Leading across boundaries: What we can learn from Socrates

After a bruising military setback, two Athenian generals—Nicias and Laches—approached Socrates with a practical question: How should we teach courage?

They expected answers. Instead, Socrates gave them questions.

What is courage? Is it fearlessness? Endurance? Wisdom in danger? Can it be taught—or is it born?

As the generals and fellow citizens responded, Socrates dismantled their answers, not to embarrass, but to reveal their assumptions. With each reply, he gently peeled back layers of inherited thinking, showing that what seemed obvious was anything but.

By the end, no one had a clear definition of courage. But they had something more valuable: a deeper understanding of how little they truly knew, and a shared humility that sharpened their judgment going forward.

“We were not wise,” Nicias admitted. “But we have been made aware of our ignorance.”

This moment, captured in Plato’s Laches, is more than a philosophical anecdote. It is a practical example for today’s boardrooms and leadership tables.

Too often, directors and executives fall into one of two traps: consensus without rigor, or conflict without progress. In either case, differing perspectives are undervalued—or worse, silenced.

Boards too rarely employ anything like the Socratic method of testing assumptions, received wisdom, or traditional answers through disciplined, respectful questioning.

This is exactly what great boards and executive teams are doing today as they face questions as complex as those in ancient Athens:

• How do we decarbonize without destabilizing the global energy system?
• How do we deploy AI without displacing trust, judgment, and people?
• How do we navigate geopolitical divides without retreating into fear or fantasy?

These are not multiple-choice problems. They require the courage to disagree, the humility to listen, and the discipline to probe. They require the ability to understand and respect different points of view, and the willingness to join hands and find the best answers.

In short, they require Socratic leadership.

That doesn’t mean every board meeting becomes a philosophy seminar. But it does mean that the most effective boards cultivate a culture and board dynamic in which questions are tools, not threats, and where the best answers are forged in the fire of opposing views and wisdom emerges from engaging across boundaries.

So, what would Socrates ask of leaders today?

• What truths are we avoiding because we fear what they might require of us once spoken aloud?
• What disagreements have we avoided that could sharpen our thinking?
• Who is not at the table—and how is their absence shaping what we call consensus?
• Are we governing across boundaries—or within them?

In a world growing louder and more divided, the future will not be led by those who shout the answers. It will be led by those wise enough to ask the right questions—and brave enough to do so across every line that separates us.

About the author

Jeremy Hanson (jhanson@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles' Chicago office and a member of the global CEO & Board of Directors Practice.