Last month, I was in Bucharest.
It was part work, part pleasure, which has often been the rhythm of my working life when travelling overseas. Get the work done properly. Serve the client well. Then, where possible, create enough space to experience the place rather than simply pass through it.
On this occasion, my wife joined me too, which made the trip more valuable. Not because it became a conventional holiday, but because it gave the week a different balance. There was work, conversation, walking, observation, and the simple benefit of being away from the usual environment.
That mattered.
Because one of the things I have learned, both in leadership and in coaching, is that clarity does not always arrive when we push harder. Often, it arrives when we change where we are standing.
Bucharest gave me that.
It gave me physical distance from home, work patterns, familiar routines, and the everyday signals that can keep your mind running along the same tracks. For me, that kind of distance can also come from being on the bike, cutting the lawn, walking by the sea, or spending time on the water. Different people find it in different ways.
But the principle is the same.
When you create distance from the environment that keeps generating the pressure, you often create access to a different quality of thought.
Distance changes what you can see
Bucharest is not a city I would reduce to a neat phrase. That is part of what made it interesting.
It felt layered, contradictory, energetic, historic, imperfect, and alive. At different moments it reminded me of Istanbul, Havana, Moscow, Lisbon, and then nowhere else at all. It had its own rhythm. Its own edges. Its own contrasts…. For me, it was truly unique.
That complexity made me think about leadership.
From the outside, leadership decisions can look far cleaner than they feel from the inside. A decision is rarely just a decision. A difficult conversation is rarely just a difficult conversation. A commercial challenge is rarely just a spreadsheet problem. A performance issue is rarely just a performance issue.
There is always more underneath.
There may be risk attached to the decision. There may be timing pressure. There may be ambition, fear, politics, pride, fatigue, loyalty, uncertainty, or history sitting behind the obvious facts. There may be a board expectation in one direction, a team anxiety in another, and a client need that does not wait politely for everyone to feel ready.
That is why leadership can become so demanding for high achievers.
Doctors, lawyers, CEOs, founders, and senior professionals are rarely dealing with isolated problems. They are dealing with pressure systems. One decision touches another. One delay creates a consequence elsewhere. One unresolved tension quietly affects the whole room.
The difficulty is not always that the leader lacks capability.
Often, the difficulty is that they are too close to the situation to see it cleanly.
That is what I explored in The Clarity Gap: Why Smart Leaders Still Feel Uncertain:
The clarity gap is the space between what you know, and what you can access under pressure.
That distinction matters. High achievers often know far more than they can reach when their mind is full, their diary is compressed, and every decision feels immediate.
The false belief that clarity comes from more effort
When clarity drops, many high achievers instinctively apply more effort.
That might mean reading the papers again, extending the working day, replaying the conversation, asking for one more update, gathering more data, or trying to think their way through the same problem from the same position.
Sometimes that works.
Often, it does not.
There is a point where more effort becomes more noise. The leader is not being lazy. They are not avoiding the issue. They are often doing the opposite. They are working hard, carrying responsibility, and trying to be conscientious. But effort alone does not guarantee perspective.
I understand that pattern because I have lived it. In my corporate career, there were moments where the answer was not another hour at the desk, another spreadsheet, another discussion, or another pass at the same issue. The answer was to step back far enough to see the real question.
That can feel counterintuitive when you are used to being capable.
Capability teaches you to solve. Responsibility teaches you to stay close. Success teaches you that effort works. So when something becomes unclear, the instinct is often to move closer, not further away.
But leadership does not always reward closeness.
Sometimes closeness distorts.
Harvard Business Review has written about the value of self-reflection in professional development, noting that reflection helps people learn from experience rather than simply move through it. Harvard Business School also discusses reflective leadership as a route to stronger self-awareness and judgement. The point is simple enough: experience alone is not the teacher. Interpreted experience is.
High achievers often have plenty of experience.
What they lack is enough space to interpret it.
Distance is not always a holiday
This is where I think Bucharest became useful.
Yes, there was pleasure in the trip. Yes, my wife was with me. Yes, I enjoyed the city. But the real value was not simply being away. It was being away in a way that interrupted the normal pattern.
That is different.
A holiday can still become another performance exercise if your mind never leaves work. A weekend can still feel compressed if you spend it carrying the same unresolved thoughts. A walk can be restorative, but only if it creates enough mental room to notice what has been sitting underneath the surface.
Distance is not just location.
It is a shift in relationship to the pressure.
For me, that shift can happen in several ways. It can happen on a bike, where rhythm and movement give the mind room to sort itself out. It can happen cutting the lawn, where a simple physical task creates surprising mental clarity. It can happen at sea, where scale changes perspective very quickly. And yes, it can happen in a city like Bucharest, where the unfamiliar backdrop interrupts the usual noise.
The American Psychological Association has reported that many workers experience improved mood, energy, motivation, and reduced stress after vacation, although the benefits can fade quickly once they return to work. Research on psychological detachment from work also shows that switching off from work during non-work time is an important recovery experience connected to wellbeing.
That is important for leaders because recovery is not just about feeling better.
It changes how you think.
When pressure reduces, perspective expands. When the mind is not constantly defending against the next demand, it can begin to organise what it already knows.
