The Heart of Leadership

Host, Steward, Servant, Shield

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” – James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Leadership, Freedom, and Meaning

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom. Part of this comes from the worsening political climate and the erosion of rights I once took for granted, like free speech, which only sharpens my resolve to exercise them. But my inquiry into freedom began more simply and personally: when I left my job and asked myself, what should I do with my time? That question pulled me into a philosophical rabbit hole I’m still tumbling through. Now I want to circle back to where I began in June and consider how freedom, alienation, and belonging bear on the question of leadership.

I used to be allergic to the very idea of leadership. At the Kennedy School, I skipped the most popular leadership classes, convinced that “leadership” was just a label slapped on loud people with more ambition than wisdom. But time has a way of cornering you with the question: if not me, then who? If not now, then when?

Now, approaching fifty, I’m finally reconciled enough with the idea to reflect on it with some experience in hand. Modern life makes the irony plain: we spend most of our days inside hierarchical institutions, doing what we’re told, our “freedom” reduced to griping with colleagues or quitting altogether.

This is why work so often feels alienating. Too many organizations still treat leadership as a reward for loyalty or longevity, assuming the org chart itself confers legitimacy. In other cases—such as in my own SES application process—bureaucratic systems try to measure leadership through a checklist of individual accomplishments. Such metrics capture certain skills but miss the holistic, relational nature of leadership. The result is predictable: people disengage or resist when authority feels procedural rather than personal. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Research shows that what employees want most is meaning. They find it in growth, shared purpose, service, appreciation, or work-life balance. Good leaders create spaces where people feel free, secure, and at home—places where belonging and shared meaning can flourish.

Host and Steward

Leadership requires more than authority; it requires cultivating spaces where freedom and belonging can thrive. Leaders who do this well act as both hosts and stewards. As hosts, they open space for others, hold authority lightly while establishing norms, and welcome difference without fear Hosting demands both vulnerability and strength: a willingness to give without demanding return. As stewards, leaders tend, protect, and defend the commons—a kind of sanctuary where people can question, innovate, and collaborate without fear. They know they are not only caring for the present but also carrying forward a legacy to be entrusted to others. Together, hosting and stewardship define the leader’s task: to hold authority as a trust, to safeguard principles that sustain freedom, and to nurture the conditions for belonging.

While I draw from Arendt’s idea of freedom as action in concert within the space of appearance, I am not suggesting that organizations must become mini-democracies. Not every decision can—or should—be put to a vote. A leader’s task is to build trust so that decisions made on behalf of the group are recognized as legitimate, informed, and aligned with shared principles. The leader listens, protects, and affirms, then acts in ways that safeguard the community’s integrity. This isn’t rocket science; much of good leadership is simply relating to others as fellow human beings. But this is exactly what gets lost when we treat leadership as a possession or prize—bestowed on those deemed more talented, ambitious, or deserving—rather than as a responsibility rooted in relationship.

I am also not suggesting that leadership is simply about granting people freedom and then getting out of the way. A certain style of neoliberal leadership—especially common in knowledge-based industries—resembles benign neglect. I know this style well; as the supervisor of up to 45 employees, I sometimes fell back on it myself. In the name of efficiency and decentralization, it pushes responsibility down onto frontline staff while failing to protect or nurture their growth. It relies on workers’ own internalized demands to perform, optimize, and constantly improve. But this is the path to burnout. Leadership as stewardship and hosting must resist these impulses by creating a nurturing, forgiving environment—one that allows for mistakes, builds solidarity, and offers genuine support.

Servant and Shield

Leadership as hosting and stewardship rests on trust, care, and responsibility. When I supervised staff, I often told them: my job is to put you in a position to succeed. Robert Greenleaf’s vision of servant leadership gave this orientation its clearest form. His test of a leader was simple yet profound: do those served grow as persons—becoming freer, wiser, and more capable of serving others in turn? In this view, authority flows not from command but from care, not from power over others but from responsibility for them.

