Listening to the Living System: Learning the Language of Leadership’s

March 30, 2026

Why future-ready leadership must learn to “think with” the networks it serves

Written by: Adelee Penner

New Series

Leadership by Design: Navigating Complexity and Change in Education

Leadership is no longer about managing what is — it’s about designing what could be.
Leadership by Design is a series of reflective provocations for educational leaders committed to shaping the future of learning. Grounded in research and rooted in lived experience, each piece invites you to pause, think deeply, and reimagine your leadership practice for a world defined by complexity, change, and possibility.
Through stories from the field, insights from scholarship, and questions that linger long after reading, this series explores how we can lead with intention — designing systems where creativity and accountability coexist, where innovation is nurtured, and where educators and students alike thrive in the uncertainty of what’s next.

Abstract: Leadership is often framed as the art of speaking: articulating vision, communicating purpose, setting direction. Yet the future may depend less on how well we speak and more on how deeply we listen. Drawing from ecological metaphors, posthumanist scholarship, and systems thinking, this piece argues that future-ready leadership must learn the “language of the living system.” Just as fungi communicate across vast underground networks, leaders must attune to the complex, interconnected forces — human and more-than-human — that shape educational ecosystems. By shifting from control to communication, from managing parts to thinking holistically, leaders can move beyond outdated approaches and co-create thriving, adaptive systems.

“In the indeterminate conditions of environmental damage, nature is suddenly unfamiliar again.” — Tsing et al., 2017, p. M2.

I often open leadership learning sessions with a clip from Fantastic Fungi: The Forbidden Fruit, where mycologist Paul Stamets reflects on the hidden world beneath our feet. He describes the intricate fungal networks that thread through soil, connecting roots, plants, and trees in an astonishing web of communication and interdependence. “The task we face today,” Stamets says, “is to understand the language of nature” (MushrooMetropolis, 2013).

That sentence lingers with me — not only as a call to environmental awareness but as a profound metaphor for leadership.

Because if nature is a living, intelligent network, so too is education. And if leaders hope to shape the future, they must learn to speak the language of the systems they serve.

In moments of upheaval — ecological, social, political — the world becomes “suddenly unfamiliar” again, as Tsing and her colleagues suggest. The metaphors and mental models we once relied on no longer hold. The scripts that once made sense no longer apply. In these moments, our systems feel chaotic, fragmented, even broken. But perhaps they are not broken at all — perhaps we have simply forgotten how to listen.

Educational systems are not static machines. They are living ecosystems composed of countless relationships, feedback loops, histories, and futures. They are human and more-than-human — shaped not only by people but by places, technologies, traditions, and temporalities. And yet, we continue to treat them as if they were predictable, linear, controllable.

We plan. We measure. We manage. We strive to fix, reform, and restructure. But rarely do we stop to ask the most fundamental question: What is the system trying to tell us?

From Speaking at Systems to Listening with Them

Leaders have long been taught to lead by speaking — by setting a vision, articulating a purpose, and giving direction. But speaking is only one half of communication. Listening — deep, attuned, relational listening — is the half we have neglected.

When Stamets calls on us to learn the “language of nature,” he is reminding us that communication is always happening, even if we do not yet understand it. The forest speaks. The soil speaks. The network speaks. The same is true in education: classrooms, communities, cultures, and contexts are constantly communicating. The question is whether we, as leaders, are capable of hearing them.

Too often, when communication breaks down in our systems, we blame the system. We label it resistant, outdated, or dysfunctional. But the truth is often more humbling: the system is speaking; we just haven’t yet developed the language to understand it.

The Provocation

What if leadership is not about imposing order on chaos but about learning to think with complexity? What if our task is not to control the network but to communicate within it — to attune to its rhythms, its signals, its stories?

This is not a soft skill. It is a paradigm shift. It calls us to reimagine leadership not as command-and-control but as ecological literacy — the capacity to read, interpret, and respond to the living dynamics of the system. It calls us to move beyond the myth of the isolated leader and embrace what posthumanist scholars describe as an ethic of mutual relation (Taylor & Hughes, 2016, p. 8).

When Leaders Don’t Listen

Our systems are always speaking — but too often, leaders aren’t listening. And when we fail to listen, the consequences are profound.

We’ve seen this play out in education again and again: decisions made in central offices ripple outward, disconnecting from classroom realities; initiatives designed without meaningful dialogue with families sow mistrust; policies built without Indigenous voices perpetuate inequities they claim to solve. None of this happens because the system is unintelligent. It happens because we, as leaders, have not yet developed the capacity to understand its language.

