Serhii Nozdrachov: Dean, what exactly is leadership? Because in my view, leadership becomes essential in situations where standard mechanisms, authority, and levers are no longer sufficient. A leader must create conditions that make it possible to achieve a goal without relying on formal power. In today’s context, it seems to me that a leader is someone who creates something and leads people forward, even without having enough authority—someone who drives change.

Oleksandr Savruk: Achieving results is, first and foremost, the task of organizational leadership. Such a leader plays a role that constantly complements, adjusts, and guides in various ways—sometimes through presence, sometimes through reaction, tuning, shaping, and so on.

In contrast, the task of a strategic leader is not to let a system become so optimized that it becomes lifeless. A strategic leader is meant to disrupt yesterday’s stability, making it relevant to today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. Constantly breaking down and shaking up the established—this is done in favor of the day after tomorrow.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Then I have a question. People often say that one of the main missions of a leader is to adapt to challenges. But to me, that misses an essential point. It’s not just adaptation—it’s about reaching an entirely new level.

Oleksandr Savruk: Clearly, a leader must work with adaptation. But a strategic leader doesn’t solve existing problems—they create a new playing field with new problems. They don’t deal with old issues; they fundamentally rethink the rules of the game, which naturally leads to the emergence of new ones.

This makes things easier for people, because they can then express themselves in their roles and emotions as human beings, not just as roles. And this is necessary—otherwise, we might remain stuck endlessly fixing today's problems, endlessly patching up an old system—in essence, maintaining an outdated reality. The task is to rise above, to rethink things, to repackage the logic, and avoid repeating past mistakes.

There aren’t many people like that—the ones we are talking about. They are naturally designed for fostering qualitative development, so that we don’t get “stuck”.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Let’s clarify. There’s a particular category of people, and they are few, who are capable of changing the system or even the rules of the game—people who enable the emergence of new systems. And that’s what we call the level of strategic leadership.

In my model, there are three levels. The first is the strategic level—people who create new conditions or an entirely new reality or new game. The second level is the team level, in my view—that’s the leader and their team, up to 20 people with direct interaction.

Oleksandr Savruk: It could be thousands. An organization is also a system that needs to be led.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Then in my model, a fourth level appears—the organizational level. And there’s also the personal level—when we choose to live, for example, according to our values, or make decisions that shake up our own lives for the sake of something deeply important. Can we call that leadership?

Oleksandr Savruk: Absolutely. You cannot become a strategic, organizational, or team leader without first being a leader with yourself. These are all different manifestations of leadership. In order to offer something to others, I must first deal with myself.

Serhii Nozdrachov: So here comes a deep and counterintuitive question: Is that how it should be, or is that how it truly is? That we must understand ourselves before we can lead others?

Open and Closed Systems

Oleksandr Savruk: Look, having a position and being a leader are not the same thing. A person with the ability to rethink and create new rules of the game must be valued. Their capability should be consciously assessed—first at school, then at university. It means that this person thinks differently, and they are valued for that. They aren’t squeezed into the norms of school, university, or corporate culture. If a corporate culture can see this potential and give it room to develop, then that's a very lucky system.

Serhii Nozdrachov: According to McKinsey data, the people most capable of creating conditions in which others do more are those with self-awareness, humility, and empathy. But they’re rarely the ones that systems elevate to the top. So there’s a responsibility—and primarily for the leaders of systems: who do we promote through those “elevators”?

Oleksandr Savruk: When we talk about systems, it’s important to distinguish between closed, mechanical systems—where charismatic leaders are naturally the dominant type—and what we promote at our school: a fundamentally different paradigm. Open systems function on a “subject–subject” basis, rather than “subject–object”.

That’s a completely different type of leadership. In a closed system, everything is single-step: I influence, you act. In an open system, there are two steps: I generate an idea, and we unite around that idea. We move in a space of meaning for the sake of a shared, conscious goal—combining our individual and collective role-based interests. This is how we reach open systems—ecosystems, clusters, and so on.

