When being valued isn't the same as being visible for advancement
In Chapter 3, we explored how Rahmat's "generalist" identity was hiding his strategic integration capabilities. But as we kept talking, another tension came up...one that I think many successful professionals deal with but don't really talk about openly.
What happens when you're respected, appreciated, and comfortable, but still wondering if you should be somewhere else?
The Cultural Connection
Early in our conversation, I found myself connecting with Rahmat's experience as someone navigating between cultures:
Izumi: "I think in terms of you personally, you and I probably have a very similar background in a way...you are in different cultures, you're in Japan but as a foreigner, I'm in Europe as a foreigner, and the way the corporate culture works makes a huge difference."
This shared experience of being foreigners in different corporate cultures became an important context for understanding his professional challenges.
In fact, its not just us. Research shows that professionals working across cultures consistently run into the same barriers: navigating unfamiliar workplace norms, dealing with language nuances, and figuring out how to position their value in a completely different context.
The Appreciation vs. Advancement Question
I wanted to dig deeper into what he meant about appreciation and cultural challenges:
Izumi: "I would really love to dig deeper into who you're actually working with at this moment. When you say that your company or the people around you might not appreciate somebody who's not Japanese or doesn't understand the culture... but your company is an advertising agency, right? First of all, what made you want to be in Japan? There must have been a big reason you shifted your career to Japan. I'd like to understand that because being a foreigner in Japan is already a huge step in terms of making an impact in a Japanese corporation."
Rahmat: "Okay. I see. I think I need to answer the appreciation question. I think it's not that I'm not appreciated. I'm not sure if this is just my personal feeling, but my expectation is different. So again I'm being appreciated by my senior, by my colleagues…they respect me…but then again my expectations... as a career, you sort of grow, you become at a higher level than you were before, but then again that's sort of like a challenge for me."
This wasn't someone complaining about being undervalued or mistreated. This was someone trying to figure out the gap between appreciation and advancement, between being comfortable and being challenged.
The Impact Mapping Insight
As we continued talking, I kept thinking about how value gets recognized and positioned:
Izumi: "I think there are two big impacts that you give to a company. One is at the company level—the business level where you make a big impact..the primary impact. But then there's a secondary impact...and the secondary impact is to the people right around you—who do you really work with? Who are your core collaborators who you influence to make a bigger impact?"
Izumi: "I feel like mapping that out is extremely helpful to understand what you really make—what are the influences that you have? And if you understand those influences, then you can look at your other projects in the past and think, okay, are there any commonalities here? Maybe there's project A, B, C... and maybe you have very different groups of people you've been working with, but the way you contribute to a specific target or impact could be very similar."
This was me thinking out loud about how his value could be better articulated and positioned.
The Strategic Pause Reality
When we talked about his desire for global leadership positions, the complexity of his situation became clear:
Rahmat: "I mean, I've been trying to push for a global position. So, I know several peers of mine who work at the New York offices. So, they were actually being transferred from let's say from Paris, from Hong Kong, from Australia and then they moved forward as global team leaders. So then again I've been talking with the global leadership for quite some time now but then again the timing and the position for me is not there."
This is what I started thinking of as the strategic pause...that space between where you are and where you want to be, where timing and opportunity just don't line up despite your readiness and qualifications.
Rahmat: "I mean, if a better opportunity came along—one with a stronger position or better compensation—I would consider moving elsewhere.That said, agency work is notoriously underpaid, and while the salary I receive is decent and allows me to live comfortably, there's still some ambiguity. I don't want to come across as greedy, but at the same time, I’m aware of my value. To be honest, I’ve been quite embedded in the system, so it’s not a simple decision—but I am open to change if the right opportunity presents itself"
Being "in the system" while questioning whether the system actually helps your growth. That's what the strategic pause feels like.
The Promotion Process Reality
I asked about how advancement actually worked in his company:
Izumi: "Is there a process in the company for getting promoted? I'm just very curious about how advancement actually works there."
Rahmat: "There is no clear process. It's sort of like if you bring values and then your reputation increases and then you probably need to talk with your senior and the key decision maker and if they say that yes there's a position opening up for you that probably would warrant you to be promoted then they will promote you."
Rahmat: "For junior members, I think there's a clear process. But at a certain point, they don't know how to move you forward unless you sort of can bring a better value to the company. I think that's how I put it."
This unclear approach to advancement creates a particular challenge for professionals with unique skill combinations. When there's no clear path, how do you position yourself for opportunities that might not even exist yet?
