Plant It on Purpose: Your Career Growth Plan for Spring

April 2025  |  Issue No. 12

A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER

I love April. I realize that's a very specific thing to say about a month, but stay with me.

There's something about the shift that happens this time of year, longer days, more light and the world visibly coming back to life. That makes it almost impossible not to feel some version of what if this could be different? For your career. For your team. For the kind of work you're doing and why.

Spring is not just a metaphor. It is genuinely the ideal window to make a purposeful move. Hiring cycles are active. Energy is higher. And you've had enough of the year behind you to know whether this year going to feel different, or exactly the same?

Most people wait for the breaking point. The layoff. The missed promotion. The Sunday evening that finally tips into something undeniable. And I understand why. I've watched it play out hundreds of times. But the breaking point is the most expensive time to make a move. Emotionally, strategically and sometimes financially.

I've always been obsessed with what it means to be intentional instead of reactive. To design your career instead of drift through it. To plant the right things in the right conditions and then tend them until they bare fruit.

This newsletter goes deeper on all of it.

Let's get into it!

THIS MONTH'S BIG IDEA 

PURPOSEFUL WORK DOESN'T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT 

This is the truth I come back to in every engagement, at every level, with every client:

This is not a motivational statement. It's a framework for how to actually operate.

Most people manage their careers passively. They take the job that was available. They say yes to opportunities that show up. They follow a path someone else laid out, whether through a manager's recommendation, an industry norm or whatever seemed reasonable at the time. And for a while, it works.

Until it doesn't. Until the layoff comes, or the promotion doesn't or they wake up one morning and realize they've been a passenger in something that was supposed to be theirs.

The driver's seat looks like this:

•      Clarity first. Know what you value, what kind of work energizes you and what you're not willing to compromise on. This is the foundation. Not a nice-to-have but the foundation on which everything else is built. Every good career decision I've ever seen or experienced was made from this place.

•      Strategy second. A career strategy isn't a rigid five-year plan. It's a direction, a set of criteria for decisions and a few intentional moves, made on purpose instead of by default. It can be adjusted. What it can't be is absent.

•      Execution with intention. Small consistent steps, taken with clarity and direction, can compound in ways that big reactive leaps don't. The people who make the most meaningful career moves aren't always the ones who make the most dramatic ones.

The season doesn't wait for perfect conditions to start growing. Neither should you.

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

SHE DIDN'T JUST SURVIVE THE LAYOFF. SHE BUILT SOMETHING BETTER.

She came to me a few weeks after the layoff. Her instinct, like most people's, was to move fast. Update the resume, send applications, just get something lined up before the savings ran out.

We slowed it down.

Not to stall. But because she'd never actually stopped to ask what she wanted. Every role she'd ever taken had been reactive, the best option available at the time, not the one she'd have chosen if she'd believed she actually had a choice. She'd been good at her work. Excellent, even. But she'd never designed the arc of it.

So we started there. Her values. What drained her versus what lit her up. What she absolutely was not willing to repeat in the next chapter.

It was uncomfortable work. She pushed back on the pace more than once. But something shifted.

She stopped interviewing from a place of anxiety and started from a place of clarity. She knew what she was looking for. She could say no to things that didn't fit and mean it. She took the conversation seriously instead of just taking the offer.

She didn't take the first offer. She took the right one.

That's not luck. That's what happens when you get intentional before you get busy.

THE HOT TAKE

PROMOTIONS ARE NOT REWARDS. THEY ARE NEW JOBS.

I've been saying this for 20 years. I'll keep saying it until it actually changes how people operate.

A promotion is not a trophy for past performance. It is a new role with new scope and you have to apply for it, even from the inside.

This means making it clear you want it. Demonstrating you're already operating at the next level. Building the case. That means not just being the hardest worker in the room and hoping someone notices.

Being exceptional at your current job earns you credibility. It does not automatically earn you consideration for the next one. Those are two different things, and confusing them is one of the most common and costly mistakes I see talented people make.

I worked with a client who had been passed over twice. Doing everything right. They received strong feedback, lead projects, went above and beyond. And became exhausted by it.

When we dug into what he actually wanted, not the title but the work itself, something shifted. The role he'd been chasing would have moved him further from work he loved. He couldn't see it because he was too close to it.

So we changed the strategy. He stopped waiting to be picked and started building toward something he actually wanted. Identified a gap. Made the case. Started doing it before anyone gave him permission.

18 months later, he created the need for a senior leadership role and the demand for him to move into that role. But this time it was for work he genuinely cared about. He didn't get promoted. He designed something better.

Spring is a good time to prune what isn't growing and direct your real energy toward what could.

TIPS FOR LEADERS AND ORGANIZATIONS

CULTURE IS BUILT IN THE ROOTS, NOT ON THE SURFACE.

Every spring, organizations launch culture initiatives. Values refreshes. All-hands presentations. New messaging about what the company stands for.

And then far too often the behavior of people leaders stays exactly the same.

Here's what I've seen consistently across Fortune 500 organizations and growing mid-size companies alike. Culture is not what you declare. It's what you demonstrate. What leaders tolerate shapes what's acceptable. What they model defines what's possible. What they reward tells everyone what actually matters, regardless of what the values document says.

Culture change fails not because people don't care, but because the work starts at the top of the org chart instead of at the roots.

The roots are your managers and frontline geniuses. The daily interactions. The way feedback gets delivered. The psychological safety, or absence of it, that determines whether your best people bring their best thinking or quietly keep it to themselves.

If you're thinking about culture this spring, start with one question. What do leader behaviors on your team actually communicate? Not what you intend. What they signal.

Tend the roots. Everything above the surface changes.

TIME FOR ACTION

5 THINGS TO PLANT THIS APRIL.

Whether you're navigating a career crossroads or leading a team, here are five intentional moves worth making this month. Pick one. Do it before Friday.

•      Audit what's actually draining you. Not just what's hard butwhat's consistently leaving you depleted. Name it before you can change it. Unnamed problems don't get solved.

•      Have the conversation you've been avoiding. With your manager, your team or yourself. Avoidance compounds. The longer you wait, the more expensive the conversation becomes.

•      Update your LinkedIn with outcomes, not duties. Your headline should tell someone what you create, not just what you're called. Do one section this week. That's enough to start.

•      Reconnect with one person with zero agenda. Networks need tending even when nothing is growing yet. Pick one person. Reach out. No ask attached. Just wanting to connect human to human.

•      Write down what you actually want. Not the reasonable version. Not the responsible version. What do you actually want from your career right now? Answer it honestly. Everything else follows from that.

KNOWLEDGE BUILDERS

Before you go...

Here's what I know after more than two decades in this work:

The people who build careers that actually mean something to them are not the ones with the best credentials or the most connections or the perfect timing. They're the ones who got intentional. Who stopped treating their career as something that happens to them and started treating it as something they design.

That's not a one-time decision. It's a practice. A daily orientation toward clarity, strategy and action, even when conditions aren't perfect. Especially when they aren't.

If you're ready for a real framework...not a one-time quiz, not a quick-hit worksheet, not a collection of surface tips...Your Career on Purpose is where to start. Five modules. Your own pace. Built for people who are done drifting.

And if you're a leader or an organization wondering what your people need right now, I'd love that conversation. Reach out directly to schedule a conversation.

Here's to an intentional season of growth! 

Heather MacArthur

Founder of On Purpose Learning Programs, Inc.