Serhii Nozdrachov: That’s when “I” commit fully because the idea is mine. “I” share the idea, and it becomes part of me, and I gain much more intrinsic strength to move forward. That’s what you mean, right?

Oleksandr Savruk: Ideally, yes. But here's the harder truth: that now, “I,” as a leader, am risking my personal investment. I might lose. But if we win, then “you” win too.

Serhii Nozdrachov: So a leader in such a system becomes more vulnerable?

Oleksandr Savruk: Yes. These systems have tougher rules, higher expectations, and a fundamentally different kind of responsibility. There’s transparency, the ability to see others in the system, to value them, and to balance your own interests with theirs. These rules are much more complex than in vertical, closed structures with one alpha-manager and everyone else beneath.

Serhii Nozdrachov: I’ve wanted to ask this for a long time—most systems, especially organizations, are a mixed type—partially open, partially closed?

Oleksandr Savruk: We’re living through a unique transformational period in human history. Many spheres are gradually moving toward more open systems—like democracy instead of feudalism or authoritarianism. Ukraine has a unique situation. We have a post-Soviet management culture that was clearly vertical and closed, and those rules have left deep traces in us. They still run in the background as if they were natural laws, unfortunately.

There’s also a notable cultural type—startups—that typically begin with charismatic leaders. At least for the first few years.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Let’s define what we mean by “startup.” There are two kinds of organizations referred to as startups. One is a tech company with potential to become a giant corporation. That’s one story. The other is simply any new business. Are we talking about both?

Oleksandr Savruk: Anything that begins with a small number of people who take responsibility. They need to test the idea—with clients, with stakeholders, with their product, and so on. Often, the idea isn’t even fully formed. In that case, all you have is the person. And this person becomes the embodiment of the idea—the “idea person.” People relate to them as the representation of that idea. They must be trusted, they must make decisions, and they must project charisma. And that’s absolutely right and logical—especially at the earliest stages.

Serhii Nozdrachov: It’s like achieving escape velocity. You have to break away, when there’s still nothing, you need to apply enormous effort quickly.

Oleksandr Savruk: Yes, and then you’ll have a situation where the leader can share one idea in the morning—and they’re right. Share another idea at noon—and they’re still right. A third idea in the evening—and they’re still right.

Sign of a Leader – the Ability to Create, to Be a Creator

Serhii Nozdrachov: So, it's about having the courage to change your mind, to sometimes look foolish and say, “No, no—let’s do something new”?

Oleksandr Savruk: Yes, because “‘we’ have realized that,” so now let’s change it and head this way, not that one anymore. And that’s perfectly fine—it works faster, it gains momentum, etc. But then the question arises: what about those around the leader—people accustomed to hearing one idea in the morning, another at noon, and a third in the evening?

They might feel unheard or deprived of access to the knowledge the leader is relying on. The danger here is that over time, the people nearby may lose their subjectivity. And that results in a kind of “scorching” or burnout around people’s potential to act as full subjects. That’s a risk that must be addressed—especially during the transition to a system.

Serhii Nozdrachov: That’s essentially a trait of entrepreneurs—they create, but they may not have the time or skill to restructure or even build a system at all. That’s why others often step in afterward.

Oleksandr Savruk: Yes, and the right question is: should they rebuild a system—or are they the ones meant to build it in the first place? Because they have that spark from birth—to create, to take responsibility, to take risks.

If they find a strong system-oriented manager or leader who can sustain that system and lead it toward results—that’s the ideal. Then, the entrepreneur can fully realize their primary strength: to go on creating, to reimagine the model, the business model, or to seek out other meaningful ideas that can function on a fundamentally different level.

Serhii Nozdrachov: At the beginning of a business, leadership as a function—or as a practice—is inevitable. Because by definition, management alone can’t cope. There’s nothing to manage yet—first it has to be created. That’s one kind of leader. By the way, Gallup claims, based on their research, that about 2.5% of the people they studied have this dual capability. But even those people often find partners to help strengthen the business. Each of us excels at different things.

