Let me tell you about a conversation that stopped me in my tracks.
A senior executive client sat across from me recently. He runs a significant business unit, commands a room without trying, and has spent decades making decisions worth millions. Frustrated, articulate, and searching for something he couldn’t quite name, he leaned forward and said:
“When I board a plane, I always check the seat numbers starting from row 1, repeatedly verifying my electronic boarding pass on my phone. I know my seat is likely at the back, probably a middle seat with limited space shared with neighbors. Why not walk partway down the cabin before checking? Deciding when to stash my carry-on in the overhead bin feels like a gamble. Will there be space above my seat, or should I aim for a spot ten rows ahead? This is the kind of anxiety I deal with, and it’s similar to running a business. Or maybe I’m just the same in my business.”
He laughed when he said it. I didn’t.
Because that single analogy told me everything I needed to know. Not about airports. About him. About what was quietly unraveling beneath the polished surface of a high-performing executive.
And if you smiled just now reading that, if any part of you recognized yourself in Seat 46E, then this article is for you.
Why Brilliant Leaders Lose the Plot in the Aisle
Let’s be clear: this is not about the plane. The plane is a mirror.
The compulsive row-checking, the boarding pass anxiety, the overhead bin paralysis, these are not quirks of travel. They are the behavioral fingerprints of something far more significant: a leader who has quietly lost trust in his own judgment in low-stakes environments, because the high-stakes ones have consumed him entirely.
“You cannot be a strategic visionary at 9 am and a row-number-counter at noon. Something has gone wrong.”
The Psychology of Contextual Collapse
Psychologists have long understood that executive function, the cognitive capacity to plan, prioritize, and act decisively, is not infinite. It is a resource. And like any resource, it can be depleted.
Senior leaders operate under chronic cognitive load. Decisions are endless, the stakes are high, and the expectation to perform is relentless. To protect itself, the brain begins to compartmentalize. In the boardroom, where roles, rituals, and expectations are clear, the executive persona kicks in. But in unstructured environments, such as airports, social situations, and even supermarkets, that scaffolding disappears. What’s left is the unguarded self. Often, that self is exhausted, anxious, and operating without the compass it relies on at work.
This is contextual collapse. The leader who is fearless in a strategic review becomes paralyzed, torn between the chicken and the pasta. It is not a weakness. It is the cost of sustained high performance without deliberate recovery and self-awareness.
The Impostor Lurking Behind the Title
There is something else at work here, and it is even more uncomfortable to name. Many senior executives, especially those who have climbed hard and fast, carry a quiet, persistent doubt. Not about their technical competence. But about whether their judgment, instincts, and experience are truly enough. Whether they actually deserve the authority they hold.
This is the impostor experience. And it is extraordinarily common at the top.
When my client double-checks his boarding pass for the fourteenth time on a ten-minute walk, he is not checking a seat number. He is checking himself. He is asking, without realizing it: “Am I sure? Can I trust what I think I know?”
The tragedy is this: the man asking that question in the aisle is the same man who makes calls worth millions with composure and conviction. The experience and judgment are all there. They simply haven’t been claimed. Not fully. Not yet.
When Anxiety Becomes a Leadership Style
Here is the part that should genuinely concern you. What happens in the plane aisle does not stay in the plane aisle.
Leaders who operate from unexamined anxiety tend to over-check, over-involve themselves, and struggle to delegate, not because they don’t trust their teams but because they don’t fully trust themselves. They scan every row of information before acting, even when the answer is obvious. They seek validation in data, in consensus, in process, because the internal compass has been switched off for so long, and they have forgotten it exists.
The overhead bin decision, do I stow it now or hold it for later? is the corporate meeting you called that didn’t need to happen. It is the strategy document that was re-read seventeen times before it went to the board. It is the hire you delayed for three months because you weren’t “quite sure.”
Your plane aisle behavior is your leadership behavior. The sooner you see that, the sooner everything changes.
Three Questions That Change Everything
Executive coaching is not therapy. It is not advice. It is the disciplined use of the right questions at the right moment to surface what a leader already knows but cannot yet see.
Here are the three questions I would bring to this client, and that I would bring to you.
COACHING QUESTION 1: “Where in your leadership are you counting rows you don’t need to count?”
My Intent: This question directly connects aisle behavior with leadership styles. Its purpose is to encourage honesty rather than cause embarrassment. When leaders associate row-counting with specific activities like reviewing reports, postponing decisions, or deleting emails, they can identify patterns that are subject to change. It also aids in differentiating between sincere due diligence and checking driven by anxiety, which isn’t always a sign of avoidance. Leaders need to develop an intuitive understanding of this distinction, not just a theoretical one.
COACHING QUESTION 2: “What would you tell a trusted member of your team if they came to you with this same decision?”
My Intent: This is the self-compassion disruptor. Senior executives are often generous and clear when advising others, cutting through noise and trusting instinct. Yet they hold a harsher standard for themselves. This question short-circuits that double standard by asking the leader to step into the advisor role, revealing they already know the answer. The capable leader just needs permission to act with the same authority for themselves. The real work begins with: “So why won’t you take your own advice?"
COACHING QUESTION 3: “If you trusted your experience completely, without needing to prove it, what would you do right now?”
My Intent: This is the core identity question of whether leaders have fully claimed who they are and what they know. Experience isn't just a CV; it's a library of patterns, judgment, and intuition. Top leaders access it swiftly and act confidently. The question invites leaders to imagine operating without external validation: what would change, speed up, or lighten? What's preventing them from staying there? The answer is the coaching journey.
Walk Past Row 1
My client ended that first session with a quiet smile. Not because I’d solved anything. Because he’d seen something.
He’d seen that the anxiety in the aisle and the friction in his leadership were not separate problems. They were one problem. And that problem had a name: a learned distrust of his own knowing, accumulated quietly over years of performing for others.
The good news? It is entirely reversible.
You do not need a new framework. You do not need another off-site or a 360 report. You need to stop counting rows from the front of the plane and start walking. You already know where your seat is. You have always known.
The question is whether you’re finally ready to trust it.
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