The Wizard of Oz and the Jews
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Great leaders and parents succeed by seeing people as they truly are and guiding them into roles where they can thrive. Real growth starts with genuine attunement.
Stanford professor Jim Collins shaped modern management with a simple image. Building a great company is like driving a bus. Before you choose the destination, you must get the right people on the bus and, just as important, into the right seats.
The right seat is more than a box on an org chart. It is the alignment of someone’s natural strengths with the role they occupy. A team can be filled with talented people, but if even a few are misaligned, progress slows or stops altogether.
According to the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) framework, a right person is someone who reflects your core values and fits your culture. A right seat is someone who is truly suited for the role.
EOS captures this through the acronym GWC:
Gets it. They intuitively understand the role and what success looks like.
Wants it. They are internally motivated to do the work.
Capacity to do it. They have the skills, time, and cognitive ability to succeed.
Someone may get it and want it, yet lack the capacity. Or they want it, but never fully grasp the work, like a manager whose strategy toolkit is limited to TED Talk quotes. The most damaging case is when someone doesn’t want it at all, yet stays out of loyalty or habit yet builds bitterness and resentment.
Leadership requires removing people from the wrong ones, guiding them into the role where they can thrive.
This principle extends far beyond business. It cuts to the heart of parenting, teaching, and human connection.
David Brooks, in How to Know a Person, often asks people: “When in your life did you feel truly seen?” Almost everyone can recall a moment—usually rare—when another person looked past their surface and responded to who they really were.
To truly see someone is to give them your full presence: noticing without distraction, listening without an agenda, setting aside the noise of your own mind long enough to recognize what is real in another and what they need.
In developmental psychology, this capacity is called attunement, the skill of sensing and responding to another’s inner world. Attunement is a form of deep presence. It builds trust, strengthens a person’s sense of self, and creates the conditions for growth.
Managers who make their employers feel genuinely seen cultivate stronger teams. People who feel recognized do better work, collaborate more openly, and stay longer.
Parents often struggle with this. They love deeply and naturally try to guide their children with the tools that shaped their own lives. Our instincts tell us that the we want our children to live a similar lifestyle to ours. We assume that what worked for us must work for them.
This is a mistake. Proverbs teaches, “Chanoch la’naar al pi darko – Educate the child according to his way.” See your children as they are, not as extensions of yourself.
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), a leading German-Jewish Torah scholar, brings this message home in his commentary on Jacob and Esau. Isaac and Rebecca raised two sons with opposite temperaments yet with a similar pedagogy. Jacob, the quiet learner, thrived under their approach. Esau, the man of the field, did not. Rabbi Hirsch argues that their mistake was not a lack of love, but a lack of attunement. They did not practice “educate the child according to his way.” Esau’s nature was never channeled; it was overridden. His corrupt path was a reaction to a style of education that did not align with his natural temperament.
Jacob took a different approach in parenting. When blessing his children, the Torah states, “ish asher kebirkato beirach otam – He blessed each one according to his natural blessing.” No single mold, no uniform expectations. He saw each child clearly, then shaped a blessing that matched their individual strengths and character.
People grow when the role fits their nature. Whether we are raising a child or leading a team, the work begins with seeing the person in front of us. Only then can we help them reach their potential.
In both leadership and parenting, the goal is not control; it is nurturing. And nurturing starts with humility. You honor others by seeing them for who they are, not who you wish them to be.
