Leadership capability in complex systems: Towards a multi-dimensional framework

Leadership is often exercised in conditions characterised by uncertainty, interdependence, tension, emergence and change.In these conditions, no single leader can fully understand or control the system, and effective responses cannot always be determined in advance.Leadership becomes less about prediction and control and more about making sense of change, mobilising distributed knowledge and agency, learning through action, and maintaining direction around what matters.In this paper we suggest that this context requires a broader account of leadership capability.Traditional approaches centred primarily on individual competencies, behaviours and role expectations remain important, but can understate the relationships, collective processes and system conditions through which leadership is enacted.We therefore conceptualise leadership capability as relational, distributed, contextually enacted and systemically embedded, residing not only in individuals, but also in the capacity of collectives and systems to act and adapt.