What to do at your next inflection moment | A Conversation with Sharath Jeevan

Every so often in our leadership journey, we get to one of those points where there's a fork in the road. It's called an inflection moment and they can be make or break moments and they happen all the time. But do you know what to do when you get to one? Can you actually be prepared for these inflection moments? Today, my guest is going to blow your mind

with some practical tips on how to navigate these moments. You're going to love it. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning. Welcome to Global Lead Leaders, the chart topic podcast for international school leaders. I'm an organizational coach and in this show, I get to know the teachers,

leaders and innovators making a difference in schools around the world. And I am so excited that today's guest is Sharath Jeevan. Now, Sharath is a globally recognized authority on leadership, particularly during critical inflection points. He's an advisor, he's a facilitator, he's an author of a few brilliant books and he helps loads of organizations from education nonprofits to the NHS, that's the National Health Service in the UK and even corporations like L'Oreal and Shopify. He mainly helps them to navigate those crucial

inflection moments. He lectures on leadership at Oxford and Cambridge University and has received wide acclaim for his books and I love them. His first one was intrinsic and his new book, Inflection, was released this year and that's what we're going to dive into today. But before we jump into the conversation, I'm delighted that today's episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more about that upcoming conference.

A treatment inflection momentary is when a leader or group of leaders thinks about the next mountain to climb. They have done well, they've often been successful but they feel they could have more impact. I think the kind of questions they may be asking is what more could we do and what more could we be? And I think the linking of those two questions really triggers that idea of an inflection moment and what I would almost always advise leaders if they have their space capacity is to take those questions very intentionally and very proactively before they get into the next crisis if you like as well. What can otherwise happen is it's a bit

like in a sport where you play not to lose, you're close for a while, something almost triggers some stress and tension there and you end up something playing more defensively. But if you're at that point where you have some blue sky around you, you can do a little bit of a reflection and try to define that next mountain. It's really, really galvanizing for you as a leader but also for the people that are around you. For your students, of course, if you're an international school leader, for parents and communities and for the staff base at large.

I'm curious, Sharath, actually. Where did this come from? Was there a personal motive behind talking about inflection moments for you? I think so. I think a lot of life is comic machinery given that I'm raised as a Hindu

myself actually. I was a founder, CEO in education for about 15 years. I set up two quite large education organizations. They reached about 50,000 schools collectively in the UK but also in emerging countries like India, East Africa, Brazil, Indonesia. When I look back

at those 15 years, yesterday, today, execution as a leader mattered. Of course, it did. But actually our success or some of our setbacks were correlated by these really critical moments that we faced. The one was about do we try and scale with the government, for example.

Another one was about do we try to distill our culture in a really powerful way. I think some of those I handled well, some less one. I think even now I can look back to trace the impact of those decisions. Now that I've stepped out of the ring, the CEO ring, and love working with other leaders in many different sectors, including, of course, education, let me focus on this as a really key theme and specialism if you like.

That makes a lot of sense. I like how you framed it as we get to moments where you almost have to ask a do we question. Do we do this? Do we follow this person? Do we choose to do this?

And I imagine schools at the minute are feeling that deeply. They've had a lot of deep inflection moments, be that what do we do with COVID? Do we go all online? Or even with generative AI recently, I imagine that's something you are speaking with schools a lot at the minute. This

is a huge inflection moment for us all. Yeah, those are two great examples. I think there's even a bigger sort of meta trigger, if you like, as well, Shane, I think, which is about what is the purpose of being an international school in the first place? So I think a lot of our inflection moments being about having asteroids and starships and asteroids are some of the external pressures around us. And I think there's been so many

questions, as you said, if you think about the external environment about changes in the job market, AI will be the biggest one in terms of what it means for young people's jobs. I just wrote a piece for Citibank and their insights group on this. But I think what it will mean is that how we think about value and what the impact of education needs to be, will need to shift quite profoundly. And I think this kind of idea of an international school being a, if you like, a stepping stone, often to university, right, somewhere in the world, US, UK, whatever, of course, it'll play that function. But I do think there'll be more and

more pressure and impetus to say, this experience is going to be really important in its own right. What we see is a lot of universities being quite pressured in resources and in time. Often, I think the best time that students will have in terms of adult relationships, role modeling, culture, all those things will be in their school years, actually. So maybe repurposing it from being a stepping stone to being a really powerful, important destination. And often, I think the biggest impact that a young person may have

will be in these school years, especially those sort of formative, maybe in secondary school, for example, but also the transition to secondary, the last years of primary school, there'll be quite profound inflection moments for young person's journey, I think, as well. When you describe it in that way, the importance of education, for example, some of the, as you call it, asteroids, some of the asteroids that are around are pretty big, these kinds of things that are weighing on schools at the minute. So it's no wonder schools sometimes struggle to make decisions, right, going forward, because it's not, what am I having for dinner tonight? These are big decisions that have massive unknowns.

