The Summit Trap - It's not arrogance. It's altitude.

Years ago, I coached a brilliant SVP through a C-suite opening she'd been passed over for. No one had told her why — just that she wasn't ready. So we ran a 360: her boss, her peers, her direct reports, people who'd worked with her for years. The pattern was unanimous. She worked too much. She didn't delegate. She stayed quiet in the room rather than speaking up to the organization when it counted.

The last one didn't surprise her — she knew she feared the stage. But the other two floored her. Nobody had ever told her. She'd been over-functioning for years, and the exact thing standing between her and the role she wanted had been invisible to her the whole time, in plain sight to everyone else.

Nobody sets out to stop listening. It happens by altitude.

Early in your career, feedback is everywhere — a boss correcting you, a peer pushing back, a mentor telling you what's not working. You need it, so you get it constantly.

Then you get good. You get promoted. You get results. And something quietly shifts: the people around you have more to lose by being honest with you than by agreeing with you. Nobody decides to stop telling you the truth. They just calculate, correctly, that it's safer not to.

This is the Summit Trap. The higher you climb, the thinner the air gets — and the fewer people are willing to tell you when you're off course. Not because you changed. Because your altitude did.

The leaders who avoid it aren't the ones who never get isolated by success. They're the ones who build the feedback back in on purpose — who go find rooms where people have nothing to lose by being honest with them, because everyone in the room is at a similar altitude and no one's angling for anything.

That's not humility as a personality trait. It's humility as infrastructure.

"Ego doesn't get louder as you rise. It gets quieter — because fewer people are around to argue with it."

If this landed, two quick things:

Know a peer who's hit some altitude and could use a listen to this? Forward this email, or paste this:"This is describing something I've felt but never had language for. Worth reading! "

Have someone you lead who's about to step into a role with less honest feedback around them — a new manager, a newly promoted VP? That's the exact problem my mastermind is built to solve — a standing room of peers who tell each other the truth. Send them this:

"I think you're about to hit this exact trap. Wanted you to see this before you do!"

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn't feedback the same thing at every level of leadership? No — the higher someone rises, the more their team calculates the cost of being honest with them. The mechanics of giving and receiving feedback don't change, but the incentive to actually do it does.

How is a mastermind different from just asking my team for feedback? Your team has something to lose by being fully honest with you. A mastermind is a room of peers at a similar altitude with nothing to lose — that's what makes the feedback different, not just additional.

I already have a mentor. Isn't that enough? A mentor is usually one relationship, often with someone above you. A mastermind is a network — multiple perspectives, ongoing, among people who see your blind spots because they've had the same ones.

What if I don't think I have this problem? That's usually the tell, not the reassurance — the SVP in this piece didn't think she had it either. The nature of a blind spot is that you can't see it from where you're standing.

How much time does this actually take? Worth stating your real cadence and format here so busy leaders can self-select without guessing (e.g., "90 minutes, twice a month").