Feeling stuck in your career doesn’t mean you’ve hit the end of the road. Instead, it often signals the start of something transformative. In this article, seasoned professionals share real-world strategies for breaking through career plateaus, from embracing discomfort to reconnecting with your purpose. Whether you’re navigating uncertainty or craving more impact, these insights offer actionable paths to reignite momentum and unlock new opportunities.
Embrace Disruption to Fuel Career Growth
I’ve hit a few career plateaus throughout my journey, and each time, I found growth by intentionally being a bit disruptive. Disruptive in the sense that I actively sought out challenges beyond the title I held, the role I was hired for, or the opportunities typically offered, especially as the only woman asking for that kind of consideration.
Early on, I moved quickly through the HR function, building expertise across disciplines until I had a firm grasp on the entire function and felt I could lead others. That season of my career was exciting, fulfilling, and fun. I was thriving, but I still wanted more.
So, I started asking for stretch assignments, exposure to the board, and cross-functional projects that would expand my perspective beyond HR and into the business as a whole.
One of my most pivotal moments came at the C-Suite level. I found myself craving new ways to contribute and grow, so I stepped into an acting COO role—without the formal title. That shift opened the door to entirely new kinds of problem-solving, deeper collaboration across departments, and the opportunity to serve the organization in a more holistic, meaningful way.
But, eventually I hit my final plateau—the kind that doesn’t get solved with a promotion or new project. That’s when I decided to truly embrace my personal motto: get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and I launched my company.
As a solopreneur, my reach is no longer limited. I choose the work I say yes to, the partnerships I nurture, and the impact I want to make. My purpose is ignited, my passion is renewed, and my story is still being written.
Becky Kowall, founder, chief HR strategist, 22 North HR
Reflect and Align for Strategic Advancement
Professionals generally want to work hard, feel valued for what they do, understand how their role connects to the organization they work for, and live a good life. They are so driven to continue to add value to the organizations and teams they work for that they often don’t take the time to reflect on their contributions and connect them to where they want to go and what they want to do, which often leads to a career plateau.
They end up on autopilot, going through their days doing the best they can until they realize they’ve plateaued or want something more or different.
This awareness is a great opportunity to pause, reflect, and uncover new opportunities for advancement.
With clients I work with, we start by identifying what they enjoy, what they want more of, and what they don’t enjoy, or what they want less of.
We uncover what success looks like for them, and what they want to feel when they step away from their career at retirement, along with what they’d have regrets about not doing at this intersection. This is an important component, as making change is often scary, and taking steps towards the right thing instead of falling into something that’s going to have them feeling similarly makes a difference.
From there, we take stock of their impact, experience, and leadership so they can reflect on what they’ve achieved (and why it matters), track success stories, and speak about their work with clarity, confidence, and alignment.
Next, we consider how they can stay visible, valuable, and empowered to ask for something more in their current roles or strategize how to look for it elsewhere through avenues like networking.
Without this process, clients are often so disconnected from the incredible impact they’ve had in their careers at this point, from entry level to very senior, that the pause and reflection makes a huge difference and allows one to regroup and determine what advancement looks like for them and how to strategically make it happen.
Clients who do this go from being overwhelmed with too many options to finding clarity and confidence about what they really want. This makes the ask for advancement much easier, and they land in roles they feel aligned with and happier about.
Shannon Bloom, PCC, leadership & transformation career coach & founder, Radiant Firefly
Seek Mentorship to Navigate Career Challenges
It is a feeling that can begin to creep up over time, and eventually one may experience career stagnation. To break free of these doldrums within a career, there has to be a strategy created to uncover new opportunities for advancement. One strategy I’ve seen work is to find a more senior colleague who can serve as a mentor and sounding board for career challenges and opportunities. There are typically formal programs within a workplace where employees can obtain mentorship, and if it doesn’t exist, then find an organization outside of work that can provide a mentor. It is important to consider who can best serve as your mentor; some qualities to consider are their current work experience, skills, and companies they have worked for during their career.
I have sought out mentorship outside my work environment when I was considering the next steps in my career, and I have also served as a mentor in my work environments. Through one experience, over the course of nine months, I had the opportunity to coach and support the development of a junior professional in a mentoring program where I facilitated 32 one-on-one development sessions. We discussed both challenges and opportunities to address her desire to progress to the next stage of her career. After completing the program, my protégé continued focusing on her strategy to address her career needs, and she went through the process to secure a new role for herself. In my case, I was able to learn from a senior professional and ended the mentorship program with a plan as to how I would seek out new opportunities to advance my career.
