Leadership, Transition and Reinvention

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The Leader's Camino explores what happens after traditional

success. Using the metaphor of the Camino pilgrimage, the

book examines how leaders can navigate transition,

rediscover purpose and build their next chapter with intention.
 

The Leader’s Camino: A Reading Guide for Leaders Facing Change

Before Crisis

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What Martin Garbers gets right about alignment, direction

and choosing change while options remain.

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Why I Chose This Book

I chose this book because it addresses a challenge many leaders experience but rarely discuss openly. The tension between external success and internal alignment often appears long before a crisis. Martin Garbers explores that gap with honesty and practical insight.
 

Book Overview

There is a particular kind of discomfort that arrives before anything breaks. From the outside, life may still look productive and successful. Inside, the gap between your values and your daily actions has begun to widen.
 

The Leader’s Camino: From Exit to Expansion is written for that moment. Martin Garbers addresses the crossroads where responsibility remains intact, but the way you are operating no longer fits. The book is a reflective companion, with tools and prompts that can be adapted to different stages of change.
 

The question running through the book is useful for entrepreneurs and experienced leaders alike: do you keep relying on discipline and familiar coping mechanisms, or do you listen earlier and choose a different direction?
 

Key Ideas

Alignment can slip before performance does

Most leaders have seen periods when results remained strong while something else deteriorated. The role still fits on paper. The calendar remains full. Targets are met. Yet the work becomes harder to inhabit. Garbers gives language to the stage before the numbers start telling the same story.
 

Direction matters more than a distant destination

As board members, we spend a great deal of time discussing outcomes. What interested me here was the focus on direction. Significant changes often begin before there is a clear destination. They begin with a different decision, a more honest conversation or a change in how time is spent.
 

Coaching can be a creative commitment

One idea I found useful is the reframing of coaching. Too often it is viewed as something people seek when there is a problem to solve. Garbers approaches it differently. Coaching becomes an investment in what comes next, made before strain turns into crisis.
 

Tools should prompt reflection, not obedience

Garbers offers adaptable tools rather than a single doctrine. I found the six-question checklist especially useful because it behaves like a mirror. It helps distinguish a new chapter from a familiar pattern wearing different clothes.
 

Why It Matters

We spend a great deal of time discussing strategy, governance and performance. We spend far less time discussing alignment, even though it influences all three. A leader can remain outwardly effective for a long time while paying an increasing private cost.
 

This book makes an earlier conversation possible. It asks readers to notice the signals before circumstances make the decision for them. Responsible change rarely begins with certainty. It begins with enough honesty to admit that the current arrangement is no longer sustainable or desirable.
 

Who Should Read This Book

• Entrepreneurs approaching an exit, a second act or a shift in identity.

• Chairs, non-executive directors and senior leaders carrying responsibility while questioning what comes next.

• Professionals whose current way of working still produces results, but no longer feels aligned.

• Coaches and advisers supporting people through growth that is chosen before it is forced.
   

Actionable Takeaways

• Name the gap. Compare last month’s calendar with your stated priorities. Use what actually happened as the evidence.

• Review your direction. Choose one behaviour that would show you are moving towards the next chapter, even if the destination remains unclear.

• Use the six-question checklist slowly. Return to any answer that sounds polished. The useful answer may be the one you would hesitate to say aloud.

• Ask for support before urgency removes your options. A coach, peer or trusted board colleague can help test whether you are changing direction or repeating a pattern.

• Run a 30-day experiment. Change one commitment, boundary or routine. Observe what improves and what the resistance reveals.
   

Most leadership transitions are discussed after the fact. An exit has happened. A founder has stepped aside. A role has become unsustainable. What I appreciated about Garbers’ approach is his focus on an earlier moment. Nothing has gone wrong yet, but something no longer feels quite right. In my experience, that is usually when the better decisions are still available. The longer we wait, the fewer options remain.

My Perspective

What stayed with me was the book’s refusal to turn change into a dramatic event. Much leadership advice assumes transformation begins with a crisis. In boardrooms and conversations with founders, I have often seen the important moment arrive earlier. Something that once fit no longer does, even while the performance indicators remain sound.
 

I also read this book alongside Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage. The railway-station passage has always been the most accessible takeaway for me. My reading of it is simple: what we search for elsewhere may already be present, but we still need the journey to recognise it. Garbers brings that thought into the life of a modern leader. The work involves noticing what has been neglected and acting on it.
 

That makes The Leader’s Camino useful at a specific point: life still works, responsibility remains, and continuing in exactly the same way would be the wrong decision.

Continue the Journey

Buy The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho on Amazon

Buy The Leader’s Camino by Martin Garbers on Amazon

Disclosure: These are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
 

About Arnold Spruit

Board Chair, Non-Executive Director, investor, writer and father of four based in Luxembourg.

I write about resilience, leadership, governance, wealth creation and human potential.