332: Settling for “Fine” at Mid-Career: Why Silence Is Costing You Influence, Pay, and Opportunity

“Fine” sounds harmless, but at mid-career it is often a warning light.

In this episode, I unpack why quiet professionalism can be misread as low ambition and how being seen as reliable can quietly turn into being perceived as replaceable. 

If you are job-hugging for stability, I help you distinguish between a smart season of skill-building and a slow slide into stagnation, and then show you how to course-correct with intention.

We’ll explore the psychological cost of settling for fine, including overfunctioning to stay relevant, growing resentment, and the internal narrative that you should just be grateful. 

I walk you through how to name your genius, the specific value others rely on but rarely articulate, and how to put that value to work in rooms where decisions are actually made.

You will learn a practical approach to brand stewardship at mid-career. That means protecting your brand so leaders, peers, and stakeholders clearly understand your value, and promoting your brand so your impact is remembered when stretch assignments, promotions, and high-visibility projects are on the table.

I cover the early warning signs of a career plateau, including generic performance reviews, smaller bonuses, and fewer strategic invitations, along with specific actions you can take to regain momentum.

Mid-career is your wealth-building window. Doubling down on what you do exceptionally well is not bragging. It is stewardship of your impact, influence, and earning power.

If “fine” has become your default answer, treat it as a signal to act. Listen in, take the scripts and steps I share, and choose one bold action this week to make your genius visible.

If you found this conversation helpful, follow the podcast, share it with a colleague who needs the nudge, and leave a review so more mid-career professionals can find the show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Fine Is Not Neutral
• 2:05 Job Hugging Vs. Growth
• 4:15 Visibility Over Execution
• 6:20 The Psychological Cost Of Fine
• 8:36 Define And Use Your Genius
• 11:20 Protect And Promote Your Brand
• 14:20 Brand Risks At Mid-Career
• 17:10 The Tag-Me-In Story
• 20:15 Plateau Warning Signs

