Systems leadership – Integration and Implementation Insights

The SPIRAL of systems leadership

April 22, 2025

By Josep M. Coll.

How can systems leadership be structured in a way that facilitates clarity and organization in its implementation and use, especially given that it is a collective type of leadership that harnesses the power of collective intelligence for solving a complex or wicked problem, in order to enable system-level change?

The SPIRAL of systems leadership is a practical model aimed at framing, developing and facilitating the transformative power of systems leadership for conscious and impactful organizations and practitioners that work in the domain of systemic transformation, regeneration and sustainable development.

SPIRAL is a name mnemonic that helps in remembering the five principles and in organizing the five phases of the model: S for Systeming, P for Purposing, I for Inviting, R for Re-designing and AL for Adaptive Learning, which are shown in the figure below.

Six ways to see systems leadership

February 7, 2024June 22, 2021

By Benjamin Taylor

What do we mean by systems leadership? And how does it relate to systems change?

Ideas about both systems thinking and systems change have become prominent over the last few years, but the terms are often poorly defined and used with a range of meanings.

I suggest that there are broadly six types or flavours of systems leadership, all of which have key implications for systems change. And, of course, they can overlap.

1. Systems leadership as a form of better leadership

This is inclusive, mobilising, and systems aware leadership. However, by focusing on the leader as an individual, this commonly defaults to current leadership paradigms, which miss wider systemic elements. The locus is on existing power structures and authority, which are taken to define the system in focus.

How systems thinking enhances systems leadership

November 29, 2023April 13, 2021

By Catherine Hobbs and Gerald Midgley

authors_catherine-hobbs_gerald-midgley — 1. Catherine Hobbs (biography)
2. Gerald Midgley (biography)

Systems leadership involves organisations, including governments, collaborating to address complex issues and achieve necessary systemic transformations. So, if this is the case, how can systems leadership be helped by systems thinking?

Systems leadership is concerned with facilitating innovation by bringing together a network of organisations. These then collaborate between themselves and with other stakeholders to deliver some kind of service, influence a policy outcome or develop a product that couldn’t have been achieved by any one of the organisations working alone.

Recognising that a network of organisations can achieve something that emerges from their interactions involves a certain amount of implicit systems thinking. After all, the classic definition of a ‘system’ is an identifiable collection of two or more parts that has properties, or achieves outcomes, that can only be attributed to all of the parts interacting, not any one of the parts in isolation.

Leadership in participatory modelling

September 23, 2021February 2, 2021

By Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Iwona Miliszewska and Alexey Voinov

moasaic_authors_raimo-hamalainen_iwona-miliszewska_alexey-voinov — 1. Raimo P. Hämäläinen (biography)
2. Iwona Miliszewska (biography)
3. Alexey Voinov (biography)

What can leadership discourse in the business literature tell us for leadership in participatory modelling?

Here we explore:

the difference between leadership and management in participatory modelling
different leadership styles and participatory modelling
three key leadership issues in participatory modelling: responsibility for best practices and ethics, competences, and who in the participatory modelling team should lead.

How does leadership differ from management in participatory modelling?

Adaptive social learning for systemic leadership

September 12, 2024April 23, 2019

By Catherine Hobbs

What’s involved in developing human capacity to address complexity, taking a mid- to longer-term viewpoint than is usual? How can we create the conditions in which people can cope with the daily challenges of living in a complex world and flourish? What form of leadership is required to inspire and catalyse this transformation?

Framework for adaptive social learning

The need for systems thinking is often referred to, but rarely considered, as a rich and comprehensive resource which could be developed further and applied.