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arly in a career, growth can feel easy to define: the next title, the next promotion, the next opportunity to lead. But what happens when those things are no longer the goal?
In Episode 2 of Performance Guaranteed, Teira Gunlock and Elena Gambon sit down with Mary Cain, MPH, Senior Vice President of Quality and Population Health at First Stop Health, for a candid conversation about how leadership and our definition of growth evolve throughout a career.
For Mary, growth today is less about advancing to the next title and more about helping others find their own opportunities to grow.
Give People the Stage, Then Get Out of the Way
One of Mary's approaches to leadership is simple: give people opportunities to use their voice. That might mean bringing someone into an important meeting and letting them speak first, trusting their expertise and being there to support them when needed. It's a shift from being the person with the answer to creating space for someone else to step forward.
And that requires something from leaders, too: letting go of a little ego.
Growth Doesn't Look the Same for Everyone
The conversation also challenges the idea that career growth has to mean managing more people or climbing the organizational ladder.
Growth can mean developing a new skill, expanding your influence, taking ownership of something bigger or simply figuring out what you want to take away from your current role.
For leaders, that means asking rather than assuming what growth should look like for someone else.
And Yes, We Need to Talk About Bias
Age brings experience, but it can also bring assumptions.
Mary, Teira and Elena get candid about the biases that can show up across generations at work and why curiosity can be one of the best ways to challenge them. As Teira puts it, every relationship offers something to learn and something to teach.
The conversation is a reminder that growth doesn't stop as we become more experienced. Sometimes, it simply starts to look different.
Watch or listen to Performance Guaranteed on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
