Table of Contents
Introduction: The Day My Coaching Playbook Died
I remember the exact moment the floor fell out from under my career.
It wasn’t a dramatic confrontation or a tearful confession.
It was the quiet, sterile finality of an email with the subject line: “Organizational Update.” Inside, buried in the third paragraph, was the news: David, my star coaching client, had been let go.
To say I was stunned would be an understatement.
I was gutted.
For the past six months, David and I had been engaged in what I considered a textbook-perfect coaching engagement.
He was the brilliant, newly promoted VP of Engineering at a fast-growing tech firm, and I was the highly credentialed, ICF-certified executive coach brought in to help him scale his leadership.
We did everything by the book—my book, the one I had spent over a decade and tens of thousands of dollars mastering.1
We started with a comprehensive 360-degree feedback assessment, identifying his blind spots.
We used the GROW model—Goals, Reality, Options, Way Forward—to structure our sessions.4
We worked tirelessly on his executive presence, his communication style, his ability to delegate, and his emotional intelligence.5
David was a model client: receptive, diligent, and genuinely committed to his growth.
I saw him transform.
He became more self-aware, more empathetic, a more inspiring communicator.
By every metric in the traditional coaching playbook, he was a resounding success.
And yet, he was O.T. His ambitious flagship project, the one that was supposed to redefine the company’s future, had imploded.
His team, once loyal, was in open revolt.
The post-mortem, which I pieced together through hushed phone calls with former colleagues, was brutal.
It wasn’t David who had failed.
It was the organization that had rejected him.
His newfound transparency was perceived as weakness in a culture of guarded information.
His attempts to foster cross-departmental collaboration were seen as a political power grab by entrenched VPs who hoarded resources like feudal lords.
His efforts to empower his team were systematically undermined by a senior director who felt threatened.
The very behaviors we had so carefully cultivated were antibodies that the organization’s immune system had ruthlessly attacked and destroyed.8
My coaching hadn’t prepared him for leadership; it had made him a target.
I had meticulously polished a single, beautiful tree, only to watch it wither and die because I had completely ignored the toxic, depleted soil of the forest it was planted in.
That failure sent me into a professional and existential tailspin.
It wasn’t just about losing a client; it was the horrifying realization that my entire professional framework, the very foundation of my expertise, was built on a lie.
The email wasn’t just announcing David’s departure; it was a death certificate for my belief in the power of individual-focused leadership coaching.
It forced me to confront the question that would consume me for the next two years and ultimately reshape my entire practice: What if, in our obsession with developing the leader, we’ve been coaching the wrong thing entirely?
This report is the story of my search for an answer.
It is a journey that took me far from the polished boardrooms and leadership off-sites I knew, and deep into the tangled, complex world of forest ecology.
It is an argument for why the dominant model of leadership coaching is fundamentally broken, destined for the kind of failures I experienced with David.
But more importantly, it is a blueprint for a new way forward—a new paradigm that sees organizations not as machines to be fixed, but as living ecosystems to be cultivated.
It’s a story about how I stopped being a tree surgeon, focused on a single leader in isolation, and learned to become a forest ecologist, tending to the invisible, life-giving network that connects us all.
Part I: The Great Lie of the “Heroic Leader” Model
My crisis of faith didn’t happen in a vacuum.
It was the culmination of years spent inside what I now call the “Coaching Industrial Complex”—a multi-billion-dollar industry built on a seductive, yet deeply flawed, premise: the myth of the heroic leader.
This myth promises that by identifying and polishing exceptional individuals, we can single-handedly transform our organizations.
It’s a compelling narrative, but as my experience with David proved, it often crumbles upon contact with reality.
To understand why, we must first dissect the machine that produces it.
The Coaching Industrial Complex: A Promise of Polish
Like many of my peers, my entry into the world of executive coaching was a path paved with good intentions and expensive certifications.
I pursued credentials from esteemed bodies like the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and programs like the Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC), which have been industry cornerstones for decades.6
These programs, often costing upwards of $10,000 or $14,000, immerse you in a rigorous curriculum delivered by experienced practitioners from global firms and top universities.1
The training is intense.
We spent hundreds of hours mastering coaching frameworks, practicing active listening, and learning to guide clients through goal-setting and action-planning.1
The core curriculum, whether from NC State, Georgetown, or private institutes, is remarkably consistent.1
It focuses almost exclusively on the leader as an individual unit of analysis.
