The current CEO of Zillow was once my boss, and he said something that irritated me at the time, but I now completely understand it.
On an annual review, he referenced my growth and development, and how he wanted me to keep getting opportunities to take on more and lead. Then, he mentioned: "Because I want you to be able to lead more than just sales teams — I want you to be able to lead Engineering Teams, or Finance, Operations, etc."
At the time, I was the Senior Director at Zillow, leading a 400-person sales organization that I had built from the ground up. Why in the hell did I need to think about leading anything other than sales organizations? I was a sales leader. My background was in sales, and my future was as a VP of Sales.
He was trying to get me to zoom out and think of the bigger picture of my career. If I were going to go on to lead bigger aspects of a business, I needed to be able to lead multiple types of roles and disciplines. At the time, I was narrow-minded, thinking only about the place I was at. If I had only stayed focused on salespeople, that would be the only mindset I knew how to operate in.
Fast forward since that conversation, and I've had the privilege to lead different roles and have oversight into other aspects of the business. And now I totally understand where he was coming from.
Back then, I took it as a knock on my skills and talents. But that wasn't the message at all. He wasn't focusing on what I had or hadn't done. He was trying to show me what could come next if I was willing to stretch beyond what I already knew.
It's easy to stay in the lane you've mastered. It's safe. It feels good to be the expert. But the higher you move in leadership, the less it becomes about deep functional expertise, and the more it becomes about understanding how all the pieces connect. The best leaders I've worked with weren't just great at their original craft — they were curious, humble, and willing to learn how the rest of the business worked too.
Once I moved into roles with exposure beyond sales, everything shifted. I started to see the business differently. I had to consider what engineering needed, what finance was pushing back on, and what marketing was prioritizing. And with that came the realization that leading at the next level isn't about doing your job better — it's about understanding how your job fits into a much larger system.
So now, when I talk with leaders, I share this story often. Because sometimes the next level of growth doesn't come from doubling down on what you already know. It comes from zooming out, asking better questions, and building the muscle to lead in places where you're not the expert. Your ability to understand the larger business is what will make all the difference in your leadership trajectory.