Chapter 3
Systemic Leadership or: Designing a World
That Others Want to Be Part Of
One must love what he does, then every kind of work, even the roughest, turns into a creation
Voltaire3.1 Considering the Whole
The answer to the challenges of the developments in the twenty-first century is
systemic leadership. Systemic leadership based on person-related development and
change is an approach in the conflict field between the requirements of globali-
zation, networking, speed, knowledge management and the individuality or – put
a bit more dramatically – the egomania of the individual leader.
The systemic perspective is open to relationships, communication, change and
the environment. It leaves room for personal growth, entrepreneurship, responsibi-
lity and trust. Systemic leadership allows decisions to be made by networking
as needed under the complex, dynamic and critical conditions of today’s world.
Systemic leadership means individual leadership, having a flexible, personal style
and being able to always adapt that style to the organization and the people of the
current leadership situation rather than working with schematic standard tools.
The term “systemic” is open to interpretation. Everything and everyone claims
to be working in a systematic or systemic way. However, no one can really explain
what systemic means. Apart from the systems theory in social sciences, in terms
of leadership “systemic” simply means thinking in contexts. Moreover it means
considering without judging. Working systemically means asking questions
instead of having ready answers. What is this good for? What lies behind it?
What is its purpose? What depends on it? On which levels do specific processes
and actions take place? Which connections are there?
The systemic view expands the focus from the person or the problem to the
complete web of contexts. It does not focus on single parameters but more on what
happens between them and the actors. By posing focused and systemic questions
D.F. Pinnow,Leadership - What Really Matters, Management for Professionals,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20247-6_3,#Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
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