Ben BurgessFor Leadership Relay’s (LR) first ever interview we interview Ben Burgess (BB), ex Championship footballer, who is now a Senior Leader in a large primary school. Throughout the interview Ben gave lots of fantastic insight, including the importance of first impressions and being yourself. Ben also stressed that it’s vital to build relationships to help get the best out of yourself and others. It was clear that Ben is a relentless learner, reads a great deal and asks questions to keep up with developments, not just in education, but in all aspects of life. Ben is a very honest person as demonstrated by his answers, especially his insights into his retirement from football and change in career. We would like to say a massive thank you to Ben for giving up his time to become our first ever interviewee and would also like to take this opportunity to wish him all the best with his future teaching career. Thank you Ben. We hope you enjoy the interview! |
The Interview
LR - First question, what is your current role?
BB - I’m upper KS2 phase leader. There are 620 pupils on roll with a 3 form entry so I’m in charge of 6 classes in Years 5 and 6.
LR - Are there any experiences in football that can be transferred across to leading staff in school?
BB- In any business, in any walk of life, people who get the best out of other people are aware that it’s all about relationships. Relationships in the classroom are all about getting the best from children, you could be the best teacher in the world, but if the kids don’t like you and the kids don’t want to work for you it makes it very hard. It’s the same with staff as well. In my current job, I moved to become a leader and it was a real eye opener.It’s hard initially when you move and you always have to earn people’s respect before they want to follow you. I’ve seen that many times in football. We always used to say, when we got a new manager in football, you could tell the first time they talked to the team what they were going to be like.
We had Ian Holloway and we were wondering what he is going to be like? He talked for 2 hours and we were all listening, captivated. Footballers attention spans aren’t the greatest at the best of times. We could tell he was going to do something special because of the kind of person he was, he was open, he was honest, inspiring whereas I’ve had the opposite of that when managers have come in. They’ve been brilliant footballers, but they’ve come in and mumbled, don’t make eye contact and you can tell straight away what they are going to be like through their body language. Wherever you go, you are always trying to pick up things, what works, what doesn’t work and what works in football will work in schools and business.
LR - Definitely, that is one of the reasons for doing the website, I’ve got loads of ideas from twitter and thought that would work in school, that would work anywhere. Were you ever wrong, you don’t have to name names or anything, when you’ve thought from the first impression oh I’m not sure about this guy and he’s turned out to be a really good manager?
BB - No, and it wouldn’t just be me thinking that. If you don’t have the players on your side and you don’t have the staff on your side, the job becomes a lot harder and it can be those first interactions. I had a manager once, he was new to management, and I liked him, but he picked a fight with an experienced player within a couple of weeks. He ended up backing down and the experience was awful. His managerial career went downhill from there and he’s no longer a manager any more. Everyone could see it happening, but too many times people will go into leadership and management and try to be someone else and that’s the worst thing you can do because you can’t act like someone else 24/7.
LR - Brilliant, thank you. Are there any experiences in football that can be transferred across to your teaching in the classroom with the children?
BB - As a player I would always be laughing, joking and smiling and building relationships. Generally, my classroom is relaxed. It might be louder than other people’s classrooms, but that is because the kids are asking questions and engaged. I’m as bad as them! If it’s quiet, I have to say something. That’s just the type of person I am. I try to take the best things from other people I’ve worked with, but you are who you are.
Building those relationships is key. The biggest thing in football, you learn to work with people from all different backgrounds, you learn to work with people from different countries who can’t speak any of the language. You learn to work with people who are extremely arrogant - you certainly wouldn’t choose to be with them, let alone share a dressing room with them. You learn to get the best out of them to help get the best out of yourself as well. You work with people who have come from absolutely nothing, who couldn’t read a book. You work with more intelligent players. It’s similar to a classroom with different abilities, the attainment levels, everything. It’s just like being in a changing room, building relationships and developing trust. You want the children to know that you care about them, and they’ll care about you and they’ll end up giving their best I think.
LR - What skills did you develop through your journalism degree?
