“Leadership,” he said, “is not about standing above questions. It is about standing within them.”

No leadership sermon. No management theory. No strategic insight. Yet I drove home thinking: When was the last time I noticed people the way he did?

The boardroom was loud. Charts. Opinions. Interruptions. Mid-sentence, he stopped speaking. He closed his notebook. And sat down. No announcement. No apology. Silence followed. Everyone looked at him, confused. Some uncomfortable. Some irritated. No one knew it then, but this would become the most important moment of his leadership.

If my job title disappeared tomorrow, would I disappear with it? Most of us don’t ask this question. Not because it’s irrelevant — but because it’s dangerous. It destabilizes carefully constructed identities. It threatens the scaffolding on which our self-worth quietly rests. So we stay busy. We stay important. We stay titled.