To care is human.
Dolly Parton is an unlikely leadership case study if we confuse leadership with titles, authority, or seriousness. Yes, her iconic brand is rich in glitter, big hair, rhinestones, and joy, which could distract from the deeper truth if that's all we notice. What defines her still is not the sparkle; it's the steadiness of her values, ones we can learn from now that we can reflect on and remember her and her legacy.
She didn't ask people to pretend things were fine. She acknowledged that life gets heavy and that it's easy to freeze in the face of one critical event after another. And then she offered her grounded invitation: dream more, care more, and love more, without denial, without shame, and without guilt.
That combination matters. It's not "positive bypassing." What we care about is our North Star, and for Dolly, it was that: she always followed her values, and that is what true leadership is about for each of us as human beings. It's a reminder that what we care about is also what carries us through the adversity of change and uncertainty, individually and together. Care shows up expressed through action and it matters more than ever right now.
Dolly showed us what it means to care beyond ourselves and she would remind us: caring for Earth is like caring for your mother. For her, life and work weren't separate from caring for all that's living. We are all interconnected.
So how do we keep caring enough to keep participating, and not outsource our human intelligence to AI's decisions and choices?
To care is leadership.
That's the real tension leadership is facing right now. AI makes new ways of working possible, but it also raises new problems, especially as answers become easy to access and good problem-solving depends more on asking the questions that have us reflect, inquire and discern, because the real shift isn't AI. It's human participation.
Future leadership isn't managing and controlling workers and workflow; it's directing and facilitating communication and information while engaging people and teams to discover what's possible, solve complex problems, and innovate toward impact that resonates with the people we serve, be it clients, customers, or consumers. It's no longer about products that produce more profit, because we each have access to everything, and the real crux is connection and care. Business is still built on relationships.
We have been conditioned to think of leadership as knowing. But if AI has given us access to answers, knowing what to do is democratized; knowing what it matters, however, is not. I happen to believe this is finally our time, when our human advantage can shine over the machines.
That's the difficult challenge for leaders today who have evolved through an industrial-age mindset that trained us to believe leaders are separate from the workforce, and that people cannot be trusted to do the work unless there's a punishment if they don't and a reward if they do.
A leader once told me people need to be managed like kids: they'll only do it if we reward them. I was shocked by this belief, and I found it sad. The reality is that people participate if they care and feel their contribution matters. If not, why should they? Sure, not everyone can care about work, but they care about something, and that was Dolly's message: find something you care about, then work for it. Not just 9-5, but make it worth your life.
Trust is no longer authority, it's authenticity.
The leaders we trust today are authentic about what they care about, not relying on authority to motivate people into action, but engaging people into participation that is care-driven and human-powered. Trust is earned not through perfection, but through consisten integrity driven by care.
Care is clarifying. What we care about tells us what to protect, what to build, and where to place our attention when everything competes for it. Leadership starts the moment we decide that dignity, connection, and the collective good are not optional.
Dolly found the way forward for decades by staying anchored to what she cared about, through every reinvention.
That's the leadership we need now: not people with all the answers, but people who keep caring; in public, consistently, and with the conviction that it matters.
AI cannot care. Only we can. Let's care more together.
Pause on This:
What do you care about so much that it directs your choices (without even realizing it.
Where in your life are you waiting for "the next thing to happen" instead of taking one step to choose and reclaim agency over what you want to make happen?
What would it look like to choose to care more this week, without getting stuck in or bypassing the reality of the challenges? (Hint: pause and hold space before you choose how to act.)
What inspires you to participate more in the collective good, and why?
