Good Work Stops Being Enough At The Director Level
My perspective on the manager-to-director transition no one prepares you for. Five things I wish I'd known about leading at the director level, starting with the day the CFO put me on blast.
Welcome to Reframed by Ashley Rudolph. One idea, every week, that changes how you see your career.
Last week, I published part 1 of this series. I talked through what it takes to be the type of Manager that gets promoted to Director. If you’re angling for a promotion to Director in 2026, last week’s newsletter was full of practical tips! Bookmark it.
This week is about the level after that. Enjoy!
MY STORY
The Email That Changed The Way I Lead
If you’ve been reading Reframed for some time, you probably have read my piece on feedback. It was my most popular issue for a stretch and I know it hit home for a lot of you. I want to revisit it this week because there’s a fuller story. That one micro moment changed how I lead.
When I was a Director, an email from the CFO landed in my inbox. The email was short “Why hasn’t this project made progress?” and I was put on blast in front of the COO, CPO, and a VP of Product (all on cc).
My heart sunk.
I went into fight or flight mode, fight to be specific. The project had stalled for legitimate reasons that had nothing to do with my effort. He was right but I was also trying.
You don’t win an award for trying.
I launched into explaining what I did. None of it mattered because being right and showing I was trying was not the actual problem I needed to solve.
The problem was that the most senior people in my company had questions about my work and none of them had answers.
Not even my manager.
Oof.
I allowed the first conversation about an important project of mine to happen over email.
That doesn’t happen when leaders trust that you have things handled. It happens when you go quiet. When you’re heads down and doing good work that no one knows about.
I was still operating like a Manager who felt lucky to be promoted to Director. Because I didn't own my updates, a narrative formed about my work without me.
At the Director level, your work does not speak for itself. You have to. And if you don’t…an email (or a Slack message) eventually will.
THE FRAMEWORK
5 Things You Need To Do Differently At The Director Level
The Director level is where capability stops being enough.
What separates great Directors is judgment: can you make the right call for the business, at the right time, even when the textbook-correct answer isn't what the company needs right now?
Understanding this is how you become a Director that executives trust. Not developing this skill is why so many talented people stall out at the Director level, stuck in a “I'm doing great work, why isn't my career moving?” loop.
TAKE THE PROMOTABILITY QUOTIENT →
If you feel stuck at work, you should take my Promotability Quotient assessment. It’ll tell you exactly what you need to focus on to advance.
Here's what it takes to excel as a Director.
1. Land your communications with executives
This one's layered. My run-in with the CFO is a good example of getting all of it wrong. Communicating effectively with executives takes three things: decoding executive feedback, communicating at the right altitude, and making your work visible.
Decoding executive feedback: Executives are notorious for vague feedback. They give you the what, not the how. “Be more strategic” or “show more ownership” is true, but if you don't know what it means for your work, it isn't actionable. Decoding vague feedback is a skill. My CFO's “Why hasn't this progressed” was really “I feel out of the loop and I need to trust you're solving this”. Resist the urge to say “WHY DIDN’T HE JUST SAY THAT?!”. Listen to me, most people won't know how to tell you exactly what they need and you can't wait for them to figure it out in order to achieve your goals. Back to the story. My knee-jerk reaction was to answer the literal question. Once I calmed down, I saw the truth: I hadn't kept him in the loop, I hadn't managed up, and I hadn't pulled the exec team in to unblock the work sooner. Doing those things is what a seasoned Director does. Someone on their way to the VP level.
Communicating at the right altitude: The framework I lean on here is BLUF: bottom line up front. Junior employees tend to communicate chronologically, walking leaders through every step in the order it happened. That's the wrong altitude for executives. Lead with the bottom line. With the CFO, I listed everything I'd done. He just wanted to know when it would be finished. Starting with the bottom line would have given him that. It also matters that executives optimize for different things. A CFO, a CTO, and a COO are not the same audience. The one who emailed me wanted a number: when and at what cost. I gave him a project log. My instinct to respond urgently was right, but I was sharing the wrong information.
Being seen: Everyone tells you to be visible so you can advance. Fine, but that framing makes it sound like self-promotion, which is why so many of us avoid it. Visibility isn’t just about getting in front of executives. Here's what visibility actually is: every time you talk about your work, you put your judgment on display. Are you just a hard worker or someone with a real point of view about how the work should be done? In my case, I was hiding, and hiding let someone form the wrong impression of my work.
