A Global Leader: A Heart Able to Embrace the World, Part 2

This is the second part of our article on true leadership. The topic is a popular one, but we want to dig deeper.

These days almost every source is shouting about success and “how to become the best”. We prefer to look at leadership not as a flat idea, but from the point of view of its meaning and inner substance. What is more, we have taken on an even more provocative question: what does it mean to be a true leader?

Today we will look for deeper answers on the following themes:

• Great leaders — who they are and what they live for
• A parental heart as the key to true leadership
• Whose burden is it to be a leader?
• Leadership in the 21st century
• Conclusion: a leader is not a formal position but an inner state
• Bonus: cinema as a textbook on leadership

Great leaders — who they are and what they live for

“Being human” is the main criterion of leadership. There may be a more skilled barista on my team — and I will only be glad that “the student has surpassed the master”. I know the ins and outs of the niche, but here is what matters most: I know the birthdays of my people, the ones who give their time and their lives to the work. I could chase bigger profits, yet I understand that growth has to be gradual and that my product has to keep its quality. And in a crisis I will look for ways to keep the team together rather than the higher revenue, because money is easier to earn than trust is to build.

It sounds idealistic. Where do you find a leader like that, or a team that honest? But what stops you from being that person yourself? The moment the question of formal versus real leadership becomes personal, life stops being a set of events — it becomes a process of choosing, every single day, “who I am”.

Every day we “plant seeds” in our lives — our intentions, our goals, our decisions. We can “plant a tree” in our own “yard”, creating a space of comfort, safety and personal wellbeing. Or we can choose a place where its fruit will answer other people's needs, where it will matter not only to us but to the world.

And then the question is no longer which goal we choose, but where and what for we pursue it. The very same action can produce a completely different result depending on whether it is aimed only at ourselves, or whether it reaches beyond the personal and becomes part of something bigger.

The world we live in seems to keep reminding us of that difference through its contrasts. In some countries people have no access to basic resources such as water or food, while in others those same resources are so abundant they create problems of their own. In one place natural wealth lies right on the surface and can be used easily; in another it has to be paid for at an extraordinary price, sometimes with lives. Some places have opportunities but lack the technology; others have the technology but no conditions in which to apply it.

And an uncomfortable question comes up again: is the problem really a lack of resources — or is it a lack of people willing to take responsibility for using them properly and distributing them fairly?

This is how we gradually arrive at a wider understanding of leadership — at the mindset of a global leader. Such a person does not confine themselves to the borders of their own country, culture or personal comfort. They begin to see the world as the space of their responsibility, as a place where their abilities and their heart may be needed. They can picture themselves at different points on the map — where people are fighting poverty, where conflicts are still going on, where people are forced to survive in harsh conditions.

And if we test ourselves even more honestly, there is one more unpleasant question to ask: am I choosing my path based on where I am needed most, or on where I am most comfortable?

At this point it becomes obvious that knowledge, education, languages, a career — everything we are used to treating as the key to success — are only tools. By themselves they do not make a person a leader, because you can have all of it and still remain indifferent to what is happening around you. And here comes the next fundamental question, the one that hits the ego: do you simply exist in order to eat and sleep, or do you live for something greater?

A parental heart as the key to true leadership

What is your relationship with your parents like? It is a very personal question, and I am rude enough to ask it, since I am sitting on the other side of the screen and am not expecting a personal answer. Why am I asking? I want to open a discussion: who is a good father? Or a good mother? Let me get ahead of myself: defining how a good father or a good mother behaves is vital. And I want to try to answer that.

A good father (or mother) does not ask themselves every day whether they want to carry the responsibility. They do not assess whether it is above their pay grade. They do not put care off until later — they simply pick it up and carry it. And this is exactly where that same Shimjeong shows itself: the deep desire to love, to care, to protect and to give, without counting, without measuring, without setting conditions. A parent's heart is a heart of unconditional love. That is how it should be, and sadly it is not always so — but that does not change who we call good parents. It is a hard-to-reach, invisible standard, and people make painful mistakes on the way towards it, yet it is still the model to follow.

So is a good leader a person with a parental heart and “big” goals? Everything written above leads neatly to that conclusion. We are discovering a concept of leadership that is not a “master — servant” relationship but a “parents — children” one. A higher level of love in relationships — the kind you have for family — could solve the problems of many organisations and teams. A good father does not pick a favourite; he wants every child to succeed. A good father does not make one person guilty of everything; he takes every complaint and every wish into account and helps the team reach, if not a compromise, then a consensus. He explains to the “wrong” side where it is mistaken, and to the “right” side why being right is nothing to be proud of. A good father takes to heart the difficulties his team faces, because, as the first example in the article put it: “employees' mistakes are also the responsibility of the system the manager built himself”.

