The world we’re leading in today is drowning in information, yet starving for meaningful attention.
We’re facing what experts call a “polycrisis” — where challenges like technological disruption, market instability, and geopolitical tensions don’t just pile up but actually amplify each other, creating a much bigger problem than any single issue alone. While some might try to simplify these complex issues by isolating or even denying them, the reality is unavoidably complex.
Organizations are at a critical moment where the decisions their leaders make will determine how successfully we navigate these interconnected problems. What makes these issues so difficult is how they feed into each other: For example, when technology disrupts industries, markets become vulnerable, making them susceptible to geopolitical tensions — creating a cycle that traditional compartmentalized approaches simply can’t handle.
As a Senior Fellow researching leadership development, I’ve been speaking with leaders across industries to understand how they’re responding to these challenges. One conversation really captured the issue: “The pace of change is so dramatic that even the most capable leaders need outside perspectives and continuous learning. It’s ironic — the more we truly understand, the more we recognize how much we don’t know. We’re constantly balancing competing viewpoints while still needing to acknowledge fundamental realities.”
These problems are daunting, but they also present opportunities for meaningful impact. This is where leadership development plays a significant role. Why? Because leadership development is a vital force multiplier that enables organizations to effectively intervene in the world’s greatest challenges.
Taking Ownership of the Problems
To address this web of challenges, organizations and leaders must fundamentally change their approach to systemic problems. Our research shows that the critical first step to systemic solutions is changing leaders’ perspectives.
For organizations to effectively address complex challenges, leaders need to overcome a key mental barrier: they must stop viewing global challenges as abstract external issues and start recognizing them as connected to their organization’s purpose and future.
The most successful organizations understand that systemic crises — whether climate change, social inequality, or economic instability — aren’t external issues, but are directly linked to their long-term success.
This shift from “the problem” to “my problem” requires overcoming 2 types of barriers: individual beliefs and collective action.
Addressing Individual Belief Barriers
Individual belief barriers disconnect leaders from systemic issues. These barriers are deeply embedded in ideologies, awareness levels, and confidence in finding solutions:
- The “me first” mentality that puts short-term profits ahead of collective well-being
- The “science will save us” belief that reduces the sense of urgency for immediate action
- The “humans first” mindset that misses our fundamental interdependence with natural systems
- The “nothing can be done” fatalism that shuts down action and innovation
Organizations need leadership development to overcome these limiting beliefs. Rather than just communicating urgency, effective programs create hands-on experiences that transform how leaders understand their relationship to systemic challenges.
Navigating Collective Action Barriers
Collective action barriers present equally tough obstacles, as addressing these crises requires unprecedented collaboration. Even when individual leaders grasp the importance of systemic issues, organizational dynamics can block effective collective response:
- Vested interests that actively push back against necessary changes
- Disagreement on solutions by stakeholders who push conflicting goals and interpretations
- Incentives that reward individual inaction over collective action
The strategic shift needed isn’t just about raising awareness — it’s about creating environments where leaders at all levels can truly own these challenges and collaborate effectively across boundaries. This is where leadership development becomes transformative.
4 Ways Leadership Development Drives Critical Capabilities
In our research, we found that leaders need 6 critical leadership capabilities to navigate a polycrisis:
- Complex problem-solving
- Collaboration and relationships
- Transformative leadership
- Fairness and ethics
- Inner capabilities
- Future orientation
However, even equipped with these capabilities, leaders face significant headwinds when attempting to drive meaningful change. The systemic nature of these challenges means there is no single solution — yet organizations cannot afford to wait for perfect answers.
Leadership development creates the conditions for meaningful change by empowering organizations to act rather than waiting for outside solutions. When integrated into a broader systemic approach, leadership development contributes value in 4 ways:
- It helps transform individual beliefs and mindsets. Leadership development helps leaders cultivate the cognitive flexibility to handle complexity, the emotional resilience to sustain engagement, and the systems thinking needed to understand interconnected challenges. For example, a global manufacturing firm we worked with used immersive learning journeys where leaders visited communities directly affected by their supply chain decisions. After experiencing firsthand the interconnected impacts of their choices, these leaders fundamentally shifted from viewing sustainability as a compliance issue to seeing it as central to their business strategy and personal leadership legacy.
