For decades, we’ve been taught to think about career growth in one direction: up. You take a job, prove yourself, earn a promotion, move into the next role and continue climbing. But careers rarely unfold that neatly anymore. And for many people, they never did.

A new term borrowed from the dating world offers another way to think about career development: “wildflowering.”

Psychology Today describes wildflowering in dating as allowing a relationship to develop organically without imposing predetermined timelines, labels or expectations. More recently, Fast Company explored what that idea might look like in the workplace: Rather than following a rigid career path, employees expand across projects and skills, allowing their individual strengths to help shape where they go next.

I hadn’t heard the term until recently, but the concept immediately felt familiar.

For years, I’ve told clients that careers often look less like ladders and more like jungle gyms. You may climb a few rungs, move sideways, go around something and eventually move upward again. Those moves may not look like traditional advancement in the moment, but together they can build experience that prepares you for opportunities you couldn’t have anticipated.

We’ve explored a similar idea through the concept of the career pivot. You don’t discard the skills and experiences you’ve accumulated when you change direction. You use them as a foundation for moving somewhere new.

Wildflowering takes that idea a little further. It feels more active and exploratory. But for it to be effective, it also needs to be purposeful.

Exploration Needs a Purpose

One of the appealing things about wildflowering is that it gives people permission to be curious. You can take on a cross-functional project, develop a skill outside your current role or work with people in another part of the organization without knowing exactly where it will lead.

That can be valuable. But “I’m wildflowering” shouldn’t become an explanation for drifting indefinitely.

You might take on a project with the finance team because you want greater exposure to how business decisions are made. You might volunteer for an initiative outside your department because you want to strengthen your leadership skills. Or perhaps you’re interested in an area of the organization you’ve never worked in and want enough exposure to determine whether it might be a good fit.

You don’t necessarily need to know the final destination. But you should understand what you hope to learn.

Otherwise, it can become frustrating. You keep adding experiences and responsibilities without those experiences leading anywhere. At some point, you need to bring that lateral knowledge together and understand how it is helping you move forward.

Don’t Wait for Your Manager to Find Opportunities for You

One version of workplace wildflowering suggests that organizations should watch for employees’ natural strengths and create opportunities around them. That sounds great. I’m just not convinced that’s how most workplaces operate today.

A strong manager may notice that you have a particular talent and encourage you to develop it. But many managers are focused on immediate business needs: We have a gap. We need someone to fill it. Who can do it?

That means employees need to take responsibility for their own development.

If you want greater exposure to other areas of the business, tell your manager. If you want to build a particular skill, ask where you might have an opportunity to practice it. If you aspire to a larger leadership role, look for ways to build relationships outside your immediate team.

I often encourage executive clients who want to advance to expand their visibility across the organization. If you remain within your own comfortable space, people outside that area may have little understanding of what you can contribute. Working across functions gives you the opportunity not only to develop new skills, but also to build relationships and demonstrate your capabilities to a broader group of people.

You can’t assume someone else will orchestrate that for you.

Leaders Still Have an Important Role

Employees need to own their development, but managers can create conditions that make exploration easier and more productive.

Development conversations are a good place to start. Instead of focusing exclusively on where an employee wants to be in one year or five years, leaders can also ask:

What would you like to learn next?
Where would you like more exposure?
What strengths aren’t you getting to use in your current role?

Those conversations can help leaders recognize when an upcoming project or cross-functional initiative might provide a valuable developmental opportunity.

Leaders also need to create realistic boundaries around exploration.

If an employee takes on a cross-functional project while still being expected to accomplish everything in their regular job, development quickly becomes “more work.” I’ve written before about the difference between a legitimate stretch opportunity and a “quiet promotion”. The same distinction applies to wildflowering. Is the additional responsibility giving the employee meaningful exposure, skills or experience? Or are they simply taking on work that needs to get done?

Leaders should discuss how much time the employee can reasonably devote to the opportunity and revisit priorities if the commitment expands. Employees, in turn, need to speak up when what began as exploration starts consuming a significant amount of their time.

That structure matters because lateral development should be recognized as development, not treated as an extracurricular activity.

Going Sideways Can Help You Move Up

Wildflowering can also help prepare someone for broader leadership responsibilities.

People who spend their entire careers within a highly specialized silo can develop tremendous expertise. But as their leadership responsibilities grow, they often need a much broader understanding of the organization.

Someone who has worked across marketing, finance, operations or other functions gains insight into how different areas think, communicate and make decisions. They understand competing priorities. They become better able to translate information across teams and see connections that may not be obvious from within a single function.

Those capabilities can become particularly valuable as the scope of a leadership role expands. The sideways move, therefore, isn’t necessarily a detour from advancement. It may be what prepares you for it.

Titles Still Matter, Just Not in the Same Way

There is also an argument that as careers become more fluid, skills may eventually matter more than job titles.

I think the reality is more complicated.

I’m currently working with a client whose title is very specific to her industry. She wants to move into another industry, and her experience is highly transferable. But her title doesn’t communicate the scope of what she actually does to employers outside her field.

That can matter when an applicant tracking system (ATS) is screening resumes for particular words, skills or titles. Technology doesn’t always recognize the nuance behind someone’s experience.

Once she gets in front of a person, however, she can explain the scope of her responsibilities and show how her experience translates.

So titles aren’t irrelevant. They remain shorthand for experience and responsibility, particularly during hiring. But they don’t always tell the whole story.

That makes it increasingly important for professionals to understand the skills beneath their titles and be able to articulate how those skills apply in different contexts. If your career is going to grow in different directions, you also need to be able to explain how those directions connect.

Wildflowering in the AI Era

Perhaps the strongest argument for a less rigid approach to career development is how quickly work itself is changing.

AI is altering roles, workflows and the skills organizations need. As the nature of work continues to evolve, developing a broader range of skills and experiences can help employees adapt to new demands and recognize opportunities they may not have considered before.

In that environment, adaptability becomes a career skill in itself. The ability to step into an unfamiliar situation, learn quickly, work across functions and recognize where your strengths can create value becomes increasingly important when it is difficult to predict exactly what a particular job will look like several years from now.

That doesn’t mean abandoning direction altogether. Wildflowers may grow in unexpected directions, but successful career wildflowering shouldn’t be entirely left to chance.

Be curious. Explore opportunities that stretch you. Develop relationships outside your immediate function. Pay attention to the work that energizes you and the strengths that emerge when you try something new.

But keep asking yourself why you’re doing it, what you’re learning and how those experiences connect. Your career doesn’t need to follow a straight line. But even when the path winds, it should still be taking you somewhere.

Learn more about Career Coaching

Wildflowering Your Career: When Growing Sideways Helps You Move Forward