Last semester, two students approached me to advise their AI-based graduate projects at a time when no one else in the department was available or willing to take them on. Our department lacked sufficient faculty with software or AI specialization at the time to support the growing number of requests in this area.
I decided to take on the projects and serve as their advisor. I was honest with them from the beginning and told them that I had no prior experience in training machine learning models. Still, I said that if they were willing to put in the effort, I would learn alongside them and support them every step of the way. Both students wanted to build careers in AI, and I knew that their graduate projects could set the tone for the opportunities ahead.
I have always believed it is my responsibility to open doors for my students, even when the path ahead is uncertain.
Although I understood how the overall system architecture should be designed, I was learning the rest in real time just like them. Others advised me not to take the risk, but I believed in their determination and their right to pursue ideas they were genuinely passionate about rather than what was convenient for faculty.
Today, both students successfully demonstrated their projects, and I could not be prouder of what they had accomplished.
When I think about this experience, I am reminded of Peter Drucker’s view that leadership is not rank or privilege; it is responsibility. He often wrote that a leader’s first duty is to help others perform to the best of their abilities. That means creating conditions where people can discover what they are capable of, not directing them from above, but believing in them enough to let them try.
In this small lab moment, I saw that principle come alive. I did not have the answers, and they knew it. But leadership, as Drucker would say, is not about knowing everything. It is about doing the right thing, even when it means stepping into uncertainty.
Trust replaced control. Curiosity replaced expertise. And in that space, both students grew, and so did I.
Drucker believed the most effective organizations are those built on mutual trust, where authority is replaced by responsibility, and learning is shared across all levels. That day in the lab, I realized that education itself is one of the purest forms of management, not managing systems or people, but managing potential.
Sometimes, the best leadership lesson does not come from a management book. It comes from saying yes when it would have been easier to say no, and discovering that faith in others is the most powerful management tool of all.
