Hippos and Leadership Part 3 — Knowing When to Leave

It doesn’t start with thunder.

It starts with quiet.

The hippo wakes to find the air different—the cool mist gone, the water shallow and still. Something in its bones says the river has changed. It doesn’t leave in panic; it lingers, watching for the signs to shift back. But then comes the sound it dreads: a distant bellow, the echo of a fight that ends badly. The water that once shimmered with safety now smells of loss. Its protector is gone. Its home feels foreign. And without needing to think, the hippo just knows—

it’s time to go.

Leaders feel that too.

Sometimes the shift starts small—a meeting that feels different, an unspoken tension, a sudden quiet in the spaces where laughter used to live. You feel it in your gut before you can name it. The currents of trust and creativity begin to thin, and you start telling yourself to hang on. After all, you’ve built something good. You’ve invested years. You’ve fought to make it better.

I’ve been there. I was making real progress, standing on ground I’d worked hard to restore. The metrics were improving, the team was proud, and for the first time in months, the water felt clear again. Then, overnight, the current shifted. My mentor—someone who had protected, challenged, and guided me—was suddenly gone in a corporate restructuring. It hit the team like a storm. The culture I’d been cultivating felt exposed.

That’s when another opportunity, one I hadn’t even been seeking, landed in my lap. I wrestled with it. Was I leaving too soon? Was I abandoning what I’d built? But deep down, I knew the water had changed. What had once been a place of growth was about to become a place of survival.

So I went.

And like the hippo finding new water, I discovered I could breathe again. The move opened new relationships, new challenges, and a wider current for my leadership to flow in. Leaving didn’t mean I stopped caring—it meant I cared enough not to wither where I stood.

There’s a difference between enduring and eroding.

Between loyalty and limbo.

Between holding ground and losing yourself in the mud.

Not every dry season means it’s time to leave. Sometimes the river just needs rain. You can outlast a drought when there’s still life beneath the surface—when trust still glimmers and hope still hums. But when the water turns toxic—when integrity feels like a daily compromise and your reflection no longer looks like you—it’s time.

You don’t owe your life to this one environment. You owe yourself your next beginning.

Leaving well can be leadership, too. It’s the courage to read the signs without resentment, to walk away without blame. It’s knowing that your growth was never meant to end in a puddle.

So when do you walk away?

When staying costs you your integrity.

When your gifts only feed decay.

When your peace feels impossible.

When your reflection no longer looks like you.

That’s when.

Because you were never built for the drought.

You were built for the river.

🎧 Listen to the podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4a8QLh77bmYllVcUNYiA1M?si=QYSnKa8ARQSeJCMGwj5tgw