Leadership Learning for Systems Thinking and Practice

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” As we write this editorial, troublesome headlines of chaos, disruption, and uncertainty inundate our inboxes, social media feeds, and phone alerts. International conflicts, shifting political priorities, school shootings, and political assassinations fuel divisive language and apocalyptic rhetoric. At times, it can feel as though doom and destruction are lurking around every corner, ready to rob our attempts at peace, thwart our hope of a better tomorrow, and render useless our never-ending struggle to get “caught up.” However, as much as we would like to, we must resist the urge to put our heads in the sand and ignore the world around us. Our very role depends on our ability to prepare people to live, work, and prosper in the current state of the world. What, then, are we to do? How might we continue to do the good work of developing leaders and leadership capacity amidst the uncertainty, division, and complexity of this world? What we offer in this issue is not a recipe for peace, a panacea for leadership education programming, or an argument for the way we think things should be. Instead, it is an invitation for “new eyes”, a new way of doing leadership education—one that acknowledges complexity, embraces messiness, and provides paradigms and practices to teach, communicate, design, and think that push us beyond short-term, linear, all-or-nothing thinking. The focus of this issue is systems leadership education, a term we hope becomes a part of the leadership education lexicon before too long. Systems leadership education encompasses the philosophical and pedagogical approaches to developing systems leadership capacities in individuals and groups, as well as the ways educators utilize systems leadership to serve as agents of change within their institutions, organizations, and communities. Technology, social, political, and ecological concerns are just a few examples that create conditions of complexity in our rapidly changing world. Equipping leadership educators and students to navigate complex challenges in our lives, institutions, organizations, and communities requires different ways of thinking about and engaging in professional development, teaching, and practice (Priest and Gleason 2021). The study and application of leadership within complex adaptive systems requires a holistic and strategic approach to capacity building through action. Dr. Kate Simpson, director of the Systemcraft Institute, noted a distinction between systems leadership and leadership for systems change. Systems leadership is when leadership is informed by systems thinking and practice—it is a way of doing leadership informed by natural systems and networks. The emphasis shifts from hierarchies to relationships as we strive to influence patterns of connection and interaction among the system's components. Leadership for systems change begins when we identify a gap or inequity in a system—a wicked challenge—and brings together diverse stakeholders to collaborate on changing the system (Impact International 2024). Research on systems thinking and practice applied to leadership and change can be found across academic and practitioner literature (e.g., Arkedis et al. 2023; Dreier et al. 2019; FSG n.d.; Satterwhite 2015; Senge et al. 2015; Uhl-Bien and Arena 2017). This literature illustrates the capacities and processes required to engage in the collective, relational work necessary for systems change, including systems awareness, embracing uncertainty and ambiguity, adaptability and learning, and managing complexity. Calls for systems thinking are not only emerging from higher education; they are being echoed in professional, developmental, and global discourse. Systems thinking aligns with vertical development frameworks (e.g., Center for Creative Leadership; Petrie 2014, 2015), and it emerges across diverse fields, including education, engineering, and organizational studies (Arnold and Wade 2015). Systems thinking skills are also trending in frameworks like the World Economic Forum's Future Skills (World Economic Forum 2025) and are reported to be becoming a foundational skill for student development (Arnold and Wade 2015; OECD 2018). We also see systems thinking topics gaining traction in leadership conferences and symposia. At the same time, systems-informed leadership learning is emerging within the circles of leadership education. Much of leadership education currently operates from a linear, expert-driven model, and little scholarship exists to instruct leadership educators on how to teach systems or build student capacity to engage with systems thinking meaningfully (Allen and Hartman 2009). Many might even find systems thinking concepts too complex, confusing, or only associate them with wicked challenges like climate change (Cabrera and Cabrera 2015). As scholars and practitioners, we understand the confusion or hesitancy around new ideas. Nevertheless, to more effectively prepare our students for the world upon graduation, we must adapt, iterate, and ensure our pedagogy aligns with our program outcomes. This is especially important given the current financial pressures on universities (Blumesnstyk 2020; NCES 2023) and shifting perceptions about the value of higher education (Gallup and Strada 2017; Pew Research Center 2017). Given the burgeoning interest in and need for systems thinking within and beyond the Academy, we curated this issue's contributions to highlight emerging approaches. In the following section, we provide an overview of the articles included and the insights they bring to the field. Exploring the intersection of systems thinking and leadership education, we invited authors to engage core questions like: (1) How can leadership education develop systems capacities? (2) How do we evaluate systems-level impact or change? and (3) How can educators deploy systems leadership to be agents of change in their institutions, organizations, and communities? With these questions in mind, we curated a collection that