What to Expect from the Passages

If you’ve been an executive for any length of time, you’ve already gone through one or more passages. Whether it was a professional passage such as receiving a stretch assignment or a personal one such as finding a satisfying balance between work and family, you may already have a sense of the power and possibility of a passage. But it’s possible that you went through passages unconsciously, without fully understanding what they entail. Or you may have been encouraged to “keep going” and, as a result, denied yourself the richness, significance, and growth inherent in significant life and leadership events, even when painful. If that is the case for you, it may be because we live and work in organizations that prize success above all else, defining leadership “development” in narrow, cognitive, and carefully prescribed terms. So although you may have shielded yourself from the pain and self-doubt that comes with the journey, you didn’t get to reap the true leadership development benefits.