BB- The biggest thing was realising that I should have done something earlier in my football career. You always think I don’t have the time to do anything. I did my journalism degree whilst I was playing football and realised I could have done so much more when I was playing. There are loads of things that can be transferred like with teaching writing at school, working to deadlines. A lot of the things in football helped with journalism. I still write quite a bit and I do radio and things. It’s all about being calm under pressure, and thinking clearly in pressure situations, how do you handle it? If you can handle that well in football, you can handle it well in teaching. It’s being able to adapt to certain situations. You might have planned your day’s teaching and then all of a sudden, your day has completely changed. Someone might say ‘we’re now not having this visitor so you’ve got to teach something else instead.’ Not panicking and adapting and going with what you know that works. It’s important to be adaptable in all walks of life.
LR - I guess what is going on with CoronaVirus at the moment demonstrates that completely doesn’t it? I guess not many people were well set for teaching with online classrooms etc
BB - Yes, that’s right, it’s really important to be open and honest. It’s something that I possibly learnt too late in my football career. The children see me making mistakes in class and it’s important for them to see that because that’s how we grow. If they see the teacher making mistakes, that’s fine and I’m always asking them to challenge me, question me because today, more than anything, children are exposed to so much information and they shouldn’t be taking this on passively. The children should be asking why? Why has somebody written that? Why has that article been written in that way? Is it real? Is it truthful? There are going to be questions all the time and if that can be developed in the classroom, then that’s great.
LR- What has been your best Professional Development opportunity since moving into teaching?
BB- I think what you can learn from twitter is better than any other CPD I’ve had. I have a lot of ideas and my problem is that sometimes I’m a little impatient. I can't stand it when things are done because they’ve always been done that way. I get into trouble for suggesting things and questioning why things are done. In some places there can be a lot of pointless meetings and there is no reason for them. Sometimes there can be a meeting, for example, because we always have a meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. INSET days can be like that. At the end of the day you should be able to say ‘what have I got that I can now apply in the classroom and help the children’s learning?’
Training is often done by ‘experts’ who have not been in the classroom for 4 or 5 years. As soon as you’re not in a classroom, or a school, you’re not an expert as far as I’m concerned. You might have an idea, but things change so quickly. Twitter has been fantastic and I try to read as much as I can. I’m probably trying to make up for the fact that I didn’t do enough whilst I was a footballer. I’m always reading and always trying to keep abreast of new developments, not just in education, but everything really. When we’re in a staff meeting and we get an outside speaker in, all the staff know that I’m going to question them on something.They wind me up saying ‘what research have you got for us this week, Ben?!’ I think that should be the case if someone comes in, they should be questioned, just like I want the children to do. I don’t want them to accept the first thing that they hear.
The best CPD is reading and twitter I would say. There are so many brilliant people on twitter, they give you so much. It always amazes me, in the teaching profession, how generous people are with the resources they make and the ideas they have. They don’t keep them to themselves. They share them. Twitter is an amazing place, there are obviously some people I completely disagree with and you do hear some good debates. I think this is my 7th or 8th year of teaching and I’ve still got loads to learn. It’s good hearing from the experienced teachers, but it’s also good hearing from NQTs. If you’re in a school, you’re only going to hear regularly from people that you’re around all the time, but on twitter, you’re connected to 1000s of different people. If you remember when you were an NQT you had all these fresh ideas and you kind of lose that. If you don't work with NQTs you forget what they can bring; enthusiasm and excitement.
LR - Just going back to the football, were there opportunities to do more reading, research and more courses when you were a younger player?
BB- I think your last question is about books, I’ve read Sir Alex Ferguson’s book ‘Leading.’ Now I’m a Man City fan so I can’t say I’m a big United fan! His book is good and in it he says that his main job is to make players for Man United’s first team, not for them to get an education. That was literally what it was like as a footballer. I was always relatively intelligent and it was always important to my Mum and Dad for me to have an education.
I signed for Blackburn when I was 16, I didn't do the courses that they were offering. I was doing quite well in my Law and History A Levels and we used to go to college on a Monday afternoon and all day Thursday and suddenly I’m getting near the first team. So, as I’m on my way to college on a Thursday, I get a call to say ‘Ben, come back, you’re training with the first team.’ Now, I’m not going to say ‘no I'm not, I want to go to college!’ I’m 17 years old and Greame Souness wants me to train with the first team, going to college isn’t an option for me then. Then I didn’t carry on with college as I was training with the first team and that’s all I ever wanted.
