In the era of global and local destabilization, becoming a systems thinker is an essential skill for collaboration and coordination in working in a complex system such as education. Compassionate Systems Leadership will provide you with the tools and frameworks to see the system you operate in more clearly and be more effective leveraging resources and investing in collaborative systems change efforts towards greater individual and collective well-being.
The program will be co-facilitated by Dr. Peter Senge and Dr. Mette Boell, both of MIT J-WEL and The Center for Systems Awareness.

This program is based, in part, on the leadership development process originally described in The Fifth Discipline, integrating elements of the recently developed compassionate systems framework that draws on the science of well-being, on social- emotional and contemplative learning strategies, and on various approaches to understanding the complexity of educational systems. The program delves deeply into both the personal and collective aspects of leadership and well-being as well as understanding and working with complexity in times of change.
Special attention is given to the domains of personal mastery, mental models, systems thinking, cultivating compassion and fostering more productive conversations around the complex issues that education leaders must regularly face.
Through the interplay of personal and interpersonal work, you’ll come to see how systems leadership is ultimately about the capacity of a human community to shape its future and to bring forth realities aligned with people’s deepest aspirations – and to discover your own abilities to contribute as such a leader, both within your organization and in your personal life.
Over the past year, The British School of Jakarta, The Wadah Foundation and United in Diversity has collaborated with Center for Systems Awareness and MIT – JWEL on a prototype bringing the compassionate systems framework to students, teachers, leaders and local organizations. With this workshop, we invite support and championship from the Southeast Asia region to come on board, to engage with the student ambassadors about the SDG’s and to explore possibilities for becoming a part of the next step of the journey.
Learning Objectives
Specific learning objectives for the participants include:
- Understand how underlying systemic structures shape behavior and how to recognize and work together to shift those structures;
- Clarify your personal vision and expand your capacity to make strategic choices shaped by that vision;
- Be more able to nurture a common sense of purpose and shared commitment;
- Cultivate care and emotional literacy;
- Help yourself and others explore underlying beliefs and assumptions and their impact;
- Develop routines that support growth of well-being skills;
- Better enable conversations that promote learning and collaboration; and
- Practice with a variety of learning tools and processes that you can take back to develop shared practices within your organization;
- Take leadership in a meaningful manner related to the SDG’s.