Leading from the Roots: Nature Inspired Leadership Lessons

Course details

While it’s common to think of companies as mechanistic organizations—successful organizations are often described as a “well-oiled machine”—embracing a view of a company as a living system can help leaders better understand how their organizations function. In this course, Dr. Kathleen Allen, author of Leading from the Roots: Nature Inspired Leadership Lessons for Today’s World, explains how living systems evolve with information and feedback and why applying the same strategic sharing of information in your organization can help develop the organization and the individuals who work there. She also discusses the value of applying the Seventh Generation Principle, a concept that urges the current generation to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Introduction

1. Why Leading with a Living System Mindset Optimizes Organizational Resilience and Vitality

02 - How living systems inform us to lead
03 - Multigenerational leadership
04 - People respond to being treated as a living human
05 - Adaptation and innovation are natural ways of being
06 - Objectification in organizations
07 - Self-made solutions

2. How Living Systems Behave

08 - Interdependence, diversity, resilience, constant change, feedback, and information
09 - Why interdependence is essential

3. Assess Your Organization

10 - Adaptive cycle
11 - PDF exercise introduction
12 - Interdependent systems and leadership
13 - System thinking
14 - Why relationships matter and relationship competency

4. Evolve with Feedback and Information

15 - Assessment of your company
16 - Resistance within the company
17 - Noticing dynamics

5. Living Systems Will Help Us Transform Our Organizations

18 - Seventh-generational thinking

6. Organizations in the Flow

19 - Energy flows are a great diagnostic on the health of the system
20 - Adaptive cycles are critical to regenerative capacity

7. Explore, Sustain, Launch, and Release

21 - Balcony metaphor spotting movement and patterns
22 - Explore and sustain
23 - Launch and release
24 - Organizational assessment

8. Form and Patterns

25 - Overview of forms and patterns
26 - Ask your employees about forms and patterns

9. Feedback Loops

27 - Shifting the way you think about and practice leadership
28 - The value of feedback and information
29 - Feedback, transparency, and changing patterns within an organization
30 - Feedback loops curb excess
31 - Feedback loops and working from home
32 - Feedback loops and leadership changing summary

Conclusion

33 - Working with the living systems form
34 - Overview summary of living systems thinking