I guess, working in the unknown is what you do a lot when you're speaking with organizations and schools. Yeah, very much. I hope the book is helpful. And of course, I work with organizations, Shane, but I think the big piece of advice I'd provide in that sense of the unknown is that's what young people are going to be facing all through their lives. We're going to need to

constantly reinvent ourselves consistently. And what the book provides is a sense of how to navigate the unknown. I love that language across four very key timeframes. And what tends to happen is we go into an unknown territory and we tend to play to the short term. Actually,

I think thinking about it being about different timeframes and what makes inflection moments so unique is you've got to navigate long-term. In the book, I've talked about the hour hand of a watch, the minute hand, the medium term, the second and the short term, and then look at that overall learning dial that will help us keep learning and growing as we go on that journey. I think starting with the long-term really, really matters. If there's a leadership team in a professional school, how do they see the world differently from other school leaders?

What's unique about their perspective? I think you'll start to bring that out. You can really start to get to a direction that is very authentic, very fresh, very unique to the school itself. I see. In the book, you talk about you get to an inflection moment and then you've got

different perspectives that you're looking at and you give it in terms of the hour hand, minute hand, second hand in terms of the short term, long term, medium term, and then that watch dial, which is quite nice in terms of just the ongoing. So is that the kind of first step that we should make when we get to an inflection moment to go through those different time dimensions? Is that in your mind? What is our best bet?

Yeah, I think first of all, just checking is an inflection moment. Sometimes it may just be a day-to-day thing, but I'd say if you're seeing a strong asteroid, a strong external shift, which we've certainly seen an education of these past years, we're probably likely to have one. Usually what happens is there's a Starship effect as well in the sense that something is changing in the internal environment. It might be a new leadership team, new governance, new demographic of student body, an internal policy change. Normally the asteroids and

Starships come at the same time and those trigger quite deep inflection moments as well. So firstly, just check that you're in one, but if you are, absolutely start with the long term. And one of the key ideas in the book is to build what I call a perspective statement. Start to think about how your view of education differs from other school leaders. So you may,

for example, feel there's a much greater need to focus on socio-emotional skills or look at relationships in the school or think about the community engagement piece. These are just examples, but whatever it is, how do you bring that to the core? So your school feels different, authentic, and unique. What I see a lot of school leaders having to do nowadays, the UK is a good example right now, is there's such strong accountability and compliance regimes.

We have it offstead or the ISI in the independent sector in the UK, for example. Often schools end up making their purpose being about having a good inspection or doing one on a league table. That's not a direction. That's an accountability thing. So how do we try to really

focus on what makes the school different? And you kind of build that sense of how we see education differently. That can provide a great starting point for building that long term, not star or direction. A perspective statement as in what's your unique perspective as a school? Is that kind of what you mean by that?

Exactly. There's actually the tool there, but it's a very simple tool. It really says, compared to conventional wisdom, as a leader or a group of leaders, I see the world different. So who do you see being the point of difference? Is it about how the students are nurtured?

How staff are trained or developed? Is it about how the community is engaged? I'm just giving examples. Once you know the key who, what needs to happen to that group differently?

Is it about the students need to have a different kind of experience or different kind of feeling in the school? Is it about staff internising in a different kind of culture? And then the how is around, how can that manifest? If it's, for example, the student experience, is it about this happening in the core school time? Is it about building stuff

outside of the core school day? Is it about every lesson changing? Is it about the stuff that happens in between lessons? It tries to really try and bring real specificity to how we think about the world differently. And that can channel us as leaders to be bolder in that

insight that you described. Got it. Got it. So when we're thinking about these moments, then, because I love how you frame the asteroids and starships, right? So asteroids is something

from outside. Starship is almost a change within our internal system. But you say more often than not, they're both happening simultaneously, right? Yeah, that's what triggers the biggest infection moments. Often they play off each other. So maybe

