For most of my career I did what was expected: I performed. A PhD, six books, 100+ Forbes articles, 300k+ followers, 20+ years as professor, consultant, and coach. Respected, visible, and in demand.
One was pain. Unexpressed frustration and anger rooted in how I grew up, in religion, in feelings I had never examined. It affected my health, my well-being, my marriage, and eventually also my career.
The other was emptiness. A nagging sense that I was not using my full potential. That I was staying safe, making a contribution that was real but not full. I knew I could and should do more.
What I discovered is that leadership is not the destination. It is a stage. Beyond it lies something else: eldership.
Eldership is not leadership+ or another leadership style. It is a different way of being:
- Integrated, no longer split between who you are at home and who you are at work.
- Present, not running on autopilot or playing a role.
- Responsible in the deepest sense: for your own life, your impact, the people around you.
- Calm not because nothing moves you, but because you know who you are.
More modest than leadership, and so much more meaningful.
This is where my own pieces fell together. My inner work, my path through Benedictine spirituality, stoicism, martial arts, and indigenous wisdom traditions, my two decades as professor, author, and coach, and the urgency I feel when I look around at the suffering in so many careers and lives, at the quality of leadership on the global stage, and at the scale of the challenges we face as a world.
The conclusion was obvious: we need more eldership, and we need it urgently.
I work with leaders who sense something similar. Who are tired, stuck, or aware that the way they have been operating cannot continue. One on one, as coach and mentor, to make the shift from leader to elder.