Oleksandr Savruk: You’re pointing out a universal word that runs through both charismatic and systemic leadership—“to create.” Perhaps one of the main markers of a leader is the ability to create, to be a creator. This goes beyond hands-on work. Especially when it comes to management or business—this is work with people. It's not just about economic outcomes; it's about people, about systems, about cultures, and so on. Creating things of that nature is undoubtedly one of the signs of leadership.

And along with creation, there’s also creative destruction. This is the disruption of what already exists. It takes tremendous courage.

Creative Destruction—that’s the term in its original form. Schumpeter wrote about this while he was in Chernivtsi, at the University of Chernivtsi, reflecting on the nature of capitalism.

He argued that radical, high-quality, innovative ideas do not arise as a direct response to external need. They are an extension of internal capabilities. In a way, the person is bursting—they are naturally compelled to create.

First comes a new paradigm, a new solution, a new “something.” These things don’t fit inside existing systems—they stem, by nature, from a different kind of person.

Serhii Nozdrachov: So then the big question is — are leaders born that way, or do they develop these traits over time?

Oleksandr Savruk: Well, considering how many leadership development programs exist around the world, it’s clear this can be developed. But I often quote something James Temerty once said when we visited General Electric’s training center. He noted this for himself, and he's now a billionaire: “Do not try to put in what nature left out.”

In other words, don’t try to add to a person what nature didn’t give them.

A person needs to understand what they were created for by the Creator. Beyond that, they may still be able to play various roles and offer much of value. Every innate capability is unique and can generate its own form of value.

Leadership is unlikely to ever be just a standard discipline. Our approach is more fundamental—it shows up across many of our key courses: in marketing, in human capital, in strategy. For example, strategic leadership is an essential component of strategic thinking, systemic thinking, and so on.

To isolate leadership into a stand-alone course, in light of its depth and complexity, would be to oversimplify it. We approach it from multiple directions. Because the big question—“what is leadership?”—can’t be answered in one paragraph. It’s a situational matter, a paradigmatic matter, a multi-level phenomenon. In our school—of which you’re aware—we lean heavily into strategic and managerial levels of leadership. Strategic leadership—working with systems and supra-systems. Managerial leadership—working with organizations, people, and teams.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Yes, that resonates deeply with me—not only because I teach at kmbs. Perhaps that’s why I do teach here. But when I talk to colleagues from the West, especially those involved in business education, they often ask, “What do you teach?” I say, “Management.” And they immediately respond, “Oh, that’s about leadership.” I tell them, not necessarily.

Because currently, in Western management education, there’s a discourse that says everyone must become a leader. Literally everyone. That seems a bit odd to me. When I started diving deeper into the subject—reading contemporary theories, academic models of leadership—I gave up around the 25th one. It became clear: there is no single, homogeneous phenomenon called “leadership.”

But on the other hand, if we take a simpler definition—leadership as the capability or fact of someone leading others—can we consider that the base characteristic of a leader?

Oleksandr Savruk: We should be careful with that kind of framing. Because today, there are many books—even in English-language environments—that define a leader by the number of followers they have: people who follow them. But when we move into the strategic level, we always say—that’s a dangerous way to define a leader.

Because at the start, especially at the strategic level, a leader must have an idea. And that idea may not necessarily be realized—there could be many reasons. It’s entirely possible a leader today has very few followers. But a person who passes through “prisons,” difficult contexts where they can’t implement their vision—would they stop being a leader because of that? I don’t think so.

So, in the paradigm we’re working with, the primary trait of leadership at that level is the ability to work with a qualitatively new idea or new rules of the game. It’s about the capacity to create a world—first for oneself, then for others. And only afterward come the competencies and skills needed to implement those ideas.

A leader might be someone who isn’t recognized as such today—but that person could still hold leadership potential.

Serhii Nozdrachov: But if there are truly no followers at all—did leadership occur that day? Because I feel that in order for leadership to happen, you need at least some followers. At some point.

Oleksandr Savruk: Ideally, yes—that's the confirmation of leadership. But initially, leadership resides primarily in a person’s own system of values and coordinates. Either the context allows it to be realized, or the person knows how to work with the context to change it according to their idea.

