Innocent thought. Terrible idea.

In respect of your time - here's your TL;DR summary:

Leadership doesn’t fail because people don’t care or try hard enough.
It fails because good leaders get dragged into the weeds, rewarded for busyness, and slowly loses the space to think, lead and create impact.

This piece is about why that pull is so strong, how leaders unknowingly reinforce it, and the small, deliberate shifts that help you lead from above the weeds instead of drowning in them.

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“I’ll just clear up a few things first” is one of the juiciest, most seductive lies we tell ourselves.

You know that feeling. You come into work bubbling over with enthusiasm and the sincere intention to be leadery, strategic and brilliant. Today is for the big picture stuff.

And by mid-morning you’re buried in emails, interruptions, other people’s priorities and up to your eyeballs in meetings you don’t want to be at. Again.

Leadership is exciting. There’s the lure of more influence, and impact. The reality is often more like “Congratulations on the promotion. Now here’s your inbox.”

The struggle is real. Most middle level managers, team leads and executives I work with:

• Spend a disproportionate amount of time on tactical work

• Are rewarded for responsiveness, not for challenging outdated norms

• Feel that slowing down to speed up is a luxury they don’t get

A leadership role gives you the potential to be strategic and create impact. But it doesn’t give you protection from being dragged, kicking and screaming or not, into the weeds.

And so, “leadership” becomes something you’re supposed to do…on top of everything else.

Why this matters

Welcome to 2026. There’s a flicker of optimism about, which is lovely. But let’s not kid ourselves. Most organisations are still a bit cooked, people are tired, and the work hasn’t magically simplified overnight.

I’ve been talking about lifting leadership for the better part of a decade, and the need for a loving kick in the pants hasn’t gone away just because the mood music has improved.

While you’re tangled in the weeds your team is waiting for you. When things feel uncertain, distracted and messy, leadership matters more than ever.

And for your business, decisions default to short term survival, teams value busyness over progress and your leadership razzle-dazzle is wasted.

It’s not another “just push through” season, and if effort was the answer, you’d be done. It takes a shift in how you think and behave as a leader, and a clearer read on the system you’re working inside.

So whether you feel like you’re stuck in the weeds, or have a colleague banging on about their situation, this is for you.

You can't lead from the weeds

Three ways to stop you from getting dragged back in

1. Understand the pull back into the weeds

Getting dragged back into the weeds rarely comes from one place. It’s usually a mix of culture, expectations from above, unspoken rules with peers, and your own very sensible habits. None of it is malicious. Most of it looks like being helpful, responsive, and good at your job.

Which is exactly why it’s so sticky.

I see it a lot in one-to-one coaching. A senior leader I worked with in a heavily regulated government organisation genuinely wanted to think more strategically. Her role demanded it. Yet everything came back to her for sign-off. Peers checked with her. Her team checked with her. Not because they were difficult, but because they were cautious, polite, and used to a very command-and-control style before her.

For her getting out of the weeds became an obsession. Not in a stressful way - more like “why am I still talking about this?”. She realised the issue wasn’t workload, it was expectation and transparency.

She set about a blatant rewiring. Less fixing, more coaching and trust. She talked openly and often about strategic objectives and linked them to a plan and pathway. There was initial resistance but as her team’s confidence grew, so did their impact and results.

I’ve seen it in leadership teams too. Busyness is a BS badge of honour that gets competitive. Long hours, full calendars, sleeves permanently rolled up. The moment someone steps back to think, it looks suspicious. As if leadership only counts if you’re visibly exhausted and personally involved in everything.

Peer pressure is a tough dynamic to shift.

In teams I’ve worked with, change only happened when leaders stopped pretending thinking time was a guilty pleasure and owned it as proper leadership work. They made it noisy and visible, calendars blocked, whiteboards covered in scribbles and Post-its multiplying like rabbits.

2. Recalibrate your habits, and your ego

One of the trickiest parts of getting out of the weeds is noticing how much you’re helping yourself stay there. Not because you’re doing anything wrong. It’s because being useful feels great. You know the work. You get quick wins. You get thanked. Leadership, on the other hand, can feel slower, fuzzier, and a bit like standing out in the open without your fly undone.

Recalibration starts with awareness. Clocking the moment you’re genuinely leading, and the moment you slip back into the familiarity of the weeds. No judgement. Just noticing when you’ve chosen safety over stretch.

There’s another sneaky dynamic at play too. When your role shifts, people don’t magically update how they view you. They still see you as their manager who makes everything safe and steady. If you keep responding like that person, they’ll keep treating you like that person. It’s a lovely, cosy, self-reinforcing loop.

The leaders I mentor this don’t disappear or suddenly become hands-off. They change how they’re involved. There’s less rescuing, more coaching and partnering with more asking questions than answering them.

Which you may need to say out loud. Seriously, if your behaviour’s going to change, don’t leave it up to people do decide why.

3. Prove it

People won’t change how they treat you and you won’t have more impact just because of a sexy “aha” moment. You need to signal the shift.

I worked with a leader who battled with this. He’s a stunning strategical thinker with vision for miles, which was his best kept secret. His task was to be more visible as a leader and less as someone fighting for his life in transactional chaos.

So we changed the signal. Less task commentary. More pattern-spotting. Fewer heroic saves. More “here’s what’s coming and why it matters.”

He didn’t only just announce a new version of himself. He behaved like it.

So, here’s a place to start. Notice when you’re in leadership mode and when you’re hiding in the weeds. Pick one relationship where you’ll partner instead of rescue. And make one piece of strategic thinking visible this week. Nothing flash or fancy. Just deliberate. Leadership rarely changes overnight. It shifts in moments you choose differently.