Hey Reader,

Most leaders hit their wall while everything still looks fine from the outside. That's what makes it dangerous.

Marshall Goldsmith put a name on this back in 2007, and many of us still subscribe to his answer. What Got You Here Won't Get You There says success builds habits, those habits harden, and the fix is subtraction. Twenty behaviors to drop. He's right that the habits are real. For many of us, we need to go one layer deeper.

You're not failing. The job changed.

Your wall isn't a character problem. It's a role change nobody announced. Maybe what got you here was hustle and intuition, and neither one is bad. They're just not what the next stage runs on. The more you rise, the more important it is to be intentional with your leadership growth.

Three signs you're already there

One. The clarity in your head isn't reaching their hands.

I once walked out of a strategy session with my senior team feeling clear, aligned and energized. Three weeks later I sat down for the first update, and what they had built looked nothing like what I thought we agreed to.

They weren't confused. They executed exactly what they heard. The problem was that I never got what was in my head into a form they could work from. I didn't spend enough time ensuring my intent was landing clearly.

Two. Everything ends up on your desk.

This one feels like leadership while you're doing it. You solve the problem, you're needed, your day moves.

Watch a quarterback throw off his back heel. He can still get it there, but sometimes he gets picked. When he puts his weight forward, he adjusts, he steps up, he buys himself half a second. Same arm. Different footing.

When every decision routes through you, you're on your heels all day, and your company keeps scaling past the position you're playing from.

​Last week I told you about a hire I had to unwind in thirty days. Part of why I missed the red flags is that I wanted somebody in that seat so I could finally step out of it. I was hiring for relief.

Relief isn't a role. Bring someone new in while every decision still routes through you, and they'll be sitting in the same traffic inside a quarter. You didn't fix the routing. You just added a stop to it. You have to be intentional about stepping forward, and getting out of the bad footing of being the one things flow through.

Three. You already know the honest answer and you haven't said it out loud.

Not "am I competent?" You're competent, and your results prove it. The question is whether you're equipped for what your company needs next, and that one takes brutal honesty.

In 2000, I joined AAA and moved the call center from Charlotte to Roanoke Rapids. Four years later, I was promoted to be the Vice President of Member Services, and the job changed for me.

I wasn't running a call center anymore. I was leading senior leaders. Division heads. Business unit owners.

Then came a session where I explained the same quarterly objective for the third time and watched everyone on my team hear every word and get none of the vision.

That night I was really questioning whether I had the skills, the talents and the capabilities to be the leader that organization deserved. The answer was…

No. Not yet.

That wasn't insecurity. That was an aha for me.

I had been the right leader for those first four years. Built the culture, ran the transformation, solved what showed up. Leading senior leaders needed a different version of me. A systematic one. Somebody who could install frameworks and instill vision in other people instead of solving every problem with hustle and intuition.

So I went and invested in my own transformation. Not because I was failing. Because staying where I was meant my organization stayed there too.

I went to Wharton for a change management program, and the content was great. But to be honest, the talent in the room was better. I sat with leaders who were years ahead of me and still working hard on their craft.

That was the actual lesson. Not a technique. A standard.

The question worth sitting with this week

Not "can I afford this?" Not "do I have the time?" Those are the questions that keep you exactly where you are.

Try instead: what am I risking by waiting?

Ask it out loud, because it lands differently when you hear yourself say it out loud. Waiting doesn't make you more ready. It just makes you more stuck.

And if none of the three signs land on you right now, good. That means you have foundational work in front of you, and foundational work is not the junior assignment. Get clear on where you're actually going before you try to go faster. Timing is the whole thing here. The right program at the wrong time is the wrong program.

The right one at the right moment is rocket fuel.

You don't fail your way into this. You grow into it. Every inflection point I've hit turned out to be a rebirth, and not one of them showed up because I was ready. They showed up because I decided to be intentional and become the leader my organization needed at the next level, not the one I had been previously.

dusty

P.S. I walked through the full diagnostic on Episode 33 of Leadership Unlocked, including the three questions I use to tell whether a leader is at a real inflection point or still has foundational work to do first: Listen Here​

P.P.S. Which of the three signs is sitting closest to home right now? Hit reply and tell me. I read every message and love learning from you.