The syllabus is a litany of individual-centric skills: enhance self-awareness, improve decision-making, increase emotional intelligence, and master interpersonal communication.5
We learned to help clients identify their personal values, shed their destructive internal narratives, and develop more effective leadership styles.5
The implicit promise undergirding this entire enterprise is that a better leader creates a better organization.
By perfecting the individual—making them more confident, more empathetic, a better communicator—we believe organizational success will naturally follow.
This is the “Heroic Leader” myth in its purest form.
The model treats the leader as a discrete, upgradeable component in a larger machine.
If the machine is sputtering, the logic goes, we must simply repair or enhance this critical part.
The industry provides the tools, the frameworks, and the certified technicians to do just that.
We are, in essence, highly trained surgeons for the individual soul of a leader.
The problem, as I would learn, is that you can perform a perfect heart transplant, but the patient will still die if the entire circulatory system is diseased.
Why the Emperor Has No Clothes: A Data-Driven Autopsy of Failure
My failure with David felt deeply personal, but the data reveals it was tragically common.
The heroic leader model is failing not just anecdotally, but systematically.
Despite the billions invested in leadership development, only 11% of business leaders believe their current approaches are highly effective.14
The reasons for this systemic failure are not secrets; they are well-documented flaws inherent in the model itself.
First, traditional coaching is dangerously disconnected from business strategy.
Research shows that a staggering 70% of organizations report a misalignment between their leadership development initiatives and their core business objectives.14
Coaching often becomes a siloed activity, a remedial perk, or a vague “development opportunity” that operates in a parallel universe to the company’s actual strategic challenges.15
Without this connection, even powerful personal insights remain theoretical and fail to translate into meaningful business impact.16
Second, this disconnect leads to a lack of measurable outcomes.
The success of coaching is notoriously difficult to quantify, often relying on subjective assessments and anecdotal feedback rather than hard, data-driven insights.15
As a result, only 8% of organizations actually measure the business impact of their coaching investments.14
This makes coaching a perpetual “soft” expense, one of the first things to be cut during a downturn, rather than a critical driver of R.I. When a process can’t prove its value, it’s a luxury, not a necessity.
Third, and most critically, the model suffers from a fatal focus on the individual over the organization.
It overemphasizes personal development while neglecting the powerful, often invisible, currents of team dynamics and organizational culture.14
This was the very heart of David’s failure.
Research confirms that even highly motivated employees cannot apply new skills when they return to teams entrenched in established ways of doing things.8
The system surrounding the leader—the ingrained processes, the political landscape, the unspoken rules—has more power to shape them than they have to change it.
We coach leaders to be vulnerable in environments that punish it, to be collaborative in cultures that reward hoarding, and to be transparent in systems that thrive on secrecy.
We are setting them up to fail.
Fourth, the industry is plagued by a crisis of qualification.
The coaching field is largely unregulated, meaning anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves an executive coach.15
Many coaches, while well-intentioned, lack the deep psychological understanding, business acumen, or experience with complex organizational dynamics required to facilitate true executive-level transformation.15
They offer one-size-fits-all models and quick fixes, when what’s needed is a nuanced, systemic diagnosis.
Finally, the model fails to adequately account for client resistance and system rejection.
Leaders themselves can be the biggest roadblocks.
They may be resistant to change, defensive, overconfident, or lack the self-awareness to see their own blind spots.17
Their discomfort often stems from a deep-seated fear of vulnerability, a threat to the very identity that made them successful.18
And even if a coach manages to break through this resistance, the leader’s new behaviors are often rejected by the organizational “immune system,” which sees change as a pathogen and works to restore the previous equilibrium.8
A Gallery of Ghosts: Case Studies in Systemic Failure
These failures are not abstract concepts; they are the ghost stories that haunt the coaching profession.
When viewed through a systemic lens, the true cause of death becomes painfully clear.
Consider the case of the “Bad Apple” Captain.
When the cruise liner Costa Concordia ran aground, the captain was immediately and publicly blamed.9
It was a classic “bad apple” narrative.
But a systemic view reveals a different story.
