Rotating the hierarchy.

Carl Jung’s statement “The true leader is always led”

That means that a genuine leader does not rely purely on ego, dominance, or rigid control. Instead, they remain receptive to a deeper inner authority, collective purpose, or unconscious wisdom rather than just commanding blindly.

What if we stopped teaching young people that development means climbing upward Walk into a school, institution, company, hospital, or government organization and sooner or later you will encounter the same familiar picture: the organizational chart. At the top: management, directors, experts, decision-makers. Further down: teachers, professionals, support staff, workers. And somewhere at the receiving end: the student, client, patient, resident, or young person. It looks perfectly logical. Someone has to coordinate. Someone has responsibility. Someone has expertise. But there is another question we rarely ask: What does repeatedly seeing the world organized vertically teach a developing child? Not because organizational structures are inherently wrong, but because children do not only learn from what adults explicitly tell them. They also learn from structure. They observe who speaks first. Who gets interrupted. Who makes the rules. Whose knowledge counts. Who receives the largest office. Who is expected to listen. Who has to ask permission. Who evaluates whom. And slowly, an invisible social map can develop:

Up means important. Down means less important. Development means moving upward. Rotate the Hierarchy. What if schools and institutions occasionally turned that map around? Not permanently. Not chaotically. And certainly not by pretending that a twelve-year-old and a trained surgeon possess the same medical expertise.

The idea is much more precise: Keep responsibility where responsibility belongs, but rotate perspective, knowledge and temporary authority. A hierarchy can be functional without becoming psychological. A teacher may have authority in a classroom. A mechanic has authority when diagnosing an engine. A carpenter understands materials differently from an accountant. A nurse may notice something at a patient’s bedside that senior management cannot see from a spreadsheet. And a fifteen-year-old may understand the social dynamics of his classroom better than every adult sitting in the staff meeting.

Expertise moves. Context moves. Perspective moves. Therefore, the hierarchy should sometimes move with it.. The True Leader Is Always Led This may sound like a contradiction. We normally imagine leadership moving in one direction: the leader knows, the leader explains, the leader decides, everyone else follows. But good leadership can move in both directions. A good leader knows when to lead, but also when to follow. A good teacher knows when to teach, but also when to become the student. A good professional knows when to intervene, but also when to step aside.

Because leadership is not about occupying the highest position all the time. Leadership is creating an environment in which knowledge, feedback and initiative are allowed to move. And this can begin with something incredibly small. The Teacher Who Makes a Mistake Imagine a teacher writing something incorrectly on the board. You can do this indirectly by simply waiting, staring at the whiteboard as if you are trying to figure something out. Eventually, a student may step in: “Wait, you don’t know that?” Without asking for help, you have temporarily shifted the hierarchy and invited the student to become the expert.

A child can also raises their hand. “Teacher, that’s wrong.” The teacher looks again. “Really? You’re right. I made a mistake.” And instead of immediately restoring the normal hierarchy: “Okay. Then help me. Where did I go wrong?” For a few minutes, something important happens. The teacher is still the teacher. The child is still the student. Responsibility has not changed. But knowledge has changed position. The person normally being taught becomes the person teaching. The person normally correcting becomes the person being corrected. The child experiences: Authority can make mistakes. Authority can listen. Authority can be corrected. Knowing something gives me a voice. Not knowing something does not reduce my value.

The teacher demonstrates something equally important: Leadership is not proving that you are always right. Leadership is creating a system in which the right information is allowed to reach you. The true leader is always led. “I Don’t Know, Show Me”

I used something similar when working with young people. Sometimes I simply said: “I don’t know.” Of course, sometimes I did know. But that wasn’t the point. During cooking, for example, instead of automatically becoming the adult who explained every step, I might ask: “How do we do this?” And suddenly the roles changed. “No, you have to cut it like this.” “First you put this in.” “No, wait, not yet.” And I followed their instructions. For a moment, the professional was no longer the instructor.

The young person was. Nothing important had been surrendered. I still remained responsible for safety and for the situation as a whole. But the direction of knowledge had temporarily reversed. A young person who is normally surrounded by adults explaining, evaluating and correcting suddenly gets another experience:

I know something. You can learn from me. My knowledge has value. I can guide someone too.

That is rotating hierarchy in everyday practice. Sometimes the most powerful thing an adult can say is not: “Let me show you.” But: “I don’t know. Show me.” “You Know This, Right?” There is another variation. Years earlier, when I worked as a mechanic, I once had an apprentice working with me.

There was something technical that needed to be figured out. Instead of immediately explaining it, I said something like: “You know how this works, right?” I don’t know. Especially when working with young people, whether in construction, technical work, education, or anywhere else, sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is: (“I don’t know. Do you understand it? I don’t know yet.” Then leave the silence. didn’t. I thought you knew this. You’re smart, right?” for example. Don’t immediately provide the answer. Give them space to think, explore, and take the initiative themselves. If they genuinely don’t know, you always step in later. It’s an ongoing process). And that was how it started. The question stayed with him, not as an instruction, but as a small challenge. Instead of me giving him the answer, he became curious enough to go looking for it himself.

