During the last years, I’ve frequently encountered the quest to understand what makes a good leader. It comes up from those who lead, teach leadership as well as those who are subject to leadership.

Those who lead find themselves with the question of how to do it right? They either look at the situation they are in or those which have not turned out as they expected it in the past. In both cases, they often assume that there must have been the right solution, one they should have been able to find.

It’s way more complex than that. But in essence, the answer is simple. They did what they could to make the best possible decision. It was all they could do at that moment.

Could it have been better? It’s not sure. Could it have been worse? It’s not guaranteed.

Naturally, this doesn’t address all the leadership lessons we can learn from others and ourselves. It only says that in leadership we are the ones who do implement what we’ve learned and how we learned it.

Could one have learned more? Maybe. Could one have learned less? For sure.

In everything we do, there is also something we don’t do.

We can win people’s hearts with what we do.

We lose people’s hearts with what we don’t do.

There’s always a bit of both.