Research Insights: Placing leadership in context

Placing leadership in context
A novel self-in-systems approach to leadership development

Leadership does not occur in a vacuum. Regardless, leader development programs have often focused on how leaders develop knowledge, skills, and abilities—the “KSAs” of traditional leadership training—while giving short shrift to the context in which leaders work. 

In his co-authored article , “The leader in context: Developing leaders by adopting a self-in-systems approach,” published in Academy of Management and Learning Education, Mike Palanski, professor in the department of management, asserts that leader development has not focused sufficiently on leaders in their unique contexts and the dynamic interplay between these contexts and leaders. He and his co-author stress that leaders are embedded in systems, and they lay out a “self-in-systems” approach as a way of leading “that involves explicit consideration of context in the form of social systems and the leader’s self-focused dynamic functioning with respect to those systems.”

The authors foreground the question, “Who do you want to be as a leader?” The self-in-systems approach enhances leader differentiation of self (emotional maturity), enables navigation of context to align with who leaders want to be, and promotes leader maturity. Further, the authors outline how to incorporate the self-in-systems approach to existing leadership development programs.

The self-in-systems model complements extant leader development approaches while also offering a broader and unique set of opportunities for further enhancing leader maturity and effectiveness.

View the paper published by Academy of Management and Learning Education in January 2026: “The leader in context: Developing leaders by adopting a self-in-systems approach.”

View all Saunders Research Insights on our website.