Most professionals have a plan.

Know where you want to go. Build the skills to get there. Find the right relationships. Make your work visible. Execute.

And that framework works until it doesn't. Because every piece of conventional career advice assumes something most professionals never stop to examine. It assumes that how you intend to show up is how others are actually experiencing you.

Most of the time, there's a gap between those two things.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry is joined by Christa Fisher, Head of Sales Training & Development at Thermo Fisher Scientific, for a conversation that surfaces the one layer most career development conversations never reach.

In this episode:

• Why conventional career advice works early -- and why it starts to feel incomplete at a certain point
• How the bar shifts at every level and what demonstrating next-level thinking before you have the role actually looks like
• Why career stalls are almost never about capability -- and what is usually going on instead
• The difference between waiting to be recognized and signaling readiness
• Why awareness is the multiplier that makes every other skill work better
• The gap between how professionals intend to show up and how others are actually experiencing them -- and why it quietly shapes more than most people realize
• Why closing that gap changes what becomes possible -- not just in how others experience you, but in what doors open

The thinking in these episodes is designed to provoke a question. Zandra is built to help you answer it -- personally, in the context of your own work: zandra.app