ABSTRACT
Achieving sustainability will require leaders capable of transcending boundaries and ideological barriers to influence multiple, diverse stakeholders to collaborate and cooperate. A system leader is a unique individual capable of seeing and comprehending the larger system and catalyzing collective leadership to proactively co-create the future. System leaders influence stakeholders across boundaries inside and outside of their organizations, industries, sectors, and geographies. In this chapter, the origin, background, and recent literature about system leadership are introduced. Systems theory and systems thinking are reviewed, to provide a foundation for system leadership, and the role of systems thinking in understanding and achieving sustainability is examined. System leadership is described as an appropriate method for achieving sustainability, both locally and globally, and barriers to system leadership implementation are examined.
