Systems Leadership

Part of our work is supporting leaders and practitioners who embody, demonstrate, and inspire ecological, social, economic and spiritual well-being within themselves and for the communities, organizations, and networks that they serve. One way in which we’ve previously worked towards this goal was by offering a fellowship program for emerging leaders that ran 2015-2021. The Academy Fellows program supported the amazing change-makers of Cohorts 1 & 2 to develop core systems-leadership capabilities that enable them to foster collective leadership within their organizations, networks and wider communities.

Find out more about our Academy Fellows in Cohort 1 and Cohort 2.

A New Way of Leading

In many corners around the world, the opportunity for leading in new ways is emerging. Social entrepreneurs, businesses, government and civil society organizations are showing glimpses of how to work together in new ways on core systems. Leaders enabling these “emerging new realities” are characterized by a profound sense of purpose. They are masters in balancing the personal, intellectual, emotional and social aspects of leading, capable of standing “at the edge of the system” and visualizing the limits and possibilities that emerge. Central to developing the skills this new way of leading requires is a dual journey of transformation. Authentic leaders engage both the “inner” (reflective) and “outer” (manifest structures) work of deep change, with a lifelong commitment – personally, within an organization, and within networks of collaborating organizations in critical systems.