When asked how he went bankrupt, a character in Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel The Sun Also Rises replies with: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
It is one of the most quoted lines in business and leadership for a reason. So many matters in organizational life follow exactly that pattern.
Leaders generally don’t lose the confidence of their team, reach burnout, or create a toxic culture — among many other outcomes — all at once.
These happen slowly over time through dozens or hundreds of small choices, actions, and compromises.
Take leadership derailment as a prime example.
Most leaders who flame out spectacularly had warning signs that accumulated over many years. They typically exhibited an inability to take feedback, a pattern of blaming others, a habit of dominating discussions, and a tendency to cut corners.
Colleagues saw the signs, but the leader, insulated by their ego and current success, seldom did. Then, suddenly, a high-stakes decision or moment arrived, and their strategy and approach collapsed, along with their career.
The leadership lesson in “gradually and then suddenly” is essentially about attention.
The gradually phase is where all the real work happens, for better or worse. Many leaders are too busy managing the urgent to notice. By the time the suddenly arrives, the outcome is largely determined.
Among the many challenges leaders become blind to, perhaps none is more pervasive than misperceiving the current reality.
Because the status, power, and influence wielded by leaders inhibit team members from giving them the unvarnished truth, they often march along believing in a reality that doesn’t match what is really going on.
As a rule, the truth becomes more filtered over time as leaders become comfortable with what they hear and know.
Over time, leaders become disconnected from reality: what is really happening with customers, how the culture is truly shaping outcomes, what evidence is driving team decisions, and how much value team members find in meetings and gatherings.
This false or incomplete sense of reality corrupts how leaders think about the problems and challenges the organization faces, or even what problems exist.
When the issue finally raises its ugly head, the leader is unprepared for what is happening. What was visible to everyone else is obscured to them.
Suddenly, they have a problem that has magnified to a point where it is nearly impossible to fix or address.
The best leaders accept that truth will be filtered to them. They can’t eliminate the status and influence they hold, but they can counter how it constrains what they learn.
So, they speak with everyone they can, asking for dissenting views and contrary opinions. But most importantly, they go to the information rather than waiting for it to come to them.
Unfiltered information lives at the edges of the organization—with frontline team members, customers, external experts, and people who have chosen to exit the organization.
Not surprisingly, leaders who walk the floor, who sit in on customer or client calls, who ask experts for critique, and who have lunch with junior team members consistently have a more accurate picture.
Leaders who want reality have to go find it.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
