Between ‘DANGER' & ‘happiness’

November 27, 2025

Aspiring CEOs live between ‘DANGER - KEEP OUT’ and ‘Happiness is here and now’

Some reflections on recent career strategy conversations:

One part of you knows how to stay safe, how to play the game, deliver, rise. Another part longs to feel alive in what you do, not just successful at it.

Leadership begins when you stop choosing between the two. When you accept that growth is never safe, and safety rarely helps you grow.

Every meaningful step in your career will feel dangerous at first because it asks you to become someone you have not yet been. To step beyond your competence into presence; beyond control into connection.

If you follow only the keep out sign, you may reach the top and find it empty.
If you chase only happiness here and now, you may drift without building anything that lasts.

The art of becoming a leader is learning to stand between those signs to sense which fear signals danger, and which fear signals discovery.

That is where leadership begins. Not when you know the way but when you’re willing to walk it, awake.

When your next step feels risky, can you tell whether it’s danger you sense, or possibility calling??

So how do you prepare yourself to stand in that space — between safety and growth — with the steadiness of a C-level leader?

Not by collecting more tools or titles but by cultivating three quiet capacities that no promotion can bestow.

1. The capacity to tolerate uncertainty.
C-level readiness is less about having answers and more about holding questions - staying composed when the map runs out, trusting judgment more than precedent.

2. The capacity for honest reflection.
Every leader needs a mirror that won’t flatter - a space to see how their fears, needs, and hopes shape their strategy. Self-awareness is not soft. It’s structural.

3. The capacity to stay human in power.
Influence scales faster than empathy if you’re not careful. Readiness means keeping the connection between what you decide and who is affected - clear, conscious, and kind.

Developing these capacities is not a one-time effort. It’s the daily practice of standing between those two signs - feeling the fear, choosing presence, and leading as if happiness really is here and now.

So ask yourself:
What am I doing today to become the kind of leader who can walk through the “keep out” sign and still make others feel safe enough to follow?

If you would like to talk to Andrew directly about developing yourself for C-Level readiness please email him here