Serhii Nozdrachov: I mostly agree. But you know—it does raise a question: what are the consequences for the followers? For example, in German, the word “leader” used to be “Führer.” And after Hitler, that word has practically been abandoned. By sheer follower count, he was an extraordinary leader—but can we call him that? Big question. And do we, as a society, really want that kind of leadership? That’s also a risk.

Oleksandr Savruk: That’s where the situational aspect of leadership becomes very important. A person may be a leader in one domain and have no leadership presence in another context.

I like the idea of “direct leadership” in the military domain. That’s leadership focused on execution—it’s tactical. You must achieve a goal, solve operational and organizational tasks: build a team, equip it, guide it, calibrate it, and deliver results.

But the most “magical” level of leadership is where the approach to results changes fundamentally. For a strategic leader, success might be measured in completely different terms—like maintaining systemic balance or establishing rules that will still work a decade later, without needing enforcement. That’s a radically different approach. And for many people, it’s unclear, invisible, and difficult to evaluate. Leadership of that sort is often neither noticed nor celebrated.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Can it be a leader’s task to create the conditions—or even, in some cases when there’s direct contact, to help people around them realize and dare to discover themselves?

Oleksandr Savruk: The best way to do this is through the environment. A leader, as the creator of the environment, must give each person the opportunity to discover their natural path of realization—their role and their most effective form of self-expression.

Serhii Nozdrachov: But what does “give the opportunity” mean here? Does it mean simply not interfering, or does it mean creating conditions that encourage someone to act?

Oleksandr Savruk: Encouragement can come to the point of even pushing someone out—and that may be necessary. That means a person might not be in the right environment and should find a different one.

People often compare leadership to the metaphor of a gardener. You can’t accelerate “something.” You can’t turn an oak tree into a birch, or a birch into an oak. You need to let each person reveal and find themselves. Because often people don’t know themselves. Usually, in our education system, they don’t understand their own latent potential—whether as a person or in terms of professional knowledge. That requires time and patience. I think this is one of the signs of leadership—to allow a person to reveal themselves, to feel themselves, to find themselves, and make sure that this is their path, that this is their role, even if only for a while. And from there, conclusions can be made.

Serhii Nozdrachov: So, for every leader, it’s important to find a personal toolkit and approach that’s aligned with their authenticity. How do “I” create those conditions, or how do “we,” in an organization or team, create them?

With everything you’ve said—I completely agree. We may not agree on everything, but that’s the strength of Mohyla overall. One thing we certainly agree on is that middle school, and not just in Ukraine, unfortunately, does not foster the development of authentic inclinations and corresponding leadership potential. So in the workplace, there’s a double task—not just to help reveal someone’s potential, but sometimes to help restore the individual, so to speak. The gardener isn’t working with “sick” plants, but with plants already a bit tired.

Oleksandr Savruk: We work a lot with educators, and there are clear problems in our education system. We’ve all been left with scars from Soviet-style education. And when we adopt external features and benchmarks from better education systems, we often fail to change the leadership culture—both in schools and in communities.

Communities are still figuring out their models of governance—often through education. The problem is that, behind the external words, features, and names, you often find aesthetic, ethical, and cultural norms inherited from the past. This causes many to struggle or begin searching for something new.

Now it’s especially complex for children who’ve gone abroad—they see the difference, including cultural differences. And I hope this will add some drive for us all to respond and catch up. And when we speak of creating environments and of the gardener themselves—let’s remember the gardener is not a god. They’re just as human as anyone else.

One of the essential traits of a leader that I truly admire is vulnerability. A leader is a living being. They must demonstrate that they are not an absolute. They need to be as open, vulnerable, and alive as everyone else. And that’s scary—it requires courage to be that way. Because visible people are the ones who get “hit” the most. But they also have the capacity to receive the most.

This is a very complex dimension of leadership. If we turn the school principal—or the director of a business school—into some sort of absolute authority, that’s a dead end for the system. There are no absolutes—just living people who search, who try, who make mistakes, who reflect, and take just a bit more responsibility than others in some moments.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Leadership really is about life. It’s not about control, or survival, or security. Those things can all be important—but leadership is something much bigger.

