenda.

Then, near the end, an instructor asked one question.

What role do you want three roles from now?

I felt it before I understood it. Like being splashed with cold water — that specific jolt where your body reacts before your mind catches up.

I was a Senior Director in Medical Affairs. Three roles up, the ladder ran through VP to EVP, and at that level, the medical path pointed toward Chief Medical Officer.

I didn't have an MD. Wasn't getting one. Had no real interest in clinical development, which is most of what a CMO does.

But that wasn't the realization that mattered.

The one that mattered was quieter, and bigger: I wanted the C-suite. I wanted to help make the decisions that shaped the company. And I was never getting there on the medical path.

I had to change lanes. Not because I was failing in Medical Affairs — because I was succeeding in a lane that could only take me so far.

At the time, I thought I was deciding whether I had the time for a leadership program. I was actually deciding whether the work in front of me got to keep me from seeing something I couldn't see from inside it.

That question moved me toward HR, then toward becoming a Chief People Officer, then eventually toward the work I do now — none of it visible from where I was sitting.

The Trap for Capable Leaders

We weigh opportunities by their immediate cost. How much time will this take. Is it worth it. Can someone else go.

Reasonable questions. Also incomplete — because some experiences aren't valuable for being efficient. They're valuable for changing what you can see.

The most capable leaders are often the most exposed to missing this, precisely because they're needed. The work in front of them always has a convincing reason to keep them close: the timing's bad, the team needs them, this can wait.

Sometimes that's true. Sometimes "I'm too busy" isn't discipline — it's the work you already know exercising too much authority over the work you're meant to grow into.

Leadership doesn't expand only through execution. It expands through exposure — different questions, different rooms, different problems than the ones that already know your name.

Try This

Name one thing in front of you right now that you've been weighing only by its cost — the ask, the invitation, the project you've been evaluating by time and inconvenience alone.

Ask a different question: what would this expose me to that my current role can't?

Decide again, with that answer in hand.

The Bottom Line

I didn't know, sitting in that room, that one question would redirect my leadership. I thought I was deciding whether I had time to step away from my work. Not rethink it entirely.

That's why these decisions are so easy to miss. They don't look like decisions. They look like interruptions — the kind you only recognize looking back.

Warmly,
Angela

P.S. I wrote more about this pattern for BioSpace — why the moments that quietly reshape your career rarely feel significant while they're happening. Read it here: https://www.biospace.com/career-advice/opinion-the-biggest-career-decisions-dont-feel-like-career-decisions​