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

If someone asked you how your career is going right now, what would you say to them? Fine? Not bad, not great, just fine. But here's the hard truth: many mid-career professionals don't want to face. Fine is not neutral. See, at mid-career, fine is a signal. And your silence? Well, that's expensive. When you stay quiet, keep your head down, and tell yourself it's safer not to rock the boat. Decisions are still being made about you. Opportunities are still being assigned, and your career is still moving, just not in the direction you want. You're not overlooked because you lack talent. You're overlooked because your value has gone quiet. At this stage of your career, doing good work is no longer enough. Your genius has to be seen. It has to be out there, not just used. And your professional brand, that's up to you to protect it and promote it. So in this episode, I'm talking to you about the hidden cost of settling for fine in your career. And why staying silent at mid-career quietly erodes your influence and what it really means to show up by using your genius and taking complete ownership of your career. Because my friends, mid-career is not the time for you to disappear. Let's get started. Here, I help you focus on how you show up, how you make clearer decisions, build influence, and take control of your career, whether you're navigating change, seeking a promotion, or redefining what success looks like for you right now. This whole idea about being fine comes from this whole idea about how so many people right now are holding on to their jobs, or the term we heard last year was job hugging. And I had shared in a previous episode that job hugging can absolutely be a viable and at times needed strategy. But I want you to be clear that being fine can also be code for not being challenged, not being recognized, and not growing in your career. I don't have kids, but if you have kids, and I can remember going through my own teenage years, but my parents would say, How are you? I'd be like, fine. And if you've ever heard that from maybe your kids, your spouse, your partner, another colleague, have you ever asked them what that really means? If we take a moment to dig deeper on what fine really looks like, we'll learn that it's actually a signal. Now it doesn't have to be a bad signal, quote unquote. But the reality is that when we say we're fine, we're opting for a space that we think is neutral, that everything is okay. But when we're fine in our career, promotions, growth, or stretch opportunities, or the influence we want to be putting out there, that doesn't go to people who are saying they're fine in their career. Staying silent right now, you may think is keeping you safe. But as someone who knows, I can also tell you it makes you forgettable. Is that what you want right now at mid-career? Do you want to be forgettable or even invisible? In last week's episode, I talked with you about how the old career rules that we had been following, they just don't apply in this job market anymore. And while early career tends to reward for execution and compliance, we know that mid-career rewards you based on how visible you are, the strategic judgments and decisions you make, along with your presence as a leader. But when we stay silent in our career when everything is just quote unquote fine, what we don't do is we don't control the narrative. And so when we tell people we're fine, we don't know how they interpret it. They might be interpreting fine as you lacking ambition or leadership readiness or drive, motivation to do something more and step up and show up in a greater capacity for the company. And then what happens? You don't get invited as much. You are seen as being reliable, but not necessarily essential. And last year we know we saw a ton of layoffs and a lot of discussions around people who were quote unquote no longer essential. If you're staying silent and saying that you're fine, your role becomes easier to replace. Now, job hugging can absolutely do that as long as you are being conscious and intentional that hugging onto that job is also designed to keep moving you forward because of how you're developing your skills or getting experience. The psychological cost of settling for fine is this. You will end up doing these things. You will overfunction to stay relevant. In other words, you will be the great executioner, quote unquote. You'll be that reliable individual that's always counted on to get things done. But in the background, you are quietly resenting and disengaging where you are in the organization, the people you work with, and more than likely your supervisor, your manager, your leader. Your confidence starts eroding, and you'll find yourself saying things like, Well, I'm just grateful I have a job. I'm very grateful to come to work every day. Listen to yourself here. Listen to what you are saying to yourself when you have that private moment when you're in the car or you're on the train or the bus going back and forth to work. You're sitting in that airplane seat going, oh my God, not another work trip. What are you saying to other people about how much you like your job or what you're doing? When I coach my clients on using their genius and leading into what I call their unique professional value, you can go back to episode 94 of this podcast and check out the episode on how to communicate your value. But when I coach my clients on using their genius, it is that thing that they are known for that they do better than anybody else. It doesn't mean that there are not people out there that can do similar things or they work in that same kind of field. But it's what they bring into that working relationship that makes them unique, stands out. So where are you the most valuable in your organization? And how often are you doing that on a weekly basis? Because when our genius gets suppressed, when we're not granted opportunities or we're not advocating for opportunities to increase our visibility, what happens when our genius gets suppressed is that we don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to be the quote unquote problem employee. We go back or default to that more of the executioner role or the tactician rather than being the strategist or the subject matter expert. And we think we're being loyal, we think we're being the quote unquote good soldier, where really what happens is we start blending in with the background and we start being more invisible. We become the afterthought. How much are you on people's radars for all of the good things in terms of what you're doing? Your genius is not just what you do well. It is what others rely on, but rarely acknowledge unless you name it. And so that ties into where your professional brand is. Your goal is to get that information to know what people are saying about you when you're not in the room. This is not about self-promotion. Let me be very clear about this. Protecting and promoting your brand is not about bragging how great you are. It's not about throwing other people under the bus. Protecting and promoting your brand is about self-protection and self-advocacy. See, your brand exists whether you manage it or not. The difference is how well aware you are of it. So do not let others define your narrative. So