I sat across from a friend and mentor recently. One of those people who seems to know where the world is heading before the rest of us catch up.
We were in one of those quietly perfect spots – a humble, home-cooking kind of place where the napkins were paper and the butter came in foil packets. Around us, old couples shared meals in silence. One man gently helped his wife to her feet like he’d done it a thousand times before. It was all so beautifully traditional. No rush. Just people showing up for each other.
And somehow, it felt like the right place to be having a conversation about leadership. The kind we need now – not in the next quarter, or the next funding cycle, but right now. Because the world we’re operating in now demands a different kind of leader, one the old model can’t produce.
Let’s call it: we’re in the final season of the Hero CEO.
The keynote darling. Sharp jaw, TEDx mic, meditation app on their phone, ruthless in a pivot. Slept under their desk. Built a unicorn. Burnt out their team. Got the book deal anyway.
They were built for the boom, and the boom is over.
We are in a reckoning. Climate. Geopolitics. Economic whiplash. The whole shebang. No single leader can out-hustle the era we’re living through. No one person can hold this complexity on their own. So we need to stop expecting them to.
I’m not saying we toss out vision. We still need that. But we need vision that’s collective. Grounded. Creative in a way that feels less like Steve Jobs on stage and more like a systems thinker in a war room.
We need stewards. Builders. Hosts. Calm in a storm.
It’s why Patagonia handed over ownership to the planet. Why Salesforce shifted focus to wellbeing and ethics. Why Canva’s leadership team keeps doubling down on shared values and long-term thinking. Why Eileen Fisher handed the company back to its people through a worker-owned model. These are not PR plays. These are survival strategies.
So maybe next time you’re hiring, building, stepping up, or stepping back, instead of asking: Who will impress the board?
Ask: Who can stay steady when everything around them isn’t?
Ask: Who still believes in possibility but doesn’t need to be the one holding the spotlight?
Ask: Who can lead a room full of smart people by knowing when to shut up and let the ideas through?
This is the shift. From hero to host. From founder-as-brand to leader-as-steward.
So if you’re the one in the seat right now , the one holding the weight, the vision, the unknown, I ask you this:
What kind of leader are you becoming for the world we’re in now?
And who are you inviting to lead alongside you?
I’d love to hear how you’re thinking about this. The floor’s open. Comment, message, send me something that’s been sitting with you. Let’s talk. We need more real conversations about what leadership looks like now.
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