297: Friction Isn’t Failure

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, Allison Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life starting now. Lead yourself. The rest will follow.

Hi there leading ladies, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Lady Podcast. I want to start today with a sentence that I think a lot of us need to hear more clearly. Friction does not equal failure. I’m saying that slowly on purpose because so many high achieving women have learned to interpret discomfort as a sign that something is wrong. If it feels heavy, we assume that we messed up. If it feels tense, we assume that we failed. And if it feels complicated, we assume that we made the wrong decision. And I want to gently but firmly challenge that.

Because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how often friction shows up, not when something is broken, but actually when something is changing, when something is growing, when something is evolving, and when leadership and business gets real instead of theoretical. So today we’re going to talk about friction, what it is, what it isn’t, and how to stop letting it convince you that you’re failing when you’re actually growing.

So here’s what we think failure looks like. Let’s start here. Failure, as most of us imagine it, looks and feels very dramatic. It could be a business collapsing. Maybe a program that’s flopping. A relationship that’s exploding. It’s a very clear, I’m using air quotes here, “this didn’t work.” But that’s not what most of us are dealing with on a day to day basis. What most of us are dealing with is actually much quieter. It’s the low grade tension, the subtle resistance, and that feeling that something is just slightly off. It’s like an irritating rub. And instead of saying, oh gosh, this needs attention, we tell ourselves this shouldn’t be happening. Why is this so hard?

And that’s where the trouble starts, because friction doesn’t announce itself as growth. It shows up as an inconvenience, as a discomfort, as a complexity. And when you’re someone who values excellence, like me, integrity and responsibility, friction feels very personal. It feels like you dropped the ball, like you should have known better, like you failed to anticipate something. Oh my gosh, those hit me so hard. The number of times that I say to myself, oh my gosh, I dropped the ball. Or I should have seen that coming. Or why didn’t I think that through?

But leadership doesn’t happen in hindsight. It actually happens in motion.

What Friction Actually Is

Friction is not collapse. Friction is contact. It’s what happens when reality meets vision, when people meet processes, and when growth meets capacity. Friction shows up when something alive rubs against something that hasn’t been updated yet. And if you’re building anything meaningful, friction is pretty much unavoidable.

In fact, if you never experience friction, I would gently suggest that you might not be leading very much at all. Because leadership requires decisions, and decisions create movement, and movement creates contact. And contact, yes contact, that rub creates friction.

So I want to give you some examples of friction. This is where I want you to listen and notice what resonates, because I guarantee at least one of these will feel familiar.

Number one, programs evolving. A program that once worked beautifully suddenly feels tight. The structure doesn’t quite fit anymore. The needs of the people inside it have changed. The outcomes are different than they used to be. And let me tell you, that doesn’t mean that the program failed. It means that the program worked. Yes, it means that the program actually worked. But now it needs to evolve. Growth doesn’t invalidate what came before it. It actually builds upon it.

Number two, contracts being outdated. This one is so common. Agreements that made perfect sense at one stage of business no longer reflect the reality of today. Perhaps roles have expanded, the scope has shifted, expectations have matured. That’s not a character flaw. That’s growth outpacing documentation. Contracts don’t go stale because people are careless. Maybe they go stale because leaders are building in real time.

Number three, communication being off. Messages land differently than they’re intended. Sometimes the tone is misread. Assumptions sneak in and people hear things through their own stress, their own fear, or their own expectation. That’s not incompetence. That’s humanity layered on top of complexity. Clear communication isn’t a one time skill. It’s an ongoing practice.

Number four, values becoming misaligned. This one can feel oh so heavy. What once felt aligned starts to feel uncomfortable. Decisions that used to feel easy now require more discernment. And no one is necessarily doing anything wrong. It’s just that you’re no longer standing in the same place. Misalignment doesn’t mean that someone failed. It just means that someone grew. And sometimes that means growing apart.

Number five, expectations being missed. Maybe someone assumed one thing and you assumed another. The gap between those assumptions creates tension. That’s not betrayal. That’s a missed conversation. Expectations are rarely missed out of malice. They are missed out of silence.

Number six, details slipping through the cracks. Not because you don’t care and not because you’re sloppy, but because capacity changed and systems didn’t catch up yet. This is one of the clearest signals of growth, even though it feels frustrating. Oh my gosh, I can’t stand it when a detail slips. And when that detail slips, I need to remind myself it’s not a failure of effort. It’s a signal that structure needs reinforcement.

Number seven, relationships changing and evolving. And this one is so tender. People change roles. Clients become colleagues. Team members grow into leadership. Some relationships will deepen, and some will quietly complete their season. That doesn’t mean something went wrong. Sometimes it just means something did exactly what it was meant to do. And that season is over.

Number eight, outgrowing programs or communities. Something that once felt supportive now feels restrictive. You’re not ungrateful. You’re not disloyal. You’re different. You grew. And growth often requires different containers.

Number nine, seasons ending. This is the one we resist the most. Trust me, I am an extremely loyal person. And once I find something and it works for me, I’m like, I’m here forever. Well, there’s a reason we say a season or a lifetime, right? Sometimes seasons end because endings feel like failure. We don’t know how to honor that completion. But not every ending needs to be dramatic or painful. Some chapters close simply because the lesson was learned and it’s time to move on.

