Why Intention Is Your Most Underused Career Tool

I spent years in HR helping other people navigate career decisions. Restructures, acquisitions, performance conversations, departures. I sat across the table from hundreds of people at inflection points and asked the same question in a hundred different ways: what do you actually want?

Start With Intention

Every role you take should come with a personal intention,  separate from the job description, separate from the salary, separate from what looks good on a resume. An intention is the answer to: what do I need to get out of this?

My intention going into my last role was clear: I wanted to prove to myself that I could lead an HR function at the executive level. Head of HR. The full seat. I needed to know I could do it.

That intention isn’t something you put in a cover letter. But it is the thing that should be driving your decisions from day one:  what you say yes to, what you push for, what you measure yourself against. When you know what you’re there to accomplish, you stop drifting and start building.

So before you take your next role, or even while you’re in your current one, ask yourself: why am I here? What does success look like for me, not just for my employer? Write it down. Be specific. That answer becomes your compass.

Learn to Recognize When It’s Been Fulfilled

Here’s what nobody tells you: sometimes a role ends not because something went wrong, but because it went right. Your intention was fulfilled. The chapter is complete. And the discomfort you’re feeling isn’t a problem to solve: it’s a signal to notice.

I’ve seen this play out again and again. A woman who joined a company because she admired her manager suddenly finds herself adrift when that manager leaves. The role looks the same on paper. The pay is the same. But the thing she was actually there for is gone. That is useful information.

When change happens: a reorg, a departure, an acquisition, a promotion that didn’t come,  use it as a prompt to check in with your original intention. Ask yourself: is the thing I came here for still available to me? Am I still growing toward it, or have I already arrived? Or worse, have I been circling the same spot for two years without realizing it?

These moments of disruption, even the ones that feel terrible, are invitations to get honest.

For me, when the company I worked for was going to be acquired, once I processed the grief of an ending I didn't choose, I realized that I did, in fact, accomplish what I set out. I was a VP of HR. I had done it. Brava.

Use It to Make the Decision

Once you’re clear on your intention and whether it’s still being served, the stay-or-go decision gets a lot simpler. Not easy. But simpler.

If your intention is still alive in your current role, if there is still something meaningful you are building toward, stay and build it. If it has been fulfilled, ask what your next intention is and whether this role can hold it. If it hasn’t been fulfilled but the path to it has closed, that is your answer too.

There’s irony that this is being shared with you as I wrap up my journey with a team that gave me the ability to hit my most recent career intention. Do I want to do it again? Yes. But I have a different intention for next time. My goal for what’s next is to build something that lets others find their way of blooming the way they want to. 

So ask yourself today: what is your intention for the role you’re in right now? If you can’t answer that, that’s where the work begins.