Leadership Beyond Perseverance: When the Path No Longer Fits

I spent nearly a decade working toward a career I eventually felt stuck inside.

That realization did not happen all at once. For years, academia seemed like the obvious place to build my career. I studied ethics, became a professor, and taught courses in social responsibility, critical thinking, and moral decision-making. I loved helping students think through difficult questions and navigate competing responsibilities when no path was entirely straightforward.

The problem was that the work I found most meaningful was not the work the academia most rewarded. As my career progressed, the emphasis fell more heavily on research, publishing, and securing grants. Those priorities are essential to academic life, but they were not the parts that gave me energy. I was more drawn to mentorship, teaching, dialogue, and helping people make sense of complexity. Tension continued to rise until it felt like I was forced to choose between my career and what I actually enjoyed doing.

Eventually, I had to ask whether the path I had spent years pursuing was still the right one. That question was difficult because career decisions are rarely only practical. They are bound up with identity, purpose, and the future we imagined for ourselves. However, that experience taught me something I now believe is central to leadership: Leadership begins when we can see the difference between a challenge that requires perseverance and a misalignment that requires change.

Sometimes we can push through a difficult career season for a higher goal or until something changes. Sometimes persevering just means continuing in a career that will never fit your needs. What ultimately became clear to me was that staying in academia would lead to burnout. That clarity, however, was hard-won.

I gained this clarity through three practices that shaped my path from teaching to technology and eventually on to executive coaching.

1. Gather Information Before Taking Action

Before you can know whether a situation calls for perseverance or change, you have to understand the system you are operating within. This can be difficult for high-performing people to accept because effort is often the strategy that has worked in the past. When something is not going well, our instinct may be to prepare more thoroughly, adjust our approach, or simply endure. Those responses can be useful, but they are not always sufficient.

Some challenges require more effort; others require a clearer understanding of the environment itself. I learned this lesson early in my academic career, when I was a new professor trying to build the kind of teaching practice I believed students deserved. I had invested significant time mentoring students, designing engaging class sessions, and creating learning experiences that helped students think critically about complex ethical questions. That work was central to my sense of purpose as an educator, and where I believed I could make the most meaningful contribution.

A few months into my role, my department chair asked me to take on additional work in support of the university’s research agenda. The request was not simply a matter of adding a few more hours to an already full schedule; it would have required me to scale back the time I allocate to teaching. I was being asked to redirect my energy away from the work I valued most, toward the work the institution prioritized.

At first, I approached the situation like a communication problem. I explained my commitments, clarified the trade-offs, and set a boundary around how I wanted to shape my time and career. The response was revealing. Rather than engaging with the substance of that boundary, my chair continued to push, making it clear that I was expected to “get in line” with priorities I did not share.

That moment clarified something larger than a disagreement between two colleagues. It revealed a deeper misalignment between my values and the system I was working within. The issue was not only that the institution valued research more than teaching or mentorship, it also left little room for employees to define the shape and meaning of their own careers. Mine were fundamentally misaligned, and perseverating this role would always mean prioritizing research.

That experience taught me to ask better questions before deciding what action to take.

• What kind of system am I operating in?

• What does this environment value or reward?

• Is there room for my difference here?

These questions do not eliminate difficulty, but they can clarify what’s possible, what’s not, and where meaningful action may still be available.

2. Agency Is Not the Same as Control

Once I understood that the issue was not only interpersonal but also systemic, my next task was to determine where I still had agency. I could not change my environment, but I could decide how long I wanted to keep trying to succeed in a system whose incentives were pulling me away from the work I found most meaningful.

That’s the difference between agency and control. Control is about whether we can change the conditions around us. Agency is about what we choose to do within those conditions. For me, agency meant recognizing that I could not reshape the system, but I could make a deliberate choice about whether to remain within it.

That realization led me to make a significant career pivot into the technology sector, where I found myself doing work that looked different on the surface but drew on many of the same commitments. At Microsoft, I taught people how to become more effective managers, communicate with greater clarity, and navigate the human complexity of organizational life. The context had changed, but the underlying work had not: helping people understand the systems they were part of and make more intentional choices within them.

This distinction between control and agency has become central to how I think about leadership. Leadership begins not with the ability to change everything, but with the clarity to see where meaningful choice still exists.

3. Vision and Leadership

Recognizing where we have agency is only part of the work. Once we understand the system we’re operating within and can see where meaningful choice still exists, we still have to decide what action is worth taking.

This is where The Humphrey Group’s teaching on vision becomes essential. Vision helps leaders clarify what they believe, value, and what they’re trying to make possible. In this framework, agency is not simply the freedom to act, but rather it is acting with intention. Without vision, we may choose the easiest path, the safest path, or the path others expect from us. With vision, we are better equipped to choose the path that reflects what we value.

In my own career, vision helped me see that leaving academia was not simply an act of escape. It was a move toward work that more fully reflected the kind of contribution I wanted to make. If leadership begins when we can see the difference between a challenge that requires perseverance and a misalignment that requires change, then vision helps us make that distinction with purpose.

Leadership Begins with Choice

Looking back, my journey from teaching to technology to coaching has not been as disconnected as it might appear. The setting has changed, but the underlying work has remained remarkably consistent: helping people think clearly, act intentionally, and make thoughtful choices inside complex systems.

That continuity became easier to see once I understood the system I was in rather than assuming the problem was mine, alone, to solve. I had to recognize the difference between agency and control, so I could stop trying to change what was beyond my reach and focus on the choices still available to me. And, I had to return to my vision: the values, commitments, and contribution I wanted my work to reflect.

Those steps did not make the path simple, but they did make it clearer. They helped me understand that leaving academia was a choice to stop adapting to a system that was pulling me away from the work I found most meaningful. Leadership often asks us to make that kind of distinction.

Some challenges require patience, endurance, and continued effort. Others ask us to recognize that the path we are on no longer reflects the work we are here to do. Leadership begins when we can see the difference—and choose our next step with purpose. 

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