Conscious Unbossing: Career Choice or Leadership Philosophy?

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Leadership  

I recently stumbled upon a leadership trend called “conscious unbossing.” It caught my attention, not because I knew what it was and wanted to learn more, but because it was such an odd phrase that I couldn’t unsee it and had to find out what in the dickens it was.

Claude and Copilot gave me very similar definitions:

Conscious unbossing is the deliberate choice by talented professionals to opt out of—or step back from—leadership roles in favor of career paths that better align with their personal wellbeing, values, and definition of success.

Okay, I can buy this; a professional makes a conscious choice to not climb the ladder and organizationally lead others. Some were meant to be a thought leader and are more sustainably content than in a people-leader role.

Chasing a promotion because a professional thinks that’s what they’re supposed to do as opposed to what fits into their life doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen many professionals who opted to move into individual contributor (IC) roles because they wanted to have thought leader impact without the stress of being a people leader. The Claude/Copilot definition holds water in my book.

Then I read articles that were pork-barreling other concepts into the conscious unbossing moniker, which not only confused me but diluted the core intent I had bought into. Things …

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