Leadership Mutates: From Egotism to Leaderful Collectives

Dr. heeten bhagat's essay for Sleek Magazine rethinks leadership through the lens of contemporary art and fashion. He contrasts traditional top-down, egotistic leadership with emerging 'leaderful' processes exemplified by Black Lives Matter, Nepalese Gen Z protesters, Kenyan #May2025 protests, and swarm tactics. Bhagat argues that current leaders, drunk on arrogance, are stimulating shifts towards polyvocality and collective action. He uses Comme des Garçons' Spring 2025 collection 'Uncertain Future' as a metaphor: 23 garment-like sculptures that defy normative fit while maintaining wearability, as noted by Jeremy Lewis. The house's decades-long anti-fashion stance and non-linear experimentation model a leaderful approach that melds the new with the knew. Bhagat, a pracademic designing decolonial and transdisciplinary collaborations, concludes that collective teams engaging in rigorous inquiry hold more power than singular figureheads.