The captain later claimed that the company insisted on such risky, close-to-shore maneuvers as a promotional tactic.9
The failure wasn’t just one man’s recklessness; it was the predictable outcome of a system that incentivized and normalized high-risk behavior for marketing purposes.
Coaching the captain on risk management would have been useless without addressing the organizational culture that demanded he take those risks.
Or take the story of the Anxious Founder of a biotech startup.19
Investors saw a confident visionary, but his employees saw a leader riddled with anxiety, which then cascaded through the company, undermining morale and productivity.
A traditional coach would work with the founder on his emotional regulation.
A systemic coach would ask:
What in the system is producing this anxiety? Is it the pressure from investors? A flawed business model? A lack of operational support? Fixing the leader’s emotional expression is like putting a bandage on a wound that is being repeatedly reopened by the environment.
The coaching addresses the symptom, not the disease.
Finally, there is the all-too-common case of the “Checkbox” Coachee.16
This is the executive who dutifully attends sessions but shows no real commitment.
They see coaching as a corporate exercise, disconnected from their real-world business challenges.
Their ego, masked by success, makes them defensive and resistant to true vulnerability.16
The coaching fails not because the coach is bad or the executive is uncoachable, but because the intervention is divorced from the organizational context.
It’s a solution untethered to a problem the leader actually cares about solving.
In every one of these cases, the diagnosis is the same.
The coaching focused on the individual leader as the problem, when the leader was merely the most visible symptom of a deeper, systemic dysfunction.
The entire Coaching Industrial Complex, with its certifications, frameworks, and focus on individual heroics, is built on a flawed, reductionist premise inherited from a bygone era of management theory.
It views organizations as predictable, controllable machines, where you can simply upgrade a faulty part—the leader—and expect the whole apparatus to run better.
This mechanistic worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the messy, unpredictable, and emergent reality of organizations as complex, adaptive, living systems.
The high failure rate of coaching isn’t an anomaly to be fixed with better techniques; it is the logical outcome of a paradigm clash.
We have been trying to apply machine logic to a living ecosystem.
The entire foundation is wrong.
Part II: The Mycelial Epiphany: Discovering the Wood-Wide Web of Leadership
After the David debacle, I stepped away.
The disillusionment was profound.
I couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to sell a service I no longer believed in.
I canceled my client engagements and retreated, spending my days in libraries and my evenings falling down internet rabbit holes, searching for a better metaphor, a different way of seeing.
My search led me far from the familiar terrain of business journals and into the dense, tangled undergrowth of biology, ecology, and complexity theory.
From the C-Suite to the Forest Floor: A Search for a Better Metaphor
I began reading about complex adaptive systems—the idea that systems like economies, cities, and ecosystems are composed of many interacting components whose aggregate behavior is more than the sum of its parts.20
These systems are characterized by non-linearity, self-organization, and emergent properties.
There is no central controller; order arises from local interactions.20
This resonated deeply.
It described the unpredictable, often chaotic reality of organizational life far better than the neat, linear models of my coaching textbooks.
It challenged the very notion of top-down control and predictability that underpins traditional management.21
It was in this intellectual wilderness that I first encountered the work of Dr. Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist from the University of British Columbia.23
She had made a revolutionary discovery, one that was beginning to send shockwaves through the scientific community.
She had found that forests were not, as long believed, a collection of solitary individuals competing ruthlessly for light and water.
Instead, they were vast, interconnected communities, linked by a subterranean network of fungi.
She called it the “Wood-Wide Web”.24
As I read her papers and watched her talks, the hairs on my arms stood up.
It was more than an interesting scientific finding; it was an epiphany.
The intricate, hidden world she described—a world of communication, resource sharing, and symbiotic relationships—was a perfect blueprint for the invisible dynamics I had witnessed in organizations my entire career.
The way older, more established “Mother Trees” nurtured seedlings, the way distress signals about pests or drought were broadcast through the network, the way resources flowed to where they were needed most—it was all there.
This wasn’t just an analogy.
It felt like I had stumbled upon the operating system of all complex living systems, including the human ones I had so spectacularly failed to understand.
The Secret Language of the Forest: A Primer on Mycorrhizal Networks
To grasp the power of this new paradigm, one must first appreciate the staggering complexity and elegance of the system that inspired it.
