About Host Leadership
Host Leadership is a model and a metaphor to engage others in complex collective endeavours.
Everyone has experienced what it’s like to be a host. But what does it look like in your context?
Host Leadership is about building relationships – at work, in the community, in society, at home –to engage others. It gives you a way of thinking about yourself through a new yet ancient leadership lens that is highly relational. It helps challenge traditional leadership metaphors that can limit how we interact with our world. Most importantly, Host Leadership is about engaging others and utilising collective intelligence to move in a more solution-focused, proactive direction.
As a leader, what will you do next? Host Leadership helps answer this question by opening up possibilities for intentional interactions, giving a language for leading in context. It enables you to step forward and back, living with the tensions between:
- Imagining a better future while keeping focused
- Waiting and seeing while accelerating progress
- Maintaining distance and breadth while getting close
- Putting your own needs first while serving the organisation
- Letting go while keeping control
- Showing vulnerability while being strong
- Enquiring while knowing*
Developed by Dr Mark McKergow and Helen Bailey, Host Leadership is a rich and compelling model that provides leaders with a better understanding of what is needed to move themselves and their teams forward to success.
"Most people start leading from a heroic stance – they get things done by knowing more or working harder than anyone else. In time, the smart ones become aware that the role of the leader is more like a host than a hero – drawing people together around an issue or challenge, engaging them and getting results through others."
- Mark McKergow & Helen Bailey,
Host: Six New Roles of Engagement
Watch Mark McKergow’s TEDX talk on Host Leadership and why ‘hosting’ is an important type of leadership.
The Enactive Solution is the only endorsed Host Leadership training business in Australia and New Zealand.
Host Leadership Course
Learn about the Host Leadership approach through a self-directed course, run by Dr Mark McKergow.
