Avoiding the Leadership Yips
Rediscovering Your Sweet Spot and Addressing Blind Spots, So You Can Crush Your Next Round of Leadership
Every leader eventually hits a moment when the reliable instincts, habits, and strengths that once powered their success suddenly stop producing the same results. It’s a disorienting experience—one that feels a lot like getting the yips in golf. Your swing worked yesterday. Today, it betrays you.
But in leadership, the yips don’t show up in your backswing.
They show up in your reactions, patterns, assumptions, and blind spots.
And while they can feel like failure, they’re actually something much more important:
a signal that you’ve entered a new leadership season that requires a new swing.
This theme was talked about in Roger’s conversation with longtime friend and executive leader Vince Burens, whose journey illustrates how high-achieving leaders grow, stall, self-sabotage, and ultimately evolve.
When Your Once-Strong Swing Starts Working Against You
Vince shared that many of the things that made him successful early in his career simply don’t work anymore. As he put it, he realized that some of those old strengths “aren’t my fastball anymore.”
This is the leadership yips: continuing to rely on a swing built for a former season.
Leaders often miss this because:
Old habits feel comfortable
Early success reinforces outdated patterns
Blind spots grow as leaders rise
And more importantly: leaders stop getting honest feedback
What used to move you forward quietly begins to hold you back
Rediscovering Your Sweet Spot
One of the most meaningful parts of leadership growth is remembering—and reclaiming—what you actually do best. Vince described how others often saw strengths in him long before he could see them in himself. He talked about leaders and mentors who held up a “true mirror” to help him understand the gifts he brought into every room.
This is the first antidote to the leadership yips: clarity.
Clarity about:
What energizes you
What you’re uniquely great at
What you do and where you do it, that creates impact
And what your team relies on you for
Rediscovering your sweet spot is all about alignment.
Addressing the Blind Spots That Undermine You
While strengths propel leaders forward, blind spots quietly sabotage progress and undermine your leadership foundation.
In the conversation, Vince acknowledged that he used to lead boldly while being “massively insecure at the same time.”
Like many leaders, he wrestled with people-pleasing, over-functioning, and carrying weight that wasn’t his to carry.
This is where self-sabotage sneaks in.
Leaders often:
Avoid hard conversations
Stay overly responsible
Try to win everyone’s approval
Or double down on outdated strengths
But Vince identified a deeper insight:
Most leaders avoid feedback because they’re afraid it will confirm their worst fears about themselves.
And when leaders block feedback, self-awareness disappears—and the yips take over.
Addressing blind spots is not about criticism.
It’s about liberation—removing the friction that keeps a leader from fully stepping into their next season.
Why a New Season Requires a New Swing
One of the metaphors Vince shared came out of his experience in golf. He realized he was still swinging like someone much younger, ignoring the reality that a new season of life required a different approach.
“You need a new swing,” he said matter-of-factly.
The same is true in leadership.
Your next season requires:
New habits
New awareness
New rhythms
New levels of honesty
New ways of investing in others
Leaders often think doing more is the answer.
But most of the time, the answer is doing it differently. Learning to lean on wisdom and embracing what’s true.
As Vince put it, “You can’t microwave wisdom. It’s a slow bake.”
And wisdom is exactly what forms when a leader embraces the need for a new swing rather than resisting it. It comes from deep self-awareness and humility to look at yourself from a fresh perspective.
Crushing Your Next Round of Leadership
Addressing the leadership yips isn’t about fear.
It’s about courage.
It’s about embracing:
Where you’re stuck
What’s no longer serving you
What you’ve outgrown
What your leadership now requires
What you are uniquely great at
And what your next season demands from you
When a leader rediscovers their sweet spot and addresses the blind spots that undermine it, the shift is profound. Energy returns. Clarity sharpens. Confidence resets. The swing feels natural again.
And most importantly:
You stop leading from instinct and start leading from identity.
That’s what allows leaders to crush not just their current responsibilities, but the next round of leadership waiting for them.
Ask yourself:
The Swing Test:
Are the habits and strengths that got you here starting to feel heavy or ineffective?
Where do you feel like you are working harder but seeing fewer results?
The Takeaway
The gap you feel right now—that sense of being "stuck" or "off your game"—isn't a sign that you’ve reached your limit. It’s a signal that your work isn't finished. This dissatisfaction is actually an invitation to a new season; it’s proof that there is more ahead for you and that your best leadership is still to come.
The "yips" are simply a reminder that you’ve outgrown your old swing. It’s time to develop a new one that feels natural, powerful, and sustainable.
Let’s Talk.
Are you ready to adjust your leadership swing? We’d love to help.
Together, we can create a plan that helps you lead your team with vision, clarity and purpose.
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