Twenty-seven years. The corn still comes up green every spring, yet it catches me off guard. As if I’m expecting something else. From flat brown fields to rows and rows of stalks, right on schedule regardless of what happened the year before.

Farmers know. Nothing rushes the corn to harvest.

Nothing stops it sprouting, either.

Funny how a cornfield outside the walls of a boardroom is teaching me about leadership.

Leadership is a posture. It’s showing up when you really don’t feel up to it, doing the right thing, and trusting yourself that when it’s time, the season will turn. Even when you don’t feel it.

Lacing up my shoes for another training run, I do it anyway, even when my body is revolting. I’ve buried loved ones. I’ve watched an organization I trusted fail me. The corn comes up anyway, and I keep showing up. None of that stopped me.

That’s the secret, if you want to call it that. Show up. Pay attention to those around you. Then get out of the way and let those around you do what you do.

That’s it.

Show up. Presence is the first act of leadership. Presence before strategy. Before vision statements, charismatic speaking, or an org chart, you, as leader, need to be present. The best leaders I’ve written about, both fictional and real, are those who walk into the room where the hardest decisions need to be made, and listen. Before planning, they listen. They pay attention, focusing on who is in the room and who can get what done. They make themselves available and, most importantly, let people have access when appropriate.

Pay attention. Leadership is just noise with authority if you aren’t listening. Because I’ve spent years writing about five-minute moments – a stranger at a gas station, a kid refusing to apologize, a mayor who forgot someone was always watching – I say this knowing it’s true. Every moment teaches us the same thing: the leaders who last notice what everyone else scrolls past.

Get out of the way. Leaders don’t need to be the center of the story, and the best ones know that. The job is never about being the center of the story. I’m 63,000 words into a novel about a nonprofit built on someone else’s need to be needed. What’s weird is every chapter reminds me why I don’t want to be on that road. It ends badly for both the leader and their team. Real leadership hands the microphone over to the people doing the work. True leadership builds something that will outshine and outlast you.

Corn and ultrarunners have a lot in common. The corn and the runner need endurance to survive. It’s rare to have someone clap for a runner in a half marathon at mile nine. But when the temperature is below freezing in February and dark, those cheerleaders at the sidelines are home, snuggled in bed, not waiting for a crazy runner like me to come by. That training run is what wins the race. Leadership works the same way. No one claps for the quiet decisions to do the right thing when cutting corners would be faster and easier. But it’s mile nine, the quiet mile, the dark mile that counts.

So what’s ahead for me this year? Or any of you reading this? Good question. All I know for sure is the corn will come up again next spring, right on schedule. It doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not. It will come.

So, get outside. Lace up your leadership shoes. Show up, anyway. Pay attention. And when it’s time to lead, get out of the way and let the good you built keep growing without you.

That’s leadership.

Everything else is just paperwork.