Careermaxxing. Slowmaxxing.
Or simply the seasons of a career?
Scroll through LinkedIn or social media and you'll come across two new expressions. They are often presented as opposite approaches to work, but they may simply give modern names to something that has always existed. Life moves in seasons. So do careers.
Careermaxxing
Describes people intentionally investing in their careers: developing new skills, seeking promotions, broadening their experience and pursuing new opportunities.
Slowmaxxing
Describes something different: choosing, for a period of time, to ease the pace of career progression in order to focus attention elsewhere.
The Myth of the Continuous Climb
For many years we've viewed career success as a steady upward climb.
Each year should bring a bigger role, greater responsibility, a larger salary, a more senior title. When someone's career momentum appears to slow, it's easy to conclude they've become less ambitious or less committed.
But careers don't exist in isolation. They exist alongside families, health, relationships, education, personal aspirations and countless responsibilities that evolve over the course of our lives.
Careers were never meant to be lived at one speed. Life doesn't work that way. It's a journey that naturally accelerates and slows as our circumstances change. Neither pace is better. Both have their place.
Different Seasons Require Different Focus
There are times when work quite naturally becomes our primary area of growth.
We pursue opportunities, take on greater responsibility and stretch ourselves in new ways. But there are other times when our focus shifts.
- A young family
- Teenagers who suddenly need more of our attention
- Supporting ageing parents
- Recovering from illness
- Further study
- Building a business
- Serving the community
- Or simply creating more balance after years of sustained intensity
None of these choices diminish ambition. They simply recognise that life requires us to distribute our attention differently at different times.
The mistake is believing that because someone's focus has shifted today, it defines what they will contribute tomorrow.
A Different Way to Think About Ambition
Perhaps ambition has never been about speed.
Perhaps ambition is about making intentional choices that allow us to build a fulfilling career over an entire lifetime.
Sometimes ambition looks like saying yes to the promotion. Sometimes it looks like declining it because another part of life needs more attention.
Both decisions can reflect maturity.
Both can reflect commitment.
Both can reflect long-term thinking.
The important question isn't whether someone is moving quickly or slowly. It's whether they're making conscious choices about the life they're building.
What This Means for Leaders
This is where leadership becomes critical.
Managers often interpret a change in pace as a change in commitment.
Someone requests greater flexibility. They travel less. They choose not to apply for a larger role. They reduce their hours for a period. Too often these decisions quietly influence assumptions about future potential.
- “They're no longer career focused.”
- “They've checked out.”
- “They're not leadership material.”
Yet none of these conclusions necessarily reflect reality. And great leaders understand that capability doesn't disappear because priorities change.
Commitment isn't measured by constant acceleration. And potential shouldn't be judged by what someone needs during one particular season of life. Leadership is about recognising the whole person, not simply the employee.
A Changing Conversation
Historically, this challenge has been experienced most acutely by women.
Many women have carried a disproportionate share of family and caring responsibilities, often at the very time their careers were expected to accelerate.
Too often, temporary adjustments to work were interpreted as reduced ambition rather than changing life circumstances. Thankfully, that picture is changing. More professional men are taking parental leave, becoming primary carers, supporting ageing parents and choosing to play a greater role at home.
The conversation is no longer about women balancing work and family. It's about recognising that every person will experience different seasons throughout their career.
The question for organisations is simple:
Will we support people through those seasons, or will we mistake a change in pace for a lack of potential?
Be Kind to Yourself
There is another audience for this message: OURSELVES.
Many high performers are remarkably hard on themselves when life requires them to slow down. We compare ourselves with colleagues who appear to be moving ahead, forgetting that we may simply be travelling through different seasons.
Careers last decades. Few people can, or should, operate at maximum intensity for forty years. There will be periods of acceleration, periods of consolidation and periods when our attention quite rightly belongs somewhere else.
That doesn't mean we've stopped growing. It simply means growth is taking a different form.
Questions Worth Asking
A Final Thought
Perhaps Careermaxxing and Slowmaxxing aren't really new ideas at all. Perhaps they simply remind us that careers are lived within lives.
The most successful careers are rarely those that move at a constant speed. They are the ones that adapt as life changes, accelerating when the opportunity is right, slowing when circumstances require it, and recognising that both are equally valuable.
For organisations, this may be one of the defining leadership challenges of the next decade. Not how to keep people moving faster. But how to create workplaces where people can move at the pace their current season of life requires, without their capability, commitment or future potential ever being questioned.
Because people don't become less valuable when life asks something different of them.
They simply become human.
At Simitri, we believe great leadership is about understanding the whole person, not just the role they perform today.
Supporting people through different stages of their careers requires leaders who can recognise potential, have meaningful career conversations and create environments where people can continue to contribute even when their focus and priorities change.
Through our leadership development, coaching and manager capability programmes, we help organisations build leaders who know how to support different career journeys, retain experienced talent and create cultures where people can thrive across every season of their working lives.
Because sustainable performance doesn't come from everyone moving at the same pace. It comes from leaders who understand that people grow, contribute and succeed in different ways and at different times.
If you're ready to explore what this looks like for your organisation, our team is here to help you build that capability.
