A Different Kind of Leadership for a Polarized Age
These reflections draw from programs and discussions convened on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and are offered for their timely relevance.
After a week in New York at and around the United Nations General Assembly, I left with a few observations I have not been able to shake.
The first is that this UNGA made the world's bitter divisions impossible to miss: over how to resolve conflict, how to confront economic headwinds facing developing economies, and how to approach artificial intelligence. Consensus felt harder to find than in years past on nearly every issue that came up.
The second follows from the first, and it is harder to say out loud: UNGA itself may be struggling to generate the kind of consensus the moment requires. Forging cohesion, fueling prosperity, and avoiding conflict remain urgent for global needs, but the multilateral process on-display this week showed how difficult that consensus has become to reach. Still, one theme surfaced in nearly every room I entered: the need for a different kind of leadership.
I want to be careful here, because when people invoke "leadership," they often bring their own assumptions and values to the meaning of the word. It is also worth saying plainly: some of the world's hardest problems persist even when good leaders are working hard to solve them. Leadership is not a cure-all, and I do not want to overstate what it can do.
But this week clarified something important for me: IREX's 2040 Ambition is not separate from this moment. It speaks directly to what so many of our funders, partners, collaborators, and the communities we serve are trying to build: a different kind of leadership, one capable of navigating complexity, bridging divides, and turning possibility into action. That is not simply good timing or good positioning. It is a sign that the work our community needs most is also the work the world is asking for now.
Recent program awards and new partnerships give us a real opportunity to meet those needs. They allow us to deepen those relationships, understand priorities and aspirations more clearly, and shape solutions that are not abstract, but responsive to the world as it is changing.
That brings me back to a practical question: If this moment calls for a different kind of leadership, what should we be cultivating? There is no single answer, and context matters. But a few qualities felt especially important this week:
- Comfort with complexity: the ability to find, test, and use good information and data when the path is not obvious.
- Humility: the discipline to listen before deciding and to learn while leading.
- A commitment to value: a focus on solving real problems for partners, people, and communities.
- Courage: the willingness to move toward what matters, even when consensus is incomplete.
- A bias toward action: especially when uncertainty becomes an excuse for delay.
What strikes me is how closely these qualities reflect the way we think about leadership at IREX: not as a title or a position, but as the exercise of good judgment to inspire action in service of a shared purpose. In that sense, leadership does not belong only to those formally entrusted with it. It belongs to all of us.
One moment from the week brought this into sharper focus. The Ukraine Prosperity Forum hosted by Devex brought together government officials, business leaders, philanthropies, and nonprofits for a conversation that did not dwell only on the scale of Ukraine's challenges. What came through just as powerfully was the country's possibility: the opportunity, grit, and hope it holds. For IREX, that possibility is not abstract. After more than 30 years working alongside Ukraine's institutions, citizens, and communities, we have seen how people rebuild through systems, trust, and local leadership. It was a quieter reminder that possibility depends on the ability to act.
That is where the question of leadership returns. We can spend a great deal of time naming challenges, weighing trade-offs, and debating options. But leadership is ultimately measured by whether we can see possibility in the face of constraint, and act on it. Hope is not passive. It is a discipline of action. And in a polarized age, that orientation toward hope, sound judgment, and doing may be one of the most important forms of leadership we can offer.
IREX puts these principles into practice by equipping leaders to navigate complexity, bridge divides, and translate ideas into action. Explore our broader Leadership Development work and flagship programs including the Mandela Washington Fellowship, the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative, the Community Engagement Exchange, the Ukraine Veteran Reintegration project—each strengthening the people, networks, and institutions that turn possibility into progress.
The previous edition of Global Outlook: From Jordan to the World: Practical Lessons for Early Grade Reformers explores practical lessons from IREX and its partners on strengthening foundational learning through coherent, classroom-focused reform.