BY ANNETTE TRYDE AKMAN, HINRICH FOUNDATION
For much of modern life, we have been shaped by the story of the hero.
The individual who steps forward.
Who solves the problem.
Who rescues the community.
It is a powerful story—one that has shaped our films, our institutions, and our understanding of leadership itself.
But I am beginning to sense that something is shifting.
Recently, I spent several days in retreat with renowned activist Satish Kumar, reflecting on what it means to live—and to act—from a place of radical love. One insight stayed with me: how easily we can slip into the belief that we, acting alone, must be the ones to fix what is broken. Not from arrogance, but from something more human. A desire to be useful, to be needed and to matter.
But the challenges we are facing today—climate instability, land degradation, social fragmentation—are not problems that exist in isolation. They are relational.
And relational problems ask something different of us.
Gordon Lawrence described this as a movement from the politics of salvation to the politics of revelation.
In the politics of salvation, we wait for the hero’s rescue, or we take on the heroic act of rescuing. This can create relational distortion.
In the politics of revelation, we understand everyone has the power to act in small or big ways that can meaningfully contribute.
I first understood this not through theory, but through listening.
Several years ago in Rwanda, I spent time with students at the Akilah Institute for Women. As I listened to their stories, what struck me was not only their resilience but also the way they imagined their futures: they did not speak primarily about individual success.
They spoke about siblings going to school.
About stabilising their families.
About strengthening their communities.
Every opportunity flowed outward in care.
The hero was not the individual. The hero was the community, working together to strengthen the whole.
This insight has continued to unfold in my work with farming communities transitioning toward regenerative practices. These transitions require patience, shared responsibility, and trust—often long before results are visible.
They cannot be driven by individual will alone. They depend on relationships.
Satish Kumar expresses this beautifully:
“When I exist in love, I move from greed to gratitude, from ownership to relationship, from glamour to grace, and from attachment to engagement.”
This movement—from ownership to relationship—feels central to the leadership shift we are living through.
The heroic model assumes certainty: I know what is right. I will act.
But in complex systems, truth is rarely held by any one person. It emerges between us—through relationship, through listening, through difference.
Care-centric leadership asks something more difficult.
It asks us to be present —with one another, with the land, and with what is unfolding. To listen across difference. To hold multiple perspectives. And to act without needing to be the one who is right.
It asks for humility.
Many traditions have long understood this. The Buddhist idea of Sangha reminds us that transformation does not happen alone, but in community.
We come to know our role through relationship—to soil, to soul, and to society.
And so I find myself sitting with questions.
Where, in my own work, am I still attached to being the one who knows?
Where might I be acting from urgency, rather than relationship?
What would it mean to trust the intelligence of the community more deeply?
And what might shift if I allowed love—not as sentiment, but as disciplined attention—to guide how I listen, decide, and act?
When I look at communities like the Asian Philanthropy Circle, I see these questions already being lived.
A willingness to move beyond individual action—to sit with complexity, to partner more deeply with grassroots organisations, and to recognize that meaningful change does not happen for communities, but with them.
Perhaps this is what care-centric leadership begins to look like in practice.
Not the disappearance of leadership—but its redistribution.
Not the loss of agency—but its deepening through relationship.
We may not yet know exactly what this new form of leadership looks like.
But perhaps it begins here.
Not with answers—but with a different way of being in relationship.
Because truth, when held alone, can become rigid—but when shared, it becomes stronger, more alive, and capable of shaping a future none of us could create on our own.
Annette Tryde Akman is a leadership facilitator, social impact practitioner, and principal of her family’s single-family office in Singapore. She is passionate about inner transformation, systemic change, gender equity, and developing leaders who navigate uncertainty with clarity and authenticity.