Systems Convening: leading social learning to transform your system

Our workshop with Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner to explored how Systems Convening skills can help you catalyse change and learning across boundaries. This was the the final workshop in our series on how to build and lead effective networks and communities.

6 Feb 2024
12:30 – 14:00

Across sectors, but particularly in health care, many people find themselves leading initiatives that seem more complex than they used to be. Circumstances change quickly, people’s stances on different sides of traditional boundaries are deepening, and results are expected increasingly quickly.

We call the people who take on these challenges Systems Conveners.

The shift of the NHS towards integrated care systems (ICSs) has made their work all the more crucial today. (The stories of a number of Q community Systems Conveners are shared in the 2021 book Systems Convening – A crucial form of leadership for the 21st century.

Though ‘Systems Leadership’ is now much talked about in the NHS, the often somewhat under-the-radar work of ‘Systems Conveners’ still remains an under-recognised, untapped resource.

This Systems Convener role, and its crucial work, was only quite recently identified by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, who previously recognised and popularised Communities of Practice internationally (see the second workshop in the series).

Systems Convening teams are now starting to be created in local authorities, working with the NHS – and pioneering a better, more relational, way to deliver services, across the usual silos.

In this workshop we will be joined by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner to explore both the mindset that Systems Conveners bring to their challenges and the various dimensions of their work.

  • Understand the language around Systems Convening as a form of leadership for current challenges, at any level in your organisation
  • Understand the mindset of a Systems Convener
  • Hear some stories of Systems Convening in action
  • Explore the relevance for today’s NHS

Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner are social learning theorists and consultants. They work on developing and publishing conceptual frameworks and practices to address the learning challenges facing the world today.

This session is the fourth and final in our series: How to build and lead effective networks and communities.

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