How to Know When It's Time to Step Back From a Role You've Outgrown | EP 613

I used to think stepping back from something I loved meant letting people down. This episode is the story of the season I redirected my energy, the succession plan I didn't tell anyone about, and what I learned watching capable people wait for permission they never needed. It's a story about spotting your own season changes before you're forced to.

Full show notes, transcript, and chapters at sheilabotelho.com/613.

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Transcript

When A Role Stops Fitting

Sheila 0:01

Every business owner hits a point where they're holding on to a role or a way of showing up past when it still fits. Because stepping back feels like letting people down. I want to give you a way to catch that moment clearly before it costs you the space your next chapter needs. I've walked away from things I loved more than once. And the timing has proven me right every time. Today I'm telling you the story of one exit, the succession plan behind it, and the pattern I still use to spot my own season changes in business. Stay with me to the end for that lens. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. You've probably heard this before. The version of you that God here isn't the version that takes you there. It's one of those lines that gets repeated so often that it starts to lose its edge. But I've lived this at numerous points in my own development. And

Leaving Volunteer Work With Care

Sheila 1:08

if you sit with it for a second, I'm sure that you have too. I want to tell you about one of mine. There was a season of my life where I was deeply involved on a number of volunteer committees and groups. And I was volunteering quite a bit in different capacities, organizing things, showing up, using my time as a resource in ways that were genuinely close to my heart. I loved it. I was proud of it. And then I hit a point where I could feel my energy asking for something a little bit different. I was building my personal brand and growing my business. And I knew that growth was going to require space that I didn't currently have. Time I was giving somewhere else. I needed to redirect that energy and let other people step into the roles that I'd been holding. And that decision sounds clean when I say it out loud right now, but living it felt a whole lot messier than that. The first place my mind went was straight to everyone else. I'd already made the decision. I knew that I was doing it. And I kept asking myself how it would land on the people I'd been building alongside. It felt heavy before it ever happened. So I did what I always do when something feels heavier than it should be. I ran it through a wider lens. And I thought to myself, people change careers all the time. Even when things are going really well, they just decide that they want something different. People move cities, people switch majors in university. People change how they eat, how they move their bodies, how they spend their Sundays. Change is one of the most natural parts of growth that there is. And that was the piece that actually shifted something for me. People leave things that are working because they want something else, something more. And that is allowed. And here's what's funny. I built the whole thing up in my head to be so much harder than it turned out to be. Of course, this happens all the time because everyone was so gracious. Of course. They understood. Because most of them had been exactly where I was. This was volunteer work for them too. And they'd made this exact move before. For me, though, it felt different. I was younger, and this particular kind of transition was really new territory for me. In the past, when I'd stepped away from community work or church involvement, let's say, it was almost always attached to a move, a new city, a new town, a natural closing of a chapter. And this time I was staying exactly where I was. I was not moving, but I was just shifting my focus. Because what I was building needed room. And room takes a decision. It doesn't just show up on its

Finding A Successor And The Nudge

Sheila 4:13

own. Now, here's a piece of that season that I haven't told many people. Once I knew I was stepping back, I had to figure out, or at least I believed, I took it on myself to believe that I had to figure out who would step in. That wasn't necessarily the case, but I thought that was the gracious thing to do. And the people I kept the landing on were not the obvious choices. They were people who'd genuinely been helpful with suggestions in the past. They had opinions worth listening to and ideas that showed they really cared, but they weren't currently volunteering for anything. And when I asked them why, the answer was almost always some version of, oh, I'm not equipped for that. I don't know that I'm the right person. And I didn't believe them because I could see their interest and I could see the heart that they had to serve sitting right there in front of me, but just not being used yet. So I started having a few casual conversations. And it was nothing formal, just checking in, asking what they thought, and seeing where their energy actually went when they talked about it. And it turned out almost every single time, they were not missing any kind of capability. What they were missing was the nudge, someone to say, you'd be really good at this. And I mean that. So we are often our own worst critics, right? We hold ourselves back from experiences all the time that we're actually fully capable of having, simply because the voice in our own head got there first and told us we weren't ready. And that detail matters more to me now than it did then because I've watched that exact pattern show up again and again in business, especially around event-focused