The Wood-Wide Web is not a flight of fancy; it is a scientifically documented phenomenon, a biological internet that underpins the health of most terrestrial ecosystems on Earth.26
It is primarily formed by mycorrhizal fungi, microscopic threads (hyphae) that form symbiotic relationships with the roots of trees and plants.26
This network is the forest’s central nervous system and its circulatory system, all rolled into one.
Its functions are as profound as they are vital.
First and foremost, it is a marketplace for symbiotic exchange.
The relationship is a classic mutualism.
Trees, through photosynthesis, create carbon-rich sugars which they send down to their roots to feed the fungi.
In return, the fungal network, which can extend the reach of a tree’s root system by hundreds or even thousands of times, forages the soil for essential nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus and delivers them to the tree.23
This is not simple altruism; it’s a sophisticated biological market where plants and fungi “negotiate” resource trades to maximize their mutual benefit.30
Some plants might invest a lot of carbon for a small return, while others might get a huge nutritional benefit for a tiny investment, depending on the species and the conditions.30
This dynamic exchange allows the entire forest to thrive, especially in nutrient-poor soils.23
Second, the network functions as a communication system.
It is a living information highway.
When a tree is attacked by an insect pest or a disease, it can send out chemical distress signals through the mycorrhizal network.26
Neighboring trees receive these signals and can preemptively mount their own defenses, such as by producing defensive compounds to make their leaves less palatable.23
This system allows for rapid, system-wide adaptation to threats, a collective intelligence that enhances the resilience of the entire community.
Third, the network is structured around crucial hubs known as “Mother Trees.” These are typically the oldest and largest trees in the forest, the most densely connected nodes in the network.35
Their role is disproportionately important.
They act as linchpins, stabilizing the entire network.38
They are also nurturing hubs, sending excess carbon and nutrients through the network to support struggling seedlings, particularly their own offspring, whose survival rates can be dramatically improved by this maternal support.31
They pass on resources, but also a kind of “wisdom”—the chemical information and fungal partners needed to thrive in that specific environment.
Finally, all of these functions combine to create profound ecosystem resilience.
A forest with a healthy, intact mycorrhizal network is more productive, more biodiverse, and better able to withstand stresses like drought and disease.39
Conversely, forestry practices like clear-cutting, which sever these vital connections, can have devastating and long-lasting consequences, leaving the ecosystem fragmented and vulnerable.23
The health of the forest is not merely the sum of the health of its individual trees; it is an emergent property of the network that connects them.
It is important to approach this with intellectual honesty.
The “Wood-Wide Web” has become a cultural phenomenon, and some of the more romantic claims have outpaced the scientific evidence.
Researchers like Justine Karst have rightly called for more rigor, questioning the extent to which these networks are truly cooperative versus competitive, and whether the transfer of resources is always significant enough to affect tree fitness.26
This debate is healthy and necessary.
But it does not invalidate the core principles.
The evidence for the existence of these networks, for the transfer of resources, and for the transmission of signals is robust and growing.26
For my purposes, the blueprint was clear.
The Organization as an Ecosystem: Translating the Blueprint
The parallels between the forest ecosystem and a human organization were so striking, so immediate, that I began to map them, element by element.
The translation provided a powerful new language to describe the invisible forces that had torpedoed my work with David.
- The Trees are the individual employees, leaders, and contributors. Each has their own skills and needs, but their ultimate success is not determined in isolation.
- The Mycorrhizal Network is the informal organization. It’s the web of relationships, trust, influence, shared history, and communication that runs beneath the formal org chart. It’s the “grapevine.” It’s how work really gets done, how favors are traded, and how reputations are made or broken. This is a concept well-established in social network analysis, which investigates social structures through nodes (individuals) and the links (relationships) that connect them.43
- The Nutrients (Carbon, Nitrogen, Water) are the tangible and intangible resources that flow through an organization. This includes budget, headcount, and equipment, but also less visible currencies like information, data, political capital, institutional knowledge, mentorship, and recognition.
- The Distress Signals are the early warnings that pulse through the network. They are the quiet rumors of a competitor’s new product, the hushed complaints about a failing project, the low morale that signals burnout, or the inter-departmental friction that precedes open conflict.