There is one more very important quality I would like to mention, one that people grow into as they become parents: a patient heart. It is in fact that same humility, only now in the position of the subject rather than the object. For parents it is essential, because raising small children takes a remarkable amount of patience if you want to teach them anything. Then come the teenage years — a whole new challenge to your tolerance, as parents have to accept complaints, unstable emotions and adolescent inconsistency with a humble, loving heart. And for parents of grown-up children it is training at the highest level. That is a separate field of relationships altogether, because you are now building a relationship with someone completely independent, while still, as a parent, remaining the elder and the loving one. Through the hardest and most painful falls and disappointments — your own or your beloved child's — you have to keep going and keep loving.

In the relationship between parents and children we train the highest level of trust, because we learn to live for others and to build a healthy hierarchy. Parents earn respect through an immense heart of love and an attitude that never changes. The moment parents start demanding respect negatively or aggressively, the foundation is lost, because you cannot play by the rules of dictatorship or totalitarianism in a relationship with your children. The same holds for a good leader: if he does find a way to build primary, parent-and-child-level relationships with his team, that organisation is bound to flourish.

Whose burden is it to be a leader?

If we are honest all the way through, it becomes clear that the biggest problem is often not that we do not know what to do, but that we do not want to take on more than we have to. Responsibility means effort, stepping outside the familiar, being ready to meet the unknown. That is why we so often tell ourselves things that sound logical and even convincing: “this is not for me”, “I don't want to be a leader”, “what I have is enough”.

But if we stop and look at it honestly, a question arises: are these the real limits of what we are capable of, or just fear that we have learned to explain beautifully?

Perhaps it is partly to do with culture, with the environment we grew up in (post-communist Ukraine), where we were taught not to stick our necks out, to be like everyone else, not to take on too much, to stay somewhere in the middle, as if that were the safest path. And it is true that this path can look stable and predictable — but at the same time it gradually mutes the most important things: desire, will, the drive for something more. Life then becomes something like normal… but not alive.

So does a leader have to be someone special, someone “born under a king's star”? Sometimes fate does prepare the central figures of history, who need not be of noble blood yet seem genuinely “chosen by Heaven”. Can an ordinary citizen really become a president? It hardly seems likely. But then again: could a young comedian, Zelenskyy, have imagined that one day he would have to keep Ukraine afloat from the position of a leader, defending it against military aggression?

And yet, if we go back to the deeper meaning of the word “leader”, we come, unexpectedly, to the conclusion that everyone has to become one. This is not about “so are we all supposed to become presidents?”. It is about that deeper meaning: a leader is not a position, it is a state. Because being a leader — taking responsibility, being able to admit mistakes, caring for the object with love — is not about an external position at all, but about inner qualities.

So one way or another, each of us has to become a leader in our own life: at the very least the leader of our own life, and in time the leader of our family, and, deeper still, the leader of our lineage, a leader at work or for those younger than us. You know the path doctors take, don't you? The peak of a medical career is not the biggest salary. First you are an intern watching a surgeon work, then you are a practising surgeon yourself, and finally you are the surgeon who teaches interns how to operate properly. The path of teaching, which in its social structure mirrors the path of parenthood, is an inevitable part of a person's growth.

Each of us has to take up our position — sometimes because we are forced to, sometimes on our own initiative. And becoming a person who defines an era really is possible; the main question is what my goal on the path of leadership is. Maybe you will become a national hero, or maybe a traitor; maybe a famous businessman, or maybe a criminal; or maybe you will simply be the best father or mother in the world. When it comes to family, one would rather not name the alternatives. And if you look at the world more widely, the heart aches just the same for a betrayed country and for friends who were let down. Either way, it is important to understand that history is built by people, and everyone reading these lines is sometimes a small cog and sometimes a large mechanism — and both keep the whole system running and make their own unique contribution. All that is left is to work out which principles to live by in order to live this life happily.

Leadership in the 21st century

Have people discovered anything new about leadership in the 21st century? You would think the principles of leadership, like the laws of economics, politics and ethics, stay unchanged for millennia. But are they really unchanging? We certainly cannot say that about political systems: a world that once lived by the rules of conquest, slavery and imperialism has slowly but surely started moving towards democracy and the value of the human being.

