Now panel with @snowded @sonjabl @NoraBateson @jgberger at Reimagine Leadership 2021 with over 300 participants. Will be live tweeting some insights

Nora Bateson: what does it mean to be healthy during a pandemic in an unhealthy system?

Jennifer Garvey Berger: I have been more and more confused during the pandemic. How can we hold this increased complexity that we have seen, as the world has shrunk and the connections grow and diminish in such unanticipated ways?

Snowden: a complex adaptive system is defined not by the actors in the systems but by the connections within the system. So our reality is that we need to think about the nature of the system and its connections before we talk about leadership

How do we create novel connections in complex systems and repurpose what exists in a system (abduction instead of the deduction/induction approaches)?

Bateson: it is so deductive to look at the problem and drill down in its parts and be tempted to look for information on how to fix it.

But we need to ask the type of question: how is that system part of a larger interconnected system and its interrelations

Jennifer Garvey Berger: I have been thinking about leadership as my own nervous system guiding and shaping our collective nervous system, making new things possible for us instead of only "what was". Can you be an agent in support of that?

Sonja Blignaut: looking at a smaller part of the system that we can fix feels good because we like that feeling of knowing how to do something. But how do we stay in the space of unknowing for long enough?

Snowden: find people who are thinking differently about a system. Build entanglement on roles (e.g. teacher + health worker + police officers) and create interdependency at a horizontal level. Design an ecosystem instead of forcing people to adopt new behaviors

Bateson: We need rigor and not just go for what "feels right" because we will fall into deeply ingrained habits that will likely backfire on us. But what if my head explodes

Snowden: create "aporia", in the world we live in at the moment we need people who think differently and act differently

JGB: We need to learn to stand that discomfort, to be more open and change our response to our natural reaction, so that we can hang on to the confusion of our time

(I also find it inspiring how Snowden stresses the community and the contextual when we talk about leadership vs the prevailing focus that so far has been on the individual)

Snowden: we need to take an ecological take on systems. As in Lincoln quote, our times ask us to think anew and act anew

Sonja Blignaut: how do I lean more into a both/and space, beyond the binary thinking, where I cultivate more curiosity?

JGB: How do I create more unplanned spaces for unexpected encounters for emergent, creative ideas to happen?

Bateson said something so profound and complex and insightful that I did not understand it at all, hence I cannot type it here : )

Plenary is over now. Thanks all four for a rich conversation!
Note: Most often it was a transcription of the essence of what panelists said rather than direct quote, so for anything unclear I take full responsibility and I hope it captures well their message