Be a Student of Humanity
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“I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.”
Terence, Roman playwright (2nd century BC)
How many leadership books and podcasts have you read or listened to this year?
Now, how many hours have you spent genuinely studying the people you lead?
Most leaders invest heavily in models, tools, and skills to help them lead well. Far fewer invest in the deeper, weirder, more rewarding discipline of understanding what actually makes people tick. I reckon that gap explains more leadership failure than almost anything else.
Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson spent decades studying what separates high-performing teams from the rest. Her conclusion was that the single biggest predictor wasn’t talent, strategy, or resources. It was whether people felt psychologically safe to take interpersonal risks. That safety is created, or destroyed, by leaders who understand, or misunderstand, how fear works in human beings.
Years ago, I was working with a newly formed team of leaders from an aluminium refinery. They were all practical ‘blokey blokes’ with a bent for the no-nonsense and the practical. We had a team-building offsite, and I thought I knew what I was doing. It was early in my facilitation career, and I’d read a lot about the importance of doing icebreakers to start the day. I’d brought along a box of fluffy kids’ toys to use in a game to help the group to get to know each other. I got the members to stand in a circle, each pick up a toy and throw it to someone else in the circle, calling their name as they did it.
As I kicked it off, the first bloke just stood there with his arms folded as the toy bounced off his chest onto the floor. The rest of the guys followed suit. You could hear a pin drop.
Oops.
I’d read the book, but not the room.
Here’s the thing: you don’t learn to lead people from books. You learn from experience, observation, and reflection.
The leader who’s watching the conditions, while also participating, is operating at a different level.
I love to surf. Every time I go, I won’t rush out. Before I get in the water, I study the conditions. I’ll observe the patterns of the waves, the currents, and the tides. I’ll look to see how the best surfers are working with the conditions. They’re the ones who’ve become fluent in spotting what’s going on, without needing to control it. They make it look effortless. And by studying first, I surf better, and I have more fun!
What if that’s what the best leaders do with people?
Not managing them. Not fixing them. Studying them. With patience, with genuine curiosity, without judgment.
What to Focus On
Being a student of humanity has two directions:
Outward: studying others
What does fear look like when it shows up in a room? What unlocks people, and what shuts them down? What are the invisible dynamics at play in any group — the power structures, the unspoken ground rules? What does it actually mean to listen — not just for words, but for what's underneath them? When you're fluent in questions like these, you have a much clearer picture of the territory you're navigating, and you can move through it far more adeptly.
Inward: studying yourself
How does your own fear show up, and what does it cost you and the people around you? What are your genuine strengths — and are you deploying them, or hiding behind them? When do you host, and when do you hero? What takes you there?
The inward work isn’t navel-gazing. It’s calibration. You can’t read the room if you don’t know how you distort it.
Peter Drucker, arguably the 20th century’s most influential management thinker, made this the centrepiece of his landmark Harvard Business Review essay Managing Oneself. His premise was quietly radical: that we cannot lead others well until we’ve done the serious work of understanding how we’re wired. What are your strengths? How do you work best? What do you value?
This isn’t about becoming a therapist or spending your leadership career in a feelings circle. This is about rigour. The best investors study markets obsessively. The best coaches study game footage. The best leaders study people: how they come together, what fear looks like, what unlocks potential, what erodes trust. It’s one of the most practical things you can do.
How to Actually Do This
Read widely, but seek the enduring. The wisdom is already there — in psychology, in philosophy, in great literature. The question is whether you’re willing to prioritise it over the latest leadership fad. Organisational behaviour, neuroscience, attachment theory — none of this is new. But it’s deeply useful.
Get mentors. Be a mentor. There’s no better way to learn about humanity than sitting with someone whose experience stretches further than yours. And there’s no better way to consolidate that learning than teaching someone else. Both are active forms of study.
Use your dual awareness. Every meeting, every conversation is a data source. What do you notice about your own state? What’s happening in the room? Who’s present? Who’s holding back? The leader who’s watching all of this — while also participating — is operating at a different level.
Ask better questions of yourself. What’s driving me right now? How might I be coming across? What am I afraid of in this situation? These aren’t indulgent questions. They’re the questions that keep you calibrated.
Most leaders I work with are genuinely good people who care about the people they lead. But caring isn’t the same as studying.
When did you last treat the people around you as your greatest source of learning? What might become possible if you did?
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