The Cage Is Made of Gold — Issue #09
The people most free to leave are the ones who can't, and loyalty isn't the reason.
ONE STORY, ONE SIGNAL, ONE TOOL, ONE QUESTION - EVERY WEEK
Issue #9 - The Cage is Made of Gold
The most trapped people I coach are the ones who could walk away tomorrow and never work again.
It should not make sense. We assume the people with the most options feel the most free, with more money, more standing and more open doors than they could ever use. And yet, the ones who could leave without a second thought are often the ones who cannot picture leaving at all.
This week is not about whether you should go. It is about something quieter: why the door is right there, unlocked, and you still do not walk through it. The reason is rarely loyalty. It is usually something you would never say out loud.
A Coaching Story
💬 A de-identified composite scenario based on my coaching experiences. This story does not reflect the experience of any particular individual or organization in any way.
He is a managing partner in his mid-sixties, at a law firm he spent 30 years helping build. His name is on the door, and he has the kind of standing in his city that ensures his calls get returned within the hour. By every measure that fits on a résumé, he has arrived.
He came to coaching for a reason he could not quite identify. A few weeks earlier, at a firm event, a younger colleague introduced him as “our longtime managing partner.” The introduction was warm, admiring, completely kind. And for half a second, standing in front of the room, he caught himself wondering what they would call him next year. The thought frightened him more than any case ever had.
When we talked, he gave me all the right reasons for staying. He was not ready. The firm needed him to help navigate a leadership change. He still loved the work. Each reason was true, yet none of them was the truth.
So I asked him something else. Who are you, when you are not the managing partner?
He answered with his résumé: the cases he had won, the lawyers he had trained, the clients who would work with no one else. I let him finish, then said gently that he had told me what he does. I asked again who he is.
The room went quiet. Sitting in that silence, he saw it. He was not staying for the law anymore. He could barely remember the last legal matter that genuinely lit him up. He was staying because his title told him who he was, and the office told the world he still mattered. Take those away and he did not know what would be left.
That was the cage. Somewhere along the way, the work stopped being what he did and became who he was. And the bars were never iron. They were made of gold: the title, the standing, everything he had earned.
The Changing World of Work
📊 A key data point and my insights about what it means to the changing world of work around us.
When researchers studied more than a million burned-out employees, the phrase they reached for most to describe what made their workplace great was “golden handcuffs.”
Across 1,734,443 employee surveys, “golden handcuffs” was the single most common phrase burned-out workers used to describe what makes their workplace great. Great Place to Work, Golden Handcuffs: What Employee Survey Responses Reveal About Burnout, 2023
People who were exhausted and quietly miserable were asked what they liked about where they work. The answer that rose to the top was the very thing keeping them there against their own wishes. They named the trap as the perk.
The pattern holds all the way up the org chart. Nearly 40% of senior executives say they weighed leaving in the past year, and the reason was rarely money. It was frequently burnout and the wish for a more balanced life. TopResume via CFO Dive, 2026
When a reward becomes the bars of a cage, you stop seeing it as a reward, and you stop seeing the cage. You just call it a good job and keep showing up.
This Week’s Resource
⚙️ A framework, tool, tip, AI prompt or skill that you can save and put to use immediately.
The Five Bars of the Cage
Last week I wrote about the cost of staying too long. This week, I’m zeroing in on a way to see what is actually holding you in place. This is a checklist, not a score. Read each one slowly. If you are staying mainly for that reason, it is a bar, not a strategy. It is keeping you trapped.
1. The Scoreboard. “I’d be walking away from money I’ll never make again.” The compensation stopped being about need a long time ago. Now it is proof, in a number, that you still matter, a scoreboard you cannot quite stop checking.
2. The Title. “Who am I if I’m not the managing partner, the chief, the founder?” If the honest answer is that you do not know, notice what that means. You have let the title quietly become the person.
3. The Room. “Without this seat, the calls stop coming.” You are staying for the access, the being known, the somebody-ness. All of it is real, and all of it is rented. It belonged to the chair, and the chair was never yours to keep.
4. The Save. “It’ll fall apart without me.” Being needed feels like meaning. Often it is just about a place your importance is guaranteed. Ask yourself honestly whether your workplace would actually fall apart if you left, or whether it’s you who might crumble.
5. The Mastery. “I’m the best in the building at this.” You probably are. But staying because you have mastered something means choosing the comfort of being excellent over the risk of being a beginner again. The cage is gold because you earned it. And it’s still a cage.
How to read this list: You will see yourself in more than one of these, and that is normal. Pay attention to the one you would rather not look at too closely. The bar you most want to explain away is usually the one that holds the lock on the cage.
The managing partner in the story went quiet on two of them: the Title and the Room. He had spent 30 years feeling sure he was staying because of the work.
A Powerful Coaching Question
🤔 This week’s high-value coaching question for you to consider in whatever way you like to reflect.
Here's what I'd ask you if you were sitting across from me: if one reward of this role disappeared tomorrow and you felt relieved to walk away, which reward would it be? Consider why that one has such a hold on you.
Inspiration for the Week
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
— Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2012)
Ware heard that regret more than any other, from people at the very end. Notice where it lands for you. It is about whose life you were living, and whether it was ever your own. The cage is comfortable enough to stay in for years. The only question that matters is whether it is yours.
Before You Go
If one of those five bars made you wince, hit reply and tell me which one. I read every response, and they shape what comes next.
Next week: the most expensive sentence in a senior career.
Until next week,
So useful, and so painfully true . . .