What I Learned Leading in a War Zone (And Why It Matters in the Boardroom)

The first time I was responsible for a decision that could cost someone their life, I was on a rooftop in Sudan. I was in my early thirties, advising on a peace process where the wrong word in the wrong room could unravel months of negotiation. There was no playbook and no quarterly review cycle, and the decision had to be made before the sun set.

I think about that rooftop often. Corporate leadership is nothing like conflict mediation, and the skills I learned in those high-stakes settings are exactly the ones I see missing in boardrooms today. And the irony is that most leadership development programs never teach them.

Lesson 1: Clarity Is a Luxury You Can’t Always Afford

In a conflict zone, you rarely have full information. You make decisions with incomplete data, under time pressure, with real consequences. Most leaders I work with in the corporate world are paralyzed by uncertainty - they wait for the perfect data set, the comprehensive market analysis, the consultant’s report. Meanwhile, the moment passes.

What I learned in Somalia, and later in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan, is that the ability to act decisively without perfect information is a discipline. You learn to distinguish between what you actually need to know and what would merely be nice to know. You develop an instinct for the 70% solution - the point at which you have enough to move, and waiting longer creates more risk than acting now.

The ability to act decisively without perfect information is a discipline.

Lesson 2: Listen to the Room Before You Speak

In peace negotiations, the most dangerous thing you can do is walk in with a pre-made plan and try to impose it. You have to listen - really listen - to what each party actually needs, which is almost never what they say they want. You have to read the room: who is afraid, who is bluffing, who has already made up their mind, and who is waiting for permission to change theirs.

This is no different in a boardroom. The most effective leaders I know are the ones who resist the urge to be the first to speak. They ask the question nobody wants to ask. They notice the person in the corner who has gone quiet. They understand that leadership means creating the conditions for the best answer to emerge.

Leadership means creating the conditions for the best answer to emerge.

Lesson 3: Trust Is Built in Small Moments

In a war zone, trust is everything. It is built when you show up in person to a difficult meeting that nobody thought you'd attend, when you follow through on a small promise, when you admit, publicly, that you got something wrong.

I watch executive leaders spend enormous energy on “trust-building initiatives” while ignoring the basics: returning an email, remembering a name, giving credit where it belongs. Trust is a practice. And the leaders who understand this - who treat trust as something earned in the daily, unglamorous moments - are the ones whose teams will follow them into uncertainty.

Lesson 4: You Cannot Lead from Behind a Desk

The most important leadership lesson I carry from conflict settings is this: proximity matters. In Sudan, you could not understand the dynamics from a report written in an air-conditioned office in Nairobi. You had to be there. You had to sit in the heat, eat the food, hear the stories, see the faces.

In corporate leadership, the same principle applies. The leaders who lose the confidence of their teams are almost always the ones who have retreated - to the C-suite floor, to the strategy offsite, to the data dashboard. The best leaders stay close to the work. They walk the floor. They have lunch with the junior associates. They know what their people are actually thinking, beyond what the engagement survey reports.

Why This Matters Now

We are living in an era of permanent uncertainty. Supply chains fracture, markets shift overnight, and AI rewrites entire industries in a quarter. The leaders who will thrive in this environment are the ones who know how to lead when the ground is moving beneath them.

I learned it on a rooftop in Sudan. And every day, in my work with leaders across five continents, I see the same truth confirmed: the skills that matter most in leadership are the ones that are forged in the moments when the stakes are real, the path is unclear, and the only option is to lead.