there's been a shift in the external environment. Maybe for example, let's say the international community has changed. Maybe there's a bigger diaspora coming in, as an example. We've had certain populations, let's say in Dubai, a large number of new Russian students come in, for example, whatever it might be, Shane, as well. That might mean that the school itself

says, okay, we need to change maybe our staffing, for example, or those kinds of questions as well. So just the areas where there's some kind of external and internal shift, and they often reinforce each other at the same time. Yeah. And that's one that so many listeners are going to be nodding along to because the demographic shifts in international schools have been quite big, especially where I'm based in Asia, where there's been massive demographic shifts since COVID, especially. It's got me wondering though, like, what if a school

is saying, I have got several big inflections happening right now. Like I've got this change in demographic, for example, I've got a teacher retention crisis. I've got AI here. What am I supposed to do with these? Do I combine them all into one massive inflection? Do I separate

them out? Where do you know where to start? Yeah, sometimes there's a risk that leaders take these on the chain and do them one by one. Almost always, that never is that coherent because the AI trends will probably interrelate with the retention piece around that. It'll

probably relate to the demographic changes you talked about in that example. So think about those as factors in the background that start with ourselves, start from within, and start to think about how do we see the world differently as leaders. And you can bring those things in, of course, that will help to bring a unified direction for the school and a sense of where the school might want to go in the future, given the trends that you talked about. Yeah, I really like that. I wonder then if we can dig into another concept that came up in the book

that stood out to me, which was about different types of problems that you might have in schools, and you talk about wicked and kind problems. How's that relevant? I'd love to unpack that a little bit. Yeah, so I think, again, when we think about our perspective on a problem, we might want to look at what kind of problem does the school really want to try to address.

And there are two types of problems in the world. One are kind problems where there is a stable technical solution for that problem. That problem can be solved, right? So it might be something around, I want to use better devices in the school. That is a classic kind problem. You

can find a device, you know how much it costs, and scope that out, et cetera. A wicked problem might be we want to use technology in a way that deeply engages young people but doesn't have the addictive side effects that we're seeing in so much of the research right now. And the wicked problem, the second one, there is no perfect answer to that problem. Judgment is involved. We've got to balance different kinds of priorities and different

kinds of trade-offs at the same time. In general, I'd say if you end up focusing on a kind problem as an education leader, I would say respectfully that something has gone wrong, that we're going for this more seductive, easier thing. But actually, the more important question is almost always wicked. That's very interesting. And I wonder if it links to something else you said. And I remember getting

to this page in your book, and you talked about it being sometimes useful to throw leaders off balance a little bit. And now this is making me think we may be tempted to just go for the kind problems, right? And is that kind of where you're thinking with that? Like, because when I first read that, and it was earlier in your book, I thought, oh, wow, that's interesting. I think

I've maybe posted it online, going, what do people think of this? Do you make a habit of throwing your leaders or your team off balance? I'd love to explore that a little bit more. Yeah, no, since I was talking about some time in the pandemic, actually, I was in Cornwall for a little while, Shane, and down from the house we were staying in, you could see all these surfers go into water, and it was freezing cold, right? The UK could be a cold place in the

winter, in the seas and so on. But you see these surfers go in, and what really struck me about that sort of metaphor was that they just jumped in and sort of almost surrendered themselves to the water itself. They knew the wave was going to come at them, they couldn't control that, but they were almost so zen about it. They almost let themselves be caught up with that bigger wave. And I think the leaders I see really succeed and flourish are the ones who find

something bigger than themselves to fall into. They almost lose themselves in the bigger problem. I think a lot of the things we talk about today around imposter syndrome of leaders, where leaders don't feel they're up to the next challenge. It's because they're very, very self-conscious. It's constantly thinking about themselves, their own capabilities.

Of course that matters, but we'll come to that later on. But actually, if you can get lost in something bigger, something so ambitious, overwhelming, you lose all those inhibitions. You've just got to go for it. You've got to go and surf the waves. And so I think, again,

if what can happen is leaders can say, look, this change is so overwhelming. Let me stay with what feels more boundable. So let's look at the iPad issue and let's get the best iPad for students. Let's not look at the bigger question of what technology is meant to be doing in our school.

It's a seductive path, but it almost never leads to a good place. Whereas if you embrace the fact that let's really go after the bigger question, the bigger problem, the wicked problem. Yes, it'll be messy. Yes, there'll be no perfect answer, but I'm going to help my organization, my school get to a place it wouldn't have got to otherwise. To me, that's the real definition

of leadership. It's the how, isn't it? That sounds like the right thing to do. And I think many leaders would believe you should be tackling these wicked, more complex problems that have a deeper impact and throwing myself into it. But on the ground, that can feel actually pretty scary.

