To lead. What does this all mean?
This is what I’ve been grappling with ever since I was a child. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne are figures that I once looked up to when I thought about leadership. The common notion surrounding the art of leadership is that of heroism, bravery, and glory. Yet, as I embark on developing programs for children in the rural areas of Vietnam, leadership expands to something beyond just a throne.
After seven days of close collaboration with students in An Giang, I’ve learned that leadership is emergence in action – complex results from simple principles. Just as in nature, complex behaviours can only exist when smaller interactions align with each other; leadership works not by taking everything but by helping disconnected nodes link together to create a stronger network that no single node can achieve. True leadership lies in the ability to bring all the work together, no matter the differences, to create something groundbreaking.
This builds the foundation for Astin & Astin’s idea of leadership as collective action for positive change, and it contributed greatly to my leadership style during this recent trip. My work with Deerfield teachers and Vietnamese corporate executives may seem completely unrelated, but to my eyes, it’s the emergence principle playing out. I brought together students, teachers, and corporate managers around a shared vision: creating a program where Vietnamese students turn mathematical concepts into tangible solutions that serve their communities. During the program, I collaborated with students after class to get their authentic feedback. To my surprise, behind the praise they gave in front of the media team, they were more critical, pinpointing the small but important issues that I had overlooked, such as curriculum relevance and sustainability. The students’ contributions, although they may have seemed trivial, created a better experience for future students. Similarly, I acted as a catalyst that connected my teammates’ diverse work streams, helping them see that their separate contributions had come together to make something far greater.
Through this experience, I have built upon and improved Astin & Astin’s idea of leadership. I’ve engineered a “self-sustaining” mechanism into the model. I’ve created not just immediate positive change through bringing together contributions, but a cycle of collaborative relationships that inspires new leaders who will go on to develop more networks of innovative changes, creating change that breeds more change.
I then stepped back and reflected on the impact that we had made. On the surface and at a material level, it was a success, considering how we were able to implement a sustainable educational infrastructure and equip students with resources to apply math to computer science and finance. Yet, I realised that we had only helped twenty students out of the millions in Vietnam. The resources and hours we invested, when weighed against the magnitude of the current problem, seemed small. This wasn’t to diminish the importance of helping those twenty students, but it forced me to confront the brutal truth: a seven-day trip, no matter how well-executed, cannot make a seismic change.
So a new problem arose: How can we continue to scale our program beyond summer trips while maintaining the identity that made us successful?
The answer arrived late at night when I was browsing through news coverage of the devastating storms that sweep through central Vietnam each August. This year was marked by Typhoon Kajiki and was part of the worst storms in a decade.
In that moment, I saw a connection. What if we could solve both problems simultaneously? What if learning math could directly generate resources for those in need? This insight led to the development of Maths4Threads, a platform that turns mathematics into clothing donations for Vietnamese families in need.
The concept is simple: students hone their math skills with our personalised AI gamified math platform, and for every three correct answers, we make one clothing donation to communities in need. Yet, this approach doesn’t create the collaborative networks through “emergence” leadership that defined our program in An Giang. Students work individually, and donations just happen; the connections are systematic rather than relational.
But that’s the point. Trying to apply “emergence” leadership to every situation was limiting my effectiveness. Some problems need collaborative work; others need systems to operate efficiently on a large scale. Maths4Threads represents systems thinking rather than emergence leadership. It’s creating mechanisms where individual actions can create collective impact without constant collaboration.
During our soft launch, we’ve already received over 100 donations, proving that our model can achieve greater impact as we scale. Unlike a temporary program, this platform can continuously attract new users, generate donations, and scale globally, allowing anyone to contribute at any time without constant involvement.
This ongoing journey has taught me that true leadership isn’t about finding the perfect model and applying it to every scenario. The program in An Giang showed me the power of “emergence” leadership following Astin & Astin’s idea, and Maths4Threads taught me the key to systematic approaches for broader impact.
Both are valuable.
Neither is sufficient alone.
True leadership lies in knowing which tool to use and being honest about the limitations of each approach rather than forcing a framework on everything.
And perhaps, that is the most profound change for me.
