Leaders after leaving office

The truest test of leadership often begins after the office is gone and power has passed.

✨ Brightest Stars in Dark Times ✨

In a time when leadership is often measured by visibility, I keep returning to a quieter question: can our leaders show light in darkest times?

Yes, especially after leaving office.

The truest leaders often shine brightest when they no longer govern but guide. Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland and now Chancellor of Trinity College Dublin, is one of them.

And Ireland is blessed to have two Marys as former president.

In my current work with Mary McAleese, we are exploring what we call the #SacredOrdinary: the everyday spaces where dignity is practiced,#care is sustained, and reconciliation quietly takes shape.

I remember one moment in particular. Walking together through the streets of #Cork during a workshop at the University College Cork, people approached her. Not with formality, not with distance. And she met each encounter simply, attentively, as a normal person in conversation. No performance of status. Just presence.

What has struck me throughout our work is not authority, but attentiveness. A way of listening that does not rush to resolution. A respect for people’s lived contradictions. A refusal to separate moral reflection from everyday life.

This sensibility is deeply shaped by her long experience in peace and reconciliation work, where progress rarely comes from declarations or spectacle, but from patient, relational presence over time.

At a moment when institutions struggle to regain trust, the sacred ordinary reminds us that repair does not begin with grand gestures. It begins with how people are treated in unremarkable settings, day after day.

These are the brightest stars of our time:
not those who shine the loudest, but those who stay close to the ordinary long enough for it to matter.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️

Photo caption: Mary and colleagues practicing attentiveness and dialogue at a workshop on religion and sustainability transformations with my human flourishing family, THE NEW INSTITUTE, Hamburg, 2024.

#Care #IrishDay #Leadership #Belonging #BrightestStars #SacredOrdinary
#HumanFlourishing