He was an apprentice. And of course, I actually knew the answer. But something interesting happened. The question stayed in his head. Why did he ask me? Am I supposed to know this? How does this actually work? Instead of waiting for me to provide the answer, he started helping, thinking, searching.

In his own time, he looked things up on the internet. He tried to understand the mechanism. He kept working on the problem independently. Eventually he came back to me: “I know it.” That moment mattered. Because I could have given him the answer in thirty seconds. But then the knowledge would still have travelled through the traditional hierarchy: From that moment on, something shifted: sometimes, before I had even reached the next problem, he had already researched it and started working on the repair himself. I would look over and think, “Wait, how did you get there already?” He was no longer simply helping me; he had started thinking ahead, exploring problems in his own time, and taking initiative before I even had to ask. And the funny part is that this is often exactly where creativity appears. The student may approach the problem from a completely different angle, and suddenly, you are learning from them too. They see something you didn’t see, simply because they have a different perspective.

Expert → apprentice. Instead, something else happened: question → uncertainty → curiosity → independent search → understanding → return. The apprentice did not simply receive knowledge. He constructed his way toward it. And when he returned, the hierarchy had rotated again. Now he was explaining the mechanism.

I was listening. This introduces another important function of rotating hierarchy: sometimes stepping back creates curiosity. If the expert immediately fills every gap with an answer, the learner can become very good at receiving information. Leave the right gap, however, and the learner may start searching for the answer independently.

The Classroom as a Laboratory. Now take these small interactions and make the underlying principle visible. Imagine a teacher drawing the traditional school hierarchy on the board: Principal. Management. Teachers. Support staff. Students.

Now rotate it. Put the students at the top.

Then ask: “If the school existed primarily to help you develop, what information should travel upward from you?” Suddenly the organizational chart becomes something else. It becomes a feedback system. Students could map: Where does pressure accumulate? Where does information stop moving? Who knows whether a classroom actually feels safe? Which rules help learning, and which rules merely produce compliance? What problems are visible to students but invisible to management? The teacher has not lost authority. The students have gained system awareness. That distinction matters.

Let the Child Become the Expert. A second exercise could be even simpler. Once in a while, rotate expertise. One student understands computers. Another repairs bicycles. Another knows everything about animals. Someone cooks with their grandmother. Someone understands social media better than every adult in the building. Someone knows exactly how exclusion happens in the playground. For twenty minutes, the normal hierarchy changes. The teacher becomes the learner. The student becomes the instructor. This teaches something that cannot easily be taught through a textbook:

Authority is contextual. You can know more than me here. I can know more than you there. Neither fact determines our human value. That is a remarkably important lesson to learn before adulthood.

But First: Understand the Group Dynamic. There is an important condition to all of this: you have to understand the group dynamic. Not every young person wants to become the temporary expert in front of twenty other students. Some children will immediately raise their hands. Others may know exactly what the answer is and still remain completely silent. Not because they have nothing to contribute. They may be reading the room. Who is listening? Who might laugh? Who usually dominates the group? What happens if I make a mistake? Will someone use this against me later? Is it actually safe for me to speak? That is why rotating hierarchy should never become another compulsory classroom exercise.

Sometimes it works beautifully in a group. Sometimes it works much better one-to-one. A teacher might notice that a quiet student understands something particularly well and approach them privately: “I think you understand this. Can you show me?” Now the hierarchy can rotate without the pressure of an audience. Before asking someone to lead, therefore, we need to understand the social architecture around that person. Who feels safe with whom? Who speaks freely? Who becomes quiet when particular people enter the room? Who knows a great deal but rarely shows it publicly?

Who needs encouragement? And who needs less attention rather than more? This makes rotating hierarchy more than simply swapping roles. It requires reading the system first. Because equality does not mean treating every person identically. One young person may grow when you say: “Come to the front and show us.” Another may grow when you quietly sit beside them and say:

“You know this, don’t you? Show me.” Same principle. Different social conditions. Rotate the hierarchy, but read the room before you rotate it.

Institutions Could Do Exactly the Same Thing

Now imagine a youth-care institution. The organizational chart normally moves downward: Director → manager → behavioural specialist → team leader → staff → young person. But once a month, rotate it. Start with the young person.

