ME01b: Stretched to Breaking Point - Or Is It the System?
What disillusionment reveals about leadership collapse, strategic drift, and the quiet erosion of belief.
In last week’s post, we explored the internal rupture—when capable, committed leaders begin to quietly ask:
“Is it me?”
This week, we ask the harder, more uncomfortable version of that question:
“Or is it the system?”
And we follow it to where it really leads.
The silence beneath the performance
Maya kept showing up.
To meetings. To one-on-ones. To leadership check-ins.
She smiled. Took notes. Used the right language. Hit her deadlines.
But inside?
She was no longer in the room.
The real part of her—the reflective, strategic, human part—had started to withdraw.
She still delivered.
She still looked competent.
But she no longer believed.
That’s not disengagement. That’s structural clarity.
When good people go quiet, we tend to treat it as apathy.
But often, it’s self-protection.
A rational response to systems that demand contradiction, reward performance over coherence, and punish those who speak truth too early.
This is how it spreads:
Smart successors quietly decline promotions
Middle managers stop volunteering for stretch roles
High-potential leaders disengage from development tracks they no longer trust
Coaching sessions become choreography
And all the while, the performance continues.
Until it doesn’t.
The system is signalling collapse. Just not in the way we’ve been trained to look for it.
According to DDI’s 2025 Global Leadership Forecast:
Over 50% of identified successors no longer want the senior roles they’re being groomed for
Edelman reports that 70% of employees believe business leaders deliberately mislead them
Gallup’s credibility metrics have dropped from 46% to 29% in two years
These aren’t data points. They’re structural fractures.
When trust erodes, alignment becomes a performance.
When belief evaporates, culture becomes a costume.
When leadership legitimacy breaks, strategic risk multiplies.
The system doesn’t crash all at once.
It drifts.
Silently.
Until one day, nobody’s really leading anymore.
This is where systems ossify
People don’t just burn out.
They stop adapting.
They stop dissenting.
They stop taking initiative because nothing upstream seems real.
Strategy becomes presentation.
Innovation becomes risk.
Change becomes fatigue.
And the system slowly trades its future for its optics.
This isn’t a people problem. It’s a design problem.
The way we structure leadership right now:
Overloads individuals
Incentivizes compliance
Silences the signal carriers
And externalises risk through churn, resignation, and spin
And the worst part?
It all still looks functional.
Until you really listen.
Until you start asking not just how people are performing, but what they still believe in.
So what does this mean?
If you’re noticing disillusionment in yourself or your team.
If you’re watching smart people pull back, not because they’re lazy but because they’re lucid.
You’re seeing the real signals of system-level misalignment.
Those signals aren’t obstacles. They’re invitations.
To stop pretending.
To stop fixing people and start redesigning roles.
To stop selling performance and start building legitimacy.
Praxis Q calls this threshold state The Drift.
It’s not loud.
It’s not visible on dashboards.
But it’s real.
It’s what happens when leaders stay in place—but leave in spirit.
And the only way out of The Drift is through:
through better diagnosis
through systems that reward coherence
through leadership practices designed to hold contradiction, not deny it
If It Wasn’t Her Fault, It Was Her Move.
Maya still sat in her office, alone.
The spreadsheet still wouldn’t load.
Messages kept arriving from her team—none urgent, all carrying something unsaid.
Small hesitations. Quiet signals.
A mounting pressure they weren’t voicing, because she hadn’t either.
And above it all, the COO’s last message lingered:
"We just need to get the numbers back on track."
As if numbers meant belief.
As if performance could be conjured on command.
As if the silence in her team’s eyes hadn’t already spoken.
She didn’t slam her laptop.
Didn’t storm out.
Didn’t even reply.
She just sat there.
And in that stillness, something shifted.
She didn’t have a plan yet—just the quiet sense that if anything was going to change, it would have to start not just with who she was, but with how she showed up, what her role had become, and the system she was still, somehow, a part of.
She wasn’t sure what came next.
But for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t waiting for permission to find out.
Reader’s Path: When the Role Stops Holding
You’ve read what happened next for Maya. The subtle cracks in the system. The quiet retreat behind polite performance. The unbearable weight of roles that no longer make sense—but still demand everything.
This isn’t a manifesto. It’s a mirror.
1️⃣ Pause
Ask yourself (without fixing, just noticing):
Where have I been asked to do two things that cancel each other out?
What am I still holding, long after it stopped serving?
Call it contradiction fatigue. Or quiet refusal. But give it a name.
2️⃣ Reflect
Try this simple self-check.
If you feel stretched:
“I’m trying to keep up, but the expectations keep multiplying.”
“I feel responsible, but never resourced.”
If you feel adrift:
“I’m doing the job, but not the meaning.”
“I don’t know what I believe about leadership anymore.”
Need a way to sense the difference?
👉 Try the mini-diagnostic embedded in the essay to reflect on how much you might be Stretched or Drifting?
3️⃣ Explore
Want to see the sources that shaped Maya’s structural unravelling?
Essay Two Reference Guide
Burnout. Mistrust. Contradictions at scale.
Includes readings on adaptive leadership, culture decay, and organisational erosion.
4️⃣ Look Ahead
Next:
“Then What?”
When the system won’t change fast enough—and leaving isn’t an option—how do you begin to lead from what’s real?
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Read the next Maya Essay: The Self-Help Trap
Highly thought provoking - thank you for sharing this.
Watched the Edelman report on Grievance / Trust erosion - clearly I echo the thoughts of many who would want see Trust restored or at least society with less grievance.