Another approach to uncover new opportunities and add new skills for advancement is to volunteer. I took this approach, before business school, to gain experiences and transferable skills as a consultant, project manager, and mentor for various pro bono consulting projects.
Finally, assess on a periodic basis how you feel about your work environment. Questions to consider are:
- Are you utilizing your skills to have the impact you desire?
- Are you doing work in an environment where you can thrive?
- Are you adequately compensated for the level of work you produce?
To avoid reaching a career plateau, conduct an assessment on a periodic basis (e.g., every three or six months) to determine career satisfaction. Conducting these periodic assessments will thwart the possibility of a career plateau because there will be a strategic approach to deflect career stagnation.
Andrea Bell, CEO & owner, The Employment Strategist
Experiment with AI to Reshape Your Role
A few years into running Petners (a nonprofit feeding stray animals in Ukraine), I hit a plateau—not just in growth, but in my own role as a founder and an operator.
We were doing the same things week after week: writing posts, sending newsletters, and pitching donors and partners. None of it was broken, but none of it was leading anywhere new either.
The shift came from tiny, messy experiments.
One of those experiments involved using AI to speed up content creation. That became the spark for building an AI-powered tool that helps nonprofits create donor-centric content. Suddenly, I wasn’t just leading a stuck nonprofit—I was launching a tool that could help other nonprofits grow. New conversations started, new doors opened, and I had a new way to grow—not just my organization, but my career.
I believe that’s the most underrated part of experimentation: it doesn’t just improve what you’re doing—it can completely reshape who you are in your work. When you start treating stuck moments like playgrounds for tests, your role evolves with the process.
Experimentation today is unusually accessible, too. We don’t need a growth team or user testing lab—you can use Lovable and n8n to build something within hours, not months.
Maia Iva, cofounder and CEO, Kweet
Build Your Personal Brand for New Opportunities
I reached my career plateau when I became the head of technology and innovation at Etihad Airways. You might ask, how did I come to that conclusion? The answer is simple—I tried for various positions at the next level, but I kept getting rejections.
The math is straightforward. As you climb the ladder, the number of positions gets smaller. The ratio of professionals applying for senior positions compared to the number of available positions is lower. This is frustrating for any professional, and it was the same for me.
So how did I address this? There are two ways you can manage this. First, you can sulk about it (which I did for a few weeks), and second, I decided that if I had to stand out, I had to be better than my peers. That’s when I learned about personal branding.
I started going through YouTube to understand what others were doing to enhance their personal brand. It was clear—I had to show myself as an expert in my field. So I decided to use the most common medium to get my message out there: a website. I created a website under my name, and I started to post articles about my area of expertise. But I wasn’t getting any traffic.
I learned that my website needed search engine optimization (SEO). It took me a couple of weeks (and a few weeks of trial and error) before I started getting traffic to my website. With all the new traffic coming to my website and the articles that I carefully wrote, I started to receive queries and questions about my expertise.
That opened the floodgates of queries from recruiters and senior executives. New opportunities started to come my way, and my confidence began to grow. I finally zeroed in on the opportunity that I wanted and moved ahead in my career.
What I learned from this experience:
- Rather than sulk about the situation, do something constructive with your time and learn new skills.
- Learning new skills at an older age can be difficult, but with a progressive mindset, there is nothing you can’t do.
- Be prepared to jump outside of your comfort zone. You will be surprised where life takes you.
These three lessons might be simple, but they take a lot of effort, patience, and dedication. You will achieve success if you have the right mindset.
Noel D’Costa, managing partner of enterprise solutions, DXC Technology
Tackle Avoided Tasks to Reignite Growth
Follow your avoidance. Most times, you hit a plateau after you become too good—the irony. When I hit my plateau, it was because the system I was working in became too stable.
The deploys were smooth, and the team didn’t need hand-holding. Nothing felt new; there was no tension, no stretch. I spent 90% of my time doing things I was great at. It felt more like maintenance instead of growth.
I decided to do something I avoided and dreaded: handling customer complaints. It is convenient to let the customer care department handle customer complaints. This was my starting point. I delved into user frustrations from the support logs. I started reading comments, replaying sessions, and sitting in on support calls.