With time, and above all with the development of society, humanity is coming to understand what a true leader looks like. To be precise, what he ought to be like was discovered long ago (by well-known spiritual figures) — but ideas of healthy leadership spread most widely in the online era, when information can travel from one corner of the world to another in an instant. Today you do not even need to leave the house: access to the world's greatest libraries is right there on your laptop.

We live in the “untact” era — a time when physical contact between people is reduced to a minimum. After the pandemic and the growth of online formats this model has only strengthened: more and more people work remotely and never come into the office.

Companies are increasingly striving for greater freedom, which raises the question of trust in employees. Since in the untact era people often do not go to work but work from home, they have more independence and more agency in making decisions. If a company does not have that trust in people, it can neither manage nor operate effectively in such conditions.

That is why organisations today are thinking harder about whether they can trust people and how to ensure responsible independent work. Even after entering the untact era, the question remains open: how do you work independently while keeping a sense of responsibility?

This is exactly why more and more people say that those needed in the untact era are, put simply, leaders. The view is that these conditions call for people capable of doing their job even when nobody is checking on them.

But this is not the 20th-century leadership we are used to picturing: the charismatic, authoritarian leader who does not listen to anyone and considers only his own opinion correct. Leadership in the 21st century is different — it is a person who has their own opinion, takes responsibility, consults others, finds harmony and knows how to collaborate well.

Conclusion: a leader is not a formal position but an inner state

So we come back to the thought that has already stirred our feelings: each of us is already a leader, whether we admit it or not, because everyone has their own role and their own area of responsibility — and it is our attitude to that role that determines who we are, a true leader or a fake. This becomes especially obvious in situations where everyone is united by a common goal, and then it is clear that centrality is not about position but about state, about the inner readiness to be responsible.

And perhaps the deepest truth is that the central place among people is taken not by the one with the most resources or opportunities, but by the one who loves more, who is able to live for others, who puts the common good above their own comfort. It sounds paradoxical, but it is precisely that person others are drawn to, trust and follow.

The conclusion is very simple: building a better society is possible, but only under certain conditions. Namely, when we inwardly realise the principles of healthy leadership and start practising them. When the idea of a leader is no longer equated with a slave owner or a dictator, and moves closer to the essence of parenthood — a mentor, an example, a subject of love. A leader with the heart of a father or a mother can solve many problems in working relationships, and relationships within companies can become like those in a family. Koreans set a good example here, as their culture holds the concept of “Shimjeong” and the phenomenon of the “extended family”, where you see friends or colleagues not as a short-term benefit but as close people you genuinely care about.

And at the end, after all these thoughts and examples, one most important question remains, one that cannot be avoided and that everyone has to answer for themselves — not in theory, but in their daily choices: how will we ourselves behave in the face of responsibility? Will we back away, finding explanations and excuses, or will we take a step forward even when it is frightening and uncomfortable?

At the very beginning we already asked a rather uncomfortable question: why can some people look calmly at the suffering of the world, at wars, poverty and injustice, read the news and carry on living as if none of it concerns them, while others feel it as inner pain, as something personal, as a calling, as a question that cannot be left unanswered?

Summing up everything we have discussed, we begin to understand that a good leader is troubled by these questions. Not merely a good one, in fact, but a large-scale one. If I am troubled by my family's problems, I will become a leader of my family; if I am troubled by my country's problems, I will become a leader of my country; and if I am troubled by humanity's problems, I will become a leader on a global scale.

At moments like these we are forced to ask ourselves: will I be a person who stays “somewhere in the middle”, or a person whose heart is able to embrace the whole world?

Bonus: cinema as a textbook on leadership

I am a film lover, so it would be a sin not to share some examples of great cinema with you. The theme of good leadership is explored powerfully in films such as Mel Gibson's “Hacksaw Ridge”, Steven Spielberg's “Schindler's List”, Christopher Nolan's “Interstellar”, Ridley Scott's “Gladiator” and “King Richard”.

To get a feel for how to become a leader starting from the very bottom rung, I can recommend these films: “The Last Samurai”, “Peaceful Warrior”, “The King's Speech”, “Ender's Game”. They are about becoming a humble student before fate and life, so I think they are a must-watch.

The questions of responsibility and leadership are portrayed well in films such as “The Fifth Element”, “Interstellar”, “Braveheart”, “Snowpiercer” and “Silence” (directed by Martin Scorsese, by the way). And also “Dune”, the animated “Moana” and the famous “The Matrix”.

To give a full description of the composite image of a leader drawn from these films would probably take more than an hour, but I can save you that valuable currency and give you my modest report: everyone in a leadership position in them is someone who earned that position not by clawing out a victory or walking over other people's heads, but through self-sacrifice, devotion and that same parental heart.