Oleksandr Savruk: Leadership is about the future—the distant future. It’s the willingness to invest in something that may not bring results for the leader personally, but could bring them to the organization or country.

Serhii Nozdrachov: You’re referring to the strategic level. But if we turn back toward a business audience—entrepreneurs, top managers—where should they start? If a person already sees the value in this phenomenon and understands how complex it is—would it be fair to say that the first step is always to start with yourself? That the very first step is awareness of your own authenticity: what’s going on inside me, what paradigms am I living in, what are my beliefs, what drives me, what’s my idea, and to what extent is it shared by those around me?

Oleksandr Savruk: In my view, I wish that wouldn’t be the first step—but the “zero” step. You wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, understand yourself, go do your work clearly, and in the evening go engage with something else. But it doesn’t work like that. Because questions like, “Who am I?” “What am I not?” “Does my idea work or not?” “Is my worldview accurate, or not, and to what extent?”—they never have absolute answers. So we start operating on risky assumptions. You can’t achieve leadership without those first, second, and third steps. There’s no warming-up phase followed by implementation. Leadership is a process.

Why is the word “capacity” so important? Because it’s not about competencies, skills, or qualifications. It’s about capabilities that manifest over time, in different situations, in different contexts—and always through action. Only action creates challenges and opportunities where you can check and feel—whether you’re strong or weak, whether you’re right or wrong, whether you’re getting results or not. Unpredictability and ambiguity make life more interesting. More difficult—but definitely more interesting.

Serhii Nozdrachov: You mentioned responsibility. What does it mean—to take responsibility?

Oleksandr Savruk: There are many ways to answer that. But basically, it’s when a person realizes that the source of judgment should not be external validation but internal conviction.

If I’ve made a decision, taken on a role, or committed to some path—then I must follow through and evaluate myself first and foremost.

Serhii Nozdrachov: I take a radical approach to responsibility. I say: responsibility never comes from the outside. From the outside, you get accountability. But responsibility is always internal. And the main thing is: I want to do this—because there’s a deep reason for it.

Oleksandr Savruk: It’s not even about reason—it’s about intent. Value. Reason can be just an external motivator. But intent is deeper—the question of “what for?” What is the meaning behind my action?

Then we come to what we often refer to as “sense-making”: Why am I doing this? And values—those are the frames or the coordinates within which I construct these meanings. But meaning must be consciously created by the individual—it shouldn’t be imposed from the outside. Even if something is suggested externally—it must be accepted deeply, internally, to the point that it becomes part of the person’s identity—their semantic DNA.

Virtues and a Shared Meaning Field

Serhii Nozdrachov: That brings up another question. In the classical Western model, there are three levels of employees: individual contributors, managers, and the leadership team. I always say the “leadership team” label isn’t a given—it’s definitely top management, but not necessarily leadership. So what, in your opinion, distinguishes top management from a leadership team?

Oleksandr Savruk: A leadership team is defined by its ability to set new rules of the game. Because it’s precisely leaders—those who change, develop, and transform systems—who determine the quality and viability of any social system. And culture must recognize these people—I mean, society’s culture must see, understand, and value them.

We do have a culture—and it comes with historical context and Soviet-era narratives and patterns layered on top.

But we also have enough agency to determine for ourselves what is truly ours and what is not. Are we truly a democracy or not? What is our ethical foundation? What type of relationships do we value?

By making such decisions and embedding them into our cultural code—through education, through culture, through the recognition and evaluation of key events—we are shaping our own system.

Serhii Nozdrachov: But who is the subject of that process? Statesmen? The president? Or everyone at their own level?

Oleksandr Savruk: When Maidan took place—who was the subject? Those who showed up. Those were the people willing to take responsibility for the future they wanted to see.

When we call that revolution by the name of a virtue—Dignity—it shows that we have a strong enough core. That core is defending the country today. It took responsibility then and continues to do so in various ways.

