© Ariana Strozzi Mazzucchi, 2025

Leadership is complicated. It’s misunderstood. It is abused. It is brilliant. It varies. It creates change, some good, some bad. It is a whole spectrum of complicated material. Maybe that is why so many people write about it.

Its meaning is supposed to be so simple. Lead-her-ship but someone forgot the ‘h.’

Lead-er-ship— a bit more neutral

I imagine that meant something in the days of ships. Shipmen were led by the stars. They were lead by intuition, the sound of water on the hull, the way the birds appeared and disappeared, and then the mere grit of the other human beings on board.

Why we need leadership—we need to find a new way to survive. We need to find a new way to be respectful citizens of this planet earth. We need to change our value of success, not one based on monetary gain, material possessions and intellectual hubris, but one based on humility, goodness, living with a village-mind, and a gaia consciousness.

Leadership in its essence is the courage to Change; the courage to see a new vision of possibility and have the resilience to follow through towards its fruition even if it is beyond your lifetime.

Yes, there is a lot of bad leadership. That is why, sometimes, we hate the word. In our unconscious doubt, leadership is about a top down dominant subordinate relationship where one is better than another…..THIS NOTION OF LEADERSHIP HAS TO DIE.

We need new leaders. New leaders who can walk quietly down the street making waves of change that most others may not see. We need leaders who will stand for change, not for ego or recognition, but for recalibrating our role on this earth. New leaders of the future will be wisdom keepers and show that we can value the essence of simple living.

We need leaders who have great intuition versus great book smarts. Leaders who know to listen to the way the earth rumbles, who notice when the floodwaters get deeper, when the hummingbird tries to make a nest in the middle of winter, that something is amiss. We need leaders who notice that the wind is getting hotter and dryer. We need leaders who know how to listen to the animal senses, their intuitive compass and not be afraid or ashamed to wear it on their sleeves. These leaders do not need to know HOW to solve all the problems they see. But they do need to listen, to share, to call others to change—not with a blame game—nor a shame game—but in a solutions game based on respect for Mother Earth, for other sentient beings, for the village, whether local or global.

What kind of person does that kind of leader need to be?