This year’s Islamic Schools Association of Australia Conference was held at Playford College in Adelaide on Thursday 13 and Friday 14 August with the theme “The Divine Blueprint: Reclaiming Tarbiyah, Leading with Purpose, and Shaping the Future of Islamic Education.”

School leaders discussed artificial intelligence, Islamophobia, policy shifts, identity, staffing, sustainability and young Muslims. What connected these issues was their complexity.

In my keynote, I invited leaders to consider a different question about it.

There is a quiet rule in many schools and community organisations: the reward of good work is more work.

The capable person receives another portfolio, another committee and another crisis because they can carry it. Over time, the load grows. Yet we rarely ask what the carrying is doing to them. We measure the work. We rarely measure the worker.

This is where I want to offer a term: the Emergence Mindset.

Most of our schools already teach the growth mindset. Ability is not fixed, effort develops capability and failure is feedback. The Emergence Mindset goes further. It says the leader is not fixed either. Who you are becoming is being formed, not only by training or strategic plans, but by the complexity you are standing in.

Our tradition understands this. Tarbiyah is not simply instruction. It is formation. We accept that children are formed through difficulty as much as comfort. Yet we rarely extend this understanding to ourselves as leaders.

Consider the leadership of Prophet Muhammad (s). His leadership unfolded through the pressure of Makkah, the upheaval of the Hijrah and the plurality of Madinah.

Complexity was not separate from his journey. It was part of the process through which his leadership emerged, supported by spiritual grounding, cultural alignment and meaningful connections.

The question changes. It is no longer only, “How do I reduce this complexity?” It also becomes, “What is this complexity calling me to become?”

That is a small shift in wording, but a large shift in posture. It can turn an obstacle into a curriculum.

A mindset shows up in what we notice. HSC results, student attendance and audit compliance matter. But they are measures of activity, not evidence that anyone is emerging.

Three signals may tell us more. Influence asks whether your voice carries when you are not in the room. Integration asks whether your faith, values and actions remain connected across work, home and the masjid. Identity asks whether you are becoming more yourself as you lead, or less. These are harder to count, but far more honest.

Complexity is not going anywhere. It was present in Makkah and Madinah, and has confronted every leader ever since. We can spend a career resenting it, or learn to move through it with intention.

Birds fly in the sky. Fish swim in the ocean. Leaders lead in complexity. It is not simply what we face. It is part of the process forming us into the leaders we are meant to become.