Balanced Leadership

BALANCED LEADERSHIP: THE POWER OF BOTH-AND IN PARADOXAL TIMES

For more than two decades of teaching at universities and business schools, I’ve seen leadership models come and go like fashion trends. Situational, servant, transactional, transformational… each was once promoted as the ultimate solution, wrapped in shiny new words. But here’s the truth: even the best of them hit their limits in a world defined not by temporary challenges, but by paradoxes and permanent crisis.

And that crisis is everywhere. Not only in the slums where we work with street children, but just as much in companies, schools, and communities here. Just a few years ago, we thought we had finally left the COVID pandemic behind us. But almost immediately, more shocks piled on: the war in Ukraine, the turbulent presidency of Trump, Brexit, an energy crisis with soaring inflation, the growing weight of climate change, and the sudden rise of artificial intelligence. Each crisis doesn’t replace the previous one, it simply stacks on top of it.

That’s where balanced leadership comes in. It’s not about choosing people or results, short term or long term, control or autonomy. It’s about learning to hold the paradox. Dealing with what feel like impossible contradictions. Think of the tension between short-term and long-term goals. The pull between constant change and keeping what still works. Or the balance between emotion and reason. Not either-or, but both-and. That’s the real leadership capacity we need today. Not a fixed style, not a recipe, but the ability to search, again and again, for the right balance in each unique context.

And in doing so, we draw not only on science, but also on our own experience with a hybrid organization like MobileSchool.org. This keynote takes you on a journey: from the war on drugs and critical thinking, to Facebook and the loss of human connection, to ChatGPT and emotional agility, and we close with fake news and the one thing that holds it all together: trust.

FORMAT: 

• Keynote