- It creates shared language and understanding across boundaries. By establishing common frameworks and experiences, leadership development enables organizations to better align diverse stakeholders and address the social barriers that typically hinder collective response. We observed this at a healthcare system where leaders from clinical, administrative, and community roles participated in a year-long development program focused on addressing health inequities. The shared frameworks they developed enabled them to transcend professional silos and create an integrated approach to community health that had previously seemed impossible amid competing priorities.
- Leadership development facilitates experiential learning cycles in the face of uncertainty. The most effective leadership development approaches embed learning cycles that help organizations experiment, reflect, and adapt as they navigate complex challenges. These cycles help organizations overcome initial barriers and ensure they don’t slide back into limiting beliefs and old patterns as they face new obstacles. A technology company we worked with demonstrates this principle through their “leadership labs,” where cross-functional teams tackle real business challenges while practicing adaptive leadership techniques. When their initial approach to developing a sustainable packaging solution failed, the structured reflection process helped them recognize and learn from systemic patterns that were blocking innovation, leading to a pivot in approach that ultimately succeeded.
- Leadership development cultivates the capacity to generate and scale small wins. Leadership development helps organizations identify opportunities for small, sustainable, and scalable interventions, rather than waiting for comprehensive solutions. These opportunities accumulate into meaningful systemic progress over time by teaching leaders how to document, share, and replicate these successes. We’ve seen this with a financial services organization that empowered regional managers to conduct small experiments in improving customer experience. One team’s innovation in streamlining loan processing was documented through their leadership development platform, allowing other regions to adapt and implement it, ultimately leading to a company-wide practice.
Developing Your Leaders for Systemic Solutions
Interconnected, systemic issues require not just awareness, but decisive action. Leadership development, when strategically reimagined and deployed, can serve as a force multiplier for organizations seeking to address these complex challenges.
Rather than relying solely on heroic individual leaders with exceptional expertise — an approach that has repeatedly failed to address complex systemic challenges — leadership development’s dual impact on individuals and systems helps create systemic solutions: practical pathways for distributed leadership and collective action.
Our research-based and experience-driven development solutions can help your leaders build the mindsets, skills, and collaborative capacity needed for transformative action.
Transform learning ecosystems beyond organizational boundaries.
The complex problems we face don’t respect organizational silos or sector boundaries, meaning you’ll need to work and influence across boundaries to make things happen. By aligning diverse groups around a common purpose, boundary spanning leaders can drive collective action and mobilize efforts to collaboratively tackle systemic crises. Our research shows that spanning boundaries is important: leaders who effectively collaborated across boundaries were seen as significantly more influential by their teams, but that only 7% of senior executives feel they’re very effective at doing it. Addressing this gap can be a key differentiator in tackling systemic issues.
Create shared ownership with a comprehensive leadership framework.
Abstract learning about systemic issues isn’t enough — leaders need to practice applying new mindsets to real situations. Our research-based Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC)™ framework provides a structure for diverse stakeholders to forge shared purpose, clarify their distinctive contributions, and build sustained commitment to addressing complex challenges. This approach directly addresses the “someone else’s problem” mindset by creating shared ownership through collective action.
Build collective resilience through continuous learning.
Systemic transformation requires harnessing diverse perspectives and creating environments where innovation can flourish. By creating a learning culture in your organization, you can build psychological safety and learning agility — key differentiators both in individual leader success and in helping those same leaders grow and build the collective capabilities needed for the challenges of tomorrow.
Expand cognitive capacity for systems thinking.
Traditional leadership development focuses on what leaders know — but today’s challenges require expanding how leaders think. Vertical development — developing more complex and sophisticated perspectives and mindsets to help leaders achieve greater wisdom and clearer insights — is essential for navigating systemic issues. While integral for all levels of organizations, vertical development is especially critical for senior leaders for whom success requires navigating increasingly complex systems and boundaries.
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