What Leadership (Still) Asks of Us

I was listening to Ken Burns talk with Adam Grant on the ReThinking podcast when Burns lingered on a detail about George Washington that rarely gets much attention.

Washington stepped away from command. More than once. At moments when authority gathered around him, he released it back to the people.

Burns framed it simply. That choice may have mattered more than any battlefield decision. Washington treated leadership as something held in trust, with a beginning and an ending.

What struck me was the cost of that trust and how rare that is in today’s world.

Washington gave his wealth, his health, his privacy, and the chance at an easier life. Leadership asked something real of him, and he answered by giving something real in return.

Washington’s story opened a larger question for me: What if leadership, at its core, could have and should have always worked this way?

Mythologist Michael Meade points to this pattern across cultures. In the oldest traditions, leadership carried a sacrificial responsibility. The person brought to the center of the community carried an obligation to give something of themselves so the life of the whole could endure and flourish.

The word sacrifice carries this meaning. It comes from the Latin sacrificium, formed from sacer, meaning sacred, and facere, meaning to make. To sacrifice originally meant to make something sacred, to set it apart in service of life and continuity.

Seen this way, sacrifice held dignity. Certain privileges and freedoms were offered so something larger could be protected. What a leader relinquished gained meaning because it served the whole.

This older view offers a useful lens for modern leadership application.

This pattern plays out in the healthiest of organizations. For instance, I’m working with several senior business leaders—CEOs and EVPs—each standing at the edge of a transition. Some are moving toward a new chapter of life, others toward reinvention. In different ways, all are choosing to step back from the center of authority and make room for others to lead.

What’s striking is that none of them describe this as disengagement. Instead, they speak of timing, stewardship, and responsibility. They sense that holding on too long can stall the system, while stepping aside—done with care—creates space for growth, confidence, and new leadership capacity to emerge.

This matters now because many institutions are carrying leadership bottlenecks. Experience is concentrated at the top, while energy and insight gather below.

In moments of uncertainty, the most consequential act a leader can take may be knowing when their presence sustains the system—and when it quietly constrains it.

Sacrifice today often shows up as restraint. Pausing with curiosity and intent to learn, before stepping in to solve. Leaving space in a meeting for people with less power. Letting others wrestle with a problem, as a practice. Choosing proportional impact rather than reach. These small choices shape cultures where trust grows and people develop.

This matters most during times of uncertainty, when pressure rises and answers feel urgent. Leadership in these moments often asks for less control and more care for the system as a whole.

In this older understanding, leadership finds its measure of impact in protection. It shows itself in what is safeguarded and in what is allowed to grow when leaders step back from the center.

Which brings us to a simple question, as relevant now as it was in Washington’s time:

What am I willing to give up so others can thrive?

The old stories imagined leadership as a threshold, where someone stands between personal desire and collective good, choosing again and again to make the life of the whole sacred.

That road less taken, for any leader, is always there for the choosing.

If you want a more trusting team, a culture of belonging or a magnetic brand that attracts more of the right customers, I can help. If you'd like to explore if working together makes sense, drop me a line.

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