Liminal leadership: Finding your True North when the old maps no longer work
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER | July 2025
You are not alone in feeling like the ground beneath your feet has shifted. What you're experiencing has a name, and it's not a personal failing—it's a collective awakening.
I had coffee last week with a senior executive who leaned forward and said, "My CEO keeps asking me for solutions to problems that have never existed before. Remote work policies for a hybrid world that didn't exist five years ago. Leadership strategies for a workforce that's fundamentally rethinking their relationship to work. Crisis management for supply chain disruptions we couldn't have imagined. Every playbook I've relied on for fifteen years feels... obsolete."
She paused, then added quietly, "And the really scary part? Everyone expects me to have the answers. But I'm making it up as I go along, just like everyone else."
Her words stayed with me because I hear versions of this conversation constantly. Accomplished leaders who built their careers on proven strategies, established best practices, and reliable frameworks—suddenly finding themselves in uncharted territory. The methodologies that got them here aren't just insufficient; they're often counterproductive. The expertise they've spent decades building feels irrelevant to the challenges they're facing today.
If this resonates with you, you're not incompetent. You're not behind the curve. You're experiencing something much more profound: you're being asked to lead through what anthropologists call a "liminal space"—that threshold between what was and what's becoming, where the old rulebooks don't apply and the new ones haven't been written yet.
THE SPACE BETWEEN STORIES
Liminality comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. It's that disorienting space where the old story of your life no longer fits, but the new one hasn't yet emerged. It's deeply uncomfortable because humans are meaning-making creatures, and in liminal spaces, meaning feels suspended.
We're not just experiencing personal liminality; we're living through collective liminality. And like my coffee companion, many of us are discovering that the emperor of traditional success has no clothes.
Think about it: We've been operating under what researchers call "zombie leadership"—dead ideas that keep walking among us because they serve certain interests, even though they've been thoroughly debunked. The "cult of doing more, faster, with less" that has dominated corporate culture for decades is finally being exposed for what it is: unsustainable, dehumanizing, and ultimately counterproductive. As Amy Arthur states in her book Pace Yourself, “…The misconception that energy is constant leads us to believe we’re able to rush things, that a faster pace means we’ll get more done.”
The metrics that promised fulfillment—the corner office, the six-figure salary, the packed calendar that signals importance—were never designed to nourish the soul. They were designed to extract value. And now, after years of extraction, many of us are running on empty.
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT: WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
This isn't the first time humanity has faced fundamental shifts. Consider the Renaissance, when the medieval worldview gave way to humanism. Or the Industrial Revolution, when agrarian life transformed into urban modernity. Each of these transitions was preceded by periods of profound disorientation, times when the old certainties no longer held, but the new paradigm wasn't yet clear.
What's striking about our current moment is how it mirrors the transition from the Industrial Age to what we might call the Conscious Age. Just as the printing press democratized information during the Renaissance, digital technology is democratizing access to information, connection, and alternative ways of organizing work and life.
The pandemic accelerated this shift, giving millions of people a forced pause, a liminal space, to question assumptions they'd never had time to examine. Suddenly, questions that had been relegated to weekend retreats became daily considerations: What actually matters? What does a life well-lived look like? How do I want to spend my finite time and energy?
The "Great Resignation" wasn't just about better working conditions; it was a collective awakening to the reality that work, as we've known it, often disconnects us from what is genuinely fulfilling.
THE COURAGE TO QUESTION EVERYTHING
What makes this moment particularly challenging for accomplished women is that we've been conditioned to excel within systems built on patriarchy and hierarchy. We've learned to be incredibly good at playing games with rules we didn't write. And now, many of us are realizing that winning games we never chose isn't actually winning at all.
The executive I mentioned earlier had this realization: "I spent twenty years becoming really good at being who I thought I was supposed to be. I optimized myself for other people's definitions of success. But I never stopped to ask, ‘What does success mean to and for me?’"
This is the essential question of liminal leadership: How do we lead—ourselves, our teams, our organizations—when we're questioning the very foundations of what leadership means?
The answer isn't to retreat into old certainties or to rush toward the latest leadership fad. The answer is to learn to be comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing. To develop what Keats called "negative capability"—the ability to remain in uncertainty without irritably reaching after fact and reason.