You are told you’ve got to give it everything. Football is very cut throat and from the outside, people see all these players get released and they’re left with nothing. There is an issue with that, but how you go about rectifying that is very hard because with the clubs, it’s very short term thinking. The clubs want players for the first team or to sell them and often management aren’t at clubs for very long. My daughter and little boy both play football. I kind of don’t want them to go into that life, but you don’t want to stop them.
There needs to be something. You can give players education. We used to have speakers saying ‘it’s really important that you get an education and do the courses.’ As they’re talking, you’re thinking, they’ve not played football for 10 or 15 years and as a young footballer you’re thinking what do they know? They weren’t very good, I’m going to be playing in the Premier League. Even then, you’re kidding yourself that it’s going to happen, but there needs to be a way through it. I think it’s 50%, or even more than that, of Premier League players become bankrupt within 5 years. They’re divorced. The stats are horrendous, but it’s a big long term project that one.
LR - Your decision to retire from football, giving up a 2 year contract, showed great honesty and courage. What was going through your mind at this time and are these values important to you?
BB - I first injured my knee at 21 and from there until 30 I was just managing it. The last few years had been very hard and my wife would say ‘why are you doing this, Ben?’ I’d play on the Saturday, then couldn’t walk on Sunday or Monday. I’d start walking again on Tuesday, I couldn’t train until Thursday. I’d train Thursday, Friday, play on Saturday and the whole process would start again. I couldn’t play with my kids in the garden.
The year before I retired, I was playing for Notts County, there was an away game at Chesterfield so it was a bit of a derby in League 1. I managed to play one of my better games. I scored. We won 3-1, back in the changing rooms, all the lads are buzzing saying ‘where are we going out tonight?’ I’m there, sitting on the floor with a big ice pack on my left knee, under my left knee as well, one on my right knee, could barely walk, and I’m lying on the floor thinking this is a good day, things have gone well and I can’t even move. I know what it’s going to be like. So in the back of my mind I knew I had to do something other than football. I’d applied for PGCE just in case I couldn't get a new club.
As soon as that season finished, Tranmere were really keen. The manager was ringing me because I’d got to the play-off final with Cheltenham and done well while I was on loan and he’d come to watch me against Torquay in the play-off semi-finals. I’m thinking the manager, Ronnie Moore, is really keen to sign me. Usually, when the season finishes, there is a month or two where it’s quiet and then usually just before pre-season, everyone is scrambling around for a club. I thought I’d wait and see and see how I felt then, but he was literally on at me from May saying ‘come on, come and sign’ and I was saying to my agent ‘I don’t know whether, I want to, I don’t know if I should’. Then they were offering a 2 year contract and I’m thinking I could move home because I was driving from Blackpool to Nottingham before that. So driving to the Wirral didn’t seem too bad. So I thought I’d give it a go.
I went to pre-season and the lads were brilliant, such a nice group of lads. I think I trained once in the first 2 weeks of pre-season because I trained and my knee just blew up. I felt like a fraud because the lads were working hard for pre-season and if you're not involved, you feel like you're cheating. You know that some players will be thinking, he’s just doing it so he can be ready when the season starts and I hated that feeling. I remember Franny Jeffers was on trial there at the time and I said to Franny ‘I think I’m just going to bin it off.’
Then I played in a pre-season friendly, I went to close someone down. It was against a non-league team and this guy had a mouth guard in, he must have been about 18 stone and I’ve gone to close him down and he’s turned inside, and it was so obvious what he was going to do, but I couldn't bend my legs. I was running and I suddenly fell over and I just thought this is embarrassing so I told the manager. I knew Tranmere didn't have much money and I knew I’d have a year of training and then I’d hopefully be earning money as a teacher. I thought it was the best thing to do, I didn't want to drag it out and it wouldn't have been great for my mental health and it wouldn't have been great for Tranmere for me to hold on, so it felt like the right thing to do.
LR - I’m sure a lot in that situation might have just said ‘do you know what? I’ve got a 2 year contract there, I might not train, but so be it.’ So it was a lovely thing to do.
LR - Very last question, you might have answered it earlier already, but what is the one book or podcast you would recommend anyone in a leadership role read or listen to?