Hearing the pain behind the metrics we present proved how much my work shaped people’s experience. It pulled me into product decisions, pricing, and messaging and gave me the umph I needed.
When you feel stuck, follow your avoidance. Try out something you aren’t good at. Find a space where you don’t feel smart. That way, you learn and grow.
Jay Speakman, chief technical officer, CustomWritings
Address Skill Gaps to Unlock Progression
Addressing a skills or knowledge gap can be an effective way of uncovering new opportunities for advancement. It is beneficial to have a niche and extensive expertise in a particular domain. However, the needs of the organization you work for or the industry you belong to might change over time.
Acquiring new skills might become pivotal for success, and a lack of these skills might actually hinder your career progression.
Once you find yourself in a career plateau, ask yourself these questions:
- Who among your peers is experiencing the kind of career progression that would make you happy?
- What skills do they have that have enabled that progression?
- What skills are the most valued in your domain/industry at this point in time?
Once you have identified the gaps, formulate a plan to gain these new skills. Identify courses you can take or networks you can leverage to get your foothold in the new, unfamiliar territory.
I personally used this method when I hit the five-year mark in my career as a software engineer. Even though I had experienced early success, I was still worried about reaching stagnation. I realized that I needed to be more product/domain/business-minded instead of just focusing on my tech skills. I pursued an MBA—which opened up a whole host of opportunities for me.
Anuj Mulik, software engineer, Featured
Reconnect with Your ‘Why’ for Renewed Momentum
In my experience, when I hit a career plateau, I realized that I was often obsessing over the “what”—what was next, what my next title would be, what my landing place in the company would be. Instead, what I needed to ground myself in was clarity around the “why” I do the work I do in the first place. This reframe allowed me to reflect on moments in my career where I felt most energized and in alignment—there are clear patterns and themes in these moments. In this reflection, it became clear to me that I am driven by evolving cultures into those where more people feel seen, where equity is baked into systems, and where leadership reflects lived values—not just business outcomes.
I was able to use this clarity to evaluate opportunities differently, advocate for purpose-aligned projects (even within my current role), and move toward designing roles that didn’t previously exist. By re-grounding my next move in my why, I was able to make intentional, values-aligned choices that reignited my momentum.
Nani Vishwanath, consultant & facilitator, The Courage Collective
Leverage Assessments to Identify Career Paths
When facing a career plateau, I took a Birkman assessment and found it very valuable. This assessment has high internal validity, meaning that at different points in your life, there’s a high likelihood that you’ll get the same results. This is important as it is a tool that you can refer back to later on in your professional journey. It looks both at the types of careers that will work for you and at the characteristics of different job environments that will help you excel.
As part of the process, you work with a coach to analyze the results and to use them to help with essential tasks like updating your résumé and LinkedIn profile to highlight core findings from the assessment that would make you attractive as a candidate. I was able to use this assessment to improve how I spoke about myself as a team member and what I can contribute to a team. I was able to quickly move to a role that allowed me to grow, build skills, and set me up for what came next.
Marianna Sachse, founder & CEO, Jackalo
Pursue Education to Expand Career Horizons
One of the tried-and-true methods for uncovering new opportunities in your career is to consider going back to school in some capacity. It doesn’t always have to be full-time, but going back to school allows you to expand your knowledge, make yourself even more marketable, and, in some programs, you’ll get certain industry certifications that are becoming more essential in a crowded sea of professionals. Not to mention, going back to school while in your career affords you a new networking pool to draw from, helping you make new connections that can help you in your career in ways you can’t yet begin to predict.
Joe Klenk, director of marketing, Pennsylvania Institute of Technology
Communicate Career Goals for Internal Moves
I learned a strategy from a colleague who used it to successfully change his career. I approached my manager at the time and shared my goals and the type of work I wanted to do. A couple of months later, he informed me about an opening in another department.
I already knew the other manager, so I moved internally to that department without any internal job ever being posted. That’s how I pivoted from working in the TV studio to working on entertainment marketing campaigns.
It’s really important to be proactive in your career and tell people what you want. This strategy works because it helps change other people’s perspective of you beyond your current role.
Melissa Chiou, senior marketer/ media & entertainment advisor, MelissaChiou.com
