Self-Awareness is the First Step to Career Advancement

Sarah, a Medical Affairs director -- not her real name of course -- came to me frustrated because she couldn't seem to get promoted from her current position. Her technical skills were very strong and her performance reviews were good but once again she had been overlooked for a promotion. "What am I missing here?" she asked, exasperated.

Sarah's situation illustrates a pattern I often see in pharmaceutical organizations. We tend to work on building capabilities and capacities external to ourselves -- more scientific knowledge, more business training, more networking. But sometimes our career stalls because of internal blind spots that, because we can't see them, we can't work on them.

The missing piece? Self-awareness about our emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence -- how we understand and manage our own emotions and relate to others -- is the elephant in the room that's not always discussed but plays a significant role in our success. All Medical Affairs professionals have scientific expertise as a baseline competence -- otherwise, we wouldn't be in the role. You need it to get the job done, but how you do the job -- the other competencies you bring to your expertise -- determines performance and, crucially, how others perceive your leadership potential.1

Why Self-Awareness Becomes Critical for Advancement

Like Sarah, many of us hit an invisible barrier where our ongoing technical success creates confidence in our current approach. Performance reviews focus on functional results, not emotional intelligence gaps. These are difficult conversations for managers to have, and they haven't necessarily been trained in how to have them. So, we don't get the feedback we need.

Meanwhile, when senior leaders assess you for promotion, they're evaluating something entirely different. They consider your ability to manage the emotional demands of leadership -- managing stakeholder relationships, staying composed under pressure, and inspiring confidence in uncertain situations.

Here's where the disconnect happens:

Sarah would become defensive when questioned about her recommendations, signaling potentially low emotional self-regulation. She struggled to read the room during tense cross-functional meetings, demonstrating limited social awareness. These aren't technical failures -- they're emotional intelligence gaps that leadership notices and remembers. These perceptions shape whether senior leaders can envision you in more complex, strategic roles.

The Context Problem

Business influence requires different emotional skills than technical excellence. In scientific discussions, precision and caution are valued. In business settings, you need confidence, adaptability, and comfort with making decisions in ambiguity.

Here's what I've learned: your current emotional intelligence patterns were likely shaped by technical environments where different behaviours were rewarded. The careful, analytical approach that makes you successful in scientific settings can actually undermine your influence in business contexts.

Let me give you some specific examples:

High impulse control -- waiting for complete data before speaking -- serves you well in regulatory or clinical discussions but may be perceived as lack of confidence in strategy meetings.

Strong reality testing -- focusing on potential problems and limitations -- is essential for clinical trial design but can seem negative or obstructionist in innovation discussions.

Your self-regard and confidence levels may fluctuate based on context. You might feel completely confident discussing your therapeutic area but uncertain when asked about market dynamics or competitive positioning. This inconsistency signals to others that you're not ready for broader business responsibilities.

Social responsibility -- that sense of duty and ethical commitment that's generally high in Medical Affairs professionals -- might make you hesitant to engage in competitive or commercially aggressive discussions, even when that's exactly what the business situation requires.

The Development Opportunity

Here's the encouraging part: emotional intelligence isn't fixed. It's a learnable set of skills that can be developed at any stage of your career. Understanding these patterns helps you adapt your approach without compromising your values or slipping into non-compliance.

But you can't develop what you can't see. That's where self-awareness becomes the crucial first step.

Getting the Self-Awareness You Need

Most career advice is based on observation and opinion. But there's a more scientific approach: professional emotional intelligence assessment. Tools like the EQi 2.0 provide objective data on your emotional intelligence patterns -- your strengths, your blind spots, and specifically how these patterns might be affecting your career progression.

The assessment revealed exactly what Sarah needed to know: the specific emotional intelligence gaps that were limiting her advancement and a clear development plan for addressing them.

Having self-awareness about your emotional intelligence skills and gaps isn't about changing your fundamental nature -- it's about expanding your emotional range to include business leadership capabilities alongside your technical expertise. The most successful pharmaceutical leaders maintain their scientific integrity while developing the emotional intelligence that enables broader organizational influence.

Ready to understand what might be limiting your career advancement?

A Career Strategy Session will help us explore the specific challenges you're facing and determine how we might work together to address them. We'll identify whether emotional intelligence assessment would provide valuable insights for your situation and discuss the best approach for accelerating your career progression. You can book directly with me at calendly.com/medicalaffairsmentor.

1: "Working With Emotional Intelligence" Daniel Goleman 2006 p21