BB - It is really about books because I read so much and listen on audible as well. Wherever I go, I've got an audible book. Some of the best books are Drive by Daniel Pink, that is just amazing that book, it’s about what motivates people and it’s really interesting, so that is a massive one for me. Bounce by Matthew Syed. The Alex Ferguson one, Leading,is good. The Chimp Paradox is very good. There is a children’s version that is very good for children who struggle with their anger and I like the Homo Deus book by the author of Sapiens too. I try and find something from everything really. I just read George Orwell’s 1984 because I never read it when I was younger. There are all sorts of things that are really interesting that you can apply to leadership in every domain.
BB - I’m upper KS2 phase leader. There are 620 pupils on roll with a 3 form entry so I’m in charge of 6 classes in Years 5 and 6.
LR - Are there any experiences in football that can be transferred across to leading staff in school?
BB- In any business, in any walk of life, people who get the best out of other people are aware that it’s all about relationships. Relationships in the classroom are all about getting the best from children, you could be the best teacher in the world, but if the kids don’t like you and the kids don’t want to work for you it makes it very hard. It’s the same with staff as well. In my current job, I moved to become a leader and it was a real eye opener.It’s hard initially when you move and you always have to earn people’s respect before they want to follow you. I’ve seen that many times in football. We always used to say, when we got a new manager in football, you could tell the first time they talked to the team what they were going to be like.
We had Ian Holloway and we were wondering what he is going to be like? He talked for 2 hours and we were all listening, captivated. Footballers attention spans aren’t the greatest at the best of times. We could tell he was going to do something special because of the kind of person he was, he was open, he was honest, inspiring whereas I’ve had the opposite of that when managers have come in. They’ve been brilliant footballers, but they’ve come in and mumbled, don’t make eye contact and you can tell straight away what they are going to be like through their body language. Wherever you go, you are always trying to pick up things, what works, what doesn’t work and what works in football will work in schools and business.
LR - Definitely, that is one of the reasons for doing the website, I’ve got loads of ideas from twitter and thought that would work in school, that would work anywhere. Were you ever wrong, you don’t have to name names or anything, when you’ve thought from the first impression oh I’m not sure about this guy and he’s turned out to be a really good manager?
BB - No, and it wouldn’t just be me thinking that. If you don’t have the players on your side and you don’t have the staff on your side, the job becomes a lot harder and it can be those first interactions. I had a manager once, he was new to management, and I liked him, but he picked a fight with an experienced player within a couple of weeks. He ended up backing down and the experience was awful. His managerial career went downhill from there and he’s no longer a manager any more. Everyone could see it happening, but too many times people will go into leadership and management and try to be someone else and that’s the worst thing you can do because you can’t act like someone else 24/7.
LR - Brilliant, thank you. Are there any experiences in football that can be transferred across to your teaching in the classroom with the children?
BB - As a player I would always be laughing, joking and smiling and building relationships. Generally, my classroom is relaxed. It might be louder than other people’s classrooms, but that is because the kids are asking questions and engaged. I’m as bad as them! If it’s quiet, I have to say something. That’s just the type of person I am. I try to take the best things from other people I’ve worked with, but you are who you are.
Building those relationships is key. The biggest thing in football, you learn to work with people from all different backgrounds, you learn to work with people from different countries who can’t speak any of the language. You learn to work with people who are extremely arrogant - you certainly wouldn’t choose to be with them, let alone share a dressing room with them. You learn to get the best out of them to help get the best out of yourself as well. You work with people who have come from absolutely nothing, who couldn’t read a book. You work with more intelligent players. It’s similar to a classroom with different abilities, the attainment levels, everything. It’s just like being in a changing room, building relationships and developing trust. You want the children to know that you care about them, and they’ll care about you and they’ll end up giving their best I think.
LR - What skills did you develop through your journalism degree?
BB- The biggest thing was realising that I should have done something earlier in my football career. You always think I don’t have the time to do anything. I did my journalism degree whilst I was playing football and realised I could have done so much more when I was playing. There are loads of things that can be transferred like with teaching writing at school, working to deadlines. A lot of the things in football helped with journalism. I still write quite a bit and I do radio and things. It’s all about being calm under pressure, and thinking clearly in pressure situations, how do you handle it? If you can handle that well in football, you can handle it well in teaching. It’s being able to adapt to certain situations. You might have planned your day’s teaching and then all of a sudden, your day has completely changed. Someone might say ‘we’re now not having this visitor so you’ve got to teach something else instead.’ Not panicking and adapting and going with what you know that works. It’s important to be adaptable in all walks of life.
