How Asia and Africa rewired my view of leadership
A tribe in Togo, the authority of the elders, and why the best leadership is contextual.
Early in my career, I had a very clear idea of what good leadership looked like. I believed in flat structures, open dialogue and shared decision-making, and anything that resembled hierarchy felt outdated to me.
That certainty began to shift when I started working and traveling across Asia and Africa.
This photo was taken in Togo, where I spent time with a local tribe. What stayed with me was not only the cultural difference, but the clarity of roles within the community. The elders hold real authority, and when they speak, people listen, not out of fear, but out of respect for the responsibility they carry. Their leadership is visible, accepted and trusted.
Structure is not the same as rigidity
At first, it challenged me. Coming from a Western mindset where hierarchy is often questioned or flattened, I instinctively associated structure with rigidity. But what I witnessed in Togo, and later in many parts of Asia and Africa, was not ego-driven authority. It was stewardship. Leadership was understood as a duty to guide, and alignment was valued because it strengthened the collective.
Over time, I realized the issue was not hierarchy itself, but my assumption that there was only one effective way to lead.
Global leadership has taught me that effectiveness is contextual. What builds trust in one environment can create friction in another. What feels empowering in one culture may feel destabilizing in a different one.
The shift for me was simple but meaningful. Instead of trying to reshape every environment according to my preferred model, I began paying closer attention to how leadership already worked in that context.
That change did not make me a perfect leader, but it made me more aware, more adaptable, and far more respectful of the systems I step into.