The Rhumb Line Course
The internal and external progressions you might be missing that make results possible.
Every year around this time, I’m back in Annual Planning sessions with my EOS teams.
And every year, we return to the same model:
Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team:
Trust → Conflict → Commitment → Accountability → Results
I’ve taught this model for years. I believe in it. I’ve watched it work.
But this year, something clicked.
Lencioni mapped how teams get results.
What he doesn’t name explicitly is the condition required for teams to even enter that pyramid.
That condition lives with the leader.
Because across companies, industries, and growth stages, I keep seeing the same pattern:
If the leader is internally looping, the team won’t fully trust.
If the leader is negotiating with themselves, commitment stays soft.
If the leader won’t hold a line, accountability erodes.
The team isn’t broken. They’re responding perfectly to the signal they’re receiving.
Which raises a quieter, more fundamental question:
Where is the leader coming from?
This is where my executive coaching work lives: upstream of the team model.
Over the years, alongside EOS, I’ve worked inside an ontological approach to leadership and action.
It’s not about motivation or mindset. It’s about stance.
Where you’re coming from when you decide.
Where you are standing when you don’t decide.
Where you shift to when pressure shows up.
And that’s when I saw the internal sequence clearly.
Before Lencioni’s model can fully activate, leaders must move through a simpler progression:
Stance → Commitment → Results
Not a framework to install. A sequence to inhabit.
Stance
Stance is not personality. It’s the internal position you’re operating from, often unconsciously.
Reactive or responsible. Looping or directed. Negotiating or grounded.
The gotcha is: you always have an inner stance. All the time, in every situation.
Some stances are useful.
Some are not helpful at all.
When our stance is unstable, we revisit decisions, reopen conversations, and carry more than we should.
From the outside, we look busy and capable. From the inside, nothing is quite landing.
Without getting all woo on you, the team feels this immediately, even if they can’t name it.
Commitment
Commitment comes next.
Not just intention, but a direct line drawn from start to finish.
In my navigation days we called this the rhumb line: the fastest, straightest course to the destination.
This is where so many people confuse motion with progress.
Lots of activity. Lots of options. Lots of contingency.
When commitment is negotiated, teams hedge. They wait. They protect themselves, hoping the “new fad” would blow over and be forgotten.
But real commitment removes optionality.
"Do. Or do not. There is no try," - Yoda
Results
After setting the most useful inner stance, committing to action then, and only then, Results show up.
I don’t believe in wishful manifesting.
If you sit on the couch, eating Doritos and drinking soda, while hoping for a million dollars to show up, good luck. Let me know how that goes for you.
Rather, if you get up every day, set your stance and follow through on taking action, you will have done your very best to manifest the results you are after, and that’s all you can do in my book.
The results I’m talking about show up as:
decisions sticking
escalations decreasing
alignment speeding up
the leader stops being the bottleneck
the business starts responding instead of resisting
That’s what I now call Directional Authority.
And if you’re trying to create a better 2026 for yourself and your business right now, here’s the question worth sitting with:
If you’re revisiting the same decisions, carrying more than you should, or feeling busy but not directional, the issue may not be strategy, structure, or talent.
It may simply be this:
You’re asking your team to operate inside a system that requires a stance you haven’t fully stabilized yet.
Some leaders circle, stuck in indecision.
Others feel the pull of sailing the rhumb line:
Cleaner decisions. Fewer negotiations. More results with less force.
If this resonates, let’s talk.
Not about fixing anything.
But about where you’re standing, and whether it’s time to choose a straighter line forward.
Coming Soon: Sweet Earth Orchard Barn Update
Exterior siding, roofing, windows and skylights are essentially complete
Interior drywall is finishing up the texturizing
Next up:
Trim, doors, flooring and painting before final electric and plumbing.
Still lots to do, but the end is coming into view.
Coming Soon: Sweet Earth Orchard Retreats
Coming in 2026, Kathy and I will be offering a small number of retreats and workshops at Sweet Earth Orchard, some together, some separate, designed for leaders who want real clarity, alignment, and space to think.
Before we finalize anything, we want to listen.
If you’re leading a business or a leadership team, your perspective would help us shape these retreats in a way that’s actually useful. No performance, not overbuilt, and not a break from reality (we are everything about being grounded here), but retreat creating resets that translate back into how you lead and work together as a team.
We’ve put together a short survey to understand what leaders truly need when they step away from the day-to-day.
As a thank you, anyone who completes the survey will receive:
Early access to the 2026 retreat calendar
Priority consideration for limited-capacity retreats at Sweet Earth
Your insight genuinely matters here.
Thank you in advance for helping us build this with intention.
It’s January - already
January has a way of making patterns visible.
If you’re already noticing that:
you’re revisiting decisions you thought were settled
you’re “off-track” on your goals already
or the year feels busy before it feels directional
That’s not a motivation problem.
And it’s not a strategy problem.
It’s usually a stance problem.
If you want to explore that, calmly, seriously, without trying to fix anything, I’m open to a conversation.
Sometimes you need someone next to you to help you see where you’re already standing, and what that’s producing.
— Steve