Like a mycelial network ignored by those above ground, communication continues without us — but our disconnection from it has consequences. We risk mistaking silence for absence, complexity for chaos, difference for dysfunction. And in doing so, we create conditions that marginalize and alienate, eroding the very trust and reciprocity our systems need to thrive.

Educational systems are not broken because they resist our plans; they resist because our plans often ignore the signals the system is sending. A school community labeled as “resistant to change” may, in fact, be communicating generational trauma. A teacher “opposed” to new assessment practices may be signalling a gap in understanding or a deeper misalignment of values. A family “disengaged” from the school might actually be expressing a long history of exclusion.

When leaders fail to learn the language of the system, they fail to see these signals for what they are: invitations to deeper understanding. Instead, we double down on old scripts — louder communication, more mandates, stronger directives — which only widen the disconnect.

Listening is not a passive act. It is a profound stance of curiosity and humility. It requires us to suspend the urge to fix and instead seek to understand. It asks us to be open to the possibility that the system knows something we do not — that wisdom exists beyond our vantage point.

Leadership as Ecological Listening

If we think of leadership as ecological listening, our role shifts dramatically. We are no longer architects imposing blueprints from above. We become translators, attuning ourselves to the subtle languages that flow through our systems — languages of culture, history, power, trauma, hope, and possibility.

This is what Jackson and Mazzei (2013) mean by “plugging one text into another”: thinking with rather than about. It is what Lenz Taguchi and St. Pierre (2017) describe as “using concept as method” — treating ideas not as tools for control but as invitations to think differently.

When leaders embrace this stance, they shift from viewing systems as problems to solve to seeing them as partners to learn from. The work becomes less about commanding and more about conversing, less about directing and more about participating. Leadership becomes an act of co-creation — a shared unfolding between people, ideas, environments, and possibilities.

And just as ecosystems thrive through diversity and dialogue, so too do educational systems. Listening deeply to the multiplicity of voices within and around us — students, families, educators, Elders, communities, non-human forces — expands our capacity to design responsive, resilient futures. Failing to do so contracts it.

The Provocation
What if the health of our systems is directly tied to our capacity to listen? What if leadership is less about exerting influence and more about amplifying what the system is already trying to teach us? What if our most urgent task is not to lead for the system, but to learn to lead with it?

Toward a New Leadership Consciousness

Leadership in complex times demands more than strategic plans and polished speeches. It requires a radical reorientation — a shift from seeing ourselves as directors of the system to becoming participants in its unfolding.

The task before us is not to control complexity but to converse with it. Like mycelial threads carrying messages through soil, our systems are alive with signals — some subtle, some loud, all meaningful. They speak in the language of relationships, resistances, patterns, and possibilities. And if we learn to listen, they will teach us how to lead.

But listening is not easy. It asks us to relinquish the illusion of certainty and step into the vulnerability of not knowing. It asks us to trade the comfort of command for the curiosity of connection. And it requires that we rethink what leadership is for: not to shape the system into our image, but to let the system shape us into what it needs.

The paradigm shift we need is not one of technique but of consciousness. It is a move from isolation to interdependence, from speaking at systems to thinking with them, from seeing leadership as power over to experiencing leadership as participation in.

When leaders adopt this stance, new possibilities emerge. Decisions become dialogues. Strategies become shared stories. Policies become living commitments, shaped by and responsive to the voices that surround them. Leadership becomes less about having the answers and more about asking better questions — questions that allow the system to speak back.

A Provocation for Your Leadership Practice

Where in your leadership are you still trying to “speak over” the system rather than listen to it?
What signals might your system be sending that you have not yet learned to hear?
How might you shift from leading for your community to leading with it?
What would it look like for you to treat leadership as ecological listening?

Let’s talk again soon. Take good care of yourself.

Adelee

References

Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2013). Plugging one text into another: Thinking with theory in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(4), 261–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800412471510

Lenz Taguchi, H., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2017). Using concept as method in educational and social science inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(9), 643–648. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417732634

MushrooMetropolis. (2013, October 27). Fantastic Fungi – The Forbidden Fruit [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J14vFSMKOV8

Taylor, C. A., Hogarth, H., Hacking, E. B., & Bastos, E. (2022). Posthuman object pedagogies: Thinking with things to think with theory for innovative educational research. Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry, 14(1), 206–221. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/cpi/index.php/cpi/article/view/29662Tsing, A. L., Gan, E., Bubandt, N., & Swanson, H. (Eds.). (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet. University of Minnesota Press. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/lib/ucalgary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4745557