what I often see is that there are some common mid-career brand risks. When I'm talking with people about where they are in their career and how things are going, especially when someone comes and starts working with me initially, I'll hear them say things like, um, I have a really good reputation, but I'm being looked over for certain opportunities. Um, I'm reliable, I'm solid, I'm well respected, but I'm often seen as simply a doer. Protecting your brand means ensuring that your value inside of your organization is understood. Promoting your brand means ensuring that your value is remembered. Let me say that again. Protecting your brand means ensuring your value is understood. Who's it understood by? Your leadership, your colleagues, your clients, your peers. Promoting your brand means that your value is remembered. Who's the go-to? Who's the one that needs to be tagged in when something goes wrong, or you have a really visible client? You want to make sure that this presentation goes exceptionally well. You want to put your best talent in front of them. I remember working with an educational nonprofit. I was new on the job. I was about six months in on the job, and we were working with a particular state. We were reviewing a set of uh assessment items. We were going through what was essentially a content review of the item and a bias and sensitivity review of the item to make sure that there was no um unfair uh interpretation brought into the items and such. And so my role at this meeting was as the co-pilot, if you will. I was the note taker. I was assisting the project manager who was driving the meeting. And of course, if you've ever been at a hotel and you've had the standard chicken dish that you get for lunch kind of a thing, um, whatever happened, um, the the guy who was leading and driving this meeting took ill. And I don't know if it was the hotel food or something he had the night before, whatever it was, but literally stands up in the middle of this meeting and goes, I'm out, and runs out of the room. So we're all sitting there. And the project director comes up to me and he goes, We got to figure out what to do. And I go, I got this. He's like, huh? I go, I've led meetings like this before. I know what's going on. Let me step in. I'll lead the meeting from here. And I did. I successfully ran the rest of the meeting for the next day and a half. And when I got back to the office, when we all got back to the office, people came up to me and they were like, hey, great job. We heard we heard you did some amazing things. I did my job. But but I'm I'm that person that you can tag me in when something goes wrong. I'm I'm that quote unquote team player that's gonna be there to fill in when needed. And when you need me to lead, and when you feel like I'm ready to lead, and you feel like I'm ready to lead in this space and environment within this organization, tag me in. Here's how I'm going to help you. So my brand within this organization was very dependable, reliable, but also very calm. Very calm and composed in stressful situations. I leveraged that event and leveraged that circumstance to my advantage within the organization. I had a choice in that moment. I could have been like, oh, I don't know what to do. Somebody else do it. Not my not my level, not my role. Okay. But I chose to act in a very specific way. When we think about our mid-career GPS and we think about the events that that move us into the fast lane and move us forward, I want you to pay particular attention to the things you are doing and not doing to accelerate your career. When we hit a career plateau, it often happens way before we realize it. It'll come up, for example, with a satisfactory rating on your performance review. Maybe you don't get as big of a bonus. Maybe your feedback is very generic or nonspecific. My friends, mid-career is the most dynamic time in our careers. And mid-career is also the most expensive time to stray or to drift. The longer you stay silent, the harder it is to reintroduce your voice into the conversation. I can't remember where I heard this quote, but it's something like you don't wake up one day irrelevant, you just slowly agree to it. I don't want that for any of you. I want you all to stay top of mind to be the exceptional leaders in your field and what it is that you're doing. And so that's the key point in this conversation. Be very clear about your actions and your intentions and how you are showing up right now. And you don't have to do everything different. Let's acknowledge that if you're currently employed and you're happy where you are or you like your job, you're doing a lot of things, quote unquote, right. What's one thing you could potentially do different that might make you a little uncomfortable or turn the dial or the knob just a little bit? You'll hear more in the upcoming weeks, but there are some things that I'm doing with my work and my business right now that I'm doing a little bit differently. I'm changing the dial just a little bit because I feel called and compelled to act differently than I have in the past. So you're gonna be along the ride, along for the ride with me on this as well. I'm excited to share with you some things as they come up. And when things don't come up, I'll share them with you as well, too. Right? But this is an opportunity for us to do something different. What's one thing you could do this week to show up a little differently than before? To help you with that, think about where you're settling for fine. Think about where you catch yourself saying, it's fine, it's okay, it's all right. Challenge that. Get really curious as to why you are saying it's fine, it's okay. All right, my friends, if you are not part of my twice weekly email community called the Mid Career GPS Newsletter, I want you to join. All you have to do is go to my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. Right there at the top of the page, you will see a place to join my free newsletter. Would love to have you come on in here, or rather there, actually, we take the conversation to a whole different level. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, you want a little bit more information and resources into your inbox, the best way to do that is my newsletter. The Mid Career GPS, just like the name of this podcast, but it comes in your inbox and it comes in twice a week. So I hope you'll join me there as well. Look, mid-career is not about working harder. I had a dear friend and mentor years ago who told me that mid-career is your wealth-building years. It's where you double down on what you do exceptionally well and you leverage the hell out of it. And you leverage the hell out of it so you increase your visibility and get more responsibilities and you make more money and you're able to invest more money and you have all of those things because you are recognized and celebrated for the outstanding professional you are. That's where your mid-career GPS needs to be dialed in. All right, my friends, until next week, remember this: you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the MidCareer GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS, or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Daryl Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember, how we show up matters.