Work with me
If you need help navigating your interactions with executives and understanding what it takes to be successful at the Director level, join Reframed Insiders.
2. Managing managers
Last week, I talked about the shift from being an IC to managing ICs. As a Director, you’ll likely be required to manage other managers, which is 2 steps removed from the actual work. You’re now managing the people who manage the people who do the work. That requires a different strategy altogether.
You want to avoid managing your managers like ICs: handing them tasks and checking their output, instead of coaching their judgment and holding them accountable to outcomes.
Managing managers means letting go of the individual tasks you used to jump in and solve and building your managers' ability to solve them instead. This doesn’t mean you don’t do work, you do. But you treat managing as a different type of work, where your goal is to get the best out of your entire department.
GO DEEPER → LEARN MORE ON HBR
Podcast episode: How do I manage other managers? This is a really great podcast, Muriel Wilkins walks through her tips for managing managers as a leader. It’s a must listen if you’re still developing in this area.
3. Playing politics
Early in my career I thought I was above politics. I treated all of it as nefarious. It wasn't until I reached the VP level that I understood I could play good politics, in a way that helped my team and not just me.
Once you reframe it, you see politics in every relationship at work.
It's your network. It's who speaks for you when you're not in the room.
When it’s done with integrity, it doesn't require manipulation. It's understanding who has influence, knowing what different stakeholders care about, and advocating for your team in terms that resonate with the people who hold decision-making power.
Seen that way, politics is just being savvy. I love HBR’s Leadership podcast episode on this topic. I’ve written about this topic as well.
GO DEEPER → READ MY REFRAME ON PLAYING POLITICS, THE RIGHT WAY
4. Build relationships before you need them
Another thing I learned as a Director was that when I was doing my job well, about half of my time was spent cross-functionally with people outside of my direct team. This time wasn’t a waste, it was part of my work.
Having strong relationships with my peers meant that I could roll out processes with minimal friction and that I had considered their POVs instead of treating their buy-in as a formality. Understanding their goals and pressures, not just my own, made my own work (and my team’s work!) better.
At this level your work has a ripple effect across other teams, and part of your job is seeing those effects coming and clearing the friction before it forms.
GO DEEPER → READ MY ADVICE FOR LEVERAGING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS FOR VISIBILITY
5. Knowing when to exit
I logged into my weekly 1:1 with my manager, prepared to engage in our usual loop of lightly trash talking our company and airing out our frustrations. But I noticed his vibe was different. He told me he’d met with a mentor who delivered a hard truth: “if everyone else is the problem, then you’re the problem”.
It stung. Him receiving that feedback meant I was the problem, too.
I was indignant.
Everyone WAS the problem here, our gripes WERE justified, we’re doing everything to make this place better and THEY won’t listen. All pretty significant clues to a puzzle I hadn’t put together yet.
I was hitting friction at every turn. Unfortunately, when everyone else is the problem, if you let the pattern play out for too long, you become the problem that an organization will eventually “handle”.
If I could do it again, I'd have asked myself whether that company was still right for me.
High achievers get stuck on the fact that they can do the work. But you also have to ask whether you can do the work you actually want, at the company you're at. If the answer is no, it may be time to go. Knowing when to leave is an underrated leadership skill.
GO DEEPER → READ MY ADVICE FOR KNOWING WHETHER IT’S TIME TO LEAVE OR STAY
CLOSING THOUGHTS
How to advance beyond the Director level
Look back at those five things. Not one of them was about working harder or doing better work. Decoding feedback, communicating at the right altitude, managing managers, playing good politics, and knowing when to leave.
Every single one of these things is a form of judgment. And that’s a huge shift from operating as an IC and a manager.
The highest form of judgment is knowing what you, specifically, bring to the table that no one else on the team does.
Early on, I thought being excellent meant doing my work better than anyone else. At the Director level and beyond, what matters more is having a point of view: about the work, the industry, where things are headed, or what the business actually needs right now. That's what people are assessing when they decide whether to promote you.
A good doer can be replaced with another good doer.
A point of view is an edge.
Next Monday, I’ll be writing about what I’d do if I were starting a VP role today.
Good luck. See you next week!
Ashley
Needed this! It’s taken me two years to pivot away from just “good work”. 100% it’s about perspective, business picture - my challenge is how does work this with keeping the people in mind?