I believe that better humans make better leaders. I further believe that the process of learning to lead well can help us become better humans. By growing to meet the demands of the call to leadership, we’re presented with the chance to finally, fully, grow up.

Radical self-inquiry is how we learn to become more of ourselves, more like ourselves, more authentic. More human.

Learning to lead yourself is the hardest part of becoming a leader. That’s one of the things new CEOs and aspiring entrepreneurs come to me for. They come because they feel lonely; they don’t have anyplace else to put the feelings.

So much of what I’ve learned about growing up came from learning to lead.

In fact, the process of becoming me made me a better leader. The two processes, becoming a leader and becoming ourselves, are intertwined and interdependent; better leaders are better humans and better humans are better leaders. Leadership lessons, then, are, at their core, lessons in humanity.

Sometimes the belief systems that are most difficult to overcome aren’t the ghosts in the machine of our childhood. Sometimes the most difficult belief systems fall under the rubric of “conventional wisdom.” Conventional wisdom, for example, dictates that, in our process of becoming warrior-leaders, we focus on the hard things. Big rocks, folks say knowingly. ‘Break down the big rocks and then focus on the little rocks.’ But how do you discern a big rock from a little rock?

...I’d say that a leader’s subject is himself and the world and ‘it requires every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are.