Why Space Creates Better Decisions

Sheila 6:05

work. I'll be planning something, building out a piece that needs another set of hands or another point of view. And I can feel the early signs of that same moment. Someone circling an opportunity with good instincts and no permission slip. And that volunteer season gave me the backdrop to recognize it fast, both in other people and in myself. It taught me what it looks like right before someone or some version of a project is ready to shift. What did that whole season cost me? Well, certainly, mostly, I didn't know exactly where those relationships would land once I stepped back. I wasn't sure what it would do to how people saw me. Let's face it, we asked those questions of ourselves. How will people see me now? And underneath all of it, I didn't have a guaranteed outcome for the business that I was making room for either. I had no proof it was going to work. You never do until you're actually moving. Things take their real shape once you're in motion and not before. And what it gave me back, though, is the part that I carry with me every day now. It gave me a deeper trust in myself. The kind you can only earn by doing the hard thing and watching yourself come through it. It gave me a new way of honoring my own desires out loud, publicly, instead of managing them in the background. And it gave me language for moving through transitions with grace, language that I still use today. It also gave me something I didn't clock until much later. It gave me a different kind of respect from the people I'd worked alongside. They respected the timeline I gave them. They respected the way that I communicated it. And the fact that I actually had a plan in place for what would carry on after me. I found that out well after the fact. And it landed like a cherry on top of something that I'd already made peace with. Now, here's the piece I most want you to take with you today. The reason that that season of redirected energy mattered wasn't just the redirection itself. It was the spaciousness that it created. If you run a business, you already know this in your bones building something out of nothing does not run on a tiny little schedule. Yes, of course, you need structure and focused hours where the actual work gets done. But some of the biggest moments and movements that you see in your business happen in the in between, in the unscheduled hours. The drive, the shower, the walk, that's big for me. The space where nothing is technically being produced. That's often exactly where clarity lands and where a new idea shows up fully formed, where you suddenly see the whole thing from a different angle. And none of that happens on command. Like it's 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, and we're gonna have the idea land right now. Oh, would that it be that way! It happens when there's room for it too. And without that room, here is what tends to happen instead. You end up making decisions that look so good on paper and yet they don't actually fit. And this happens because you made the call from a full calendar very often instead of a clear one. And I don't mean fully clear, I mean more clear spaces, right? So today I want to leave you with two things.

Two Prompts And A Next Step

Sheila 9:54

One is a question, and one is a nudge in the other direction. The one I got from those casual conversations all those years ago. So the question first Is there something in your life right now that you're holding on to simply because you've always held it? This is not something that's a mistake that you made or anything. It's just something you've always held. Because sometimes the things we carry were genuinely good for the season that we pick them up. The question is whether they're still the thing that gets you to where you're actually going next. And for the nudge, if you've been sitting on an idea, an opportunity, a role, a piece of a project, telling yourself you're not equipped or not the right person, I invite you to consider that you might be doing exactly what those volunteers did, waiting for permission that was never actually required. Sometimes the only thing standing between you and the next version of yourself is someone, maybe even you, willing to say it out loud first. So this week, notice one thing you're holding on to out of habit instead of alignment, and notice one thing you've been waiting for permission to step into. Let both of those noticings be enough for today. If you're sitting with either of those and you know you need more than a solo conversation to work through it, that's exactly the kind of thing I hold space for. All of my work is built around meeting people at different levels of depth and proximity to me. And you get to choose where you want to meet me. Head over to sheilabotello.com forward slash work with me to see what's currently open. You can see the link in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week, and I'll see you on the next episode.