Steven Claes

Steven ClaesSep 15, 2026

The hardest thing to tell an introvert who is performing extroversion at work is that it is working. It works, which is exactly why nobody in the company ever has to change anything. I have sat in a version of this conversation many times. Someone says about a candidate: "He really came alive in that presentation." The room nods. He gets the role. Read the left column of that whiteboard again. Every line on it is something the job asked him for, and he delivered all ten. For years I let that sentence pass. Now I ask which decision got better. The room usually goes quiet. Because a senior role is never only the work. It carries an unwritten spec inherited from whoever held it last: how often they were in the corridor, how they opened a meeting, how fast they answered. Nobody writes that down. Everybody calibrates against it. So the promotion arrives as a reward and then becomes a contract. Perform at that level, at that frequency, for as long as you hold the role, and there is no mechanism anywhere in the company for handing the contract back. Three years later he leaves, and we code it as balance, and we lose the judgement that got him promoted. The cost of a badly designed room belongs to the people who designed it. We have spent years charging that cost to the individual instead, and calling that development. → Write the role spec before you name candidates, then strike every line that describes the last holder rather than the work. → When someone says a candidate came alive, ask which decision got better. Up to you to decide what your last succession slate was actually measuring. Your room may not change this year, and you still have a career to run in the meantime. If you're interested in more, join the A+introvert newsletter for weekly free introvert & leadership insights. Subscribe here 👇. https://lnkd.in/en59EKuG

Steven ClaesSep 18, 2026

Being reachable all day is a poor measure of work. Your best work may require the opposite.   A workplace that treats that as a problem has confused presence with contribution.   Have a good weekend. Join the A+introvert community - weekly free deeply introvert career & leadership insights: https://lnkd.in/en59EKuG

Steven ClaesSep 17, 2026

You can meet every requirement for promotion and still be told: "One more thing." I've sat in talent conversations where someone was told exactly what they needed to prove. They proved it, and then the requirement changed. Nobody described it as moving the goalposts. It was usually presented more politely: "One more thing." Good promotion systems make the standard visible before the employee starts chasing it. A manager should be able to explain what the next level requires, what evidence counts, when readiness will be reviewed and who is involved in the decision. If those things only become clear after somebody has met the previous expectation, the process is teaching them that progress doesn't necessarily move them closer. A moving target also selects for a particular kind of person. When the criteria stay vague, the only way to find out where the line has gone is to keep asking in the room, repeatedly, in front of the people who decide. That suits the colleague who is comfortable relitigating their own case and quietly disadvantages the one who went away and built exactly the evidence they were asked for. Written criteria, a known review date and a named decision-maker take that advantage away. People can focus on building the right evidence instead of trying to read the room. If you're told you need "more leadership" or "more visibility," ask what that looks like in observable terms, and if the requirement changes later, ask what changed and why. A development plan should make progress easier to see. If the finish line keeps moving, stop calling it development. I write more about workplace systems like this in my free weekly newsletter for introverts, as well as extroverts who want to understand how those systems land differently. I cover visibility, meetings, leadership and progression, and the unwritten rules that shape who gets heard and who gets ahead. If you’d like to read it, you can join here: https://lnkd.in/en59EKuG