True Leaders Create Doors: They See Possibility Others Miss

Learning to Recognize True Leaders

I believe true leadership is rare. I learned to look for it when I worked at the Loran Scholars Foundation, a merit scholarship for youth who demonstrate character, service, and leadership. Again and again, I saw how easy it is to confuse achievement with leadership. The real test is something deeper: how people engage with possibility.

Here’s the metaphor that has stayed with me:

Some people look out at the world and see only walls. They feel stuck, unable to imagine a way forward.

Some find doors that already exist. They open them, walk through, and keep moving.

Others find those doors, open them, and invite others through. They hold the door so others can step forward too.

And then there are the rare few who look at the wall and see where a door could be. They carve out an opening, creating possibility where none existed before, and help others to see it as well.

Door Making Leadership in Action: The Creators of Biidaasige Park

The Don River coming back to life in Biidaasige Park

I was reminded of doormaking leadership while exploring Toronto’s new Biidaasige Park, built on lands once industrial and treated like a dead zone. What had felt lifeless and unusable has been transformed into a vibrant green space where Indigenous plants and animals are returning, and the Don river itself feels alive again. A small group of leaders saw possibility where most saw only decay. They worked alongside Indigenous communities, ecologists, landscape architects, and many others to bring that vision to life. Together, they turned a place once written off into a thriving, welcoming part of the city.

That’s what true leadership is: the courage to see possibility, and the creativity to make it real, not just for yourself, but for others too.

If you find yourself standing at a wall in your own leadership, coaching can be the space to pause, reimagine, and engage in the creative act of leadership itself - the act of turning walls into doors. My coaching supports leaders in cultivating the courage, imagination, and clarity to see possibility where others see barriers, and to create pathways that invite others forward.