Here’s something I didn’t previously know about satellites.
A satellite orbiting Earth isn’t hovering. It’s constantly falling toward the planet — it just happens to be moving fast enough, and from a distance high enough, that as it falls, it swings around Earth rather than crashing into it. The gravitational pull of Earth is always there, always working. The satellite stays in orbit not because gravity isn’t pulling at it, but because it has enough speed and distance to keep falling in a circle (for the physicists out there, yes, I’ve oversimplified).
Now imagine a rocket heading from Earth toward the moon. If you turned off the engines halfway there, the rocket would fall back toward Earth — because at that point, Earth’s gravitational pull is still stronger than the moon’s. But if you kept going, you’d eventually reach a point where that equalizes. A point where the moon’s pull finally equals Earth’s. Where if you pass that point and cut the engines, the rocket would fall toward the moon instead of back toward Earth.
That point is called the Lagrange Point. (The actual physics involves centrifugal forces and five distinct equilibrium points — but the essential idea holds, and it’s the idea that matters here.)
The Lagrange Point is one of the most useful frameworks I’ve found for understanding why change is so hard — and why what looks like failure is often just someone who hasn’t yet reached their own Lagrange Point.
Think about what happens when a leader tries to shift from one way of leading to another. Maybe they’ve been directive their whole career, and they’re trying to become more collaborative. Maybe they’ve led through urgency, and they’re learning to slow down. Maybe they’ve avoided hard conversations for years, and they’re finally trying to have them.
In every one of those cases, there are two gravitational forces at work. The old behavior — the default, the ingrained pattern, the way that’s worked (or at least felt familiar) for decades — is like Earth. It’s enormous. It’s been pulling at this person their whole career. The new behavior is like the moon. Real. Worth moving toward. But from a distance, its pull is weaker.
Until they reach their Lagrange Point, every setback, every moment of reverting to old patterns, every week where the new way feels impossible — all of that is just the rocket still in Earth’s gravitational field. It doesn’t mean the moon isn’t real. It just means they’re not there yet.
This reframe matters enormously for how leaders evaluate change — in themselves and in others.
When we watch someone try to change and fall back into old patterns, we tend to conclude that the change didn’t take. That they don’t really want it. That coaching didn’t work. But that judgment almost always measures growth by the metric that matters most to the observer, not the one that’s most relevant to the person doing the changing. And it treats a moment in transit as if it were a final destination.
The truth is that change isn’t linear, and it isn’t instantaneous. There’s what we do, what we think, and how we feel — and a shift in any one of those can eventually move the others, but not always on the timeline we’d prefer. A leader’s thinking might shift dramatically before their behavior catches up. Their feelings might change long before anyone around them notices anything different.
We’re all of us en route to our own Lagrange Point. On more than one front, at any given time. The question isn’t whether we’ll get pulled back occasionally — we will get pulled constantly. The question is whether we have enough momentum, energy/fuel, and support to keep moving until the new gravity takes over.
And for a leader trying to make that journey, the most important thing isn’t perfection. It’s not giving up just before everything changes.
How do you know you’re heading in the right direction? Assessments, baby. Assessments.
If you’re working through a change that feels harder than you expected — or leading someone who seems stuck between who they were and who they’re trying to become — that’s exactly the kind of work I do. I’d love to help you find your Lagrange Point.
