More Than a Feeling

Gary Burnison is CEO of Korn Ferry and the author of I Need a Job!

It was a sound I hadn’t heard in ages—maybe decades. But that long, low reverberation stopped me in my tracks last week while I was visiting the Midwest on business.

And it wasn’t really the sound itself. It was the feeling.

The instant that train horn blew—I was transported back to the small town where I was raised, to the house where trains ran just beyond the backyard. My grandfather working on the railroad. And so many pennies placed on those tracks…

But memory has a way of smoothing the edges. Nostalgia so often puts a golden glow on the past. The truth is those times weren’t always easy—or as idyllic as we might remember. There were hard moments—real ones. Uncertainty. Struggle. Even loss.

And still, what came rushing back to me was something else entirely. Something deeper, more personal, harder to put into words.

It was a sense of who I am—and where I came from.

No doubt, we’ve all had moments like this. Those long-forgotten memories of a bygone era just have a way of peeling back and stripping away all the layers we accumulate over time. The varnish comes off.

What remains is something simpler, more grounded—and maybe that’s the point. Because what we do is not who we are.

In leadership, that distinction just might matter more than we realize. People may respect titles, but they definitely don’t find inspiration in directives.

They respond to connection—something far more human.

Like the time, early in my tenure as CEO, when a board member said to me, “I don’t just want you to be successful—I am going to ensure you are successful.”

Then he hugged me and gave me an invaluable piece of advice: “Never forget that your job is to make people feel better after every conversation than they did before.”

Leadership, at its core, is not about strategy or vision. It’s about presence.

As David Dotlich, PhD, a senior leader in our Consulting business, told me, “The biggest gifts we can give others are our attention and our willingness to listen.”

That’s why leadership is both the great question mark and the logical answer.

Because leadership isn’t just about where we’re going. It’s about never losing sight of where we came from—and staying true to who we are.

Not to dwell on the past. Not to rewrite it. But to reconnect with it—as a feeling.

And that brings us back to the railroad, where my grandfather worked for many years. Every day he carried in his pocket a watch on a chain. Over the years, it passed from my grandfather to my father to me.

Today, the hands are frozen in time at 7:39—whether A.M. or P.M., I’ll never know. And maybe that’s not so important. All that matters is the time we have now and the experiences that continue to shape us, moment to moment.

The old watch no longer keeps time; the train horn fades into the distance. But the feelings remain.

As the band Boston so profoundly told us: So many people have come and gone. Their faces fade as the years go by. Yet I still recall as I wander on—as clear as the sun in the summer sky.

It's more than a feeling.

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