If My Biggest Goal is Moving into Leadership, Do I Need to Leave My Organization?

I work in a technical field in local government (think OSHA Inspector type role).

At this point (7 years) in my career, I highly desire advancement. I’m about half way through my masters and want to be a leader in my field within the next few years.

I could write an essay in an attempt prove that I was treated unfairly and used as a scape goat, but long story short, I didn’t meet my work goals last year. For the sake of this post I’ll just accept that for what it is. In an attempt to save my moral my bosses played it off like it wasn’t a big deal, but it was a big deal on paper. I was officially marked as “did not meet expectations” and received a plethora of repercussions (no raise for the year, tuition assistance revoked, placed on a fake PIP for 2 months, permanent record on my file).

Leadership position openings are scarce in this field (not just my county but really all counties) and pop up only once every several years. Unlucky for me, one came up last month, about 9 months after “failing” my yearly performance evaluation.

I knew that I essentially wouldn’t be hired for this role as it would be pretty tough explaining to HR why their choice for leadership was the guy who failed his most recent annual evaluation, but given my long term good standing with leadership as a highly competent employee for the 6 other years, I was pretty gutted to not even receive a call for an interview. My application went completely unacknowledged.

Again, I know that realistically they probably weren’t going to go with me because of last year’s performance rating, but to me, not even getting an interview or acknowledgment is a pretty clear signal that despite what management told me to calm me down after I (very professionally) met with them to express my concerns with how the rating went down, I’m officially on the “naughty” list and nowhere close to leadership material in their eyes. Looking back, even though I carried myself professionally, calling a meeting with them might have made their view of me worse and created a bit of “messy” reputation for myself.

With all this being said, if my biggest goal is eventually moving into leadership within the next 3-5 years, is the writing on the wall that I need to get a fresh start with another county and wipe my slate clean?