This episode is brought to you by Julie Blanton of Stretch Your Spirit. Julie’s a yoga pro, an author, speaker, retreat leader, and the founder of Stretch Your Spirit, where she empowers women to feel joyful, stable, and sexy through movement and stillness. You can learn more at StretchYourSpirit.com.

Why We Mislabel Friction as Failure

So why do we mislabel friction as failure? Why do we do this? Why do high achieving women especially jump straight to self blame? I’m guilty of it too. I immediately go into this is all my fault.

Well, it’s because we’ve been taught that success should look smooth. Leadership should feel confident at all times, right? That clarity should come before action. That if something feels hard, it must be wrong. But leadership doesn’t work that way. Entrepreneurship does not work that way. That’s why it often feels lonely. It often feels uncertain. And it often feels heavy.

That’s not because you’re failing. It’s because you’re holding responsibility. And when you care deeply about people, integrity, outcomes, friction can feel emotionally loud. So instead of asking what is this teaching me, we ask what did I do wrong?

But here’s the shift. I want you to start looking for the lesson. That’s the learner’s mindset. When we feel that friction, to ask, what is this teaching me?

Discernment: Friction Versus Misalignment

This part really matters. Not all friction should be pushed through. How do you tell the difference between healthy friction and true misalignment?

Here are a few questions that I ask myself and I’m inviting you to reflect upon as well.

Is this discomfort coming from growth or avoidance?
Does this decision align with my values even if it’s uncomfortable?
Am I reacting emotionally or responding strategically?
If I remove fear from the equation, does this still feel true?

Friction that aligns with your values will refine you. Misalignment will absolutely drain you. One strengthens and one erodes. Our job as leaders is not to eliminate friction, but to interpret it correctly.

So let’s reframe this. If you’re in a season right now where things feel heavier than usual, where the conversations feel harder, maybe you’re recognizing that some systems need updating and clarity feels far out of reach, I want you to hear this. Please hear me.

You are not failing because it is hard.
You are not wrong because it feels uncomfortable.
You are not lost just because it feels complex.

Sometimes friction is simply the sound of you being more honest with yourself, of you truly aligning with the leader, the business owner, the person that you are meant to be. And sometimes it’s the signal that it’s time to update, clarify, mature, or even release.

It’s not quit. It’s not let’s burn it all down. Don’t assume that it’s broken or that you broke it. Just tend to what’s asking for attention.

This is why I love my strategic wheel. I start every client with a strategic wheel. And if you join the Hub, I encourage you to start there as well. It asks you your current level of satisfaction in each area. Finances, operations, visibility, customer experience and product. Then it goes into health and wellness, personal development, relationships. It’s asking for your level of satisfaction. So what it’s really asking is, are you good? Is there some friction somewhere?

And I know that we as humans tend to avoid discomfort. We are built that way. It started when we were cave women. We had to look out for danger. We avoided discomfort because it saved our lives. We needed to be aware of threats. We needed to be aware of what was dangerous to us. So our brains, our nervous systems, naturally go where we feel good. We don’t want to do the hard thing. We don’t want to put ourselves out there and have risks and experience discomfort.

So when my clients do the strategic wheel and you score yourself lower in satisfaction in a certain area, my challenge to you is okay, let’s pay attention to it. Let’s look at the discomfort. Let’s look at the friction. Let’s address that. Because it might just be one area in the wheel where you’re feeling the friction. But it’s so loud, it’s so uncomfortable, that you’re telling yourself that the whole wheel is broken. And that’s just not true. It just means that specific area needs a little more attention.

So if this episode resonated, I want you to take a quiet moment today and ask yourself, where am I experiencing friction right now? Maybe you want to download the strategic wheel and look at it that way. Maybe you want to do a little self audit today.

Then I want you to ask, what’s inviting me to adjust? Where do I need to adjust instead of abandon? I’m not going to quit. I’m not going to crumple it all up, burn it all down, throw it away. I’m going to adjust.

Leadership, business, it’s not about avoiding friction. It’s about staying grounded while moving through it.

And I want to end with this. If no one has told you lately, let me say this clearly. You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not failing. You are leading and building and moving something that is alive. You’re doing the thing. It’s going to be hard. But you are built for this. You are brave. You are courageous. You will adjust. You will discern. And you’re not meant to do it alone. Our whole community, our whole Leading Lady ecosystem is here for you. I am here for you.

So if any of this resonated with you, please shoot me an email. I do read and respond to every email sent. And if you want to take a moment, I’ll put the link for you to download the strategic wheel. You can do a self audit and maybe look for the areas where you have friction. Look for the lesson in that. Where do you need to adjust or realign or release?

This stuff is hard. It is hard. And it is so worth it. Your work matters. You matter. So don’t let the friction lie to you and tell you that you’re failing.

Okay. Until next time, take the lead.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of The Leading Lady podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode on our website. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And while you’re there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to help other high achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.