An ice cave guide told a group of visitors something worth writing down. Even the most experienced mountaineers get stuck in the snow sometimes. Not because they're lost. Not because they picked the wrong path. Conditions changed. Visibility dropped. Stopping was the smart move.
I return to this often.
I've been stuck more times than I'd like to admit. Most people I respect have been, too. The ones who won't admit it are the ones I worry about.
The Lie Leaders Tell
There's a story leaders tell. It goes like this: you always know where you're headed. Every decision has logic behind it. Forward motion is constant. Doubt is a sign you're not cut out for the job.
A lie. And the worst part is, most leaders know it while they're telling it.
I spent several years at one of the UK's fastest-growing fintech companies, leading seven cross-functional engineering teams. At my peak, 43 people reported up through me. I loved the work. I was good at it. And about eighteen months in, I hit a wall. The work got done. The teams performed. But something was stuck.
I called it a plateau. I told myself it was fine. I kept going through the motions of someone with a plan, because looking like I had a plan was easier than admitting I didn't.
This is the lie. Not one big dramatic fabrication. A hundred small performances of forward motion, adding up to a leader going nowhere in particular.
What Being Stuck Looks Like
Being stuck doesn't look like failure. Here's the trick: it often looks fine.
From the outside, you look functional. Meetings happen. Reports get written. People get managed. Work continues. But inside, you're not moving toward anything worth naming. Spinning wheels on the surface, going nowhere deeper.
Signs I've learned to recognize in myself:
- I'm doing the same things and expecting different results (there's a word for this, and it isn't flattering)
- I'm avoiding a specific conversation I know needs to happen
- I'm busier than usual but less useful
- I stop being able to answer the question "what are you working toward right now?" without faking the answer
The last one is the clearest signal. When "where are you going?" produces fog, you're stuck. Not paused for reflection. Genuinely lost in forward-facing disguise.
Why High Performers Get Stuck and Won't Say So
Here's the problem with high achievers: asking for help feels like failure.
It's one of the most counterproductive traits you find in strong leaders, and it's extremely common. The same self-sufficiency driving performance becomes a blindspot when you need a different perspective. High achievers are wired to figure things out. Admitting you're stuck conflicts with the entire story you've been telling about yourself.
I grew up in the US Army. You don't advertise confusion. You project confidence and figure it out. This instinct serves you in some situations and buries you in others. It kept me functional at times when stopping to acknowledge the problem would have been the smarter move.
The higher you go, the harder it gets to admit you're stuck. You're supposed to have the answers. Your team is watching. Your peers are watching. Admitting you don't know what to do next feels like pulling a thread and watching everything unravel.
So instead you keep moving. More meetings, more strategy decks, more initiative names. None of it addresses the real problem. You're not going somewhere, you're doing the impression of someone going somewhere.
I've seen leaders burn their best people doing exactly this. Not because they were malicious or incompetent. Because they were stuck and wouldn't say so, and so demanded movement from everyone around them instead of standing still long enough to see clearly.
This isn't unusual. McKinsey's research on vulnerability in leadership makes the point most leaders know but ignore: admitting uncertainty doesn't weaken your standing. It builds it. Teams follow people who are honest about conditions, not people performing certainty they don't have.
Worth noting: this week saw a lot of chatter about the London Marathon runner who finished in under two hours... and came second. He ran faster than any human in history, and the story became about not winning. We've trained ourselves to define progress so narrowly it makes everything else feel like stagnation. Sometimes being stuck is refusing to call something progress because it doesn't match the one metric you decided matters.
What Gets You Moving
I've been stuck at real turning points. When I decided to leave corporate engineering. When I joined Step It Up HR and had to rebuild a professional identity, from engineer to speaker to author. When I finished writing Bad Bosses Ruin Lives and had to figure out what came next.
The same few things got me moving each time.
Tell one person the truth. Not a vague "I'm going through something." A specific, honest description of what you're stuck on. For me this is often a conversation with Deb. For you it might be a mentor, a peer, a coach. It doesn't matter who. It matters to say it out loud, because saying it out loud strips it of the distorted shape it has taken in your head.
Change the medium. When I'm stuck on a work problem, walking helps more than thinking at a desk. When I'm stuck on a direction question, travel helps more than planning. You don't think your way out of stuck. You move your body through a different environment and let your brain follow.
Stop asking "what should I do?" and start asking "what am I avoiding?" The thing I'm avoiding is almost always the thing I'm stuck on. Not mysterious once you're willing to look at it directly. The avoidance and the stuckness are the same thing wearing different clothes.
Stuck Is Not Stopped
The ice cave guide's lesson wasn't "don't get stuck." It was: getting stuck is part of the territory.
Snow happens. Visibility drops. The path you planned isn't the path you're walking. Not a failure of planning. The actual conditions.
The guides who get people killed are the ones who refuse to stop. Who push through when stopping is the smart move. Who treat being stuck as a personal insult rather than information.
Being stuck is information. Something changed. Something you haven't examined closely needs examining.
I've known leaders who went entire careers without admitting they didn't know what to do next. Every one of them had teams more lost than they were. Because the leader was performing so hard, the team had no permission to be honest about it either. You set the tone. If you're faking it, your team starts faking it, and before long everyone is stuck together while all the strategy decks say otherwise.
If you're stuck right now, stop moving long enough to see where you are. Look at what you're avoiding. Tell one person the truth about it.
The snow doesn't last forever. But you have to stop and read the conditions first.
Where are you, and who have you told?
Ken Corey is the author of Bad Bosses Ruin Lives and works with leaders through Step It Up HR.