This idea began as a speech I gave to our Junior League leadership team in my role as President. It’s about the kind of environment that helps women discover what they’re capable of—and, yes, strawberries.
Leadership isn’t about producing perfect people. It’s about creating the kind of environment where people discover what they’re capable of.
Most people do not join a volunteer organization because they are hoping to become the person who runs the event, manages the budget, addresses the tense committee conversation, or speaks into a microphone in front of a room.
They join because they want to help.
Then, somewhere along the way, someone asks them to do something they have never done before.
Lead this shift. Chair this committee. Make the ask. Teach someone else what you just learned. Solve the problem that has been quietly waiting for someone to claim it.
The first response is often some version of: I do not really know what that means. I am not sure why you are asking me. But okay, let’s try.
And that is where leadership begins.
Not when someone feels perfectly prepared. Not when every obstacle has been cleared. It begins the moment a person takes one small step past what she already knows how to do—and learns, through experience, that she is capable of more than she thought.
Because I like to paint things—and I’m currently having a big strawberry moment—I’ve been thinking about a leadership metaphor that connects the dots between a memorable lesson and the juicy, colorful image that makes us feel cozy inside.
Stay with me.
A strawberry does not appear because one thing went right. It needs good soil, strong roots, rain, plenty of sunshine, time, and pollinators. A whole ecosystem of independent and interconnected conditions has to work together before there is any fruit to show for it.
That is how leadership development works, too. Call it the whole patch.
Organizations do not simply produce leaders. People are not assembly-line projects to be perfected and sent out into the world. Leadership is not really something we hand to people. We advance it by creating environments where they can discover what is already possible in them: clarity, courage, judgment, resilience, and the confidence to act before they have every answer.
The work matters. The programs, projects, customers, communities, and outcomes all matter. But if we want meaningful work to keep happening, we also have to care about the conditions around the people doing it. We have to understand that leadership and impact are not competing priorities. They need each other.
The whole patch matters.
Here is the part nobody puts in the leadership brochure: growth can be profoundly inconvenient.
It looks like low registration for the event you poured your heart into. It looks like a fundraising goal you did not hit. It looks like a disagreement on the team, a delayed deliverable, a role that is suddenly bigger and messier than you imagined. It looks like realizing you are responsible for a problem you do not yet know how to solve.
In those moments, I want to borrow a small phrase from the strawberry patch:
More berries.
Not because failure is fun. Not because frustration should be polished into forced positivity. And not because every obstacle was meant to happen. But because a challenge is not empty. It gives us information. Experience. Perspective. A clearer picture of what needs to change. Another opportunity to practice the very capacities we say we want to build.
When something goes wrong, we can ask better questions:
Perfection is not the standard for meaningful work. The goal is not to avoid every hard thing; it is to leave with more knowledge, more perspective, and more grit than we began with.
More berries.
Then there are the pollinators: the honeybees moving from flower to flower, making connection possible across the patch.
In a team, pollinators are the people who share a resource, offer encouragement, give grace, make an introduction, ask a thoughtful question, help solve a problem, or remind someone of a strength they have forgotten they have.
We all grow in our own ways, but none of us grow alone.
That matters especially in volunteer spaces, where people are giving their time because they care. People will turn things in late. We will dream up wildly ambitious plans before remembering that we are volunteer humans with limited capacity to carry out every single thing we want to do.
It is also true in any workplace, leadership team, or community: the way we treat people becomes part of the environment in which they either take risks and learn—or stay guarded and small.
So when a mistake happens, choose curiosity over blame. Choose solutions over criticism. Choose support over judgment.
This does not mean lowering the bar. It means creating enough safety for people to reach for it.
Comfort says, “Do not make a mistake.” Safety says, “Take the risk. We will learn from what happens.”
Leadership grows best in that second kind of environment: one where people can be honest about what they do not know, brave enough to try anyway, and supported as they get better.
Keeping the mission at the center matters. A people-first culture is not a detour from meaningful work, or an excuse to avoid hard conversations. It is how people become equipped to do meaningful work well. The mission gives us something larger than individual frustration to return to—and a reason to keep learning together when the work gets complicated.
The next time you find yourself thinking, Why does this keep happening? Why are we behind? Why is this harder than it should be? pause before you let frustration become a verdict about the people involved—including yourself.
Try this instead:
The leaders we most need are not the ones who look flawless from a distance. They are the ones who create conditions where other people can discover their own capability.
Mission at the center. More berries. Be a pollinator.
That is the whole patch: women who know how to lead, serve, support one another, and do hard things. And that is how good work keeps becoming possible.