LR - I guess what is going on with CoronaVirus at the moment demonstrates that completely doesn’t it? I guess not many people were well set for teaching with online classrooms etc
BB - Yes, that’s right, it’s really important to be open and honest. It’s something that I possibly learnt too late in my football career. The children see me making mistakes in class and it’s important for them to see that because that’s how we grow. If they see the teacher making mistakes, that’s fine and I’m always asking them to challenge me, question me because today, more than anything, children are exposed to so much information and they shouldn’t be taking this on passively. The children should be asking why? Why has somebody written that? Why has that article been written in that way? Is it real? Is it truthful? There are going to be questions all the time and if that can be developed in the classroom, then that’s great.
LR- What has been your best Professional Development opportunity since moving into teaching?
BB- I think what you can learn from twitter is better than any other CPD I’ve had. I have a lot of ideas and my problem is that sometimes I’m a little impatient. I can't stand it when things are done because they’ve always been done that way. I get into trouble for suggesting things and questioning why things are done. In some places there can be a lot of pointless meetings and there is no reason for them. Sometimes there can be a meeting, for example, because we always have a meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. INSET days can be like that. At the end of the day you should be able to say ‘what have I got that I can now apply in the classroom and help the children’s learning?’
Training is often done by ‘experts’ who have not been in the classroom for 4 or 5 years. As soon as you’re not in a classroom, or a school, you’re not an expert as far as I’m concerned. You might have an idea, but things change so quickly. Twitter has been fantastic and I try to read as much as I can. I’m probably trying to make up for the fact that I didn’t do enough whilst I was a footballer. I’m always reading and always trying to keep abreast of new developments, not just in education, but everything really. When we’re in a staff meeting and we get an outside speaker in, all the staff know that I’m going to question them on something.They wind me up saying ‘what research have you got for us this week, Ben?!’ I think that should be the case if someone comes in, they should be questioned, just like I want the children to do. I don’t want them to accept the first thing that they hear.
The best CPD is reading and twitter I would say. There are so many brilliant people on twitter, they give you so much. It always amazes me, in the teaching profession, how generous people are with the resources they make and the ideas they have. They don’t keep them to themselves. They share them. Twitter is an amazing place, there are obviously some people I completely disagree with and you do hear some good debates. I think this is my 7th or 8th year of teaching and I’ve still got loads to learn. It’s good hearing from the experienced teachers, but it’s also good hearing from NQTs. If you’re in a school, you’re only going to hear regularly from people that you’re around all the time, but on twitter, you’re connected to 1000s of different people. If you remember when you were an NQT you had all these fresh ideas and you kind of lose that. If you don't work with NQTs you forget what they can bring; enthusiasm and excitement.
LR - Just going back to the football, were there opportunities to do more reading, research and more courses when you were a younger player?
BB- I think your last question is about books, I’ve read Sir Alex Ferguson’s book ‘Leading.’ Now I’m a Man City fan so I can’t say I’m a big United fan! His book is good and in it he says that his main job is to make players for Man United’s first team, not for them to get an education. That was literally what it was like as a footballer. I was always relatively intelligent and it was always important to my Mum and Dad for me to have an education.
I signed for Blackburn when I was 16, I didn't do the courses that they were offering. I was doing quite well in my Law and History A Levels and we used to go to college on a Monday afternoon and all day Thursday and suddenly I’m getting near the first team. So, as I’m on my way to college on a Thursday, I get a call to say ‘Ben, come back, you’re training with the first team.’ Now, I’m not going to say ‘no I'm not, I want to go to college!’ I’m 17 years old and Greame Souness wants me to train with the first team, going to college isn’t an option for me then. Then I didn’t carry on with college as I was training with the first team and that’s all I ever wanted.
You are told you’ve got to give it everything. Football is very cut throat and from the outside, people see all these players get released and they’re left with nothing. There is an issue with that, but how you go about rectifying that is very hard because with the clubs, it’s very short term thinking. The clubs want players for the first team or to sell them and often management aren’t at clubs for very long. My daughter and little boy both play football. I kind of don’t want them to go into that life, but you don’t want to stop them.