You can feel pretty vulnerable going in that. And also the day to day can sometimes feel like it's overwhelming. Get in the way. Do you have ways to kind of get over that hurdle to actually jump into these inflection moments in the way you describe?

No, absolutely. And I think the key is to really get the hour hand, minute hand and second hand, and the dial moving at the same pace, the same direction as well. So one of the things I talk a lot about in the book is how we need to align team potential towards that direction. So let's say, for example, that the school leader says they really want to look at, there's been big demographic changes. They've been really struck by the post pandemic environment

around, let's say mental health, for example, even absenteeism might be something where they may be saying, I'm just giving you a hypothetical scenario here. But suppose those things happen. Okay. The school says, look, we really want to reinvent our relationship with technology as a school, not in a kind of, let's get the best iPad. We really think,

what does the student experience seem to look like? What does the staff experience? What's the role of technology to really fulfill potential of these two important groups? That's a classic wicked problem. That might be the start of that next inflection journey for

them. They look at the direction and say, look, what makes us different compared to conventional wisdom. We really believe that we're really strong as a school about engaging with our community. The relationships with our community are unique. They're stronger than in other schools. They make

us who we are. Our community really wants to help shape this with us. Maybe that's the core of how they see the world differently. And so they may then think, okay, I'm going to go to think about technology in terms of aligning key potential. They may see both their own internal

staff and the community as their sort of quote-unquote team. So how do you nurture the potential of both? How do we get better communication going, but also richer communication going between those two groups, but in a way that's not overwhelming for the teachers. They're not bombarded by messages of communication, but how do we get the right level of communication, but also support students in their home lives around that journey, for example. So again, I think the key

thing often what happens is schools go and say, we want to build a great culture. And it starts from a very abstract place of culture in its own right is a good thing. It is, but the culture needs to reinforce the direction we're going and the team we have and how they're nurtured, what they focus on needs to support direction. So it's about aligning those two things together very tangibly. That's a really great point. We can think we're creating cultures,

but you're not, of course, you're developing on a culture that's already there. And so working with it is your best tool. And I also, I imagine leaning into your team or leaning into your community when you've got this moment in terms of designing is going to feel that little more supported and whole because you're all going together at the same pace rather than a leader kind of leading from the front and then hoping that the community are going to follow. Absolutely. And I think also at the education, I'd say that one after the inflection

moment, it's not always a what inflection moment, it's a how inflection moment. So it might not always be about, we want a brand new gizmo, right? If it's technology example, you might already have that. Maybe there's a great iPad policy or whatever the school is using, but actually it's more like the how, like what are the rules of the game?

How do we think about technology? How do we use it in the cadence of a lesson? How do we make sure it's switched off at the key points so that students really are mindful and have flow and can fully focus? Those kinds of how questions tend to need to be co-creative, as you said. And it's thinking about who are the key constituent groups around you

that you need to bring in. So I grew up, I should have said actually, at the beginning at an international school in Saudi Arabia, it was a deep and very formative experience for me. I loved it and I learned so much. My one big regret actually is that the school was quite sort of ossified in the culture of Saudi Arabia. There wasn't many linkages between the

school and the wider world. There was with the parents beyond that. And it was such an interesting place to grow up in, right? There was so many interesting things going on.

And so looking back, I wonder, could we have built more bridges with the community more widely as a chance to learn, to explore, to build that cross-cultural. I'm not within the student body. I've got 17 nationalities at such a diverse place, but between the community and the student body. So that's just one example. We may want to think about, okay, well,

if we really want to build, you know, cultural relationships for our students, maybe we can think about that. How could technology enhance that discovery process, for example? That example is a perfect example that again, many leaders will be thinking about as international schools can sit as little islands in their community. But the framing of it in terms of how, how can we do this, I think is very useful and really opens up a conversation. I want to take a moment to tell you about the

