Why do we care about leadership?

So perhaps we care about leadership, despite all the disappointments, because we can't help ourselves. It's part of who we are. We cannot resist the desire to make progress and improve things, no matter how many times others or we have failed. And in such a daunting task we may wish that others would take up this role. Or if we have the privilege and power, and if we feel the responsibility to do something with that, then we take up that task ourselves.

You may be in this position now. You may have the power, privilege, awareness to do something useful with that, not just for yourself.

I would say that this actually is leadership. It is the doing: the constant striving and effort and recalibrating and learning. Leadership is not the end goal in itself. Because we know as much will be undone as done, leadership is the doing. Like humanity, it is a long story of change and adaptation.

And this brings me to the final part of these wonderings. As I thought about this question for myself and wondered why I care about leadership, I realised how much what I was describing sounded like something else. Something else that we hope for, build our expectations up for and that some die for. Something that is also, we would say, uniquely human.

Of course, it sounds like love. Like leadership, love has no destination: it is in the doing. It requires a constant deepening, understanding and interdependence-just like leadership. It requires us to constantly learn about ourselves and others, understand our power and know when to let go.

We often think of the leaders we admire as exhibiting great courage. I think what they show is love. Love takes courage. It takes courage to love enough to push ourselves into places where we might be wrong, might be disliked and are uncertain about the outcomes. It takes courage to love enough to be willing to let go of the protection.

But most of all it takes courage to love enough to step into the full potential of who we and others are: our compassion, wisdom, power, head and heart-all our imperfections and strengths put together.

This kind of love makes us really stretch to understand what is being asked of us right now. I am sure this is something you have thought about for yourself in this last year. We are being called from the future to continue the story of leading and loving which are inextricably linked.

If we can answer this call perhaps then we can truly understand why we care so much about leadership. And also understand, really, what it means to be human.