Musings on messy humans

Towards the end of last month, I had the chance to listen to Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, speak. As you might imagine, it was thoughtful, inspiring, and the kind of talk that makes you forget to pull your phone out to take photographs, videos or notes. There are innumerable snippets of the talk etched in my memory. However, this post is dedicated to the one segment that resonated most deeply.

In the second half of the discussion, after reflecting on diversity, politics, and his experiences in office, Obama was asked why, of all the pressing crises in the world today, he chose to focus on building strong leadership through his Leaders Program. His response was deceptively simple yet struck a chord with me because it echoed so deeply with the work I do in my profession each day.

Using climate change as an example, he pointed out something striking: the technical solutions to address rising global temperatures already exist. If the world decided today that we wanted to solve the problem, the tools to deploy those solutions are already on the table. But the challenge isn’t technology—it’s human beings. Climate policy, green transitions, or any sweeping social change requires humans to act in unison, and that, humans are hard to organize. That is why he invests in leaders. Leaders with the capacity to inspire, organize, and mobilize humans toward collective goals.

That line hit me like a mirror held up to my own work in HR. Because if there’s one truth about organizations, it’s this: the daily challenges aren’t about whether we know how to implement strategies, processes, or systems. It’s almost always about the people—their motivations, their fears, their capacity to align and move together. Leadership at its core is not about commanding people or instructing them on what to like, believe, or do – as Obama believes the current generation defaults to. He pointed out – human beings bristle when they are told what to think. Instead, good leaders make people feel seen, heard, and understood. And it is when leaders establish that trust that real change happens.

He shared the story of a young woman who wanted to pass a law addressing domestic violence in her country. The first time she tried, it failed miserably. Despite the importance of her cause, she couldn’t garner the support she needed. Later, during her time in the Leaders Program, she was asked a critical question: did she know why she hadn’t received the backing she needed?

This reflection sent her back into the community, where she spent time engaging with women across the country. Her discovery surprised her. The obstacle wasn’t that people condoned domestic violence. Instead, women hesitated because they felt signing the referendum would put the men in their families at risk. They didn’t want to betray their loved ones, even if they agreed with the cause. Armed with this insight, she reframed her proposal in a way that honored those concerns while still confronting the issue. This time, the referendum didn’t just pass, it drew record levels of engagement. So much so that it set off a wave of turnout that eventually toppled the ruling government. A law passed, a government changed—all because one leader slowed down, listened, and built trust vs telling people what was right and what they should do.

This story lingered in my mind. It made me thing deeper about the complicated nature and the messiness of human beings and the entire branches of science dedicated to studying this exact messiness, from individual psychology to group dynamics. But I also couldn’t help but wonder: is this part of why we are so enthralled by machines and AI? Unlike us, they don’t come with contradictions, biases, or emotional chaos. They operate on pre-programmed logic. Flawed, yes—because those programs are shaped by humans—but still arguably more consistent, predictable, and easier to “organize” than people.

In an organizational context especially, that predictability and control can be seductive. Imagine a workforce that never strays off schedule, never takes a break, never demands fairness or transparency, all while still managing to be productive and creative. Machines may never dare to question authority, stage protests or write open letters. It sounds almost sadistically utopian. Perhaps this is the undercurrent of our societal obsession with AI, chasing not only innovation but also controllability.

Yet as I sat longer with this notion, I realized this framing misses the greater opportunity. We’ll always need humans in organizations – exactly for their messiness, creativity, passion and energy. Leadership isn’t about controlling humans as though they were machinery. It is about embracing the contradictions, the emotions, the complexity and turning all of it into momentum. Machines can compute and optimize. But they can’t organize humans. They can’t tell a story that moves people to act and drive social change that connects deeply with lived realities. They can’t inspire belief in a shared future.

That is what leaders do. And for those of us working in HR, this is the core of our role too. We’re not simply administrators of systems and processes; we’re curators of human energy. We help organizations lean into the messy but beautiful truth that people are unpredictable, emotional, contradictory—and also capable of extraordinary change when they feel heard and supported.