At senior level, competence keeps working, yet its protective power thins out. People still notice whether you deliver, whether you understand the business, whether you can solve hard problems.

Authority rarely collapses in public. More often it thins out over time, almost politely, until a leader discovers that decisions which once carried weight now travel slowly, get second-guessed, or arrive with a footnote attached.

Executive positioning loses its effectiveness when it is treated as a higher-status version of personal branding. The two practices share some surface features: both involve words, images and public interpretation.

What people see as a sudden fall is usually the moment a longer internal drift becomes impossible to ignore. Boards and executives often experience that moment as a surprise because the signals were dispersed, partial or inconvenient.