The coach cannot run for you

Early every weekend morning, a running group gathers along the waterfront in Doha. The woman who leads it cannot make a single person in it faster.

She knows this. Her work is everything around the running. A start time that never moves. A route that has been measured. Water left at the turning point. Pace groups, so nobody ends up alone at the back. A message the night before. She notices the runner who has missed two weeks and sends one friendly line, not a lecture.

None of that is running. All of it is the reason people keep running.

And none of it works on someone who never wanted to run. She cannot argue a reluctant person into loving early mornings. What she can do is remove every excuse a willing person might have for staying in bed.

I think this is what leading anything looks like, whether it is a group of customers, a community or a family. The growing belongs to them. The wanting has to be theirs. Your part is the setting around it: what is easy, what is clear, who is there when they arrive, what happens when they slip.

People tend to undervalue this work, because when it is done well it disappears. The runners credit their own legs, and they are right to. Nobody thanks the water bottles.

But take the conditions away and count how many still turn up. The wanting is necessary, and it is rarely enough. Building the place where it can do its work is the difficult part, and it is the part that is yours.