A Small Revolution of Hope: Reflections on Sustainable Leadership with Young Minds from Around the World

Over the past months, I had the pleasure of working with an extraordinary group of young intellectuals from all over the world in the SPOT – Social Psychology of Transformation master’s programme. Diverse in backgrounds, cultures, and professional aspirations, they shared one thing in common: a deep curiosity about how leadership might look in a world marked by crisis, uncertainty, and rapid transformation.

My task within the programme was to work with them on the topic of sustainable leadership. At first glance, this might sound like a familiar—and perhaps overused—concept. Sustainability, after all, has become a buzzword in many leadership discourses. Yet very quickly, it became clear that this group was not interested in easy answers or polished slogans. Instead, we explored leadership as a complex, contested, and deeply human practice.

Together, we examined different leadership models—classical, transformational, relational, and critical approaches—and, just as importantly, their limitations and blind spots. We asked uncomfortable questions:

Who gets to lead, and who is expected to follow?

When does “inspiration” become pressure?

Where do power, inequality, and exclusion hide behind well-meaning leadership narratives?

A key theoretical companion in our discussions was Thomas Kühn’s work on transformative leadership. Kühn understands leadership not as heroic influence or mere performance optimization, but as normative identity work—a process shaped by agency, belonging, and coherence. Leadership, in this view, unfolds within social, historical, and institutional contexts and is inseparable from ethical tensions, emotional dynamics, and questions of meaning.

What resonated strongly with the students was the emphasis on hope. Not hope as naïve optimism or motivational rhetoric, but hope as a courageous openness to the future, grounded in realism and responsibility. Transformative leadership, as Kühn describes it, is about creating spaces where uncertainty can be held, where ambivalence is not denied, and where people can relate to one another without being reduced to roles or functions. Leadership becomes less about control—and more about care, containment, and community building.

From my own work and from the intense, thoughtful exchanges with the students, I left these sessions with a strong sense of encouragement. Watching them critically engage with leadership theories, reflect on their own biographies, and challenge dominant narratives—often with humor, passion, and a refreshing lack of cynicism—was deeply inspiring. Yes, there were debates. Yes, there were disagreements. And yes, there was plenty of coffee involved. But there was also something else: a shared commitment to imagining leadership differently.

So, after all these conversations, reflections, and moments of collective thinking, I find myself quite confident in saying: there is a small revolution of hope underway. It may not look loud or spectacular. It unfolds quietly—in seminar rooms, late-night discussions, and reflective pauses. But it is driven by a generation that insists on linking leadership with humanity, sustainability with ethics, and transformation with responsibility.

And if that is not a promising starting point for the future of leadership, I honestly don’t know what is.

For more about the programme, see:

https://spot-psychology.eu