Ask: “What does the institution look like from your position?” Then physically map the system on a wall: Young person → daily environment → staff → team → specialists → management → policy. Now trace information upward. A young person becomes angry every evening. What happens next? Does the information reaching management become: “aggressive behaviour”? Or does the system preserve the entire sequence?What happened beforehand? Who was present? What rule was introduced? Was there embarrassment? Conflict? Social pressure? Loss of autonomy? Fear? A misunderstanding? What happened five minutes before the behaviour? What happened five hours before it? What happened repeatedly during the previous month? Rotating the hierarchy changes the starting point of analysis. Instead of asking: “How do we make this person function within our system?” During my graduation internship, I tested this with a young person who could be highly aggressive. I told him, “Today, I know nothing. You teach me.” He started explaining cooking, cleaning, and other practical tasks while I deliberately took the position of the learner. The dynamic changed, and he became noticeably calmer. I initially wanted to make this the subject of my thesis, but eventually chose a different topic.

The institution can also ask: “What does our system look like from the position of this person?” That is not anti-authority. It is better systems engineering. The Same Problem Appears in Work. We reproduce the vertical model later in life. You should move up. Get promoted. Become manager. Become director. Acquire status. Build a personal brand. Become visible. Become somebody.

But somebody still has to build the house. Somebody has to repair the heating system. Somebody has to diagnose the engine. Somebody has to install the electrical system. Somebody has to grow food. Somebody has to teach the apprentice how the work is actually done. A highly skilled tradesperson can create enormous economic and social value without ever wanting to become a manager. Yet our cultural language often describes advancement vertically: Also, when you’re young, you simply don’t know yet. We often underestimate the opportunities in skilled trades and technical professions. After five, six, or eight years of experience, someone may start their own business, develop a new product, or discover a completely different direction. And look at what highly skilled tradespeople can earn today, it can be surprisingly good. As a child, you have no idea. You may think working with your hands means limited opportunities or income, while the opposite can be true. Technical and skilled work can offer enormous room for creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation. These professions are often underestimated, yet they can offer excellent earning potential and even opportunities to build a successful business of your own.

higher education. higher position. higher management. higher status. higher income. Perhaps development does not always have to mean higher. It can also mean: deeper expertise. greater autonomy. better craftsmanship. greater responsibility. stronger cooperation. more creativity. That changes the geometry of development.

From Hierarchy to Network. Traditional hierarchy asks: Who stands above whom? A rotating hierarchy asks: Who has the relevant knowledge here? That produces a different model of authority. Authority does not disappear. It becomes functional, temporary and accountable to context. The surgeon leads during surgery. The pilot leads in the cockpit. The teacher carries responsibility for the classroom. The mechanic leads the diagnosis underneath the bonnet. The child becomes the primary source when adults want to understand what the child’s daily environment actually feels like.

Leadership becomes something that can move through a network depending on the problem being solved. This is closer to how complex systems actually work.

From Instruction to Curiosity. The small examples from earlier now reveal several different mechanisms. The teacher creates space for correction: “You’re right. I made a mistake.” The professional creates space for temporary leadership: “I don’t know. Show me.” The mechanic creates space for independent discovery: “You know this, right?” And understanding the group creates the conditions in which that rotation can happen safely:

“Where and with whom can this person actually take the lead?” The adult does not abandon responsibility. Instead, the adult temporarily stops occupying all available space for knowledge. That empty space matters. Because if adults immediately answer every question, solve every problem and demonstrate every skill, young people can become very good at following expertise. But leave the right gap at the right moment and something else can emerge:

Curiosity. Initiative. Problem-solving. Competence. Confidence. Ownership. Sometimes leadership means showing someone the answer. Sometimes leadership means knowing the answer, and leaving just enough space for someone else to discover it. And It Can Start at School Children could learn this before they ever enter the labour market. Rotate the classroom. Rotate expertise. Rotate who explains. Rotate who asks the questions. Let students occasionally evaluate the learning environment instead of only being evaluated by it. Let them map how decisions travel through the school. Let a caretaker explain the building. Let a carpenter teach measurement. Let an entrepreneur explain risk. Let a nurse explain responsibility. Let a student explain the social architecture of the playground. Sometimes do it in the group. Sometimes do it one-to-one. Read the room. Keep responsibility. Rotate perspective. Then return everyone to their normal roles. The purpose is not to create a world without structure. The purpose is to prevent structure from becoming identity. Because perhaps one of the most useful developmental lessons we can give a child is remarkably simple:

You do not have to climb above other people to develop yourself. Sometimes you lead. Sometimes you follow. Sometimes you teach. Sometimes you learn. Sometimes you know. Sometimes you say: “I don’t know.” And sometimes the person at the bottom of the organizational chart possesses the information everyone at the top desperately needs. The goal is not to destroy the hierarchy. The goal is to rotate it. Keep responsibility. Rotate expertise. Create curiosity. Read the room. Return the floor.

And perhaps, if we teach that early enough, children will grow up seeing society less as a ladder to climb,

and more as a system in which everyone has a position from which something valuable can be seen.

The true leader is always led.