The Obstacle Inventory

A Trust-Based Reflection for Unplanned Challenges

What This Is

This reflection is a tool for alignment. It brings your awareness to the precise moment when momentum breaks and instinct takes over. Leadership lives in those moments, in the posture you choose when the ground moves beneath you. This tool helps you see what drove your choices, what signals you sent, and where trust was either extended or withheld.

Reciprocating Authority

is a lived practice. It travels with you into discomfort, into disruption, into complexity. You don’t apply it from the outside. You embody it. This reflection sharpens that embodiment.

When to Use It


Reach for this when something unexpected disrupts your course, whether it’s a decision that lands poorly, a meeting that stirs tension, a shift in team dynamics that throws off the rhythm. This tool is a compass for those moments. It helps you name the pattern, restore intention, and return to trust as a discipline shaped by how you show up.

  • What happened? Be honest and specific.
    Where were you? Who else was in the room or involved in the decision?

    What emotion hit first (Examples: tension, urgency, disappointment, anger)?
    What happened in your body?

    What did you do in the first 24 hours?
    What were you trying to protect or move forward?

  • What was your posture around decision-making?
    Did you hold it all, or did you invite others to carry some of it with you?

    What did your voice, your timing, your presence communicate to others?
    What story did they likely pick up based on how you entered the moment?

    How did your team respond?
    Did they rise, wait, question, react, or steady themselves?

  • What part of you led (Examples:your fear, your need for control, your clarity, your curiosity)?
    What patterns showed up?

    What relationship needs follow-up?
    What conversation would bring more trust into the space?

    What posture will you choose the next time something unexpected hits?

Alan’s Reminder

Leadership most often happens in unplanned moments. When structure fades and the familiar begins to blur, people don’t look for you to be perfect, but they do look for you to be present. They study how you carry yourself when the map disappears. Reciprocating Authority lives in that moment. It’s the choice to extend trust when you have every excuse to tighten your grip. When you distribute ownership instead of protecting your position, you invite others into a steadier, more courageous rhythm. Your posture becomes the permission others need to act.

 

I offer The Obstacle Inventory as a resource for the leaders I work with. It is a simple tool, freely given, to support reflection after something unplanned interrupts the rhythm. A conversation shifts. A decision stirs tension. A moment surprises you. These are the places where leadership becomes visible. This inventory helps you see how you responded, what your posture communicated, and how trust moved through the space. Reciprocating Authority takes shape in these moments.