The Million-Dollar Question No One Asks New Leaders
Are You Building a Sapling or a Sequoia?
You’re less than ten years into your leadership journey.
You’re hustling, proving yourself, absorbing every “best practice” you can find. Everyone tells you to specialize. Pick a lane. Define your niche.
But what if that advice is quietly sabotaging your long-term growth?
What if the best thing you could do right now isn’t to find your path, but to build it through deliberate, bold experimentation?
Forget becoming a fully grown oak. Early in your career you should be a wild, sprawling sapling—throwing out branches in every direction until you feel the gravitational pull of your trunk, the deep core of your future leadership identity.
I. The Myth of the Pre-Set Path for Emerging Leaders
The “Trunk” Metaphor
Your trunk is the core intersection of strengths, values, passions, and high-leverage problems you’re uniquely wired to solve. In research terms, this maps to what Herminia Ibarra calls the “working identity”, the version of yourself that emerges through action, not introspection (Harvard Business Review, “The Authenticity Paradox,” 2015).
Ibarra’s findings are blunt: young leaders discover their identity by doing.
The Core Problem
Emerging leaders face enormous pressure to mimic, conform, or prematurely specialize. This stunts exploration and narrows your long-term trajectory.
What This Post Promises
A structured framework for intentional experimentation—the kind that transforms you from a hesitant sapling into a deeply rooted, high-impact sequoia.
II. The Trap of Premature Specialization (and Why It’s Dangerous)
Fear of Being Undefined
Early-career ambiguity is uncomfortable. Research from Stanford’s Center for Work and Family shows that identity ambiguity early in career is correlated with broader long-term skill sets and more adaptive leadership styles (Williams et al., Stanford, 2019).
Mimicry Over Discovery
Dorie Clark notes in Reinventing You that copying established leaders often leads to surface-level skills without deep alignment—what she calls “performative competence.”
Burnout From Misalignment
Gallup’s global burnout survey found that burnout is 2.6x more correlated with “lack of role fit” than with workload (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2023).
Missed Opportunities
Cal Newport’s “career capital” shows that you build the rare-and-valuable skills that propel your career only through targeted exploration and skill acquisition—not by pre-selecting a niche too early (So Good They Can’t Ignore You, 2012).
The Golden Handcuffs
Getting good at something you don’t love leads to professional inertia. Adam Grant refers to this as “identity foreclosure,” when people lock in too early and get stuck for decades (Think Again, 2021).
III. Why Your First Decade Is Your Experimentation Lab
Lower Stakes, Higher Learning Density
Data from CEB (Corporate Executive Board) found that leaders in their first 10 years experience the highest ROI from cross-functional exposure and role variety.
Developing Your Leadership Signature
Psychologist Robert Kegan’s developmental research shows that leaders form their core leadership identity through “probing experiments” rather than linear progression (In Over Our Heads, 1994).
Building Adaptability
Future of Work research from McKinsey indicates that adaptability—not technical specialization—is the top predictor of future leadership effectiveness (McKinsey, 2020).
Identifying Your Superpowers
Gallup’s StrengthsFinder database of 20M+ assessments shows that people often misdiagnose their own strengths until they experience success or failure across varied contexts.
Future-Proofing
Harvard’s “100-Year Life” research predicts 7–10 career pivots across a lifetime. Those who experiment early adapt far more effectively.
IV. How to Become an Intentional Experimenter (AKA: How to Find Your Trunk)
A. Adopt a Hypothesis Mindset
Herminia Ibarra encourages leaders to “test possible selves” through small, reversible actions. Ask:
“If I took on this project, what might I learn?”
“What version of me does this unlock?”
Define success as learning, not outcomes.
B. Use Low-Risk, High-Learning Tactics
Side Projects & Internal Initiatives
Research from MIT Sloan shows that employees who volunteer for cross-functional projects expand their promotable skillsets at nearly 2x the rate of peers who stay in their lane (MIT Sloan, 2020).
Borrowing Ideas
Innovation scholarship repeatedly confirms that cross-pollination—importing an idea from one domain into another—is one of the most reliable sources of breakthrough innovation (Hargadon, How Breakthroughs Happen).
Micro-Pilots
Testing a process with a 3–5 person team for two weeks reduces risk while maximizing insight.
Information Interviews
According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Career Pathways Report, people who conduct six or more informational interviews are 56% more likely to identify a new career direction that fits their strengths.
C. Master the Art of Failing Forward
Debrief, Don’t Dwell
After-action reviews (AARs) from the U.S. Army have been shown to increase team learning effectiveness by up to 38% (Harvard Business School, 2014).
Reframe Failure as Data
This aligns with Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” findings: people who treat failures as information accelerate development.
D. Listen to Your Inner Compass
Pay attention to:
Work that energizes you (Daniel Pink calls this “intrinsic motivation”).
Tasks you lose track of time doing (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow research).
Problems you voluntarily return to.
Compliments that surprise you.
These are roots revealing themselves.
V. Addressing the Naysayers (and Your Inner Critic)
“I’ll look unfocused.”
Frame it as structured exploration. Research shows employees who articulate learning goals outperform those who define early fixed goals (HBR, 2011).
“My boss won’t let me.”
Micro-experiments embedded in existing work don’t trigger resistance. Demonstrate value with early wins.
“I don’t have time.”
McKinsey’s “Time Leadership” study: automating or eliminating just one recurring task frees ~12–20% of weekly capacity.
“What if I make a mistake?”
Google’s Project Aristotle found psychological safety—and the willingness to make mistakes publicly—is the number one predictor of high-performing teams.
VI. The Unstoppable Power of a Found Trunk
Once you find your trunk:
You lead authentically (Ibarra).
You create disproportionate impact (McKinsey).
Your career accelerates sustainably (Newport).
You experience meaningful work, not just productive work (Viktor Frankl; Ryan & Deci’s self-determination theory).
You build a recognizable leadership legacy.
This isn’t about becoming a leader.
It’s about becoming the leader you were uniquely wired to be.
Conclusion
Stop chasing someone else’s definition of success.
The great leaders didn’t find their trunks by following a map—they carved their path through bold action, relentless curiosity, and intelligent experimentation.
Your first decade isn’t for choosing one direction.
It’s for exploring the entire terrain.
Every experiment is a root.
Every pivot is a ring.
Every “failure” is structural growth.
Go plant your forest—one brave experiment at a time.
Your trunk awaits.
Insprired by:
Christopher Lynn
Systems Coach for Overwhelmed Leaders.
Need help implementing this?
Stop trying to figure it out alone. Let's build this system for you.
Book a Strategy Call