I talk a lot about altitude with my executive coaching clients. One conversation in particular was with a senior leader who sat down across from me and said, "I'm working ridiculous hours, I'm constantly busy, and yet it feels like I'm falling further behind every week."
What struck me wasn't the workload itself, but the contradiction. Things were ticking along well, her team was delivering, and her dashboard showed everything was under control. But she spent most of her days bouncing from issue to issue, rarely finishing what she had planned to accomplish before the next urgent matter popped up. Because she was dependable and responsive, decisions, problems, requests, and approvals continually found their way to her. And every day, she felt like she was climbing up the down escalator.
As we unpacked her reality, we noticed a pattern emerging. There was a common thread at play: decisions flowed through her; problems landed on her desk; questions had to be answered by her. Her team depended on her for direction, approvals, information, and problem-solving, leaving her days consumed by operational details, responding to issues, and helping people navigate obstacles.
Of course, these are all important activities, to be sure. It might be tempting to think that she was not delegating well, or that she was a workaholic, but the real issue turned out to be her leadership altitude. She was spending most of her time operating at a Manager altitude, instead of the more strategic Vice-President altitude. In essence, she hadn't adjusted her altitude with her new responsibilities and span of control. That conversation stayed with me because I've seen countless versions of it throughout my years of executive coaching: leaders unaware they are flying at the wrong altitude.
THE ALTITUDE GAP
One of the most common, and most challenging, leadership transitions a leader can make is the shift from managing day-to-day operations and individual contributors, to leading other leaders, systems, functions, and strategy.
As leaders move through organizations, the horizon line they're responsible for monitoring expands. They become accountable for larger systems, more people, greater complexity, and decisions whose consequences may not appear for years. But many leaders continue operating at the altitude that made them successful in their previous role.
The behaviours that help someone become an outstanding Supervisor differ from those required to become an outstanding Director. The strengths that help someone succeed as a Director may eventually become limitations as they move into Vice-President, Executive, and C-suite leadership. That's why so many talented leaders feel overwhelmed. They're trying to lead a large organization while spending most of their time solving low-altitude problems.
Over the years, I've developed metaphors for leadership using three aircraft: the Helicopter, the Jet, and the Starship. Each operates at a different altitude and provides a different perspective. And each becomes increasingly important as a leader's scope of responsibility expands.
THE HELICOPTER
Imagine your leadership as a helicopter hovering a few hundred feet above the ground. You're no longer standing in the middle of the action, but you're still close enough to see what's happening on the ground. You can spot bottlenecks, notice tension between teams, identify missed handoffs, and observe where work is getting stuck.
This is the altitude of operational leadership, where leaders coach people, remove obstacles, allocate resources, clarify priorities, and help teams navigate challenges. Helicopter altitude keeps leaders connected to reality because they can still see the work as it unfolds.
Most of us spend a significant portion of our early leadership careers here. Supervisors, Managers, Team Leads, Project Managers, and frontline leaders often need to operate predominantly at this altitude because their success depends on helping people execute effectively to produce results.
The challenge is that Helicopter altitude feels productive. You can see a problem and solve it. You can answer a question and help someone move forward. You can remove a roadblock and watch progress happen almost immediately. The feedback is instant, and that sense of usefulness can become habitual.
Over time, some leaders become so accustomed to solving problems that they unknowingly train everyone around them to bring problems to them. Decisions, accountability, and responsibility all begin to migrate upward. And before long, the leader knows everything that's happening this week and very little about what needs to happen three months or three years from now.
I've worked with executives whose calendars looked like emergency dispatch units. Every issue found its way to them, minor conflicts required their involvement, and difficult decision somehow became their responsibility. They were admired, trusted, hardworking... and exhausted.
THE JET
As leaders move into larger and more complex roles, another shift begins to happen. The work itself becomes less visible. At first, it can feel uncomfortable, especially if you've built their careers on being knowledgeable, responsive, and closely connected to the work. Climbing higher often means giving up some of that visibility.
A Director overseeing six teams can't possibly keep track of every conversation, customer issue, project challenge, or interpersonal conflict occurring across their organization. And a Vice-President, responsible for several other leaders, hundreds of employees, and complex organizations, certainly can't.
What emerges in its place is something different: noticing patterns. Instead of seeing a single employee struggling, leaders begin noticing recurring turnover across a department. Instead of focusing on one delayed project, they begin recognizing a resource allocation issue affecting multiple teams. Individual events still matter, but they become clues pointing toward something larger, rather than signals to jump into action and solve them.