That’s typical of Ukraine in general. Even in the absence of formal institutions, we have a sufficient number of people in our culture who are capable of taking responsibility—who declare, defend, embody, and demonstrate the virtues that ought to be cherished. The challenge is building the institutional structures that match that spirit. That’s a process we’re still learning. And this whole discussion—we’re having it as part of our collective practice in governance and leadership.

Serhii Nozdrachov: So the key is to create conditions where people with the will and capacity can find each other and act together?

Oleksandr Savruk: You don't need to gather such people—they will find each other on their own. The question is whether institutions will eventually be able to operate with the same level of depth and quality as those individuals and spontaneous phenomena.

This is about a shared meaning field and natural narrative patterns that arise from these values. Such people don’t need excessive explanation—they connect quickly with one another and manifest themselves professionally, socially, culturally—across all domains. And today, we already have many examples of how that works in Ukraine and around the world.

Serhii Nozdrachov: I still have a couple of important questions. Are artists fulfilling a leadership role?

Oleksandr Savruk: Absolutely. I honestly envy artists in a good way—because they’re able to fully realize themselves as creators.

When we talk about creativity—about making something—especially in the context of shaping a person’s identity, then all artistic or creative actions are a path to full personal subjectivity. When a person creates—this is the ultimate expression of their agency.

They depend on no one. They make decisions. They realize their personal ambition, their internal vision—whatever they can imagine. That’s a fundamental trait. We’ve been saying: a leader is a creator. So an artist is also a creator—in the purest form.

And if no one follows that artist—are they still a leader? From my perspective, yes—they are.

Oleksandr Savruk:

Serhii Nozdrachov: Any piece of art—a book, a painting, a photo artwork—I’ve seen your photo artworks, and they can’t be described as just photos or snapshots. They hold your gaze for a half hour. There’s always a co-author—the person who reads or observes. And in that sense, they become followers. If something resonates with them, new meaning is created. And the more space there is for the freedom of the viewer, the greater the leadership involved.

Oleksandr Savruk: But at that point, it no longer belongs to the artist. It’s like releasing a child into the world—the child no longer belongs only to us. They have their own rights, responsibilities, and ideas. That moment of creation is deeply connected to what we call leadership. Because a leader creates—through design, through ideas, through various kinds of decisions. It’s always a composite, complex decision.

Serhii Nozdrachov: We’re still saying that anyone can develop. But there are certain directions where a person has a much greater chance of achieving mastery. Any person can occasionally find themselves in a leadership situation. But to consistently and effectively fulfill this important social role, you must have a certain talent for it—and then grow it. It’s not enough to be born with a certain genotype or raised in a certain environment.

Oleksandr Savruk: If you feel even a little bit of leadership potential inside you—whatever form it may take—you have to develop it. Not doing so is, in a way, a sin. It’s human potential that can’t be captured in budgets or business plans, but it’s essential to answering the question: are we truly promising as individuals and a society? Will we succeed in something meaningful? Will we, in the end, remain fully human—or just part of a mechanical system?

Serhii Nozdrachov: So what comes first—people or systems? People or processes? Is that a real dichotomy at all?

Oleksandr Savruk: A human being is a social creature. And if that’s the case, then we are always part of a social system. The problem is, we often perceive the word “system” as something mechanical, closed, and negative.

But any type of relationship—a city, a family, a workplace—is a sign of a living open social system. And in such systems, we not only need to understand the rules, but learn to apply them with care. Because here, another actor becomes involved—what we might call “the system as a whole,” which includes balances, cultures, and forms of connection between people.

That’s exactly what we need to be learning. One of the key questions we ask at the beginning and end of our programs is: “Is management manipulation or not?” And the answer can go both ways. That’s the difference between closed and open systems.

If someone says it’s manipulation, they’re culturally located in a closed system. If not—it means they consciously choose to enter a different kind of game. That’s a fundamentally different paradigm, a different set of opportunities, a vastly greater potential for results—a chance to live, not just survive.

That’s our collective task in this civilization: to finally transition to a more human nature of relationships.

