When you become senior enough, you get to (kind of) be temporarily in charge of other senior academics, generally as chair of a committee, or seventeen.
I don’t know if I am finally achieving new levels of maturity, but I’ve acquired some unexpected insights from chairing one important university committee. One such insight has to do with having always felt like I was too uncouth for academia. It turns out there is (probably) nothing wrong with me. I have witnessed people lauded for their tact and composure do stuff I never would, or stuff that, if I did, I would beat myself up over for half a decade. Yet, these other folks don’t seem to be plagued by guilt or shame. It truly is all about how one sees oneself.
Senior academics feel very strongly about things and believe they know best, which makes them challenging to lead. With some, the knowing best manifests as belligerence. With others, it presents as excessive proactiveness, doing something far too soon or doing something that turns out to be a bad idea, then backtracking and causing things to fall into disarray.
I’ve had the previous committee chair, now no longer chair but still on the committee, all but scold me over doing something that is not procedure, just something this person individually feels should be done a certain different way. I responded to the barely disguised written snark with a thank you, then took the issue to the whole committee, where we collectively decided how it would be handled in the future. I owe the former chair some deference, but not limitless deference. Former chair is still just a faculty member, just like myself.
Overall, as challenging as herding cats might be, it has made me feel better about myself as a grownup academic. Seeing others lose their cool, do (minor) imprudent things, and say stuff that is not perfect for the occasion feels vindicating. It also makes me resent all the more the person who, years ago, when I was first starting out as faculty, flat out told me I didn’t have the personality for administration; since the words played into my existing insecurities, I took them as the truth. I hope the person was simply wrong, the way people with big egos are wrong when they assume they know things well beyond the realm of competence, and not that they tried to manipulate me. Because it turns out my poker face has gotten good over the years, my written-communication game is on point, and I have just the right amount of not giving a fuck on account of my gooey center no longer being beholden to academia that I might be ready for larger herds of academic cats. I might even enjoy the challenge.
xykademiqz 
Hm, do I smell a future department chair?! 🙂
I became department chair for the first time this year, and it’s pretty OK, I guess. I like that I can run things the way I want to run them most of the time. I don’t like trying to herd cats, or the senior faculty member who is disengaged until he sends me an eruptive email the night before a deadline saying that he doesn’t like how I did things. I don’t like not having as much control over my schedule, and not being able to plan around when fires will start that I need to put out. The sense of “Somebody ought to do something about that! Oh, wait, I guess the somebody is me…” can be a little unnerving. But, I think I’ve been doing a reasonably good job of putting out the fires that have started, and even trying to have a little vision for the future of the department to work towards. I’m sure you’d be very good at it, despite what that naysayer told you years ago. And if you might even enjoy it… why not?!
We are going to be looking for a dean of a new school that encompasses data, physics, computer science & applied science at W&M. Want to build something and herd a large cohort of cats?
I think it takes a lot of maturity to change your framing to see the rewards of administration. The culture of academia has drilled into me that I only matter as a researcher (and money bringer) and that administrators only exist to get in the way. I’ve been a center director for a couple of years and it has been an internal struggle to shift my thinking. A lot of it requires being less selfish, and I think I remain pretty selfish. It’s hard to separate what brings you satisfaction and joy from what the world tells you should do so (at least for me). From your writing, it’s clear that you care, and that’s the most important thing you need to be a great administrator!
During the pandemic, I found myself on the executive committee for planning (that is what happens when the acting provost is an old colleague). The only thing funnier than watching a bunch of senior physicists argue is watching the intersection of physical scientists and medical doctors, or disease researchers and economists (like the university president).