The Myth of Meritocracy and the Permission to Be Whole

Rewarded by not being promoted

I had a conversation recently with a colleague who said something that stuck with me:

“I’m doing an excellent job. And yet, I’m being rewarded for that by not being promoted.”

It’s a refrain I’ve heard too often—especially from women. We’re trained to believe that if we just do an excellent job, promotions will follow. That merit will speak louder than politics, optics, or anything else. But more often than not, that’s a lie. A myth. A setup.

I remembered a time in a former job when my boss—who was, frankly, failing us—was promoted. Not because he was excelling, but maybe because his failure was so profound it needed to be displaced. Perhaps it was easier to promote him out of the problem than to confront it directly.

Meanwhile, the rest of us? We were high-performing, over-delivering, emotionally invested in the team’s success. And yet… stuck.

That contradiction has always bothered me:

• How is it that someone’s incompetence leads to advancement?

• Why is doing your job too well sometimes the very reason you're kept in place?

I know I’m not alone in this frustration. Especially among women, we’re taught to hold it all together, to handle the current level before we’re deemed “ready” for the next. But when you demonstrate too much mastery, they don't want to lose you. You become too valuable where you are.

That story is infuriating. But today, I find myself asking:

What if it’s not the full story?

What if that boss was terrible at managing us—but excellent at managing up?
What if, while he abandoned us, he delivered something the system valued more than our well-being?

That doesn’t excuse the failure—but it reframes it.

Which led me to think about my own life.
I want to lose weight. I say I’ve been doing the work. But the truth? I’ve only been partially following the plan. Reading about it, yes. Dabbling, yes. But not fully executing.

It hit me:
Effort doesn’t always equal results. Execution does. Precision does.

Wholehearted alignment does.

And maybe that boss was doing something with precision elsewhere. While half-assing his leadership, he was whole-assing something else.
Do I like that? No.
But is it possible? Yes.

So then I ask myself:

What would it look like to permit myself to be less excellent in one area, to create space for real, measurable progress in another?

What if I didn’t need to be excellent at everything to be worthy of growth, leadership, or evolution?

Maybe men, consciously or not, have accepted this trade-off.
And maybe women—especially women of color—have not been given that same internal or external permission.

This reflection isn’t about celebrating mediocrity.
It’s about permission to be in process.
To stop overcompensating in one area because we think it will open doors elsewhere.
To stop tying our worth to how flawlessly we can endure the present.
To be honest about what we’re really doing—and not doing.
To stop writing ourselves out of the story of power, just because we don’t like how it’s been told before.

This isn’t just about getting promoted.
It’s about how we measure value, energy, and seasonality in our lives.
It’s about redefining what nourishment looks like in a system that rewards disconnection.

So maybe the real question isn’t “How do I get promoted?”
Maybe it’s:

“What am I willing to stop over-performing at in order to move into alignment?”
“Where am I ready to be fully in the work—and where am I ready to let go?”

Because clarity doesn’t always come from excellence.
Sometimes, it comes from disruption.

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