Although I am a product of my circumstances, I believe we carry knowledge within us from elsewhere, enabling us to make better choices in this life. If we get the right parents, as I did, these choices come easier. Inner knowing helped me choose the right mentors in the form of brave managers, who took the risk of betting on a darkie in time when people like me weren’t considered for thinking roles in business.

I’d put my version of hierarchy in place by delegating to other managers, but I was also part of a chain of command in the greater Lucasfilm empire. I remember going home at night, exhausted, feeling like I was balancing on the backs of a herd of horses—only some of the horses were thoroughbreds, some were completely wild, and some were ponies who were struggling to keep up. I found it hard enough to hold on, let alone steer.

Exploring that space between memories and the stories we create allows us to emerge as the leaders we were born to be. My journey as a leader has taught me that my childhood demanded a hypervigilance and that, to stay safe, I learned to work ceaselessly to try to make sense of the world (even as I was confronted with insensible acts and facts). As part of that effort, I listened closely—collecting and holding the stories of those around me as clues to a puzzling life.

The result is that I often see, hear, sense things that others miss. This can be a source of great wisdom. But this sensing can be an impediment to my peace of mind as well, for I can create whole ships of fiction out of the random flotsam and jetsam that float my way. Still, when I sit well and quietly, I can see a way through the puzzle, especially when another is blocked. I laugh as I recall that one of my favorite childhood pastimes was completing books of mazes. I like working my way out of mazes; I am good at it.

This, then, is the highest calling of the warrior-leader: to take our seats as humans and build humane companies, communities where it is gloriously safe for others to be human. The leader—the person living into the immense sky of that honorific—is called to use the gifts of inquiry to see which dragons we may be running from and which princesses we may be running toward. To notice with loving attention if we’re over-indexing on either the soft, open front of the warrior or the strong back. For humane organizations are those that sit still, staying firmly in that place between the strong back of good processes, fiscal clarity, firmly held beliefs and values and the soft, open heart of wisdom, empathy, and fierce gentleness.

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?