International Curriculum Conference that is coming up from the International Curriculum Association. This will be held from the 11th to the 13th of November in 2024 in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It is so exciting. The theme of this is global perspectives, local impact. And I was at their

conference last year. I can't recommend it highly enough. This is a focal point for the global community of schools, part of the International Curriculum Association. There is going to be amazing keynote speakers and a wide range of school-led workshops delivered by classroom teachers, sharing their practice and experience. Seriously, with the incredible

insights and showcasing of learning, I really do recommend the International Curriculum Conference because it offers a unique level of enrichment connection and learning for all. If you're interested, check out the link in the show notes to register. Please go there. It's going to be great. So the community are really important, but of course, the leader,

you as a leader are central to a change and to an inflection point as well. And you talk a lot in the book about that process of as a leader. And one thing you mentioned in the book is, what do you see when you look in a mirror and who do you see looking at as you are? And I guess here you go into a good discussion about being authentic as a leader. Do you see that authenticity

as a key part of navigating these moments? Absolutely. And I don't mean authenticity in a sense of like, you just need to just be yourself in the extreme version. That's not what I mean. But it's something, a sense that I think what often we do as leaders,

often we're trained in pursuing experts to do this is to wear what I call the mask of leadership. We behave, and you can see this in certain meetings. I did some work in our parliament, the UK parliament last year. And you see these meetings where I know someone will come and share the meeting. And it's just, they've learned to chair it, right? There's a certain way they

chair it. It doesn't reflect them in any way whatsoever. It's almost an easy way for them to almost not be themselves and reveal anything about themselves. And I think the core idea of leadership in sort of my definition is about helping a team and a group of people reach a place they want to have reached other wives. So if that's the definition, you've got to be open about

what that place in your view needs to be and why that's the case as well. And that is, it comes from saying, I don't have all the answers to how to get there, but I believe passionately getting to that place. I want your help in reaching that place together. These are my strengths. These are things I can help, but these are things that I'm also maybe less confident

on, less strong on. Can you help me to build that additional muscle so we can get that together as well? So it's less about this kind of adversarial or need to show that I'm the smartest person in the room. I went through that in my career and it was a disaster actually. I

didn't really achieve what I would achieve early on. I think for me, the unlocking was when I realized that I had to sort of almost like forget myself about the surfer and think about that broader journey and do whatever I had to do as they did to help my team and my organization get on that journey and really want to be on it as well. Yeah. I think we've all played leader in early leadership journeys where you're experimenting and almost mimicking the behaviors that you think made a good leader before. But what comes

across from what you're saying and what you've written is that some of our best leaders actually are absorbed in that big picture, absorbed in the idea that themselves, they are a part of their message, of course, but the authenticity comes in in that belief and then in that vulnerability, I guess, to go, and that doesn't mean I already know it. Otherwise, you know, we'd be in a different place. That's not only okay, but it's desirable. Absolutely. And I think also having the vulnerability to say this is a big ambition.

This is scary. It's a big place we're trying to get to metaphorically speaking. You know, I have a client who is the CEO and founder of the National College for Digital Skills. And he'd been talking to me for years and I got a chance to work with him quite deeply for a couple of years, Shane, about having a campus, right? A real campus. And it was such

a lofty thing. And, you know, the government budgets, the UK further education had been cut a lot, but it was so inspiring. I went to see him in this beautiful campus in Victoria about a couple of months ago. And it just made my whole month that she's coming in and just seeing this place had been alive. But what really struck me about him as a leader is he'd

not given up on that dream that was always there. In the meantime, while that was still not a constraint, he built all the other elements, the cultural elements, the technology elements to make that student experience for him really come to fruit. But the building was also a key element of it. But I think he just really believed in it, was able to bring our government on and so on in the UK. And just seeing that physical building, that really beautiful space that

was ideal, was re-optimized for those on this journey. Yeah, it really told me a lot about the role of persistence, really being willing to be big, to be vulnerable and scary, but to not let go of that ambition. We so need these kind of leaders at the minute as well in education. I talk a lot about what I've called like this slow death of organizational confidence in schools that I think has crept in over time. And I think that's because there's a lot of

outside noise, either from policy, from government or from companies, businesses who want to provide, or from consultants, or so much from outside that school leaders can sometimes just feel a bit scared of actually making decisions for themselves. But actually, what we really need now is we need leaders who can face inflection moments and create those positive trajectories for change in a brave way, like you just described. I think it's so vital that that work has been done by educators, by education leaders. Otherwise, people from outside, they will also do that.

Google will happily put a school together and already are, right? So what are we doing in education? How are we driving those conversations? It's really important.

