The gap nobody seems to own

This week, I received an invitation to explore an international networking community made up largely of South Africans living and working abroad.

The invitation was thoughtful and genuine. Someone had clearly taken the time to look beyond my profile photo and surname and decide that I might be a good fit for the community they were building.

Perhaps they saw an entrepreneur. Perhaps they saw a business owner. Perhaps they saw a South African trying to make her way in another country.

All those things would be true.

So, I spent some time looking around. The network looked impressive. There were successful entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate executives. People supporting one another across countries, industries and time zones.

The founder's videos spoke about connection, growth, opportunities and relationships.

All valuable things.

And yet, after about twenty minutes, I found myself staring at the screen thinking, "I am so tired." Not because there was anything wrong with the network. Quite the opposite. I could immediately see why people would find value there.

The problem was that I couldn't quite find myself in it.

This is not a new issue.

My work does not sit comfortably in the business world, but it doesn't sit entirely in the education world either. It lives in the awkward space between the two.

The same awkward space our future leaders stumble into when they leave education and enter the world beyond it.

The longer I sat with that thought, the more I realised that this is where the tiredness comes from time to time.

Because it is a gap that nobody quite seems to own.

A few years ago, I was invited to speak at a conference in New Zealand. The organisers had brought together school leaders, business leaders, politicians and professionals to discuss the future of education.

I was second to speak and then spent the next two days chairing discussions between experts who occasionally agreed with one another and occasionally - okay, more than occasionally - did not.

At one of the tea breaks, the organiser approached me with what can only be described as the look of a man who had just had a brilliant idea.

"Hey," he said, "would you mind bringing your bagpipes to the dinner tonight? One of our sporting guests has Scottish ancestry, and I'd love to surprise him."

How does one say no to that, especially after already admitting that the pipes were sitting in the boot of the car?

So, midway through the dinner, I tuned up outside and did my bit. People seemed suitably surprised.

A principal approached me afterwards.

"That was incredible," he said. "To play like that must have taken years and years of dedication and discipline."

He was absolutely right. It has. But what fascinated me, though, was not the compliment.

It was how immediately he could see the years behind the music. The practice. The commitment. The thousands of unseen hours.

Yet the doctorate I had completed, the research I had conducted and the years I had spent exploring how leadership develops in young people - the very reason I had been invited to the conference - remained largely invisible.

Not because he didn't value it. Because it sat outside the categories he naturally recognised.

And that, I think, is the challenge.

We know where education belongs. We know where business belongs. But there is a space between them that remains largely unseen.

A space that young people eventually enter when they leave one world and begin navigating another. A space where qualifications matter, but so do judgment, responsibility, self-awareness and relationships. A space where life starts asking questions that examinations never did.

That is the gap that interests me.

The gap between education and the world waiting beyond it. The gap between academic achievement and personal leadership. The gap between knowing and becoming.

It is also the reason I continue to spend so much of my time working with young people. Not because I believe every student needs to become a leader in the traditional sense. But because I know how much of life is lived in spaces that do not come with a map.

The spaces between education and experience. Between certainty and responsibility. Between whom we have been and who we are becoming.

Perhaps that is why I keep returning to this work.

Because long before young people become leaders of organisations, they are trying to become leaders of themselves.