Abraham Maslow added another dimension: leaders help others not only meet basic needs but also awaken to higher possibilities of creativity, service, and self-transcendence. The leader as host does not merely provide shelter but creates a space safe and secure enough that people can risk growth, stretch into new capacities, and discover what lies beyond themselves. In short, a home.

Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky described adaptive leadership as hosting the hard work of change. (Ironically, they taught one of those Kennedy School leadership courses I skipped at the time!) Leaders cannot shield people from challenge—growth requires discomfort—but they can shape the conditions so that difficulty leads to learning rather than collapse. Too much pressure and people shut down; too little and they cling to familiar patterns. The leader as host, then, is both vulnerable and steadfast: creating a space where truth and dissent can be voiced, while ensuring that the shared “home” remains steady enough for people to stay present and do the work together.

As these leadership models show, a true leader is both servant and shield: servant in listening, affirming, and enabling others to flourish; shield in protecting the integrity of the space against corrosive forces—fear, exploitation, manipulation—that erode trust. To be servant and shield is to embody leadership as hosting: vulnerable in welcome, steadfast in defense, creating a home where others can act in freedom.

As hosts and stewards, leaders transform authority from possession into trust Their decisions are not commands but acts of care, rooted in relationships rather than rank. This does not mean that there are no conflicts, but rather that disagreements are negotiated on a common ground of shared purpose and care.

A Discipline of Care

Here bell hooks presses the final claim: stewardship is inseparable from love. For hooks, love is not a feeling but an action. More precisely, love is a disciplined practice of care, responsibility, and commitment to the well-being of others. Yet in the professional and public spheres, we’ve all but banished the word. Love is left to families, churches, and artists—seen as either too intimate or too lofty to belong in the “serious business” of institutions. But if we take love as hooks does—as a discipline of care—it becomes clear that it is the ethical foundation of any responsible leadership. You won’t see it in a PowerPoint deck or a training module, but love (or care, if you prefer) is the unspoken truth of effective leadership.

The clearest example I know of this practice comes from my wife. As an elementary school teacher, she is beloved by children and parents alike. I know this because, walking through the streets of Arlington or Cambridge, we are often stopped by parents—or even teenagers who once had her in class—effusive in their praise and gratitude. What makes her such a remarkable teacher is her love for her students. And this love does not mean indulging or spoiling them, but rather fostering their growth: challenging them, supporting them, and helping them become more fully themselves. It is as precise an example as I know of the disciplined practice of care.

You may be tempted to dismiss this as obvious—after all, she works with children. But the truth is that no matter how far along we are in life, we never outgrow our need to be loved. Love is not a stage we pass through on the way to maturity; it is the condition that makes growth possible at every stage. If, as Maslow argued, the purpose of leadership is to help people realize their full potential—to self-actualize and even self-transcend—then love is the ground on which all meaningful leadership must stand.

The Heart of Leadership

I sometimes listen to Buddhist sutras on my headphones while walking around my neighborhood. If I try to sit down and read them, I just fall asleep. So walking has become my meditation. One of my favorite conventions in the sutras is the hidden teaching—the most secret, profound, and ineffable instruction. These teachings are usually introduced through a story of their transmission down a long lineage of teachers and now, improbably, arrive to me streaming on Spotify as I circle the Belmont reservoir watching the clouds. The teaching is “hidden” not because it is concealed, but because its truth is subtle—easy to miss, hard to grasp.

In my final months at Volpe, on a late spring day, I attended a protest on Boston Common. It was a motley affair with no clear message—there was so much to be angry about. We stood in the cool air straining to hear the speakers. Still, it was good simply to be there with others. It reminded me that any change begins with presence. Among the many signs that day, one simple one stayed with me: “You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people.”

So here is the pith instruction—the heart teaching—of leadership:

To lead the people, you must love them.

Love is alchemy.

Love turns authority into trust.

Love turns purpose into meaning.

Love turns freedom into a sanctuary, a home we can share.

Only love.

The rest is up to you.