Serhii Nozdrachov: People often ask me, “What do you teach at kmbs? What makes kmbs different—what’s your superpower?”
I usually have two answers. First—it’s about building capacity. The capacity to do something that before, wouldn’t have even crossed your mind. It’s not about tools, though we certainly have them. Second—it’s the ability to see the system as a whole.

Oleksandr Savruk: We teach a lot of tools, and through those tools, we test certain capabilities. But if we were to describe ourselves as a school that develops capacities—that would probably be the first and most important thing to say.

Many participants come to our programs and say: “I want to systematize my knowledge.” But when they graduate—or reflect on their learning as alumni—they say: “I’ve fundamentally changed.” The difference between simply organizing your knowledge and deeply transforming yourself is enormous. I think what happens here is a kind of magic—one worth experiencing.

Serhii Nozdrachov: I’d like to touch on personal leadership. Because based on everything we’ve discussed, it really all starts at that level. Regardless of a person’s role, there must be people who care, who want change, who want to create something better than what is—and who are willing to step beyond the familiar. It seems to me, the more challenging the circumstances, the more crises and uncertainties there are—the greater the need for leadership. Would you agree?

Oleksandr Savruk: We have to be careful here. Crises primarily give rise to charismatic leaders. And that’s not a bad thing—it’s a positive. Because charismatic, personal-type leadership is naturally aimed at achieving short-term results. It’s perfect for crisis situations.

But when we’re talking about system leadership—that’s for situations of development and growth. They are two entirely different types of leadership, two different ways of thinking. And we can’t simply flip between them. We need to understand they require different types of teams.

For example, within an organization—some people work on crisis response, others work on long-term development. These are fundamentally different mindsets.

People focused on development are designing processes—meaningful frameworks, structures, and roles for growth. But in a crisis, the job is: solve the problem—first and foremost. Some problems can sink the ship. So we need to distinguish clearly between these two leadership styles. And ideally, they shouldn’t come from the same person.

Even in Soviet times, the person who built a factory from scratch wasn’t left in charge of operations. That kind of effort followed a project mindset—it was about results, straightforward execution, with no need for complex “meta” frameworks. Organizational roles and collaboration were clearer, more direct.

Development, however, operates in a softer frame—with more complexity, more depth—and it requires a different kind of person, a different approach.

Serhii Nozdrachov: Okay, but what about an entrepreneur? Someone who launched a business, built a system. What are the chances they’ll be able to keep that role long-term, develop the system?

Oleksandr Savruk: At some point, they need to step into a different role. They shouldn’t be running the organization day-to-day. There needs to be someone whose job is to fine-tune the system. And the entrepreneur shouldn’t interfere in daily decision-making or maintain excessive presence in the role of owner or otherwise. That’s why we have corporate governance structures—to soften this dynamic.

One of the real strengths of leadership, I believe, is knowing when not to use your strength. It’s knowing how to enter and exit roles appropriately. Because this kind of role-play allows everyone to contribute, balance, and move toward the future.

Serhii Nozdrachov: And that, to me, is proportional leadership. I think that’s where it truly begins. Like a seed—that, with the right environment and the right gardeners around it, can grow. Tell me, can a person be their own gardener?

Oleksandr Savruk: Of course. I also have to recognize that I’m subject to certain natural evolutionary processes that I can’t override. I can’t suddenly master English or German by the end of the day just because I want to. I have to tap into natural mechanisms and respect them. These are cognitive, physical—they exist. And I need to accept that. Then I need to learn to live, to accept myself, and to understand how to work with myself—according to my level, my limits, my boundaries.

Serhii Nozdrachov: I mostly agree. But I’ll add one more thing. By understanding my own limitations, I also come to see that I perform very differently in different environments. So I believe we each have to consciously recognize that, in order to be more effective—or to fully realize important meanings—we need to find the environment where our talents and strengths can flourish fully. And that’s our responsibility. But to be fully self-sufficient? Definitely not.

Oleksandr Savruk: Yes, we are social beings. We exist with others and for something greater than ourselves. There’s a famous quote from Skovoroda about one's "calling"—which we interpret as the continuation of our authentic self. If we find a role that extends our core authenticity—then we are happy people.