CEOs are human beings. They occupy multiple roles in life including spouse, parent, caregiver, citizen, leader of an enterprise. These roles put values in tension with each other in ways that can be difficult to reconcile – making it hard to live with oneself if you are a healthy human.

Authentic leadership requires an honest and open reckoning with the interior conflicts and the exterior choices the CEO role demands – the brutal truths of a business facing competition, dealing with the risks emerging in the macro-environment, generational changes in the employment contract, and disruption across business and society as a consequence of emerging technologies.

No one understands the full complexity of these times. Some of the threats are or at least can feel existential. How you deal with them reflects your character and tells your stakeholders who you are.

Being human is being in a network of relationships – these relationships shape us and we shape them in turn through our actions and our communications. This holds for CEOs as well as for any human. If we treat our relationships as transactional, they will be limited to transactions. If we treat them as something more, something co-generative, then our network of relationships may become a powerful force for change.

Who we are and who we become may be shaped by our intentions and our actions through the network of relationships we cultivate over a career and a lifetime.

Becoming a CEO who is a match for the challenges of these particular times calls for a shift in perspective from individual to team, from having answers to generating questions, from knowing to learning, from some of us to all of us, from transactional to transformational.

To get to where you are required sacrifice, talent, hard work and persistence. It also required luck and near countless acts of support from people you know and remember as well as uncountable others you don’t.

To know this and to hold it as a core principle is not to dishonor what it took from you personally to achieve your success, but rather to honor the many contributions of the community that surrounds you.

Being a leader, being a CEO is a great responsibility and a great privilege. Extending the privilege in ways that benefit your company, your stakeholders and the greater human community may not be easy – it is worthy.

One of the most common concerns for every leader is how to create alignment amongst their team members, up the chain and across the organization.

How to process frustration and bridge the gap between intention and reality.

Purpose, clarity of vision, fostering psychological safety, communication and building a relationship based approach are some of the elements that form the foundation in aligning teams within an organization, but without the intent and ownership to create positive change the foundation will not last for long.