Q-Interview: What We’ve Learned About Systems Leadership

Welcome to The Q — an interview series where we invite the Equal Measure team, clients, and colleagues from the field, to share their insights on current and emerging issues of salience in the social sector. In this interview, we sat down with Kimberly Braxton, Kim Glassman, and Robert Roach to discuss systems leadership and lessons Equal Measure has learned thus far from several different projects.

Q: Why do you think systems leadership is important?

KKim B: Drawing from my experience working on the Irvine Foundation’s Linked Learning Regional Hubs of Excellence initiative, I’ve learned that systems change is ‘people change.’ To achieve systems change, it is essential for leaders in a community to build relationships and develop trust, so that they can better understand people’s needs and aspirations.

Q: How have systems leaders worked to build trusting relationships?

RRobert: One example is a partnership in Albuquerque, NM called Mission Graduate. We conducted a site visit with them, as part of our recent evaluation of Lumina Foundation’s Community Partnership for Attainment initiative, and invited them to participate in a webinar about how to engage employers in college access and success strategies. One of the systems leaders in this partnership recognized that educators and employers have different expectations. For example, because they operate within different systems and bureaucracies, there are different expectations about how fast a change might happen or about definitions of what certain terms or what certain goals mean. Educators and employers took time over several months to meet and discuss their viewpoints and expectations. Through these meetings, they developed trust and familiarity with each other, and also realized that they had some shared goals.

KKim G: I think that in Albuquerque, we learned that systems leaders had to understand the needs of partners and acknowledge their interests, and that partners may not be willing to let go of their own organizational goals and interests. But partners also see themselves, once the trust is built, as part of a larger initiative. I think strong systems leaders can bring those different needs and interests together, and facilitate a dialogue to create shared goals, without inserting their own agendas.

Q: The ability to communicate comes across as a requisite for system leadership. Let’s discuss that a bit more.

KKim B: Systems leaders are trying to manage community initiatives that can be complex and ambitious. And the daily work will be nuanced. I imagine that they would engage in a lot of communication by phone, in person, and by email to keep efforts coordinated. They might also delegate components of the work through boards and action teams. In this case, it is helpful for leaders to have a deep understanding of people’s strengths and assets so that they can divvy up roles and responsibilities appropriately.

RRobert: I’ve noticed with the people I consider to be systems leaders, that much of their work is around facilitation and relationship building while also continuing to build trust. A lot of it is around understanding people. Understanding dynamics between themselves and a partner, or between different sets of partners and then having the flexibility to shift things around, compromise, and find a way to work together that builds toward a shared goal.

Q: What other characteristics define an effective systems leader?

KKim B: Through our evaluation of the Linked Learning Regional Hubs of Excellence, we identified nine qualities of effective systems leaders. Along with building trust and establishing strong communications, which we’ve already mentioned, an effective systems leader elevates diversity, equity, and inclusion, and creates a sense of urgency around the cause and what partners are focused on accomplishing. Systems leadership is experiential, so you won’t necessarily find someone who has all these characteristics. There are qualities that have to be developed through experience, and then with the partnerships, and you may find folks with different strengths who can complement each other.

KKim G: There are all these approaches to leadership, and if you’re really trying to focus on leadership development, there are some questions you should ask, like ‘what is my leadership style?’ I think the field has evolved to moving between different styles when the situation calls for it. We often hear of system leaders that facilitate conversations among new partners acting as servant leaders; they see their role first as serving, rather than leading. They bring compassion, a growth mindset, and can often hold the big picture along with many moving elements in mind at once. Strong systems leaders also move into other styles of leadership when the situation calls, understanding when to step up and when to step back.

KKim B: I think flexibility is necessary for systems leadership as well. There are always things coming up, and a lot of people compare leading systems change to building the plane while you’re flying it. There are some things that you can’t plan for, and its helpful to have a leader who has that ability to flex as needed, which is probably a hard to come by skill. We’ve seen in many systems change initiatives, policy shifts happen that are independent of the initiative. Ideally these changes happen synergistically. Such is the case with the Bridging the Gap initiative, which has been recently boosted by California State University executives orders reforming general education and student placements policies.

Q: You’ve each worked on systems change projects in different communities. Does it make a difference whether the leader is a long-time resident of the community?

RRobert: I think in some cases, there is a real value in someone who is from the community and has a long experience there. I’ve found that someone from the community might be perceived as having more vested interest in the community itself because they live there. It could be effective to come in from somewhere else, too, but I think that depends on the dynamics of the community. Some communities are more welcoming to outsiders than others.

KKim G: I’ve seen some examples where an outside leader comes in and inspires the community, because maybe there isn’t anyone in the community getting people excited. I’ve seen leaders come out of the White House or Washington, D.C. and return to an area. They arrive with all these connections, and a credibility that inspires community leaders to join in with these systems change efforts.

Q: Are systems leaders always found at the top levels of community power structures, or can they emerge from within the community?

KKim G: They can come from different levels in a community. I’ve seen small, scrappy grassroots organizations come together and become collective leaders in a sort of shared or spread leadership model, where different people play different roles. Some might be behind the scenes, rather than visible leaders, but were still doing crucial work. In the Get HYPE Philly! evaluation’s study of how social networks formed over three years, we found leaders of small grassroots nonprofits were increasingly considered as key players in the initiative. Their leadership, creativity, and penchant for collaborating were valuable to the collective of 10 organizations.

KKim B: That makes me think about the Parkland shooting, and how those students have risen as leaders in efforts to change the system and policies around gun control. I also believe that a sense of urgency around a major event can galvanize people, and activate a community to do something together. Successful systems change definitely requires a lot of persistence, passion, and folks that you can lean to within a community.

Q: And how can communities ensure that systems change efforts remain strong, while leaders may come and go.

RRobert: I think distributed leadership in a community is important, so that the systems change effort doesn’t fall apart if there is a leadership transition at the top. Distributed leadership means that different organizations, and roles within those organizations, take leadership of seperate aspects of partnership work. That way, partnerships aren’t too dependent on a single person and it becomes easier to transition responsibilities and maintain momentum even if leaders are coming and going. For example, several partnerships that were involved in the Lumina Community Partnerships for Attainment initiative have developed orientation handbooks and onboarding meetings to help new members transition into the partnership. Several partnerships also have “compacts” or MOUs that state each partner’s commitment to the effort, as well as the title of the representative generally expected to participate in the partnership.

KKim B: That’s very much aligned with the network development theory, in terms of networks starting off as scattered interactions, then forming hubs of activity, with the density of the network increasing over time. At that point, the network is so interconnected that if one person left, it’s still strong at the center.

RRobert: That’s right. And systems change partnerships must establish policies and practices to ensure that all the organizational or community knowledge, as well as knowledge of relationships, does not reside with one person. Systems leaders must spread that information to others throughout the partnership, so when a person leaves there isn’t a big gap in knowledge — which can certainly slow down systems change efforts.