Not every great person fits every season.Not every great person fits every season.

The storm that comes up over open water.

For a long time, everything grew. The business came to us. Success had a rhythm, and we mistook that rhythm for the way good people simply are.

Then the weather changes. Not slowly, but the way a storm comes up over open water. A market shifts, a deal falls through, growth that used to arrive on its own now has to be hunted. And the very conditions that once made everyone look strong begin to expose them.

Leaders feel it first as unease. Then the unease goes looking for a name, and the easiest name is a person. People get judged more quickly and sorted into boxes. This one still fits, that one no longer does. More gets said about people than to them. And before anyone has asked the real question, the exit conversation is already being rehearsed in someone's head.

This paper is a follow-up to The Seasonal Leader. That paper argued that organisations move through seasons, and each season asks for a different kind of leader. This one turns the same lens one layer down, onto the team. Because the real question is not whether someone has stopped performing. It is whether the season has turned underneath them, and they have not yet found the words for it.

The most useful question is no longer: is this person still good enough?

It is: is this person still in the right season, and are we honest enough to say so?

The labels we reach for too quickly.

When unease appears, we look for something to attach it to. And the easiest thing to attach it to is the person.

I see it in boardrooms and leadership teams again and again. Within a few sentences, a person has been reduced to a label. "Not entrepreneurial enough." "Too operational." "Too corporate." "Stuck in the old way." It sounds like a conclusion, but it is almost always just the friction of a new phase with a name stuck on it.

Labels are comfortable because they are tidy. They locate the problem inside one person, which conveniently means the rest of the system, including us, gets to stay the same.

Behind many of those labels is a quieter truth. People bring different energy, strengths and pace in different phases of growth. A label describes the discomfort. It rarely diagnoses the cause.

Two halves of one move.

When the storm hits, most organisations do one sensible thing. They look at the top. They ask whether the leadership still fits the season, and often they change it. That was the argument of the first paper, and it still holds.

But changing the leader is only half the move. A new seasonal leader does not, by appointment alone, bring the organisation back to the season that matches its vision and its goals. Underneath that leader sits a whole organisation of people, and they are in seasons too.

So the real task of the seasonal leader is not only to lead differently. It is to go deeper, into the people. To understand before expecting to be understood. That is what turns a change at the top into a change that actually moves the business.

Because the same truth that applies to leaders applies one layer down. A person can be talented, loyal, experienced and genuinely capable, and still struggle, because the organisation has entered a phase that no longer fits the way they do their best work. That is not failure. It is a seasonal mismatch.

Some people are natural pioneers. Others create rhythm. Some bring stability and trust. Some come alive in transformation. And some carry the memory and the culture that everything else depends on. None is better than another. They are simply suited to different weather.

What actually changes when the season turns.

When someone says a colleague has "changed", it is almost never true. That person has stayed exactly the same. What changed is the weather around them. I usually see it in four places at once.

Let me give the example I run into most. For years the work arrived on its own. You only had to deliver. Then growth stalls, and suddenly that same team has to go out. Call, win, sell. It was always in the job description, but it was never needed, so it never really got into the hands. Put a capable person in front of work they do not enjoy, cannot yet do, or secretly do not want, and they freeze. And from a distance, freezing looks exactly like failure. It is not.

None of this is about competence. It is about the fit between a person's natural energy and what the moment now demands.

Not underperformance. A change of season.

This is where the unease comes from. A Scaler dropped into a sudden crisis looks too slow. A Pioneer in a maturing organisation looks disruptive, or not a team player. A Steward in a turnaround looks like they are clinging to the past. None of them got worse at their work. The season began asking for a different energy than the one they naturally bring.

And here is the hardest part, the part we almost always miss. Often the person cannot name it either. They only feel that it no longer flows, that work which used to be effortless now drags. That wordless feeling, on both sides of the table, is what quietly turns a change of season into a verdict.

Left unspoken, the doubt grows. It is invisible, because there is no single event to point to. It is gradual, eroding over months. It is personal, because both sides feel judged. And it compounds, because doubt changes how we treat someone, more oversight and less room, which suppresses the very strengths we hired them for.

This is why the seasons are a more powerful force than most leaders expect. We assume performance is a fixed trait, that people either have it or have lost it. In reality, performance is contextual. Move the same person into the right season and the old strength tends to return.

I judged too quickly. It is what keeps me sharp.

I should be honest, because I have made this mistake myself, and it is exactly that mistake that keeps me sharp now.

I have spent most of my career inside growth companies. Growth has a culture of its own. High energy, always on, a relentless growth mindset. Live in that climate long enough and you start to believe it is simply how good people work.

Then the weather changed, and people who were brilliant when the work came to them were suddenly asked to go out and find it. They slowed down. They froze. And I judged quickly, because in the end it is always about performance, isn't it? I waited for some formal review moment to raise it, when I should simply have talked about it there and then. I did not take the time to ask which season the person was in, or which season the company had entered, and to talk about both, openly and early.

That was an earlier version of me. I have learned from it, and the lesson is simple. Understand before you expect to be understood.

It is also why I no longer believe in the annual appraisal, or in the performance review as a ritual. By the time you sit down for it, the moment to act has usually passed. A leader should sit with their people regularly, every month, as a matter of course. Not to judge, but to stay close.

That rhythm does not stop seasons from turning. Nothing does. What it does is make sure no one is ambushed. Most season changes announce themselves quietly, months before they become a problem. The monthly conversation is simply where you hear them in time.

FIT, and how to tell a mismatch apart.

In my work as interim CEO and executive search partner, I have trained myself into one habit. The moment the doubt appears, I slow down. No judgement yet, three questions first. I call it FIT, and it is not a model for a slide. It is the three questions I run through in my head before I form an opinion about anyone.

That last question matters most in practice, because it can go two ways, and they are opposites. Real underperformance calls for feedback and a plan. A season mismatch calls for something else entirely: a different challenge, or an honest and respectful goodbye. Confuse the two, and you solve the wrong problem. Here is how to tell which one you are looking at.

Key takeaways for boards, founders and leadership teams.

1. 01

   Restlessness is data, not a verdict. When unease appears about a once strong person, treat it as a prompt to diagnose fit, not as proof of decline.

2. 02

   Changing the leader is only half the move. A new seasonal leader brings the business back to its season only by going deeper, into the people. Understand before expecting to be understood.

3. 03

   Diagnose the season before you judge the person. In a changing organisation, most performance problems are placement problems wearing a disguise.

4. 04

   Mismatch and underperformance need opposite responses. One needs feedback and a plan. The other needs a new challenge, or an honest and respectful exit.

5. 05

   Talk monthly, not annually. The season conversation, held early and often, is what keeps a change of season from hardening into a verdict no one saw coming.

Respecting what someone has given while being honest about what the next phase needs is one of the hardest things leadership asks of us. It is also one of the most human. If the honest conclusion is that someone no longer fits the season your company is in, that is not a failure. It is only a failure if it is never made discussable.

Name it early, keep it human, and people become more conscious of where they truly belong. Conscious people make better choices, including about themselves. Make it discussable, and keep it human.