The Leadership Response

Systems cannot be directed but they can be disturbed. A system is a pattern of relationships. The leverage point for your influencing the pattern of relationships within a system is your own behavior. Your own actions can have an impact on a situation and influence how people respond. While you do not have control over others and the environment, you can control how you respond to people and circumstances. Since everything within a system is interdependent, a change in one part of the system will have a ripple effect to other parts of the system. A change in your behavior will commonly prompt a change of behavior in others. This opens the way for achieving different results in the environment. If we are to proactively change our situation, we must change our behavior. Since leadership is the relationship between leader, followers, and context, a change in any part of that system will change the leadership. The leadership response is the conscious influencing of the leadership system to achieve a desired result.