Being right too early is a leadership risk

Leadership is often described as the ability to see further than others. In practice, it is often penalised for exactly that.

Being right too early creates a particular kind of tension — one that has little to do with strategy and everything to do with human behaviour. The problem is rarely the direction itself. It is the discomfort that direction creates for those who are not yet prepared to confront it.

Most leadership advice assumes that clarity persuades. Experience suggests otherwise.

In boardrooms and investment committees, clarity frequently increases resistance rather than alignment. Not because the insight is wrong, but because accepting it requires abandoning narratives that still provide comfort. People do not reject truth outright. They filter it — often unconsciously — until it becomes tolerable.

This is where leadership stops being analytical and becomes political — in the most human sense of the word.

The leader who speaks too early, too cleanly, or too decisively risks becoming isolated — not because they are incorrect, but because they have removed the space others need to arrive at the same conclusion themselves. Alignment that is argued for rarely holds. Alignment that is experienced tends to endure.

This creates a paradox. The responsibility to see clearly does not come with the right to be immediately understood.

There are moments where pressing harder is not leadership, but impatience. Where restraint is not hesitation, but control. In such moments, progress often requires allowing controlled friction — even controlled failure — so that reality can be encountered directly, not described abstractly.

This is not an argument for silence. It is an argument for timing.

Leadership under pressure is less about proving foresight and more about managing the pace at which others are able to absorb it. The cost of being right too early is often social. The cost of being right too late is structural.

Knowing the difference is not instinctive. It is trained.