Reflective text Q1 ’26

Side By Side In The Dark

Leadership is often imagined as someone standing at the front, confidently pointing the way. At Proakatemia, however, leadership feels much more like walking side by side in the dark, without a map, without certainty, and without anyone who truly knows the “right” answer. Through team-based entrepreneurship, leadership is not learned from textbooks but from real moments of responsibility, conflict, discomfort, and growth. Being part of this academic institution has completely changed how I see leadership, not only on a community level but also within a smaller team like Averi. I’ve learned that leadership isn’t about titles or control, but about actions, accountability, and the way you show up for others.

Walking “in the dark” is uncomfortable. There is no authority to hide behind and no clear structure to rely on. Leadership in this environment is not about certainty, but about presence. When I first started at Proakatemia, I expected leadership to feel more stable and controlled, as if someone would naturally step up, take charge, and guide the rest. Instead, I learned that leadership often means staying engaged when things are unclear, choosing responsibility over avoidance, and moving forward together without knowing where the path will lead. This shifted my understanding of leadership from something hierarchical to something deeply human and shared.

At Proakatemia, leadership becomes real very quickly because no one is there to manage us from the outside. We decide what we work on, how we work, and how seriously we take our learning. At first, I thought this freedom would automatically lead to good teamwork and motivation. Being part of Team Averi made me realize otherwise. Freedom without leadership can easily turn into silence, frustration, and unspoken tension rather than progress.

Everyone can be given the role of a leader, but not everyone can actually lead. This became clear through my experience in Averi. We have had capable and skilled people in leadership positions, yet there were still moments when the team felt like it lacked leadership. This raised an important question, if leadership isn’t just about competence or position, then what is it really about?

There were clear moments when this absence became visible. I remember meetings where no one spoke, not because people had nothing to say, but because no one knew how or whether it was safe to say it. At times, people didn’t show up fully, or didn’t show up at all. Decisions were sometimes made quickly to keep things moving, but they felt rushed or imposed rather than shared. Conflicts remained unspoken because addressing them felt uncomfortable or risky. In those moments, leadership wasn’t missing because no one cared, it was missing because there was no space for uncertainty, discussion, or disagreement.

Traditional definitions, such as those from Oxford or Cambridge, describe a leader as someone in control, a boss, director, or person in charge. While this may have made sense in the past, it reflects an outdated understanding that doesn’t fit modern, self-directed environments like Proakatemia. Leadership has evolved, but not everyone’s view of it has kept up. Even here, where teamwork and autonomy are central, it is easy to fall back into the belief that leadership means being in charge, making all the decisions, or telling others what to do.

These assumptions often surface under pressure. When deadlines approach or things feel stuck, the instinct is to take over decisions in the name of efficiency. Speed starts to feel like leadership, and movement like progress. I have seen and felt how easy it is to mistake quick action for good leadership. In reality, these reactions often come from discomfort with uncertainty rather than confidence. They may move things forward in the short term, but they tend to reduce trust, ownership, and engagement over time.

One of my biggest realizations has been that many behaviors associated with leadership are actually the opposite of it. Dominance, over-control, always having answers, or constantly appearing busy can seem impressive. Within a team, however, they often create distance, pressure, and silence. As a result, people stop taking initiative or speaking up, weakening collective progress instead of supporting it.

To me, real leadership looks different. A leader takes responsibility, not only for results, but also for people and the environment they are part of. A leader creates direction, not control, helping the team understand where they are going and why without removing autonomy. This connects to the idea of psychological safety, which shows that people are more likely to contribute and learn when they feel safe to express themselves without fear of negative consequences (Edmondson, 1999).

Direction without control has become a key insight for me. Teams need clarity, but they do not need someone thinking for them. When leadership turns into control, autonomy disappears, along with motivation and ownership. In Averi, the strongest moments were not when someone gave orders, but when someone helped the team understand why something mattered and trusted us to figure out how to move forward together. This reflects research on motivation, which highlights autonomy and purpose as key drivers of engagement and performance (Pink, 2009).

Psychological safety has been one of the most challenging lessons. It is easy to say that everyone is free to speak up, but much harder to create the conditions where they actually do. Safety is not built through words, but through reactions, how mistakes are handled, how disagreement is received, and whether vulnerability is supported or quietly discouraged. I have seen how quickly it can disappear when leadership shifts from curiosity to control, reinforcing how strongly leadership behavior shapes team culture (Edmondson, 1999).

Another important realization has been the difference between leadership and management. Management is necessary. Structure, planning, and deadlines keep a team grounded, and a good leader needs these skills. But management alone is not leadership. When the focus is only on tasks and efficiency, people begin to feel processed rather than supported. That is often when psychological safety starts to fade, replaced by compliance and quiet resistance.

My time in Averi has taught me that leadership is not about controlling people, but about understanding what inspires them to show up. It also means taking responsibility for how people experience the work. Teams that feel safe, purposeful, and motivated are more willing to experiment, challenge ideas, and learn from failure. That kind of environment does not happen by accident, it is created, protected, and modeled.

Empathy plays a crucial role in this. Team members bring different realities with them, stress levels, communication styles, confidence, and life situations. Leaders who take the time to understand these differences are better equipped to handle conflict respectfully and prevent it from becoming personal. Empathy does not mean avoiding difficult conversations, it means approaching them with awareness and care.

Communication ties everything together. At Proakatemia, reflection and dialogue are constant. Leadership shows up in how clearly ideas are expressed, how feedback is given, and how disagreement is handled. In Averi, the most effective leadership moments often came through facilitation rather than instruction, someone slowing the conversation down, making space for quieter voices, or helping turn vague ideas into clear next steps.

At Proakatemia, and especially within Team Averi, leadership is not a role reserved for a few individuals, it is a shared responsibility that shifts depending on the situation. Leadership creates trust in uncertainty, direction in ambiguity, and safety in learning. Good leadership is often quiet, visible in behavior rather than authority. Poor leadership, on the other hand, often hides behind dominance, ego, or the illusion of productivity.

Through this journey, I have come to understand leadership not as being “in charge,” but as being accountable, to people, to learning, and to the environments we create together. I have also started to understand the kind of leader I do not want to become, someone who hides behind control, efficiency, or certainty when things get uncomfortable. Leadership, I have learned, is never finished. It requires constant self-reflection, humility, and a willingness to unlearn what we think we already know.

This understanding also places responsibility on me. If leadership is about creating the conditions for others to grow, then I am responsible not only for how I lead, but also for how I respond when others step into leadership. Moving forward, my challenge is to find a way to encourage my team to walk together side by side in the dark, and figure it out as a team.