- The Mother Trees are the keystone leaders. These are not always the people with the most senior titles, but they are the central hubs of the informal network. They are the influential figures who control the flow of resources, set the cultural tone through their behavior, and mentor the next generation of talent (the “seedlings”). The health, dysfunction, or removal of a Mother Tree can have cascading effects, destabilizing the entire ecosystem.
- Clear-cutting is the all-too-common practice of destructive reorganizations, mass layoffs, or abrupt leadership changes that sever critical network connections. This destroys institutional knowledge, breaks bonds of trust, and leaves behind a sterile, unproductive “monoculture” where innovation and resilience cannot take root.
This ecological metaphor transformed my understanding.
“Organizational culture” was no longer a vague, abstract noun.
It was a tangible, living system that could be mapped, analyzed, and understood.
The failure of a leader like David was not a failure of the tree, but a clear diagnostic signal about the health of the surrounding forest.
The problem was, my old toolkit only had instruments for examining the bark and leaves; I had no way of seeing the roots.
The most profound realization was this: the health of an organization is not the sum of the health of its individual employees.
Organizational health is an emergent property of the quality and nature of the connections between them.
This insight, drawn directly from complexity theory and vividly illustrated by the Wood-Wide Web, changes everything.20
It means the most powerful point of leverage for a coach—for any leader—is not the individual node, but the network itself.
Instead of trying to “fix” the tree, we need to learn how to tend the soil, clear the pathways, and improve the health of the entire forest.
This requires a fundamental shift in the very definition of what a leadership coach does.
Part III: The Systemic Coaching Framework: Tending the Organizational Forest
Armed with this new paradigm, I felt compelled to return to coaching.
But I could not go back to being the same kind of coach.
The old identity of the “tree surgeon,” performing precise, isolated interventions on individual leaders, was dead.
I had to become something new.
From Tree Surgeon to Forest Ecologist: A New Identity for the Coach
My new identity is that of a “forest ecologist.” My job is no longer to polish the individual but to diagnose and improve the health of the entire organizational ecosystem.
This is not merely a rebranding; it is a fundamental shift in mindset, skillset, and methodology.
A forest ecologist understands that what happens above ground is a reflection of what is happening below.
They think in terms of patterns, feedback loops, and systemic forces, not just individual behaviors.20
This requires a much broader and more sophisticated toolkit.
It demands skills in organizational diagnosis, an understanding of group dynamics, a degree of political savvy, and the ability to facilitate difficult conversations between multiple stakeholders.
It moves the coach’s primary focus from the one-on-one session to an analysis of the entire system in which that one-on-one is embedded.
This new identity directly addresses the “unqualified coach” problem that plagues the industry.15
It raises the bar for competence exponentially.
A systemic coach cannot simply rely on a standardized model like GROW or a certification in a single assessment tool.
They must be a systems thinker, capable of seeing the whole and the parts simultaneously, and of understanding how they influence one another.
They must be able to “peer beneath the surface of what is being said and done…
and join up the dots between events to see (potentially stuck) patterns”.46
The Four Principles of Systemic Coaching
From this new identity, a new framework emerged, built on four principles derived directly from the lessons of the forest.
This is the Systemic Coaching Framework, a practical guide to tending the organizational ecosystem.
1. Principle 1: Map the Mycelium (Diagnose the Network)
The first step in any systemic coaching engagement is not to assess the leader, but to map the informal network they inhabit.
Before you can help the tree, you must understand the soil.
This goes far beyond a standard 360-degree feedback survey, which only provides perceptions of an individual.
We must map the actual flows of influence and information.
This involves asking a different set of questions: Who do people really go to for answers, regardless of their title? Who are the brokers of information between teams? Where does communication flow freely, and where are the bottlenecks? Who are the “isolates,” cut off from the network? Where are the toxic clusters where trust has broken down? This diagnostic phase uses tools like organizational network analysis (ONA), which visually maps these connections, combined with deep, ethnographic listening tours to understand the stories and history that give the network its shape.43
The goal is to make the invisible visible, to create a shared, data-informed picture of the system’s actual structure, not just the one on the org chart.
2. Principle 2: Nurture the Mother Trees (Coach the Hubs)
With a map of the network in hand, coaching senior leaders takes on a new and more powerful meaning.
The focus shifts from the leader’s personal development goals to their role as stewards of the network.
