“But How Do I Know What’s Right?”

It’s a stillness I’ve come to recognize—the quiet before a real conversation begins. Not the kind of dialogue stuffed with data or posturing, but one where hearts might open, even just a crack. Not one concerned with the how of our work in the world, but the why that undergirds it. One where something true might be spoken.

That was the feeling as I stood outside a classroom waiting to speak to a group of MBA students.

Inside, the students were studying a case on leadership, power, and influence. I was there not to lecture, but to reflect, to respond. And perhaps, to gently unsettle.

We began as expected—with models and mechanisms, tactics and trade-offs, and eventually moved to a discussion about whether or not those in power have ethical obligations. A hand went up. A voice, more urgent than the rest, asked:

“But how do I know what’s right?”

The room went still.

That question—the kind that lives not only in classrooms, but in boardrooms, in kitchens, and in the quiet of long walks—hung there.

After class, the student wrote to me. His note was tender, thoughtful. He spoke of the tension he felt: the ambition to build something great and the desire not to lose himself along the way. He wanted to lead well. He wanted to be good. He wanted to be ethical. He wanted to build and make a positive dent in the world. But he also knew how blurry those lines can get.

What moved me wasn’t just his intelligence, but his yearning—for clarity, for compass, for a way to do the hard things without hardening his heart.

And I understood.

Because the truth is: no map will tell you what’s right.

Leadership, at its core, is an ethical endeavor. It asks us again and again to navigate the terrain between what’s effective and what’s just. Between what serves the self and what serves the whole. And often, the path isn’t obvious.

I told him, as I’ve told many others: you won’t always know what’s right. But you will always know when something feels off. That unease? That internal friction? That’s not a distraction. That’s the beginning of discernment.

In Reunion, I explored how leadership is kinship—that to lead is to care, to be in a relationship, to recognize our interdependence. And when we forget that, when we reduce people to metrics or pawns or means to an end, we’re not just failing ethically—we’re failing to lead.

Ronald Heifetz, in Leadership Without Easy Answers, speaks of leadership as the capacity to hold people in discomfort long enough for transformation to occur. It’s not about having the answer. It’s about creating the conditions for people—including yourself—to grow into the answer.

That’s hard. That’s slow. But it’s real.

The student’s question reminded me that so many future leaders are hungry—not for dominance, but for decency. They want to build things without betraying themselves. They want to succeed without forgetting what it means to be human.

And that gives me hope.

So here’s what I offered in return:

Pay attention to the moment when silence feels safer than truth.

Pay attention to what tugs at your conscience when others urge you to let it go.

Pay attention to the question behind the question: not just, “What should I do?”—but “Who do I want to become?”

Because in the end, that’s what leadership is. Not control. Not certainty. But a way of being in the world.

And the ones who change the world for the better aren’t always the ones with the biggest platforms or the boldest strategies. Often, they’re the ones who dare to ask, again and again:

But how do we know what’s right?

The ones who stay in the uncomfortable silence that follows such a question often end up with the only answer that is both true and right: the one that arises from within.