We were over halfway through a supposed 2-hour flight when I noticed the time remaining had gone up, not down.
I pulled up the flight tracker and saw it: a giant loop. The plane had been circling back on itself for the last twenty minutes. Lots of movement, but no forward motion.
No one told us why the flight time had been extended. Perhaps they’d hoped we wouldn’t notice, and most people probably didn’t.
We did get back on course, but not without that loop over Iowa.
Circling without forward momentum, without acknowledgement of what’s happening. Sound familiar?
Yep, I see this on leadership teams. Lots of activity. Lots of activity. Meeting after meeting, report after report, a new initiative every quarter. Everyone’s busy and everyone’s tired. And yet somehow, the same issues keep coming up. The same frustrations. The same conversations that feel productive in the moment but don’t actually change anything.
Movement without direction. Activity without impact.
The team isn’t stuck because they’re not working hard enough. They’re stuck because no one has addressed why they keep looping back to the same place–or even recognized that the loop exists.
Sometimes it’s a trust deficit that makes real conversation impossible. Sometimes it’s individual patterns that keep colliding. Sometimes it’s a CEO who’s unknowingly part of the loop.
Whatever the root cause, more activity won’t solve it. You can’t fly through weather by circling harder.
You have to name what’s actually keeping you stuck.
Where is your team circling?
Hey there! I’m a leadership team whisperer, executive coach, and speaker. I guide leadership teams in high-growth companies to achieve rapid growth in a healthy, sustainable way. I coach senior leaders to discover the path to lead with ease.
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