The coaching conversation is no longer just, “How can you be a better leader?” but “How can you create a healthier ecosystem?”
The coaching agenda becomes radically different.
We work with these “Mother Trees” on how to more effectively distribute resources (information, budget, support) to where they are needed most.
We coach them on how to better identify and nurture their “seedlings”—the high-potential talent that represents the organization’s future.
We explore how their own behaviors—their communication style, their meeting habits, their reactions to bad news—create ripples that either strengthen or weaken the entire network.
This approach directly connects the leader’s development to the health of their team and the broader organization, solving the problem of coaching being disconnected from business reality.14
3. Principle 3: Clear the Nutrient Pathways (Facilitate Connections)
A systemic coach understands that many organizational problems are not problems with the people (the trees), but problems with the connections between them.
Therefore, many of the most powerful coaching interventions are not one-on-one sessions, but facilitated processes designed to repair and enhance the system’s connectivity.
This is where the coach acts as a catalyst for the system.
It might involve mediating a long-standing conflict between two departments that has been blocking collaboration.
It could mean designing and facilitating a series of cross-silo workshops aimed not at generic “team building,” but at solving a specific, shared business problem, forcing new connections to form.
It might even involve co-designing new communication processes or meeting structures to ensure that critical information—the “distress signals” about market shifts or project risks—travels quickly and efficiently through the network instead of getting trapped in silos.
The coach’s role is to act as a fungal hypha, creating new links where none existed before.
4. Principle 4: Cultivate Biodiversity (Foster Psychological Safety)
A healthy forest is not a monoculture plantation; it is a diverse and complex ecosystem.29
The same is true for a resilient and innovative organization.
It needs a diversity of thought, perspective, and experience.
It needs to be safe for people to bring their whole selves to work, to dissent, to experiment, and even to fail.
This principle focuses on coaching leaders to actively cultivate psychological safety.
The coach helps the leader see the “weeds”—the unconventional ideas, the challenging personalities, the contrarian viewpoints—not as threats to be eradicated, but as potential sources of future adaptation and resilience.38
As one case study on systemic coaching notes, fostering a culture that values learning, open communication, and continuous improvement is key for teams to be open and honest.47
This means coaching leaders to move beyond rewarding conformity and to start creating environments where constructive conflict is welcomed and where failure is treated as a source of learning, not shame.48
These four principles represent a radical departure from the traditional coaching playbook.
The following table provides a clear, side-by-side comparison of the old paradigm and the new.
Table 1: Traditional vs. Systemic Coaching: A Comparative Framework
| Feature | Traditional “Heroic Leader” Coaching | Systemic “Forest Ecologist” Coaching |
| Primary Goal | Enhance the skills and behaviors of an individual leader. | Improve the health, resilience, and effectiveness of the entire organizational system. |
| Unit of Analysis | The individual leader (the “tree”). | The network of relationships and interactions (the “forest”). |
| Coach’s Role | A personal trainer or advisor focused on individual performance. | A systems diagnostician, facilitator, and catalyst for network health. |
| Key Tools | 360-degree feedback, personality assessments (e.g., Myers-Briggs), one-on-one goal setting (e.g., GROW model). | Organizational Network Analysis (ONA), systems mapping, group facilitation, conflict mediation, deep listening tours. |
| View of Failure | A failure of the individual leader to change or apply new skills. | A diagnostic signal of a systemic blockage, dysfunction, or unmet need in the network. |
| Measure of Success | Positive feedback on the leader’s changed behavior; achievement of personal goals. | Measurable improvements in system-level outcomes: project velocity, cross-silo collaboration, employee engagement, innovation rates, talent retention. |
| Core Metaphor | The organization is a machine; the leader is a part to be fixed or upgraded. | The organization is a living ecosystem; the leader is a steward of that ecosystem. |
Part IV: The Systemic Coach in Practice
Theory is one thing; practice is another.
The true test of any framework is its ability to generate superior results in the complex, messy reality of organizational life.
The Systemic Coaching Framework is not just an elegant metaphor; it is a practical and powerful approach that transforms outcomes.
Case Study: The Division That Grew Back Stronger
A few years ago, I was brought into a multinational pharmaceutical company to work with the new head of their struggling Medical Devices division.
Let’s call her Sarah.
The division was a mess.
