There’s a moment in leadership that often goes unspoken: when what once worked… doesn’t. You’re still capable, trusted, and showing up, yet something feels off.
It’s not wrong, just off.
In these moments, many leaders make it personal.
Often mistakenly assume we need a new strategy or a quick answer to figure things out. Most of us have been trained to take on more, we push ourselves a little harder, think more, ask others for advice, trying to solve this problem in front of us.
Yes, something is changing, but what if this isn’t a problem to solve?
What if you just don’t know how to see it yet?
This is a Leadership Threshold.
I call these moments leadership thresholds, not breakdowns, not confusion, but transitions. Real opportunities to expand how you see yourself - your leadership, your capacity, and what’s possible.
These leadership thresholds are a point where something in your leadership is shifting:
Your identity
Your capacity
Your relationship to responsibility, direction, or impact.
And what got you to this point isn’t what will move you forward.
The Earliest Signs You’re in a Threshold
These moments are subtle at first. They can be easy to miss, easy to override if you’re not aware of the moment you’re in.
You may notice
What used to work feels harder, yet not necessarily wrong.
You’re questioning things you once felt certain about.
You feel a pull to change but don’t yet have clear direction.
You’re trying to “figure it out,” but nothing clicks.
You feel both capable and unsettled simultaneously.
There’s often no clear problem (though sometimes there is a big life transition). Which is often what can make it so disorienting and feel so personal.
Here’s the truth: you’re not stuck. You’re not unclear. You’re misidentifying the moment you’re in.
And that misidentification matters.
Because when you misidentify this moment, you don’t just feel stuck, you make decisions that pull you further away from what’s actually trying to emerge.
Often, it looks like:
commiting to paths that no longer fit
saying yes to things that drain you
overriding what you know, before you’ve fully heard it
And over time, this compounds. Not into failure, but into quiet misalignment.
Most leaders move too quickly through these moments. They take action, they adjust, they try something new.
But the underlying moment hasn’t been fully understood. So they find themselves here again. Different situation, same feeling.
What looks like progress on the outside can start to feel like misalignment on the inside.
Not because they aren’t doing anything, but because they’re doing the wrong things for the moment they’re in. They’re taking action but not activating growth. The reality is we’ve never been taught how to recognize this kind of moment.
Often, the shift isn’t MORE effort. But asking a different question to shift our perspective.
Rather than asking, “What should I do?” try asking, “What do I actually want?“
It’s simple, but not always easy. Consider the last time you asked yourself, " What do I actually want?” and really considered what came up.
Most leaders have been on a trajectory for a long time. Our minds will tell us…
It’s too risky to step off
You’ll miss out
You should stay the course
What if I fail
I’ve been there. There was a point where I found myself asking, How on earth did I get here?
Not because anything was wrong on paper, but because something didn’t feel like mine anymore.
And when I looked closer, I saw it clearly: I had said yes…to opportunities, expectations, and paths without fully discerning whether they were actually mine.
Not because they were wrong but because I hadn’t paused long enough to ask, Is this what I truly want?
Before you try to fix it
If you’re in one of these moments, before you push, pivot, or try to force clarity, there’s something more important to do first.
Understand what you’re actually in.
Because this moment isn’t asking you to solve it.
It’s asking you to see it.
Join me Live
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself, this is the conversation to be in.
I’m hosting a live session:
Leadership Thresholds 101
Why what used to work no longer does
This isn’t training on what to do next.
It’s a space to:
recognize the moment you’re in
understand why it feels the way it does
and begin to respond differently
If something in your leadership feels like it’s shifting, you don’t need to figure it out alone.