The Grounding

What if our greatest danger isn't that we're becoming less capable, but less human?

During COVID, I helped executive coach Mike McCartney produce a leadership presentation for Legatus, an organization of Catholic business owners and senior executives.

With the conference moving online, we could have filmed him behind a desk.

Instead, we went to his farm.

Horses grazing. Open fields. A magnificent pond. A great blue heron standing motionless at the water's edge.

There was something wonderfully grounding about it.

The heron wasn't performing. The horses weren't producing. The trees weren't competing for our attention.

They simply were.

And somehow, surrounded by all of it, we were invited to become more fully present ourselves.

I've thought about that experience often, particularly as our capacity to create and produce accelerates.

We can build companies, move markets, automate processes, and now generate entire worlds of images, words, and ideas with artificial intelligence.

Extraordinary possibilities.

But are we becoming more powerful at making things while becoming less capable of inhabiting the world we've been given?

J. R. R. Tolkien understood something about this.

In The Lord of the Rings, the orcs cut, burn, uproot, and destroy. Living things become obstacles or resources.

Against them stand the Ents, shepherds of the trees, and the hobbits, whose love of the Shire is expressed through gardens, good earth, friendship, and belonging.

It's more than a contrast between destruction and preservation.

It's a contrast between ways of seeing the world.

One seeks to possess and control.

The other recognizes something worthy of reverence.

There's an ancient Latin word for earth or soil: humus.

From it comes humility.

Not humiliation. Not thinking our gifts are insignificant.

But remembering that we're rooted in something greater than ourselves.

A tree can reach magnificently toward the heavens precisely because it remains rooted in the earth.

So can we.

And perhaps that's a lesson for leadership in an age increasingly defined by speed, scale, and technological capability.

Our people aren't merely resources. Our communities aren't markets to be conquered. And our lives aren't simply instruments of production.

The measure of our progress cannot be only what we're becoming capable of doing. It must also include what we're becoming as human beings.

Standing beside that pond with Mike, watching the heron, I was reminded of something no dashboard can adequately measure.

The gift of being alive.

Of being present.

Of belonging.

We need ambition. Innovation. Strategy. Technology.

But we also need the humility to remember what they're ultimately for.

The greatest leaders don't merely build more. They remain grounded in what makes building worthwhile.

Are you grounded?