Leading Through the Liminal
Transitions Leadership, Threshold Spaces, and the Discipline of Not Misnaming the Moment.
By Isaiah “Ike” Wilson III
There are moments in leadership when the old maps stop working—but no new ones have yet appeared.
The titles still exist. The institutions still function. The routines still operate. But something fundamental has shifted beneath the surface. The assumptions that once guided action no longer hold. Authority feels thinner. Certainty evaporates. People sense movement without direction.
Anthropologists call this state liminality—the threshold space between what was and what will be.
Most leadership failures occur here.
Not because leaders lack intelligence or commitment, but because they misdiagnose what is happening to them—internally and institutionally—and then act on the wrong story.
Liminal Spaces and the Psychology of Mislabeling
In liminal spaces, leaders often experience a quiet but destabilizing internal question:
… Am I actually good enough to be here?
This question is commonly labeled impostor syndrome.
But that label is often wrong—and damaging.
There is a critical distinction that matters deeply for transitions leadership:
Being “green” means you are legitimately new to a domain, role, or responsibility.
Impostor syndrome means you believe you do not belong despite evidence that you do.
Conflating the two is a leadership error.
Being “green” is a situational condition.
Impostor syndrome is an identity distortion.
Liminal spaces make this confusion more likely—because in transitions, everyone is partially ‘green’.
The system itself is learning. The rules are shifting. Expertise acquired under one set of conditions does not fully transfer to the next.
When leaders misinterpret this as personal inadequacy, they respond incorrectly.
They compensate.
They overperform.
They rush decisions.
They perform certainty instead of cultivating legitimacy.
This is not humility.
It is anxiety masquerading as leadership.
What Liminal Spaces Actually Are—and Why They Matter
Liminality is not crisis management.
It is not reform.
It is not innovation theater.
It is the unsettled middle—the space after an old order has lost legitimacy but before a new one has earned trust.
In liminal spaces:
Authority is questioned
Identity feels unstable
Old incentives stop motivating
New rules are unclear
People oscillate between anxiety and nostalgia
Historically, these moments accompany:
Leadership transitions
Institutional reform
Post-crisis recovery
Cultural realignment
Technological disruption
Democratic stress
These are the moments when leaders are most tempted to pathologize themselves rather than correctly name the terrain.
But feeling uncertain in a liminal moment does not mean you are unqualified.
It means you are paying attention.
Why Traditional Leadership Models—and Self-Diagnoses—Fail Here
Most leadership models assume stable systems:
Optimize performance
Execute strategy
Align incentives
Drive outcomes
Most self-help narratives assume stable identities:
“You belong here”
“Silence the inner critic”
“Just be confident”
But liminal spaces are pre-strategic and pre-identitarian.
The question is not:
Am I good enough?
The real questions are:
What no longer fits?
What is emerging?
What must be protected while things are unsettled?
What must not be rushed?
Treating liminality as a confidence problem is a category mistake.
This is not impostor syndrome.
This is transitional leadership strain.
Transitions Leadership: A Different Posture
At Wilson W.i.S.E., we define Transitions Leadership as the discipline of guiding people, institutions, and oneself through uncertainty without prematurely collapsing ambiguity into false certainty.
The leader’s role is not to “have the answers.”
It is to:
Hold uncertainty without transmitting panic
Contain anxiety rather than amplify it
Protect legitimacy over performance
Allow identity to be re-formed rather than imposed
This requires leaders to correctly name their internal state.
Being green in a new strategic landscape is not a weakness.
It is a signal that learning—not performance theater—is required.
Five Principles of Leading Through Liminal Spaces (WiSE Framework)
1. Name the Threshold—and Your Position in It—Honestly
People know when they are in transition.
Leaders deepen trust by saying:
“We are between chapters. Some of what we know still applies. Some does not. We are learning in real time.”
This reframes “I don’t know yet” from incompetence into responsible stewardship.
2. Distinguish Learning From Doubt
Transitions leaders ask themselves:
Am I uncertain because I lack capability?
Or because the environment itself is unsettled?
Most of the time, it is the latter.
Calling legitimate learning “impostor syndrome” pushes leaders to fake certainty instead of building shared understanding.
3. Slow the Clock Without Freezing Motion
Liminal leadership is about temporal discipline.
You move—but you do not rush meaning.
Short-term actions stabilize the present.
They should not define the future prematurely.
4. Protect Legitimacy Over Projection
In liminal moments, people forgive imperfection.
They do not forgive bad faith.
Leaders who perform confidence to mask being green erode trust faster than leaders who model disciplined learning.
5. Accept the Loneliness of Not Knowing—Publicly
Transitions leadership is isolating because it resists theater.
You will be pressed to:
Declare answers early
Simplify complexity
Reassure through overconfidence
Resisting that pressure is not weakness.
It is leadership.
Why This Matters Now
We are living through stacked liminalities:
Institutional distrust
Democratic stress
Technological displacement
Cultural fragmentation
Many leaders feel unsteady—not because they are frauds, but because the ground is genuinely moving.
Mislabeling that experience as impostor syndrome drives:
Overreach
Premature closure
Performative decisiveness
Legitimacy collapse
What we need instead are leaders who can say:
“I am not lost. I am early.”
The Quiet Leadership Skill We Underteach
Every durable institution survives because someone, at a critical moment, could:
Remain calm without false certainty
Learn publicly without self-erasure
Lead without pretending the threshold did not exist
Liminal spaces are not failures of leadership.
They are tests of diagnostic honesty.
Being green is not disqualifying.
Misnaming the moment is.
Closing Thought
If you feel uncertain right now, do not rush to diagnose yourself as an impostor.
First ask:
Am I standing in a threshold?
Is the system learning?
Is this uncertainty a signal, not a verdict?
Transitions leadership begins the moment you stop asking,
“What’s wrong with me?”
and start asking,
“What kind of leader does this moment require?”
That question—held patiently—is where legitimacy, trust, and the future quietly begin.
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