STAYING GROUNDED IN GROUNDLESS TIMES
Here's what I've learned from working with leaders navigating these threshold moments: The way forward isn't about finding new external anchors to replace the old ones. It's about developing internal anchors that remain steady regardless of external circumstances.
1. Recognize that feeling disoriented is not a bug—it's a feature.
Liminality is supposed to feel uncertain. If you're feeling like you don't know which way is up, congratulations! You're awake. The comfortable certainty you once felt was often based on unexamined assumptions. The discomfort you now feel is the price of consciousness.
2. Understand that your identity is not your achievement.
So much of leadership development focuses on what you do rather than who you are. But in liminal spaces, doing-based identity becomes unreliable. The titles, accomplishments, and external validations that once defined you may suddenly feel hollow. This isn't a crisis; it's an invitation to discover the part of you that exists independent of any role or achievement.
3. Practice what I call "liminal leadership"—leading from the threshold.
This means being transparent about what you don't know. It means admitting when old strategies aren't working. It means creating space for questions, rather than rushing to answers. It means modeling the courage to be authentically uncertain in a culture that rewards the performance of certainty.
THE EMERGENCE OF AUTHENTIC AUTHORITY
What I'm seeing among the leaders who navigate liminality successfully is the emergence of what I call "authentic authority"—leadership that comes not from position or expertise, but from a willingness to be genuinely human in professional spaces.
These leaders stop performing invulnerability and start modeling resilience. They stop pretending to have all the answers and start asking better questions. They stop optimizing for external validation and start aligning with internal values. They stop trying to be the leader they think they should be and start being the leader they actually are.
This shift terrifies some people because it requires releasing control, or at least the illusion of control. But it liberates others because it allows them to bring their whole selves to their work for the first time in their careers.
THE COLLECTIVE AWAKENING
What gives me profound hope is that you're not alone in this questioning. Across industries and roles, I'm seeing a quiet revolution of leaders who are saying, "There has to be a better way." They're no longer willing to sacrifice their humanity on the altar of productivity. They're no longer willing to perpetuate systems that extract value from people rather than creating conditions for them to thrive.
This isn't about abandoning ambition or settling for mediocrity. It's about expanding our definition of what excellence looks like. It's about recognizing that sustainable high performance requires sustainable people. It's about understanding that the most innovative, creative, and resilient organizations are those that honor the full humanity of their people.
YOUR COMPASS FOR THE JOURNEY AHEAD
As you navigate your own liminal space, remember this: The goal isn't to get through it as quickly as possible. The goal is to let it transform you. The discomfort you're feeling isn't something to fix; it's something to listen to. It's your inner wisdom telling you that you've outgrown the container of your life as it's currently structured.
The path forward isn't about finding the "right" answer, it's about learning to live with the questions. It's about developing the courage to be authentic in a world that often rewards performance, sometimes in a questionable manner. It's about trusting that the clarity you seek will emerge not from thinking your way through, but from being present to what's actually here now.
You are not lost. You are not behind. You are not failing. You are becoming. And that process, by its very nature, requires dismantling what was to make space for what's emerging.
The old maps that got you here won't take you where you're going. But you don't need old maps. You have something far more reliable: your own inner compass. Trust it. Follow it. And remember, you're not walking this path alone.
The future of leadership isn't about having all the answers. It's about having the courage to live with the questions—together.
Kindly,
What liminal space are you navigating in your own leadership journey? I'd love to hear about the questions that are emerging for you and the inner compass points that are guiding your way forward.
THIS MONTH'S REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Are there rules or definitions of success you’ve been following that no longer serve you?
What would it look like to question or rewrite them?
In moments of uncertainty or ambiguity, what internal anchors help you navigate forward?
How do your actions align with your personal definition of success, rather than one prescribed by external expectations?
COMING NEXT MONTH
Next month, we're going to explore one of the most liberating realizations of authentic leadership: that your willingness to disappoint others thoughtfully and strategically isn't a character flaw—it's a developmental milestone. It's the bridge between living from others' expectations and living from your own authentic authority. And when you cross that bridge, you don't just transform your own leadership—you give everyone around you permission to be more real, more creative, and more courageously themselves. The permission to disappoint, it turns out, might be the most generous gift you can give both yourself and the people you lead.
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
—Dr. Seuss
