Coaching Real Leaders · Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins

How Can I Move Forward When My Company Won’t Promote Me?

March 30, 2026·48 min·2 clips

A healthcare executive realizes her career paralysis stems from guilt about prioritizing her own happiness for the first time.

Erica is close to the top she wants. She has spent decades in healthcare, built almost her whole career inside one organization, and moved through leadership roles with purpose. Now the final step has stalled. Muriel frames the session around that stuck place, where the dream of a C-suite role runs into the cost of changing the life Erica already has. The conversation turns toward routine. Erica describes the Monday-to-Friday rhythm of dinner, television, and bed, then names the pull of not wanting to be by herself. Muriel does not hurry past that. She reflects the distinction carefully: Erica can be alone, but she may not want to be. That shift makes the problem feel different. Promotion stops looking like a clean career milestone and starts looking like a choice with emotional and relational weight. The word trade-off matters here. Muriel suggests the hardness of the trade-off comes partly from Erica's relationship to it, not only from the facts. It lands as a gentle challenge. Erica has said past promotions felt like the natural next thing, so Muriel asks what happens when the next thing requires her to own the decision. Guilt moves into the center. Erica admits she struggles to choose herself first, even with a supportive husband telling her to do what she needs to do. Muriel keeps the tone steady. She does not tell Erica to chase the role or stay comfortable. She keeps pressing on how Erica makes the choice. The session is grown-up and practical. It is about ambition, yes, but more than that, it is about the moment achievement stops being a ladder and becomes a deliberate trade.

As heard by us

A focused coaching session on ambition, stalled advancement, and the personal cost of choosing a C-suite path.

Erica, a long-tenured healthcare leader, wants the final push into the C-suite after years of steady advancement inside one organization. The episode works because Muriel Wilkins moves the issue away from a simple promotion gap and into the harder business of choice: what Erica…

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