Throughout the ages and the world, mankind has been going to holy places, looking for something that wasn't found when it walked normally. The Hajj is a way for millions of Muslims to experience humility, equality, devotion, and return to God in Islam. The Camino de Santiago has always been a symbol of reflection, repentance, endurance and renewal in Christianity. For Buddhists, visits to sites related to Buddha's life call forth silence, detachment, mindful presence and awakening. Traveling to sacred rivers and temples may be linked to the idea of purification, surrender, and return to the divine order of life in Hindu beliefs.

These customs may vary in rites, symbols, and doctrine, but they all appear to share one universal human truth, pilgrimage is never a journey to a place. A journey of the self.

The pilgrim doesn't take with him his comfortable habits, social masks, titles or certainties. Something is suspended. The normal identity quiets down. The person steps into a liminal space or a threshold between what one has been and what one "may" become, as anthropologist Victor Turner said. Here, the hierarchy melts away, the ego retreats and the human being is set in front of the fundamental questions: Who am I? What truly matters? So what do I need to let go of? What is the name that God is giving to me?

This is where pilgrimage and psychology converge. Identity is not static but dynamic and is negotiated and constructed in the process of life experiences, relationships, crises, transitions, and meaning-making. Erik Erikson's essay on identity reminds us that it is a developmental task to become oneself, not a possession. Subsequent studies of “possible selves” also reveal that human beings are motivated not only by who they are now, but by who they think they can be, who they wish they can be, and who they fear they can be.

Every pilgrimage is thus also a possible self encounter. The self that couldn't listen. The self that was bringing inherited expectations. The self that was shaped by role/service, status, achievement, or belonging. Maybe, under everything else, a more subdued self waiting to be heard again.
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This resonates very strongly with leadership.

The expectations of today's leaders are high: they are expected to act quickly and decisively, perform constantly and be strong under pressure. However, the work of leadership doesn't start with performance. It starts with identity. If a leader hasn't tapped into their own relationship they have a tendency to be unconscious about leading from fear, control, image, and/or inherited patterns. Once the inner work has been completed, a leader can lead from presence, clarity, values and responsibility.
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The leader is always accompanied by followers. All leaders are part of a larger system; family history, culture, organization, team, generation, market, society. The "choice" that seems like a personal one is frequently shaped by unseen allegiances, shared stories, interpersonal dynamics, and cultural norms. The pilgrimage is like deep coaching or reflective retreat: It's a moment of pause in the system. It enables the leader to remove the habit of reacting and look out: What am I doing automatically? What am I serving? How do I affect people through my being?
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That is how spiritual retreat, coaching and reflective practice can be transformative spaces. They are not just for resting. They connect with themselves, with others, with purpose, on a deeper level. In the study of religious experience, William James examined the way in which a person's inner experience could affect their perception of life, meaning and action. In leadership language, we could say that these are times when leaders shift from reacting to being conscious, from being a leader to being a leader, from being successful to being significant.
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Or maybe the message of pilgrimage for leadership today is that change is not achieved through only going forward, sometimes it's going backward.

The human journey is not just physical; there are all kinds of pilgrimages, such as the Hajj, the Camino, Buddhist pilgrimages, Hindu sacred journeys, and many others. It's moral, emotional, relational and spiritual. It invites us to live with humility, to listen with new depths, to perceive our interdependency, to return as different, but more aligned.

The wisdom of pilgrimage is that as our world is an obsessed one, the quickest path to leadership may be the slowest one: the courage to stop, the humility to ask questions, the discipline to walk towards a more conscious way of being.
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Leadership is not just where we take others.

It is also about who we are as we go.

Jihane Labib, an executive coach, MCC , ICF PC Board Chair 2026, and Author of the book, Creating Bridges.

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