Cultivating Change Agents Through Systems-Informed Activities: Lessons From a Participatory Agenda-Setting Project in Guatemala.

Abstract

Leadership education must develop learners' capacity to navigate complexity and foster collective action for sustainable change. This article presents educational activities conducted as part of a community-engaged project in Panajachel, Guatemala, where leadership educators, practitioners, and learners collaborated in a week-long initiative to develop a sustainable development agenda. Through three systems-informed activities-telling systems stories, participatory mapping, and co-creation planning-participants explored community assets, challenges, and priorities as necessary sources of insights for decision-making related to community development. By engaging local residents in the design, execution, and meaning-making processes of systems change, this project not only yielded valuable insights into community realities that will inform evidence-based interventions but also offered significant lessons for systems-informed leadership broadly. Large systems change requires (1) multiple rounds of learning, action, and reflection, (2) intentionally designed processes to engage many different perspectives, and (3) deep understanding of the past and present, as well as a commitment to co-creating new possibilities. This article highlights the transformative potential of leadership education as a catalyst for contextually grounded, participatory systems change.