Ironically, one of the biggest challenges of being a successful leader is that you actually do make progress personally and professionally and reach a point where you have accomplished some of your major goals.

When you are younger this is often not a problem because the things that you tend to work towards are smaller and numerous and when you accomplish one of these things you often barely pause long enough to take a breath before you are rushing off to work on the next item on your list.

However as you gain confidence and experience, the things that you set your sights on tend to get bigger and more complex and take longer to come to fruition.

The positive consequence of this is that you learn to be more selective in your goals and more strategic in the manner that you approach them. You also learn valuable skills such as teamwork and relationship building and delegating and trust.

The more challenging aspect of becoming a leader with a successful track record is that other people begin to turn to you for guidance and start asking awkward questions like, “So what’s next?”

How do you tell someone that when things are going really well, sometimes you don’t always know the answer to this?

Sometimes you just have to float along, doing the tasks that emerge, trusting that you are getting to where you need to be as the day, your life and the world evolves around you.

But how can you be floating and leading at the same time?

Aren’t these two notions contradictory?

On the surface perhaps they are but, in reality, true leadership requires more than ability, charisma and confidence – it requires something much more demanding.

It requires faith in the process.

It’s rather like asking a sea turtle bobbing along in the middle of the ocean to explain how it knows that it is heading towards Bermuda to lay eggs.

Putting aside the fact that it can’t talk, the sea turtle is guided by something stronger and deeper than rational thought because it never doubts that it knows the way to the island or that it will eventually arrive.

It also never complains that the journey is taking too long or questions its purpose – it just wakes up each morning and swims. Some might call this instinct or intuition; others call it faith.

Even more interesting is the fact that, having travelled thousands of miles to reach her destination, the sea turtle also somehow knows that if she spends even a short time lounging on the beach she will surely perish. Instead, the moment she has accomplished her long-awaited task she heads straight back into the water to embark immediately on another lengthy voyage.

In some respects, successful long-term leadership is a lot like being a sea turtle. All you really need to do is set your sights on a clearly defined long-term objective, so large and seemingly impossible that others might dismiss it as being “far-fetched”; then get up every morning and float happily through the day doing all the tasks that emerge as you visualise yourself accomplishing your goal.

And every once in a while, (as a special treat) take a moment or two as you watch the sun set to consider what you might do next …

Robin Trimingham is the chief operating officer of The Olderhood Group Ltd and a virtual presenter, journalist, podcaster and thought leader in the fields of life transition and change management. Connect with Robin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/olderhoodgroup1/ or robin@olderhood.com