Comment: This captures the essence of leadership as influence rather than authority. Systems Leadership and Conversational Leadership both depend on the ability to convene, listen, and connect across boundaries.Systems Leadership is about how you lead across boundaries – departmental, organisational or sector.
It’s how you lead when you’re not in charge, and you need to influence others rather than pull a management lever.
It describes the way you need to work when you face large, complex, difficult and seemingly intractable problems; where you need to juggle multiple uncertainties; where no one person or organisation can find or organise the solution on their own; where everyone is grappling with how to make resources meet demand which is outstripping them; and where the way forward therefore lies in involving as many people’s energies, ideas, talents and expertise as possible.
Credit: Debbie Sorkin
Posts where this quotation is embedded
- Systems Leadership for Sustainable Development Lisa Dreier, David Nabarro and Jane Nelson (September 2019)
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Photo Credits: Pixabay (Pixabay)
Online Knowledge Café: Conversational Leadership — Beyond Knowledge Management
Wednesday 17th March 2026, 14:00 - 15:30 London time
Knowledge Management gives us access to information, but it does not decide or act. In this Knowledge Café, we will explore how Conversational Leadership builds on KM by strengthening shared reasoning, judgement, and agency. Join us to examine how we think together when knowledge alone is not enough.