represents examples of systems leadership education across scales, from individuals in service to collective work, to classrooms and programs, to institutions and communities. As we build our capacity for systems thinking and practice, we become better equipped to engage with issues that impact our world. We can see and understand systems more clearly, ask better questions, collaborate effectively, and remain resilient. In line with the assumptions of complex adaptive systems (CAS), these contributions are not presented as prescriptive “best practices,” but rather as context-responsive approaches to real-world challenges. The authors represent a diverse array of institutions, programs, and perspectives, which we find both inspirational and deeply practical. The first group of articles is more conceptual and includes broader overviews of frameworks for systems leadership education. Royce Holladay and Kerry Priest introduce Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) principles and tools, exploring how leaders can better navigate complexity, foster adaptive capacity and resilience, and how leadership educators can cultivate those same capacities. Rian Satterwhite, Kate Sherridan, and Whitney Miller bring together sustainability, systems thinking, and the Inner Development Goals, offering a framework to align these elements in pursuit of meaningful change. Jera E. Niewoehner-Green, DaNel Hogan, and Alexandria Sedar draw from their work with the Waters Center for Systems Thinking to build systems thinking capacity in college students. The second group of articles considers implementing systems tools and concepts in the classroom. Catlin Goodwin and Tiffany Marzolino offer advice on leveraging causal loop diagrams and rich pictures to view challenges from a systems perspective and Brandon Kliewer shares insights on integrating course-level systems mapping to promote student understanding. For those looking to make more robust pedagogical shifts, Jeff Bourgeois and Sarah Zare describe Classroom as Organization as a systems-based framework for more team-based collaborative leadership courses. Jason Headrick and Lori Kniffin illustrate how service-learning/community-engaged scholarship combined with civic engagement can function as powerful pedagogies for cultivating systems leadership. Keyhan Shams, Mac Benavides, and Kerry Priest offer practical learning activities designed to develop and evaluate adaptive and systems leadership behaviors among college-level learners. The third group of articles attends to programmatic and campus-level initiatives. Jessica Ramirez and Muthoni Kiunga examine the Global Food Systems Leadership (GFSL) program at Kansas State University, which prepares students to navigate complex food systems through interdisciplinary systems leadership education. Michael Gleason and Abbylynn Helgevold describe the creation of an institutional Think Tank at Wartburg College, a timely model for leading through uncertainty and complexity. In the final section, we hear from scholars and practitioners that build capacity to support systems change through purposeful community organizing and development approaches. Lauren Cline and colleagues share a collaborative, systems-based approach to build capacity to make progress on the rural veterinarian shortage in the United States. Shaibu Fuseini, Olalekan Sipasi, and Kerry Priest present a framework for building capacity to make progress on climate action in Ghana. Mac Benavides and colleagues share lessons from a participatory agenda-setting project in Guatemala, where systems-informed strategies-built capacity for community development. Finally, Lucas Díaz and Dwan Adams offer field notes from over 40 years in community organizing and international development, emphasizing the necessity of power analysis and systems understanding in driving policy and structural change. Their article also brings this issue full circle, emphasizing the value of integrating real-world experiences into systems learning in classroom settings. This issue showcases systems leadership education across multiple levels of scale—from individual development to collective work within specific contexts, spanning classrooms, programs, institutions, and communities, both locally and globally. Content aside, what unites the authors in this issue is not just what they do, but how and why they do it. Across the board, these are educators committed to systemic change. They are individuals who care deeply about the world, their students, and the grand challenges of our time. They aren't content to pontificate from the sidelines; they are out in the field, experimenting, co-creating, and threading together diverse theories, pedagogies, and bodies of work to bring systems leadership education to life. These are trailblazers who understand that new challenges demand new ways of thinking and doing. Their pedagogies are inherently metacognitive, designed not just to deliver content but to cultivate mindsets, habits, and skills for navigating complexity. Regardless of their strategies, they center leadership as practice, always rooted in context, culture, and care. They recognize that systems leadership education is necessarily messy, iterative, and contextual, and they lean into that complexity with courage. These are educators who aren't faking it; they are living it. And by sharing their real-world examples, complete with risk, reflection, and recalibration, they empower the rest of us to do the same. We hope that you leave feeling both agentic and optimistic. As editors, we feel equipped and empowered after working with these authors and engaging deeply with their contributions. We hope you feel the same. This issue is not the final word; it's a starting point, a way through chaos, and a paradigm suited for the complex, ever-evolving world we inhabit. It reflects a growing field shaped by experimentation, curiosity, and courage. As you read, we invite you to reflect on your own systems, consider how you teach complexity, and imagine how you might lead differently, with the greater system in mind.