For reasons that probably say something strange about me, I’ve been thinking about traffic signals a lot lately. Not because I’m secretly passionate about municipal infrastructure or have taken up a side hustle in urban planning. If anything, I’m the person who still gets irrationally annoyed when a left turn arrow takes too long.
But somewhere in the middle of writing this Forté Signals series, I realized I kept circling the same two ideas.
Signs.
And signals.
And once I saw the difference, I couldn’t unsee it.
We understand the difference when we’re driving without even thinking. A stop sign is a stop sign. It tells you exactly what to do. You can obey it, ignore it, roll through it, or pretend it doesn't apply to you because you are apparently far too important to stop like the rest of us. But the meaning itself is fixed.
A yellow light is different. A yellow light is where interpretation begins. Do you slow down? Do you speed up? Do you make a questionable judgment call and hope no one is watching? Are you the person who treats every yellow light as a personal challenge?
Two people can see the exact same yellow light and make completely different decisions.
And one day, after hearing yet another smart, capable woman ask, “What is my next step,” it hit me.
Careers used to run on stop signs. Now they run on yellow lights.
What Organizations Say vs. What They Show
Here is the distinction that cracked the whole thing open for me.
Signs are what organizations say. Signals are what they show. And those two things rarely match perfectly.
A job description is a sign. Who and why someone actually gets hired is a signal.
A promotion cycle is a sign. Who gets promoted outside the cycle is a signal.
A company value written on a wall is a sign. Who gets rewarded in real life is a signal.
A manager saying “you are doing great” is a sign.Whether they trust you with something ambiguous is a signal.
Once you start noticing the mismatch, you can’t go back. It's like realizing your favorite restaurant’s forty five minute wait sign is actually a signal that they have no idea how long it will be.
And it works both ways
You can’t control which signs people notice about you. Your alma mater. Your job title. Your company’s brand. The fact that you once used a semicolon correctly in an email and now everyone thinks you’re the team’s editor.
But you can shape the signals they receive. Not by crafting the perfect thirty‑second pitch (shameless plug for the last post), but by letting people see your operating system. The way you break down a messy situation. The way you explain why you chose one path instead of another. The way you steady a conversation that is veering off course. Those moments tell people far more about you than any line on a resume ever will.
If you treat every sign like a stop sign, you’ll misread the system. If you ignore the signals, you’ll misread your opportunities.”
At the same time, you cannot afford to read every organizational sign literally.
Because inside real systems: “We are not hiring right now” sometimes means “We are not hiring for that.”
“We value collaboration” sometimes means “We reward the loudest person in the room.”
“We promote based on merit” sometimes means “We promote based on familiarity.”
“We want innovative thinkers” sometimes means “We want innovative thinkers who don’t make us uncomfortable.”
If you treat every sign like a stop sign, you’ll misread the system. If you ignore the signals, you’ll misread your opportunities.
Why this matters for your career
What I’m seeing more and more is that most career frustration comes from mistaking signs for signals. Both the ones we send and the ones we receive.
People think they are being evaluated on the facts of their resume. They’re actually being evaluated on the story people tell themselves about those facts.
People think organizations are communicating clearly. Organizations think they are communicating clearly. Meanwhile, for all that supposed clarity, everyone still walks away with their own version.
The gap between what’s said and what’s shown is where careers get confusing, unpredictable, and occasionally absurd. If you have ever sat through a performance review that felt like it was happening in a parallel universe, you know exactly what I mean.
The point of all this
Signs tell people what you have done. Signals help them predict what you will do next. Once you understand that difference, the system becomes easier to navigate.
And I’ll be honest. I’ve been thinking about this distinction so much that it is starting to feel like the foundation of something bigger. Maybe a framework. Maybe a course. Maybe, someday, the book I keep threatening to write.
For now, it’s the next piece in this Forté Signals series. The goal is to make what’s actually happening easier to see so you can navigate that gap with a little more awareness and a little less guesswork.