This is Jet altitude. The horizon expands dramatically. Details become harder to see (as they must), but the broader landscape becomes clearer. Leaders begin examining how departments interact, where priorities collide, what external conditions will likely impact their business, how information flows through the organization, and which systems are producing the outcomes they see.
The questions change as well. Rather than asking, "How do we solve this problem?" leaders begin asking, "Why does this problem keep appearing?" Rather than focusing on individual performance, they start paying attention to the systems and structure, processes, communication channels, incentives, governance, and culture.
Many leaders arrive at positions that require Jet altitude long before they become comfortable operating there. They continue solving issues one at a time, when the real opportunity is to improve the system creating those issues in the first place.
Jet altitude comes with its own traps, however. Leaders can become so fascinated by the system of strategy, frameworks, organizational design, and planning that they lose touch with the people living inside it. Most of us have experienced a strategic initiative that looked brilliant in a boardroom and bewildering everywhere else. Reality has a way of exposing details that weren't visible from 40,000 feet.
THE STARSHIP
The further leaders advance, the more another question begins to emerge. The focus shifts from "What's happening?" and "Why is it happening?" to a different question altogether: "What will happen next?" This is where Starship altitude becomes necessary.
Imagine looking back at Earth from space. Cities fade from view. Roads become invisible. Eventually, even national borders lose their meaning. Our perspective changes completely.
At Starship altitude, we stop focusing primarily on operations and organizational systems. Our attention shifts toward forces that may shape the organization for years, and sometimes decades, into the future.
We begin asking different kinds of questions: What technological shifts are reshaping the industry? How will demographics change the workforce? What customer expectations are emerging? What assumptions do we hold today that future leaders may laugh at? What must this organization become if it hopes to remain relevant ten or twenty years from now?
This is the altitude of enterprise leadership. It's where leaders wrestle with the big, bold questions of purpose, direction, positioning, legacy, and long-term relevance. They are less concerned with certainty, and more with understanding what version of the future may be emerging and how today's decisions might improve the organization's chances of thriving within them.
Starship altitude is partly about learning to notice what others overlook. Tomorrow rarely arrives all at once. The clues are usually visible long before the disruption becomes obvious, but they can be easy to miss when your attention is consumed by today's challenges.
Starship altitude has risks of its own. We've all encountered leaders who seem permanently stationed in orbit. They speak passionately about the next decade while their teams are struggling with problems that have existed for the last two years. Their vision may be compelling, but their connection to present-day reality becomes increasingly thin.
Organizations need leaders who can imagine the future, but they also need leaders who understand the realities of today.
WHEN SUCCESS BECOMES A LIABILITY
Promotions can create an unexpected problem: the behaviours that helped us earn a promotion to the next level of leadership frequently become the very behaviours that limit us afterwards.
The Manager who built a reputation for being responsive becomes the Vice-President who can't stop getting involved. The Director who became successful through personal expertise struggles to delegate decisions. The executive who built a career by solving problems continues solving them long after the role requires system-level thinking instead.
That's why leadership transitions can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. The issue is rarely intelligence, capability, commitment, or work ethic. It's altitude. The role requires one perspective while the leader continues operating from another.
That's exactly what was happening with the Vice-President I mentioned earlier. She was struggling because her responsibilities had evolved, but her altitude had not. Once she began spending less time solving operational issues and more time leading at the altitude her role demanded, something interesting happened. Her calendar became less crowded; her teams became more capable; her decisions became more strategic. And she finally stopped feeling like she was climbing the down escalator. What a relief!
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
The Altitude Audit: Set aside 10 minutes and reflect on the past two weeks. First, ask yourself:
Have I been spending most of my time at Helicopter altitude, focused on tasks, issues, and execution?
Have I been operating primarily at Jet altitude, focused on systems, priorities, and cross-functional outcomes?
Have I been spending meaningful time at Starship altitude, scanning the horizon and thinking about the future?
Now ask a second question: What altitude does my role actually require most often?
Notice any gap between where you've been spending your time and where your leadership responsibilities require you to be. Then reflect on:
What keeps pulling me toward my current altitude?
What leadership challenges might be connected to this gap?
What important signals, opportunities, or risks might I be missing?
What is one thing I could do this week to operate at the altitude my role requires?
Many leadership challenges are not capability problems; they're altitude problems. Sometimes the most important growth a leader can make is learning to see a different horizon.
If you're curious about how your own leadership altitude may be helping or limiting your effectiveness, I'd love to help you explore it. Reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.