I’ve been leading people since March 3, 1980, the day I got the title Big Sister--and my little brother born that day was just the first of seven younger siblings who would come along. (To answer some common questions: there are no multiples. Four boys, four girls.) That is when my leadership started, and it hasn’t stopped since.

I’ve led in paid and unpaid positions. I’ve led in situations with formal authority as well as in situations where I have had no authority of any kind, and had to rely on influence. I’ve led large teams through many layers, and individuals that ran the gamut from World Class Rock Star to… not so much. I’ve led teams, steering committees, schools, networks, volunteer councils, task forces… if there was a book for kids on the ABCs of leadership I could write it (A is for Agenda, B is for Buy-In…).

No matter what the context, one fundamental truth comes back again and again: people want to be good at their jobs. Whether that is my 8 year old daughter’s job of loading the dishwasher after dinner,  the principal working to ensure 100% of their students head to college or the PTA meeting their annual fundraising goal, everyone wants to be successful. Everyone brings their own baggage to it, and how people can define success can vary widely but everyone wants to be good at what they do.

The question leaders are constantly facing is: how do we make our people successful? Because it changes over time, this can be vexing. Last year’s star saleswoman is in a slump this year. Becoming a father has presented the Rising Rockstar with new work-life balance tension. There’s technical and quantitative success, but that’s not enough: there’s also the feeling of being on a mission greater than yourself, or being part of a community. You can get the structure and systems right but still have a not-great culture--or you can have a great culture, but work would be so much better if the responsibilities were clearer, or the policies more equitable. The landscape is ever-shifting, presenting many challenges.

“How do you make people successful?” is one of my favorite questions to wrestle with, and yet I found that when I was in the thick of my CEO life it was sometimes challenging to see the forest for the trees. Bringing in a fresh, outside perspective was incredibly valuable to making sure that people were successful---and then, building on that, they were happy, engaged, and staying with us.

Now, as I think about how to make a difference in the world, the idea of helping mission-driven organizations maximize their people motivates me--because that’s a question I love to answer, which I have a track record of exceptional results in and which is one which, when answered consistently, helps, to paraphrase Dr. King “bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.” It’s a powerful question: how often do you think about it, and why?