Ah the leadership question...

Being a few years past high school, it's interesting to look at many people who seemed like leaders but never made it.

Some times it was life-circumstances. But I think think there is also a too-great a willingness to merely work hard at what presented itself.

There much that has been said on this but it's worth mentioning that to reach a certain level of leadership, while you can continue leading a bit by example, you have to be mainly willing to delegate a lot of the actual work. Essentially, you have to be able to use people. It's more than positive vibes.

In software, in particular, inspiration has never been part of the equation for any good manager manager I've had. Instead, saying what mattered and getting out of the way has always been key. Don't lead technical people by example. Don't clean our bathrooms or our code. "Mr. Energy" would not be welcome here. And I've had too many managers who were bad because they never learned the lesson that their job was no longer coding or even "inspiring" but organizing and bureaucracy-hacking.