By Yuliya Arsenyeva
Leadership transitions aren’t strategy problems – they’re identity problems. Here’s the map most leaders never get to see.
There’s a particular kind of discomfort that seasoned leaders rarely talk about. It’s not burnout, though it often gets mistaken for it. It looks like procrastination on decisions that used to come naturally. It feels like a strange heaviness before important meetings. It sounds like “I know what I should do, but somehow I’m not doing it.”
If any of this sounds familiar, welcome to the threshold.
I’ve been at such a threshold more than once. Career pivots, relocation, becoming a mother twice, a war that changed everything overnight. Each time the same disorienting question: “what do I do now?” This article is partly what I wish I’d had to read during those years to make it feel less like something was wrong with me.
Why Leaders End Up Here
In anthropology, this space has a name: liminality, from the Latin limen, a doorstep. You’ve left the old room. You haven’t quite entered the new one.
Liminal states don’t always arrive as obvious ruptures. Sometimes they sneak in quietly behind a promotion, an acquisition, or a strategic pivot. Research shows that between 50% and 70% of newly appointed executives fail to deliver within 18 months¹, and the root cause is rarely a lack of skill. It’s the failure to navigate the internal transition.
Most leaders are never told this is happening. They interpret the disorientation as weakness. They push harder. And nothing shifts, because the problem isn’t efficiency. It’s identity.
Procrastination is Not Laziness. It’s a Symptom.
When a capable leader suddenly can’t move on decisions they previously made with ease, it’s worth asking not “why can’t I just do this?”, but “what is this resistance trying to tell me?”
The old decision-making frameworks no longer apply. The new ones haven’t formed yet. Think of it as your internal operating system mid-update: the old version is winding down, the new one isn’t live yet. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: it doesn’t care about your deadlines, and you can’t force-install clarity either. Pushing harder only drains the battery faster.
Five Phases of an Identity Transition
Drawing on van Gennep (1909)² and William Bridges’ Managing Transitions (1991)³, and informed by my own practice, identity transitions tend to unfold across five phases – rarely in a neat sequence and often overlapping and looping back.
Navigating Each Phase
Phase 1: The Crack. A success that doesn’t land. A decision that feels hollow. A vague sense that the role no longer inspires. Easy to miss. Most leaders walk straight past it.
Phase 2: Ending, Losing, Letting Go. The old identity starts to loosen. Resistance, grief, and a sense of loss, not because anything bad is happening, but because something real is ending. The key trap: filling the gap with busyness, which extends this phase indefinitely.
Phase 3: The Threshold. The old identity has loosened, but the new one hasn’t formed. Confusion masquerades as strategic ambiguity. A typical response is to seek external validation, and when the people closest to you don’t quite get what you’re going through, that disconnect can be deeply destabilising.
Phase 4: First Signals of the New. Something begins to shift. A decision made from a different place. A moment of “that felt right.” This phase is fragile – easy to dismiss as a fluke, or to overinterpret as arrival.
Phase 5: Reintegration. A new sense of self begins to consolidate. Decisions feel grounded again. The procrastination lifts, as the internal conflict creating it has been resolved, instead of pushing through.
Why Transitions Are Taking Longer Now
For most of history, identity transitions happened against a relatively stable backdrop. Then came the internet with an avalanche of information and comparison that never quite switches off. Then came AI reshaping industries faster than a human brain can process. According to a 2025 study by Kevin Novak (2040digital)⁴, 70% of leaders report burnout significantly undermines their decision-making, while 72% acknowledge serious physical and mental health consequences from cognitive overload. Research from IT Revolution (2024)⁵ puts the organisational cost at $322 billion annually in lost productivity. A 2022 Deloitte survey⁶ found nearly 70% of C-suite executives are considering leaving their roles to protect their wellbeing.
The result? Liminal phases that would once have resolved in months can now stretch considerably longer. Adaptability is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s the core leadership skill of this era. And awareness of where you are is the first, most underrated step.
What You Can Speed Up — and What You Can’t
Some parts can be accelerated:
- naming what’s happening,
- seeking new inputs,
- honest self-inquiry,
- and getting the right support.
Coaching works particularly well here, not by bypassing what you feel, but by helping you hear it, untangle the emotional noise from the signal, and use what remains as a foundation for clearer decisions. McKinsey (2022)⁷ found that companies with highly effective leaders are 1.9 times more likely to outperform peers in profitability. Getting leaders through transitions faster isn’t a soft investment – it’s a hard business decision.
What you cannot rush:
- the timeline of inner consolidation,
- and the trust of your team
- both require consistent new behaviour, not announcements.
Conclusion
The disorientation of a liminal phase is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It’s a sign that something in you is ready for the next chapter, even if the rest of you hasn’t caught up yet.
That tension is not a sign that something is wrong. It’s where the real work lives.
And it passes with awareness, deliberate action, and the right support.
Acknowledgements
AI tools were used in the research and editing process of this article. The ideas, observations, and conclusions are drawn entirely from the author’s own experience and practice.
About the Author
Yuliya Arsenyeva is a Coach for Business Leaders, working with CEOs and founders across Europe during periods of growth and high pressure. With 15 years of leadership experience in the IT industry and 2+ years of executive coaching practice, she helps leaders build the inner clarity that translates directly into stronger decisions and business results. Her clients achieve up to 33% profit growth within or shortly after three months of individual work.
References
1. Nawaz, S. (2017). The biggest mistakes new executives make. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/05/the-biggest-mistakes-new-executives-make
2. Van Gennep, A. (1909). The Rites of Passage. University of Chicago Press.
3. Bridges, W. (1991). Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Addison-Wesley.
4. Novak, K. (2025, September). The mental overload of modern leadership: Why today’s executives are burning out differently. 2040 Digital. https://www.2040digital.com/ideas-and-innovations-newsletter/the-mental-overload-of-modern-leadership-why-todays-executives-are-burning-out-differently/
5. Weis, L. & Pais, M. (2024). Team cognitive load: The hidden crisis in modern tech organizations. IT Revolution. https://itrevolution.com/articles/team-cognitive-load-the-hidden-crisis-in-modern-tech-organizations/
6. Fisher, J. & Silverglate, P. (2022). The C-suite’s role in well-being. Deloitte Insights. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/leadership/employee-wellness-in-the-corporate-workplace.html
7. Jules, C., Kshirsagar, A., & Lloyd George, K. (2022). Ready, set, scale: Shaping leaders for hypergrowth. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/ready-set-scale-shaping-leaders-for-hypergrowth
