Education leaders are often confronted by hierarchical structures, cultural issues, workforce diversity, and multiple stakeholders and personalities with differing agendas and leadership styles. To deliver effective education in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, everyone must be able to competently lead themselves and others. To achieve this, many attend educational leadership courses but often fail to apply their learning as they get immersed in their day job and fall into many pitfalls that create inertia and disappointment. The purpose of this focus session is to reframe the former into learning that is practical, clear, and adaptable to the individual. Case studies will illustrate that competent educational leadership is students and learning focused. Good leadership arises from a constant collision of learned concepts, inherent values, and contextual circumstances including followership, critical thinking, and sound decision-making.

Effective educational leadership is a prerequisite for the delivery of high-quality medical undergraduate and postgraduate education. In addition, universities and medical schools need good leaders because of the impact they have on others. The essence of good leadership is to inspire people to do the right things.
At the end of the focus session, participants will be able to:
1. Reflectively understand the importance of developing the art and science of leadership in delivering education through inspired medical schools and universities.
2. Analyze how leadership is culture-and context-dependent at all levels of the organization.
3. Understand why empowerment through information-and resource-sharing is important to prevent failure.
4. Apply authentic, servant and transformational leadership in an interprofessional setting.
5. Reflect on the meaning and purpose of leadership and understand why it fails in education and how it can be remedied.