It is a hard time to be a leader. We are not facing one challenge in our organizations and our society; we are facing many at once: polarized politics, a media environment that makes reality itself feel contested, and a pace of change that rarely lets up long enough to catch our breath. Some call this the polycrisis. Whatever we call it, it is a lot.
When leadership gets this hard, it is tempting to turn outside ourselves for the answer. We Google it. We read a great leadership book. We think about what a mentor or a role model would do. We might ask AI to help us think it through, maybe even to help us script the exact words for a difficult conversation.
It is tempting to believe the solutions we need are external, out there somewhere, waiting to be found. But what if we already had what we needed within us, and the work was learning to access it?
When we look outward for the answer, it is not really our answer. It is someone else’s approach, someone else’s way of doing things. It might work well for them. But being a great impressionist of another leader will not work for you. We need to find the answers within us and let that be the foundation for how we lead others.
I have been thinking about this as leading from the inside out, and it has three parts.
Inner Work
Most of us think of leadership as influencing others, creating change, building a shared vision, and moving people toward something. That is true, and leadership starts with inner work. We have to get honest about how we get in our own way. We complain about our boss, our employees, the context, the government, the media, but if we are honest, we are often the biggest obstacle to our own progress. Alongside that, we need a real foundation: clarity on our values and our purpose, on who we are and what we are doing, so our leadership is genuine and grounded rather than a good impression of someone else’s.
Leading Others
This is where we build the capacity to lead people and lead teams well, where our inner work becomes visible to the people counting on us: how we listen, how we hold conflict, how we show up in a room full of competing priorities.
Empowering Better Tomorrows
This is transformational leadership, creating positive change in our organizations, our cultures, and our systems, so the world is better for all of us, not just easier for some of us right now. This might be where we focus on the outcomes of our leadership. We aren’t effective here without first doing our inner work.
These three parts are what I mean by leading from the inside out. I have been thinking and writing about this for several years, and it feels like it is starting to come together, especially in this moment. With AI, it has never been easier to find the right-sounding answer, the confident summary, the clean two-paragraph version of a hard idea in thirty seconds. That is tempting. It is easy. It might even feel certain. But it is not deep, and it is not you. And that is exactly what we need more of from our leaders right now.
I am developing this into a book about leading from the inside out. I would love to hear what resonates, what does not, and what questions it raises for you. If this is landing, or if you want to talk it through, let’s connect.