Yeah, and I think it really echoes the idea of like, it's important. I think when I find our leaders are awash with, as I said, all those external influences, advice, best practices, data often awash with data as well. That's not the problem anymore. But it's how do you channel that to a great place, that place that you want to get to next. And I'm a big believer in stepping

back. And what I normally do in organizations, and I do this with a number of school groups is stepping back in over this journey of say, say four to six months, systematically going through these steps of thinking about direction, team potential, culture, and learning and bringing them all together. So that inflection where it's been allocated, most of the work honestly, is actually creating space for you just to step back from the day to day. It's often not even trying to change the direction so much as actually challenging to think even bigger, and making sure they're not watering down that direction they want to go in, and making sure that all of the elements are coming together to support them. And they also have the bandwidth to focus on that long term,

and are not overwhelmed by the short term reactive elements, which is also part of being a leader as well, or a head teacher, or a principal, or also a school governor. So how to think about those spaces, and I call it a guided journey, because it's almost a sense of a journey that you're going on. It's exciting, you're not quite sure where you're going to end up. But a lot of it also is the emotional support to help them through that, because there are always those big roller coasters that happen as part of that journey, things they've got to navigate, pressures, and so on. Just make sure someone is also there to help them on that journey as well.

Yeah, for sure. Having those people around is so important, and especially important to have people around to understand the general direction that you've decided on as an organisation or as a team, because as you rightly said, you don't know what it's going to look like in the end, no one can really give you what the destination looks like. So you have to have a sense of letting go into the journey in a way. And I think by using tools such as your dial tools in your book, or to frame it as our best outright of being able to look at these challenges, look at these inflections with more confidence. Definitely. And I think also what I've also

done is make sure the whole leadership team goes on a journey together. They're part of the entire guided journey. They're from the very beginning, if they're important stakeholders, maybe it's a governing board or a Spectric, whatever it might be, they're part of that journey from the start. And so everyone feels they're on that same journey when there are things to clarify or hustle with. Everyone knows that it's transparent.

There's also a sense of debate, debate, commit. There's no perfect answer. Not everyone will get exactly what they want on that journey, but there's a real sense that we believe in the process and we trust that this will unlock a lot of ideas and potential that wouldn't have been unlocked otherwise. I really like that. Sharath, I wonder if we were to just be able to draw out one

thing where a school leader could start on just reflecting on their next inflection moment, something that might just help them take that step. Is there something that comes to mind for you that might just help leaders make a start in this? I think the key thread right through the book and really all my work as well Shane would be that not all time is created equal. You can be so tempting as a leader. I've been this,

you know, myself as an education CEO in the past where you have a day where you can barely go to the bathroom or barely have lunch or back to back on meetings or Zoom calls or whatever it might be. You feel really, really busy, but if you ask yourself, you know, have I today taken my school to a place it wouldn't have got to otherwise? Honestly, as a leader, I couldn't say that honestly. So the idea to think about yes, the day-to-day matters, execution matters, but actually what's going to really stand out in terms of my legacy years later when I look back, it's how I navigated those key inflection moments.

But probably the best way to start is to say, look, am I at one? What are the asteroids going on right now? What are the external shocks or forces? What are the internal shifts and changes going on the Starship side? If those are significant, usually on one or

often both, I'm probably in a different way of thinking about this. I can't just use day-to-day thinking and incremental thinking. Then we retake kind of step back and then apply the dial framework to the situation I'm on. As a coach, I love the fact that you frame it with questions to ask yourself questions that because that's such a powerful place to start and acknowledges the uncertainty of the future. But by asking those questions, you're checking in with yourself and you're making

sure that you're kind of reflecting actively on the process that you're in. Yeah, I think the answers are all going to be so different, especially with international schools. In such diverse contexts, there'll be no single pattern. It's more about knowing that you're in that situation and that's the key starting point to all of this.

I told you that there was a lot packed into today's brilliant conversation. I think for me, I'm taking away that those inflection moments in education require a real long-term perspective and a willingness to embrace those wicked problems. I like how we talked about authenticity and vulnerability being key attributes for leaders who are in those moments and also community engagement in addressing those moments. You have to reflect on inflection moments and engage your team in the journey. That's essential.

I guess the other thing that really stood out to me was that when these big external influences come, you need a clear direction. This is crucial for addressing those inflection moments. I'd love to hear what inflection moments you've had, so please do get in touch and share. Global Lead Leaders is hosted and produced by me, Shane Leaning.

Thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillermo Silva. Thank you so, so much for tuning in today. And if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week.