A leader facing crisis should circle above the problem instead of crashing into it. The "airplane holding pattern" means staying calm, maintaining perspective, and connecting with your team rather than forcing control. Amateur pilots panic and land in the storm; skilled ones stay at altitude until conditions clear.
I discovered what I now call the airplane holding pattern, a method that saved not just my leadership that day, but transformed how I navigate every high pressure situation since. Picture yourself as a pilot flying through a massive storm. The rain is pedaling down on your windshield and the wind is rocking your aircraft. Visibility is near zero. Every instinct is screaming at you to land, to get out of the turbulence, to find solid ground. But here's what experienced pilots know. The amateur pilots, they don't. Sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is try to land in a storm. Instead, skilled pilots, they enter what is called a holding pattern, designated airspace, where they circle safely above the chaos, maintaining altitude and stability while the storm passes or conditions improve. This is exactly what the third pillar of my framework for connected leadership teaches us. You learn to pivot from reactive control to strategic presence. Here is the radical part. The goal isn't to eliminate the storm. It's to maintain your leadership altitude. What the storm does what storms do. Most leaders, they crash because they're trying to force a landing in impossible conditions.
