Leadership would be a dream job if it weren’t for all the humans involved.

I’m half-joking. But only half. Maybe a quarter. 

You can read every leadership book. Build a color-coded calendar. Learn about accountability systems, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and process optimization. You can even implement all of it with care, clarity, and just the right balance of empathy and authority. 

And still, someone will misinterpret a message, blow up a group chat, refuse to follow a simple instruction, show up late, get in a passive-aggressive turf war over pallet space or lose their mind because you rearranged the whiteboard. 

Why? Because humans are unpredictable. Messy. Emotional. 

And they don’t always act in their own best interest. 

Which is a real buzzkill when you’re trying to hit your KPIs. 

I’ve led in environments where the plans made sense. The systems were solid. The logic was airtight. And it all fell apart anyway, because someone woke up  in a bad mood and decided today was going to be the day they were going to die on the hill of “we’ve always done it this way.” 

That’s the part leadership books don’t usually prep you for. 

They’ll teach you how to create structure. 

They won’t teach you how to explain the same thing for the fifth time without sounding like an asshole. 

They’ll show you how to build a motivational framework. 

They won’t tell you how to handle a team member who’s mad that their buddy got moved to a different shift and now they “just don’t feel like trying.”

They’ll preach servant leadership, strategic thinking, and communication theory. 

They won’t prepare you for the moment someone walks into your office unannounced and says, “Can we talk about something weird that happened two weeks ago that I haven’t stopped thinking about?

Leadership isn’t hard because the systems are complicated. 

It’s hard because people are people. And people bring everything with them, their stress, their insecurities, their childhood trauma, their bad lunch, their loud opinions, their calendar confusion, and the fact that someone looked at them wrong in the parking lot that morning. 

And here’s the catch.

You don’t get to opt out of that.

You don’t get to say, “Let’s just stick to the work.”

 Because the work is the people. And the people are never just the job they do. 

So yeah, leadership would be easier if people weren’t involved.
But then it wouldn’t be leadership.

It would be inventory management.

If you’re in it for real, get used to the mess. 

That’s where the good stuff happens anyway.