This connects closely to something I explored in Taking Time Out: Why Strategic Stillness Strengthens Leadership Performance:
Taking time out is not a retreat from ambition. Used properly, it is a way of making ambition sharper, cleaner, and more sustainable.
The risk of staying too close
The opposite of distance is not commitment.
It is over-identification.
This is a crucial distinction. High achievers often stay close because they care. They want to respond well. They want to protect standards. They want to support the team, serve the client, avoid mistakes, and keep momentum alive.
That is admirable.
Until it becomes costly.
When a leader stays too close for too long, their thinking can begin to narrow. The inbox becomes the operating system. The urgent request becomes the priority. The loudest person becomes the reference point. The most recent problem becomes the whole story.
That is where constant availability becomes dangerous.
It gives the impression of responsiveness, but it can quietly strip away perspective. If every issue reaches you instantly, and every decision arrives before you have had time to process the last one, then your leadership can become reactive without you noticing.
You may still be performing.
You may still be trusted.
You may still be delivering.
But the deeper question is whether you are still seeing clearly.
That is why next week’s theme, the hidden cost of constant availability, follows this one so naturally. Because availability can look like dedication while quietly eroding judgement. It can turn capable leaders into permanent responders.
This also links to The PaceTrap: Why High Achievers Lose Clarity Without Noticing:
Pace can feel like progress. Responsiveness can feel like leadership. Movement can feel like control.
But none of those things guarantee clarity.
The outside view
One of the reasons distance matters is that it helps leaders access what decision researchers and strategy advisers often call the outside view.
McKinsey has written about how executives can fall prey to cognitive and organisational biases, and how taking an outside view can help decision-makers gain much-needed perspective. McKinsey also describes the outside view as a way of using reference cases to challenge assumptions and improve forecasts, rather than staying trapped inside the immediate details of one situation.
That is not just useful in strategy.
It is useful in leadership.
When you are inside the problem, your identity is often involved. You remember the history. You know the personalities. You feel the pressure. You carry the consequences. That inside knowledge matters, but it can also make the situation harder to interpret.
The outside view does not remove responsibility.
It gives responsibility more perspective.
This is one of the reasons executive coaching can be so powerful for high achievers. A good coach is not there to take over, rescue, flatter, or instruct. The value is often in creating a different vantage point: close enough to understand the pressure, but far enough away not to be consumed by it.
That distance allows better questions.
What are you assuming?
What are you avoiding?
What has become louder than it deserves to be?
What is the real decision underneath the apparent one?
What would you see if you were not standing so close?
That is why I often use the coastline metaphor.
When you are in the waves, you cannot see the coastline. A coach becomes the lighthouse.
Bucharest reminded me of that principle. Not because the city had some neat leadership lesson waiting around every corner, but because being somewhere different helped me notice again how much our usual environment shapes our thinking.
What I saw up close
What I saw up close in Bucharest was not only a city of contrast, history, and movement.
I saw again how quickly a different environment can loosen familiar thinking.
I saw how valuable it is to work properly, serve properly, and then step away without guilt.
I saw how much clearer things can become when work and life are not treated as enemies, but as parts of a more deliberate rhythm.
And I saw how often high achievers deny themselves the very thing that would help them most.
Space.
Not endless space. Not dramatic reinvention. Not disappearing for months. Just enough distance to interrupt the pressure pattern and let the mind reorganise.
For one leader, that may come from a city break after client work. For another, it may come from a Sunday bike ride, a morning walk, a quiet garden, a boat, a train journey, or an hour in conversation with someone who is not tangled inside the same system.
The form matters less than the function.
The function is perspective.
Because high achievers do not always need more information. Often, they need enough distance to interpret what they already know.
Closing thought
Perspective is not a luxury in leadership.
It is a requirement.
And sometimes the most responsible thing a leader can do is not to push harder, answer faster, stay closer, or keep proving their commitment through availability.
Sometimes the most responsible thing is to step back far enough to see what the pressure has been hiding.
Bucharest reminded me of that.
Not because it gave me all the answers.
But because it gave me a different place from which to notice the questions.
And often, that is where clarity begins.
References and further reading
American Psychological Association. (2018). Vacation time recharges US workers, but positive effects vanish within days.
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/06/vacation-recharges-workers
Harvard Business Review. (2022). Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection.
https://hbr.org/2022/03/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-self-reflection
Harvard Business School Online. (2025). The Ladder of Inference: Building Self-Awareness to Be A Better Human-Centered Leader.
https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/the-ladder-of-inference-building-self-awareness-to-be-a-better-human-centered-leader/
McKinsey & Company. (2018). Bias Busters: Taking the Outside View.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/bias-busters-taking-the-outside-view
McKinsey & Company. (2019). How to take the outside view.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-to-take-the-outside-view
Sonnentag, S. and Schiffner, C. (2019). Psychological Detachment from Work during Nonwork Time and Employee Well-Being: The Role of Leader’s Detachment.
https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/49933/1/Sonnentag-Schiffner-2019.pdf
I’m Laurence Loxam and I’ve pushed limits in business, on mountains, and at the finish line.
Now I help elite professionals do the same, pushing past the point most people stop.
I coach doctors, lawyers, CEOs and founders who’ve hit success, but still feel there’s more.
Together, we unlock clarity, sharpen confidence, and lead with conviction.
loxamconsultingltd.org
Ready for your next leadership breakthrough? Let’s connect.
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