It was consistently missing its targets, morale was in the basement, and two of its key teams—R&D and Marketing—were in a state of cold war, communicating only through passive-aggressive emails and blaming each other for every setback.
The previous division head had been fired, and Sarah was brought in to turn things around.
The company’s initial request was for me to coach Sarah on “executive presence” and “driving accountability.” It was a classic “Heroic Leader” assignment.
Using the Systemic Framework, I politely refused.
I told them I couldn’t coach Sarah effectively without first understanding the system she had inherited.
Step 1: Mapping the Mycelium. My first two weeks were spent not in Sarah’s office, but in deep listening tours with over 30 people across the division.
I combined this qualitative data with a formal Organizational Network Analysis (ONA).
The results were stark.
The map showed two completely separate, densely clustered networks—R&D and Marketing—with a toxic “structural hole” between them.
Information did not cross this divide.
The informal leaders, the people everyone identified as the “go-to” experts, were not the official team leads, but two senior managers—one in each camp—who had a bitter personal history dating back years.
They were the source of the blockage.
Step 2: Nurturing the Mother Tree. My coaching with Sarah now had a clear, systemic focus.
We threw out the “executive presence” goal.
Instead, we worked on her role as the division’s primary “Mother Tree.” Our sessions focused on strategies for her to bridge the structural hole between R&D and Marketing.
We role-played difficult conversations, not with hypothetical employees, but with the two warring senior managers.
I coached her on how to act as a mediator and on how to re-frame the division’s goals in a way that created a “superordinate” identity that both teams could rally behind.
She had to become the central hub that connected the entire network.
Step 3: Clearing the Nutrient Pathways. The next intervention was to get the two teams in a room together.
This was not a “team building” off-site with trust falls.
It was a two-day, roll-up-your-sleeves workshop that I facilitated, focused on a single, critical business problem: the abysmal time-to-market for their next-generation product.
By forcing them to collaborate on a shared, high-stakes problem, we began to forge new “mycelial” connections.
They had to share data (nutrients), they had to resolve conflicts in real time, and they had to build new communication protocols.
Step 4: Cultivating Biodiversity. Throughout this process, Sarah, with my coaching, made a point of publicly celebrating moments of constructive disagreement.
When a junior engineer in R&D pointed out a flaw in a marketing plan, instead of shutting it down, Sarah paused the meeting and praised the engineer for their courage and insight.
This small act sent a powerful signal that dissent and diverse perspectives were now valued, not punished.
The results were not instantaneous, but over the next nine months, the transformation was undeniable.
The new product launched two months ahead of schedule.
Employee engagement scores in the division jumped 25%.
Most tellingly, the ONA map we ran a year later showed a completely different picture: the two separate clusters had merged into a single, densely interconnected network with Sarah at its center.
The investment in systemic coaching paid for itself many times over, not just in self-development, but in bottom-line results.50
The division didn’t just recover; it grew back stronger and more resilient than before.
An Autopsy of David: How the Forest Could Have Been Saved
I often return to the story of David, the failure that started my journey.
With the clarity of the systemic lens, I can now perform a proper autopsy.
David’s failure was not only predictable; it was inevitable.
My old coaching approach was like trying to save a single sapling while ignoring the fact that the forest was on fire.
A systemic diagnosis would have revealed the truth immediately.
David was a healthy, high-potential “tree,” but he was planted in a deeply toxic ecosystem.
The “Mother Tree”—his own boss, the EVP of Product—was not a nurturer but a competitor.
He saw David’s talent as a threat to his own position and systematically starved his projects of resources (nutrients).
The pathways between David’s engineering team and other key departments were blocked by political silos, preventing the flow of critical information.
The organizational culture punished the very transparency and collaboration we were trying to instill in David.
Had I been a “forest ecologist” back then, my approach would have been entirely different.
- I would have started by mapping the network, and the political toxicity and resource blockages would have become immediately visible.
- The coaching engagement would not have been with David alone. The primary focus would have been on the system itself. The “client” would have been the relationship between David, his boss, and the other VPs.
- The coaching with David would have been about navigating the political landscape and building alliances, not just improving his communication skills in a vacuum.51
- The most critical intervention would have been to facilitate a conversation with David and his boss, with the explicit goal of clarifying roles, aligning expectations, and addressing the resource issues head-on.
