The Invisible Pattern Keeping Leaders Stuck in Transition
Published by Sanita Pukite - on October 16, 2025
When working harder stops being the right answer
Newsletter in short: Studies show that two years after executive transitions, anywhere between 27 and 46 percent of them are regarded as failures or disappointments. The main reasons, according the study by McKinsey, are people, culture and politics. However, from my experience working with leaders I have observed the 4th reason – hidden patterns that stand in their way. These behaviors keep leaders in their old ways of doing and thinking and thus prevent them from moving on to their next level of leadership – the one required to succeed in a new role. This edition explores this.
The cross-country, cross-industry move.
Most career and executive coaches will tell you: never change more than one variable at a time - country, industry, or function. If you move, move step by step, and only within one dimension. That’s the ideal. But real life doesn’t always cooperate.
This is the story (anonymised and adapted) of a client who made two of those three moves - and what happened next.
Alicia stands in the kitchen making coffee, holding a loud scream inside her. The kitchen has become her place of escape. Three months into her new role in Netherlands - new country, new industry and a new company - and she’s drowning. Unfamiliar processes. Confusing internal language. Cultural codes she can’t fully relate yet. She’s working harder than she’s ever worked, and it’s not enough. She’s starting to wonder if coming here was a mistake.
A quick look at Alicia and one could see a classic transition challenge: overwhelm, adjustment stress, insufficient emotional capacity. If Alicia were to consult AI, she might get suggestions around mindfulness practices, better boundaries, time management techniques or generic advice around building her resilience. Giving it some time.
But that’s not what’s happening. What I am slowly learning about Alicia and her world is that in her previous organization and country she arrived from (US), hard work and overcoming obstacles signaled commitment. The harder she worked, the more she proved her worth. Pushing through was the currency of success and belonging.
This strategy, whether consciously or not, had served her very well so far and helped her to find the oversees opportunity she had hoped for and searched for. In a culture that rewarded visible effort, Alicia’s capacity to endure became her competitive advantage.
Now, in the new culture and environment, this was no longer the case. What I am slowly discovering using the PRO model (person, role, organization) is that in her new organization, overwhelm, overwork doesn’t signal dedication, it signals incompetence. Her new colleagues don’t see a committed professional pushing through adversity. They see someone who can’t handle the role. The very behavior that proved her worth in one system is undermining her credibility in another.
From outside it is obvious, but being inside of it - Alicia can’t see it. Because the pattern runs on autopilot. It’s beneath her awareness, quietly steering her behavior. She thinks, “I just need to work harder,” but in reality, she’s replaying an old survival strategy - one that once served her so well her, but no longer serves her now.
This is what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott would call a “false self” (2) structure: Alicia performing the version of herself she believes the organization needs (the hard working, proving, striving professional) rather than being who she actually is (competent, experienced, capable).
The performance is exhausting. And it’s invisible - until someone points it out.
How did Alicia come to this point?
Most leaders I work with have already climbed far. They’ve mastered demanding roles, managed through complexity, and built their careers on sharp intellect, discipline, and performance.
But then comes the moment that shakes them.
A new country. A new company. A new system with unspoken rules.
This is where what got them here no longer gets them through.
It is the same principles as in high altitude climbs. When a mountaineer steps onto higher altitude, the familiar rhythms of breathing no longer work. The air is thinner. Every move demands more awareness, not just strength. It requires adjustment of the form, the mindset and the being in the new situation - not just pushing harder.
And that’s when leadership stops being a technical climb and becomes an inner one.
Psychodynamic theory teaches us that we organize ourselves around anxiety (3). When we enter unfamiliar territory - literally or psychologically - anxiety rises. And we unconsciously reach for the defenses that worked before.
For Alicia, overwork is a social defense against the anxiety of ‘not being enough’. As long as she’s pushing hard, working late, struggling, she can tell herself: “I’m doing everything I can. If I fail, it’s not because I’m not good enough, it’s because the situation was impossible.”
The struggle becomes proof of effort. The effort becomes proof of worth.
If her organization rewarded the effort, Alicia would succeed using her old ways and her old methods, however, this is not the case and her behavior comes with the cost: While Alicia is busy proving herself through all the hard work she is doing, she’s not actually doing the work she was hired to do. The role she was brought in to fulfill and what she’s spending her time and energy on have diverged.
Her role says: Lead strategic initiatives, build partnerships, establish credibility through delivering strong results.
How Alicia is spending her time: Managing her own anxiety about whether she belongs in the place at all and proving her worth to firstly and foremostly – herself.
