Leadership as stewardship, not performance
A collaboration grounded in lived responsibility and systemic practice.
The Art of Heroic Leadership is the result of a rare collaboration between two practitioners who have worked within complexity, carried responsibility, and reflected deeply on what leadership requires today.
Their work bridges inner leader formation and large-scale systemic stewardship—linking personal coherence with organizational and civic transformation.
Ahmad Mukhlis Yusuf, PhD (Coach AMY)
Executive leadership, public trust, and institutional stewardship.
Dr. Ahmad Mukhlis Yusuf is an executive and business coach, learning facilitator, and Waqf Nazhir practitioner with over three decades of experience stewarding complex organizations across corporate, public-sector, and educational contexts.
He has held senior executive and board-level roles, including leading high-stakes institutional transformation within national and multinational environments. His leadership experience informs the book’s exploration of arena-building, leadership under pressure, and stewardship of public trust over time.
His work is guided by a strong ethic of amanah—leadership understood as sacred responsibility across generations—positioning leadership not merely as performance, but as ethical preparation for the future.
Zulfikar M. Rachman (Coach Kangzul)
Systemic coaching, field practice, and collective intelligence.
Zulfikar M. Rachman is a systemic leadership coach, facilitator, and author with over 20 years of experience working across organizational, development, and multi-stakeholder systems in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
His work integrates systemic coaching, experiential learning, and field-based practices, supporting leaders and institutions to navigate complexity with clarity and coherence. He has designed and delivered leadership and systems-based programs reaching tens of thousands of leaders, educators, and practitioners.
Zulfikar’s practice is grounded in a lived conviction: no system can be healed by a fragmented self, and leadership maturity begins with inner coherence as the foundation for ethical and effective action.
A complementary collaboration
Complementary authority, held in service of the work.
The strength of The Art of Heroic Leadership lies not in individual expertise, but in complementary authority.
- executive and public-sector leadership experience
- academic credibility and teaching practice
- systemic coaching and field-based facilitation
- cultural grounding rooted in collective stewardship
being and doing, inner coherence and institutional responsibility, personal formation and collective impact.
Why this work exists
Reflection over reaction.
This book did not emerge from observation alone. It emerged from leaders who have borne consequences, navigated uncertainty, and chosen reflection over reaction.
It is written for leaders who sense that something essential is missing when:
- complexity is met with control alone
- transformation is pushed through pressure rather than presence
- leadership becomes detached from service to something larger than oneself
This work is offered in the spirit of stewardship—with care for the systems we lead, the people we serve, and the future we leave behind.