Leadership Quote by Jean Vanier

Vanier’s line is a warning shot at the point where a living community hardens into an institution. “Mystery” isn’t mystical fog for its own sake; it’s the irreducible strangeness of other people, the fact that belonging starts in encounter: faces, needs, unpredictability, the slow trust built without a spreadsheet to certify it. Calling that beginning “mystery” elevates it above managerial comprehension. You can’t fully explain why a group coheres, why a neighbor becomes “ours,” or why care takes root. You can only show up.

Then comes the slide: “ends in administration.” The phrase lands with a grim inevitability. Administration is not villainized because it’s useless, but because it’s legible. Systems demand categories, policies, liability coverage, measurable outcomes. Paperwork makes a community governable to outsiders and funders, but it also changes what the group is for: from mutual presence to program delivery. The subtext is that bureaucracy doesn’t just document reality; it rewrites it.

“Leaders move away from people and into paper” sharpens the critique into a psychology of authority. Leadership begins as proximity and attention, then becomes mediation through forms, meetings, compliance, and performance metrics. It’s the classic nonprofit and religious drift: charisma becomes committee, care becomes case management. Vanier, shaped by L’Arche and its emphasis on relationship with people with disabilities, is pointing at a specific betrayal: when leaders stop being accountable to the vulnerable in the room and start being accountable to the abstractions that keep the organization running.

The quote works because it names a familiar corrosion without romanticizing chaos: every community needs structure, but structure has an appetite. The challenge is keeping administration as a tool, not a destination.