Would it have saved David’s job? Perhaps not.
Sometimes, the ecosystem is too sick, and the best advice for a healthy tree is to be transplanted elsewhere.
But it would have been an honest diagnosis.
It would have addressed the real problem, not just the symptom.
And it would have given the organization a true picture of its own dysfunction, a choice to either address it or accept the consequences.
Instead of polishing a single leader for slaughter, I would have held up a mirror to the entire forest.
The Forest Health Diagnostic: A Toolkit for Leaders
You don’t need to be a certified coach to start thinking like a forest ecologist.
The principles of the Systemic Framework can be applied by any leader looking to understand the health of their own team, division, or organization.
The following questions are a starting point—a simple diagnostic tool to help you look past the individual trees and begin to see the invisible network that truly defines your world.
Table 2: Diagnostic Questions for Assessing Your Organizational Network
| Framework Principle | Diagnostic Questions for Leaders |
| 1. Mapping Your Mycelium | – Who do people on my team really go to for answers or advice, regardless of their official title? – If I needed to get a critical piece of information to everyone on my team unofficially, who are the three people I would tell first? – Where does work get “stuck” when it has to move between my team and another team? What is the nature of that blockage? – Who on my team seems isolated or disconnected from the main flow of communication? |
| 2. Assessing Your Mother Trees | – As a leader, what percentage of my day is spent doing my own “tasks” versus actively managing the flow of work and communication across my team? – Who are the 1-3 most influential people on my team (the informal hubs)? Am I actively coaching and supporting them? – Who are the “seedlings” (junior, high-potential talent)? What specific actions have I taken this month to send them “nutrients” (mentorship, opportunities, visibility)? – If I were to leave my role tomorrow, would the network of connections on my team be strong enough to function without me? |
| 3. Checking Your Nutrient Pathways | – How quickly does bad news travel up to me? Do I hear it first from my direct reports, or through the grapevine? – When a problem arises, is the default response to assign blame to an individual or to analyze the process/system that led to the failure? – Are my team meetings designed primarily for information broadcast (one-to-many) or for genuine interaction and problem-solving (many-to-many)? – What is the single biggest source of friction or delay between my team and its key internal partners? |
| 4. Evaluating Your Biodiversity | – When was the last time a dissenting opinion from a junior team member genuinely changed the direction of a decision? – How is failure treated on my team? Is it a career-limiting event to be hidden, or a learning opportunity to be discussed openly? – Look at the last 5 people promoted on my team. How similar are they in background, style, and perspective? – On a scale of 1-10, how safe is it for someone to say “I don’t know” or “I need help” in a team meeting? |
Conclusion: We Are All Connected
My journey from a confident, by-the-book “tree surgeon” to a humbled, inquisitive “forest ecologist” was more than a professional pivot.
It was a profound shift in how I see the world.
It was a rejection of the simple, heroic, and individualistic myths that our culture loves to tell, and an embrace of the more complex, messier, and ultimately more hopeful reality of our interconnectedness.
The dominant model of leadership is broken because it is based on a flawed metaphor.
It treats organizations like machines and people like parts.
It celebrates the lone hero and ignores the system that supports or sabotages them.
The result is billions of dollars wasted on development programs that fail to deliver, and countless talented leaders like David who are polished, perfected, and then sacrificed on the altar of a dysfunctional system.
The wisdom of the forest offers us a better Way. It teaches us that resilience, health, and vitality are not properties of the individual, but emergent qualities of the network.
A forest is not just a collection of trees; it is the relationship between them.
An organization is not just a collection of employees; it is the quality of the trust, communication, and collaboration that flows between them.
The future of leadership development, therefore, lies not in a relentless focus on perfecting the individual, but in the quiet, patient, and essential work of tending the ecosystem.
It requires us to become better systems thinkers, to learn to see the invisible patterns that shape our daily lives.
It calls for a new kind of leader and a new kind of coach—one who understands that their greatest leverage comes not from standing above the network, but from working within it, strengthening its connections, and fostering its health.
It is a paradigm shift from control to cultivation, from engineering to ecology.
It is the recognition of a simple but profound truth, one that pulses beneath the forest floor and through the hallways of our offices: we are all connected, and we will only thrive together.
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