The Client Trust Factor
I was trying to understand what made some people successful in getting promoted:
Izumi: "Have you seen other people in your position who were successful in bringing value and getting promoted? What's their definition of 'bringing value'? How do they judge that? How do they make the decision?"
Rahmat: "There's several people... mostly it's because they have trust from the clients. Most of the time and then yes... so yeah again it's going back to me being a foreigner I think it's kind of hard for me."
This connected to something he'd mentioned earlier about crisis communication. While he could lead projects in Japanese, handling client crises required a level of language precision and cultural understanding that he felt might not be there when things got really stressful.
The Skills vs. Positioning Shift
I found myself challenging him to think more deeply about where he wanted to focus his energy:
Izumi: "I'm not saying that Japanese culture isn't an issue here. But do you really want to keep showing your value there, or are there other places where you can be yourself and have the same effort be appreciated more? Where the value is easier to communicate because the value systems are different?"
Rahmat: "Yeah. I think... Come to think of it, since you put it like that, I don't think Japanese culture is the issue here. It's just my set of skills is not sellable I guess inside this company."
This shift in perspective was interesting. It moved from thinking about external factors to thinking about positioning…from "the system has certain requirements" to "maybe my skills aren't positioned in a way that creates obvious advancement opportunities here."
When I asked about his experiences applying to other companies:
Rahmat: "I would say yes... I tried several times, but yeah, it's kind of hard. They always reject me at the end. I'm not sure why."
When someone with clear capabilities consistently faces challenges in the external market, it often suggests a positioning issue rather than a competency issue.
The Positioning Challenge
This got me thinking about how Rahmat could better articulate his value. If both internal advancement and external opportunities weren't materializing despite his clear capabilities, maybe the issue wasn't what he could do, but how he was presenting what he could do.
I suggested focusing on documenting past accomplishments:
Izumi: "What I'm hearing from you is that it's difficult—you need to prove your value to get promoted, right? Maybe that's where you need to go back and look at the projects you did and really outline the value of each project."
Then I found myself asking him a more direct question about whether he wanted to stay in an environment with these cultural challenges:
Izumi: "I wouldn't be able to bring value either in your situation. I am Japanese, but I don't understand Japanese culture as much as they want me to. I've been in situations where someone told me that my email in Japanese was too casual and I shouldn't write like that. I felt like, okay, but that's not me. I wasn't being casual—I was writing in my best polite Japanese way. But if you're being judged for being yourself, maybe that's not the environment you want to be in."
The Strategic Pause as Opportunity
What emerged from this part of our conversation was something I recognized from my own experience: when you're comfortable and valued in your current situation, but that situation doesn't provide the growth trajectory you want, what do you do?
Rahmat was experiencing what I've felt myself and wondered if other successful professionals face:
- Respect and appreciation in current role
- Decent compensation and stability
- Skills that are valued but may not translate to obvious advancement
- External opportunities that don't materialize despite qualifications
- The question of whether to optimize current comfort or pursue uncertain growth
Rather than seeing this pause as a problem to solve immediately, I was beginning to think it might be an opportunity for deeper clarity work.
When you're not in crisis, when you have time to think strategically rather than reactively, maybe that's when you can do the most meaningful work on positioning and brand clarity.
The strategic pause allows for questions like:
- What type of growth do I actually want?
- Where would my unique combination of capabilities be most valued?
- How do I position my complexity as specialized rather than general?
- What would "better value" look like in my specific context?
The Brand Promise Connection
What's interesting is that this wasn't a planned coaching session or brand workshop. We were just having a podcast conversation, but naturally the need for brand promise work kept coming up.
Rahmat didn't need more career advice or networking strategies. What was becoming clear was that he needed to figure out how to position his unique value in ways that created obvious advancement opportunities.
The strategic pause wasn't a holding pattern. It was preparation time for more intentional positioning.
But first, we would need to explore what happens when you start mapping the specific ways you create value...both the visible impacts and the invisible contributions that make everything else possible.
Next in ChaosClarity™ Diaries #001
This conversation with Rahmat continues across six chapters, each exploring a different facet of professional clarity and cultural navigation:
- Chapter 1: When Value Doesn't Equal Recognition ← Start here
- Chapter 2: When Cultural Complexity Becomes Currency
- Chapter 3: The "Generalist" Reframe That Changes Everything
- Chapter 4: Comfort vs. Growth: The Strategic Pause ← YOU ARE HERE
- Chapter 5: What Brand Promise Workshops Actually Uncover
- Chapter 6: The Wisdom of Strategic "No"
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