This gap - between what the role requires and what Alicia is unconsciously doing - is where performance breaks down. Not because she lacks capacity. But because she’s working on the wrong problem. The result – she might end up within the 40% of leaders who fail in their transitions. Not because she is not competent, smart or capable, but because she failed to adjust her activity and actions to the new environment and requirement.
The organization hired her to lead. She’s spending her energy proving. This is the hidden dynamic that no amount of “resilience and mindset training” will fix.
The pattern in the system
Alice isn’t alone in this. I see versions of this pattern in nearly every leader navigating significant transition:
1. The technical expert promoted to leadership who keeps solving technical problems (the role they’re comfortable with) instead of leading the team (the role they now hold).
2. The founder scaling to CEO who maintains control over every decision (the defense against losing what they built) instead of delegating authority (what the organization needs).
3. The senior leader joining a new company who tries to replicate what worked in their previous culture (loyalty to old identity) instead of adapting to the new system (what success requires).
Each of these is an unconscious loyalty to an old way of being. Each leader is living a pattern that once made them successful, but now keeps them stuck.
And here’s what makes it particularly challenging: the pattern feels like the solution, not the problem.
Alicia experiences her overwork as “commitment.” The technical expert experiences their problem-solving as “being helpful.” The founder experiences their control as “maintaining standards.”
They can’t see that the very thing they’re doing to succeed is the thing preventing success.
The challenge with this - you can’t change what you can’t see. The reason these patterns stay hidden is that we can’t see them from inside them.
It’s like trying to read the label from inside the bottle.
Alicia can’t see her “hard work and struggle = worth” pattern because she’s living inside it. To her, it just feels like “I need to work harder.” The pattern shapes her perception of reality, it’s not something she’s doing, it’s just “how things are.”
This is what psychodynamic work and coaching does: it holds up a mirror to show you the pattern you’re living in without awareness.
Not to judge it. Not even necessarily to change it (immediately). But to make it conscious, so it stops running you, and you can choose how to work with it.
In my work with Alicia, the turning point came when I asked a simple question: “What would happen if you stopped trying so hard?”
She looked at me like I’d suggested something dangerous. “If I stop working this hard… they’ll see I can’t do it.”
“See what, exactly?”
Long pause.
The rest of this story I will leave up to your imagination.
What is the essence here?
Alicia needs to recognize her beliefs and accept that they are not facts, but her beliefs and only. Once this shift takes place, everything else starts to shift.
Not immediately. Not magically. But fundamentally.
When Alicia realized the struggle wasn’t the job - the job was perfectly manageable - everything began to shift. The real struggle was her belief that she had to constantly prove she deserved to be there.
What happened with Alicia?
Once Alicia could see her “struggle = worth” pattern, she started experimenting with a different way of being.
Not by trying to “be more resilient” or “manage stress better.”
But by asking: “What if I don’t have to prove myself? What if my work and being here is legitimate simply because they hired me? What if the work itself is enough (and not the extra or the suffering like she was showing before)?”
We were not discussing positive psychology or faking till believing. This is about dismantling an unconscious belief that had been running her behavior.
So, what was the shift after all?
She stopped working late just to be seen working late or proving herself that she is trying hard to make it work.
She started asking questions she needed to ask and admitted when she did not know something.
She started to embody her leadership she was hired to do vs. spending her energy and time proving her right to be there.
And here’s what surprised her: People respected her more, not less.
Because she stopped performing the role, and started leading in the role as herself.
The false self (the struggling, proving, striving version) gave way to the true self (the experienced, capable, thoughtful professional she actually is).
It was transformative experience for Alicia who finally could acknowledge she made the right choice and start enjoying being where she had wanted to be for so long.
Alicia didn’t need to build more emotional capacity or resilience. She needed to see the pattern she was living without awareness. She needed to understand that her struggle wasn’t the job, it was the defense – her coping mechanism with the unknown and the anxiety that came with it. And once she could see it, she could work with it.
We created small experiments that she was able to put in practice to start being the leader she is and was hired for and these experiments served as basis to build on to eventually succeed in her new role.
Could she have done it herself? Perhaps. But - sometimes it is hard to see clearly when we are inside of it.
And - we can’t change what we can’t see.
P.S. What’s the moment in a leadership transition that tested you the most?
References:
1. Keller, S., & Meaney, M. (2018, May). Successfully transitioning to new leadership roles. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/people%20and%20organizational%20performance/our%20insights/successfully%20transitioning%20to%20new%20leadership%20roles/successfully-transitioning-to-new-leadership-roles-web-final.pdf
2. Winnicott, D.W. (1960). “Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self.” In The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment.
3. Menzies Lyth, I. (1960). “Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety.” Human Relations, 13(2), 95-121.
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