Developing Relational Leadership

Developing Relational Leadership offers the scholar, the practitioner, and most importantly, the scholar-practitioner an exuberance of riches. The authors provide a deep foray into the worlds of systemic, cybernetic and constructionist ideas, while bringing those ideas to the worlds of leadership and organizational change and practice. The authors share cases that present tools for exploring these ideas and practices. While the authors position the two halves of this volume as "tools for thinking" and "tools for action," marking this as a book about both theory and practice, the reader experiences "tools for thinking about the relationship between thinking and action" - and this connection is quite a treat. Relationship and context are continually in the foreground. Developing Relational Leadership looks at the importance of the questions that we ask - and what our questions do for systemic inquiry and praxis. The focus on diverse ways of asking powerful questions is worth the read itself. This book is for those who are interested in systems theory, cybernetics, constructionism, and communication theory, as well as those interested in leadership, coaching, and organization development. The authors, true to their reliance on positioning ourselves in a multitude of roles, invite us to converse with an ecology of ideas, and open space for a profound reflective practice. A joyful read that will change how systems practitioners think and systems theoreticians act.