There needs to be something. You can give players education. We used to have speakers saying ‘it’s really important that you get an education and do the courses.’ As they’re talking, you’re thinking, they’ve not played football for 10 or 15 years and as a young footballer you’re thinking what do they know? They weren’t very good, I’m going to be playing in the Premier League. Even then, you’re kidding yourself that it’s going to happen, but there needs to be a way through it. I think it’s 50%, or even more than that, of Premier League players become bankrupt within 5 years. They’re divorced. The stats are horrendous, but it’s a big long term project that one.
LR - Your decision to retire from football, giving up a 2 year contract, showed great honesty and courage. What was going through your mind at this time and are these values important to you?
BB - I first injured my knee at 21 and from there until 30 I was just managing it. The last few years had been very hard and my wife would say ‘why are you doing this, Ben?’ I’d play on the Saturday, then couldn’t walk on Sunday or Monday. I’d start walking again on Tuesday, I couldn’t train until Thursday. I’d train Thursday, Friday, play on Saturday and the whole process would start again. I couldn’t play with my kids in the garden.
The year before I retired, I was playing for Notts County, there was an away game at Chesterfield so it was a bit of a derby in League 1. I managed to play one of my better games. I scored. We won 3-1, back in the changing rooms, all the lads are buzzing saying ‘where are we going out tonight?’ I’m there, sitting on the floor with a big ice pack on my left knee, under my left knee as well, one on my right knee, could barely walk, and I’m lying on the floor thinking this is a good day, things have gone well and I can’t even move. I know what it’s going to be like. So in the back of my mind I knew I had to do something other than football. I’d applied for PGCE just in case I couldn't get a new club.
As soon as that season finished, Tranmere were really keen. The manager was ringing me because I’d got to the play-off final with Cheltenham and done well while I was on loan and he’d come to watch me against Torquay in the play-off semi-finals. I’m thinking the manager, Ronnie Moore, is really keen to sign me. Usually, when the season finishes, there is a month or two where it’s quiet and then usually just before pre-season, everyone is scrambling around for a club. I thought I’d wait and see and see how I felt then, but he was literally on at me from May saying ‘come on, come and sign’ and I was saying to my agent ‘I don’t know whether, I want to, I don’t know if I should’. Then they were offering a 2 year contract and I’m thinking I could move home because I was driving from Blackpool to Nottingham before that. So driving to the Wirral didn’t seem too bad. So I thought I’d give it a go.
I went to pre-season and the lads were brilliant, such a nice group of lads. I think I trained once in the first 2 weeks of pre-season because I trained and my knee just blew up. I felt like a fraud because the lads were working hard for pre-season and if you're not involved, you feel like you're cheating. You know that some players will be thinking, he’s just doing it so he can be ready when the season starts and I hated that feeling. I remember Franny Jeffers was on trial there at the time and I said to Franny ‘I think I’m just going to bin it off.’
Then I played in a pre-season friendly, I went to close someone down. It was against a non-league team and this guy had a mouth guard in, he must have been about 18 stone and I’ve gone to close him down and he’s turned inside, and it was so obvious what he was going to do, but I couldn't bend my legs. I was running and I suddenly fell over and I just thought this is embarrassing so I told the manager. I knew Tranmere didn't have much money and I knew I’d have a year of training and then I’d hopefully be earning money as a teacher. I thought it was the best thing to do, I didn't want to drag it out and it wouldn't have been great for my mental health and it wouldn't have been great for Tranmere for me to hold on, so it felt like the right thing to do.
LR - I’m sure a lot in that situation might have just said ‘do you know what? I’ve got a 2 year contract there, I might not train, but so be it.’ So it was a lovely thing to do.
LR - Very last question, you might have answered it earlier already, but what is the one book or podcast you would recommend anyone in a leadership role read or listen to?
BB - It is really about books because I read so much and listen on audible as well. Wherever I go, I've got an audible book. Some of the best books are Drive by Daniel Pink, that is just amazing that book, it’s about what motivates people and it’s really interesting, so that is a massive one for me. Bounce by Matthew Syed. The Alex Ferguson one, Leading,is good. The Chimp Paradox is very good. There is a children’s version that is very good for children who struggle with their anger and I like the Homo Deus book by the author of Sapiens too. I try and find something from everything really. I just read George Orwell’s 1984 because I never read it when I was younger. There are all sorts of things that are really interesting that you can apply to leadership in every domain.