Petra Kuenkel is a full member of the Club of Rome, a leading strategic advisor to pioneering international multi-stakeholder initiatives that tackle sustainability issues, and is the founder and executive director of the Collective Leadership Institute (CLI), an international not-for-profit organization building competence for collaborative change and advocating for high-quality dialogue and cooperation. As a lead faculty member, she designed and conducted high-potential international leadership programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. Based on successful change processes, she developed the Dialogic Change methodology and the Collective Leadership Compass, a guiding tool for navigating change in complex multi-actor settings. Kuenkel’s writing has appeared in the Guardian Sustainable Leadership hub, numerous professional journals, and on her blog, The Future of Leadership is Collective. For more information, please visit www.theartofleadingcollectively.net.
Choice- "The philosophical premise of this work is that global
stakeholder collaboration leads to a human rights–based world
that is economically and environmentally sustainable. Kuenkel
(founder, Collective Leadership Institute) presents a simple
four-step process for the complex activity of leading collectively:
“Prepare for your journey into collaboration from the outset;
Locate where you are, defining what is present and what’s missing;
Map the path, adjust your strategies, and know what to shift, to
strengthen, or to focus on; Convince your colleagues that leading
collectively for sustainability can change the world.” The
underlying change-management theory explored in this book closely
follows the eight-stage process for leading change as first
presented in John Kotter's Leading Change (1996) and incorporates
many disciplines of the learning organization presented in Peter
Senge's The Fifth Discipline (CH, Jan'07, 44-2797).
References in this book to the three levels of the compass are
reminiscent of Bill George's Finding Your True North (2008).
This book follows up the author's earlier book Working with
Stakeholder Dialogues (2011). It is an easy read and uses
tables to guide readers through sometimes esoteric dialogue about
collaborative endeavors. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers,
undergraduates.”
Library Journal- "Kuenkel, a full member of the Club of Rome as
well as cofounder and executive director of the Collective
Leadership Institute, an NGO (nongovernmental organization), has
written extensively in the area of collective leadership in all
sectors. With this title, the author attempts to alert people that
the time for passive approaches to the many environmental problems
besetting the world today is rapidly passing or has passed and
explores how to make her way of thinking understood. She applies
the shared actions that have led to a strengthening of the coffee
production industry as her prime example. Her 'collective
leadership compass' aims to design paths for society to follow and
work together to implement unified strategies. The goal is to
achieve knowledge in various fields using collaborative,
sustainable, socially just methods that allow for corrective
measures to assist leadership and stakeholder cooperation for the
common good. VERDICT: This important book should be
available in both academic and public venues.”
“If we are serious about taking on the pressing challenges of
our time, we need fresh ideas about the art of leadership, new
approaches to practicing it, and courageous minds willing to make
that journey. In the Art of Leading Collectively, Petra
Kuenkel has given us an inspiring book that is also a vital
roadmap for any and all who feel called to accelerate the
great transition our world so urgently needs.”--Alan AtKisson,
author of Believing Cassandra and The Sustainability
Transformation
“The Art of Leading Collectively is an amazing journey into
taking diverse actors through collaborative change. Beautifully
articulated with case studies in its implementation in individual
to global change initiatives, this is an inspiring and invigorating
read—most relevant to our complex, urgent, and interdependent
world.”--Pavan Bakshi, CEO, Prime Meridian Consulting, India
“In our complex world, strategies for harnessing collective
intelligence and mobilizing collective leadership will be critical
to achieving transformative change. Kuenkel eloquently champions an
approach to leadership that is surprisingly under-explored in the
literature, offering a clear conceptual framework to underpin her
argument.”--Danny Burns, coauthor of Navigating Complexity in
International Development
“Corporations, governments, and NGOs alike will benefit from the
shift in collaboration across sectors that will be opened with
collective leadership. I highly recommend The Art of Leading
Collectively to anyone interested in the future of leadership and
anyone committed to systems transformation for sustainability and
humanity.”--Kathrin Wieland, CEO, Save the Children Germany
“Unleashing the potential of multi-stakeholder collaboration is
paramount for achieving the 2030 development agenda. The Art of
Leading Collectively is a powerful guide for change agents, from
those in business to those in international organizations, who want
to make change happen and address global challenges at scale. The
beauty of this book lies in its appeal to thinkers and
practitioners alike to embrace systems change, organizational
development, and individual daring as key ingredients to
collectively and decisively acting on creating a better
world.”--Arjan Schuthof, Global Partnership for Effective
Development Cooperation
“The Collective Leadership Compass is a fascinating
multi-dimensional framework that has the potential to open up new
perspectives on systemic change from a complex systems perspective.
This book should be read critically, but it should be read.”--Dave
Snowden, Chief Scientific Officer, Cognitive Edge; creator, The
Cynefin Framework
"The Collective Leadership Compass, the tool
elaborated on in The Art of Leading
Collectively, enables people from very different backgrounds,
perspectives, and beliefs to come together, meet as equals, and
develop common ground and solutions that go beyond what each could
have achieved individually. These solutions are truly carried by
all members of the group and hence translated into action.
Having had the privilege to experience the method firsthand,
I know that its effects are profound and just what is needed
to bring forth the kind and level of innovation we urgently need
today.”--Bettina von Stamm, author of The Innovation
Wave and Managing Innovation, Design and
Creativity; founder, Innovation Leadership
Forum
“The complex challenges of our time call for systems-based,
collaborative leadership. Petra Kuenkel shares her breadth of
experience about developing this capacity, showing how leaders can
use her approach to mobilize organizational, multinational, and
multi-sectoral networks for sustainability. She reminds us that
becoming a more effective collaborative leader is both an inner and
outer journey, and that we can best realize our individual visions
by accessing people’s collective humanity, power, and
creativity.”--David Peter Stroh, author of Systems Thinking for
Social Change
“Implementing the seventeen global sustainable development goals
successfully will require us to take collaboration between
institutions, stakeholders, and nations to the next level. The Art
of Leading Collectively prepares us for this journey.”--Cornelia
Richter, management board member, Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
“The level of complexity in development challenges requires new
approaches and new forms of leadership. Persuasively and vividly
laid out through both storytelling and deep analysis,
Kuenkel provides the tools and understanding that are
essential to the science and art of leading
collectively.”--Darian Stibbe, executive director, The Partnering
Initiative
“Through rich examples of her own experience and that of others,
Petra Kuenkel shows that co-creation is at the heart of our lives.
Moreover, she gives invaluable material to help us co-create in
more conscious, fulfilling, and effective ways. Her method is core
to addressing critical challenges-come-opportunities that we face
as individuals, in our work lives, and as increasingly
interconnected citizens of planet Earth.”--Steve Waddell, author of
Global Action Networks; principal, NetworkingAction
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