The Four Forces

As someone who has served as Director of Engineering, Director of Six Sigma, Director of Operational Excellence, and General Manager, I have led teams through the challenges of transformation, innovation, and complexity. In today’s fast-moving, complexponential world, we need leadership models that are as dynamic and human as the environments we navigate. The Four Forces: Igniting Emergent Generative Team Leadership in a Complexponential World, is exactly that. 

The authors’ deep understanding of systems thinking, human dynamics, and emergent leadership gives this work a level of credibility and insight that few can match. By grounding leadership in the forces of intent, hope, care, and love, the authors offer a transformative path forward, one that empowers teams to lead with authenticity, resilience, and purpose. This book is not just timely – it is essential.

-- Mehdi Javidinejad, P.E. MBA, Director of Engineering Forum Energy Technologies, Former Director of Six Sigma, Director of Operational Excellence, and General Manager

So much has changed in recent years, including environmental changes, new technologies, and changes in government. All of these factors have created a new world that we have never experienced before. Consequently, there have been significant shifts in organizational realities before, during, and after the pandemic, which had an unprecedented impact on leadership. This EGTL book is timely and insightful. It proposes a team-led leadership approach to challenge decades of traditional leadership by focusing on ‘team connections’ instead of ‘heroic authority.’ Readers will gain valuable perspectives that can inform and support their work.

-- David W. Jamieson, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Organization Development Review, Professor Emeritus, University of St Thomas

What most of us know about leadership is now only half-true. Covid, remote work and self-directed teams have brought us an emergent form of team leadership driven by four key socio-emotional forces. This thoughtful book explains the new paradigm and how to thrive within it.

-- Vince Thompson Venture Capitalist Author of Ignited: Managers! Light Up Your Company and Career: For More Power, More Purpose, and More Success

Who needs another book on leadership? There are tens of thousands of journal articles, academic and popular books, typologies, conceptual frameworks, checklists, and more, that often leave one bewildered about what is crucial to know. There is literally a top for every pot. 

But it turns out we really need this book. Why? Because it describes how fundamental socio-emotional relationships within small groups can generate leadership that drives learning and creative action. Leadership is an ongoing process to respond creatively to continuous environmental change. The emphasis on emergence of leadership at the team level harkens back to Kurt Lewin’s seminal work and the earliest days of research on leadership. In this important way, Emergent Generative Team Leadership closes the loop between historical foundations and ever-emerging change.

 

-- Charles McClintock Past Director of the Institute for Social Innovation, Dean Emeritus, Fielding Graduate University

The Four Forces is a timely and profound guide for those seeking to lead not from control, but from connection. The book reimagines leadership as a collective, generative force powered by intent, hope, care, and love. In a world of relentless complexity and change, it offers a deeply rooted yet fluid model of team-based leadership that honors emergence over hierarchy, wholeness over fragmentation. A must-read for those ready to build living, evolving organizations that thrive like ecosystems: adaptive, relational, and wise.

-- Devin P. Singh Associate Professor of Religion, Dartmouth University Founder and President of Leadership Kinetics https://leadershipkinetics.com/about Author of Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West (Stanford 2018)

Emergent Generative Team Leadership in a Complexponential World" is a timely and thought-provoking exploration of how leadership must evolve to meet the demands of our rapidly changing world. Kathleen Curran, Randal Joy Thompson, and Jane Feng offer a compelling framework that not only explains the 'what' and 'why' of adaptive leadership, but also delivers a practical 'how' for teams striving to be more resilient, innovative, and responsive. I was especially drawn to the book’s deep dive into the shifting dynamics of business and the urgent need to rethink how we manage, collaborate, and lead. This is an essential read for anyone committed to building agile, empowered teams ready to thrive in complexity.

-- Justin Collingwood, GM and Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Neovia Logistics,

I am inspired by Curran, Thompson and Feng’s EGTL model. It is not just a timely contribution to the conversation about how teams and work are evolving—it’s a critical blueprint for navigating the unprecedented complexity of the change. And the book illuminates a profound truth: the future belongs to teams, not just leaders. Rooted in deep purpose and sustained by the socio-emotional forces of Intent, Care, Hope, and Love, the authors unveil a powerful shift from hierarchy to human-centered ecosystems. As someone who has studied and supported high-performing teams across sectors, I can say without hesitation: this is a leadership framework that will empower many nextgen organizations. It’s bold, actionable, and inspired."

-- Dan McGurrin, PhD Award-Winning Leader & Team Development Expert who has developed/coached thousands of teams and communities Co-Author of Culture and Teams (2016), Current Opinions in Psychology

This book offers a deeply refreshing perspective on leadership—one that is holistic, process-oriented, and grounded in the rhythms of nature and the wisdom of the Tao. It goes beyond traditional hierarchies to embrace emerging, relational forms of organizing, where leadership is co-created through intention, care, hope, and love. For managers who aspire to make meaningful contributions beyond self-interest, this work provides both inspiration and practical guidance for cultivating generative teams in an increasingly complex world.

-- Yih-Teen Lee, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Managing People in Organizations Academic Director, IESE Executive Coaching Unit Academic Director, Eurofirms Foundation Research Fund on Leadership for Embracing Inclusion

A core principle in coaching is that the coachee is complete, resourceful, and whole. As mentioned in the book, The gardener said: “I don’t force the flowers to grow. I remove what stops them.” Emergent Generative Team Leadership is an invitation to consider the same about teams. The organization, as a terrarium of teams with shared purpose, is ripe for a shift in team leadership, team evolution and team outcomes. Team members led with Emergent Generative Team Leadership principles and tools evolve from acting as obliged members of a team with imposed goals to stewards of the organization, stewards who deliver felt and desired results. In “feeling” their purpose and seeding the ground for future organizational sustainability, teams move beyond assembled group structures to communities of practice: Creating, building and stewarding. With real world case studies, Emergent Generative Team Leadership pulls from multiple disciplines to make you challenge your current leadership assumptions and undertake concrete steps to operationalize team leadership with a new, provocative, potentiated lens, the kind that leads to change.

-- Enza Cignarella, MBA, PPCC, ACC Biopharma Executive & Leadership Development Coach Quebec, Canada

I know firsthand the limits of traditional command-and-control hierarchies. In my work over the past three decades, I’ve seen teams design processes, policies and practices that crumble under disruption. The Four Forces offers exactly the fresh paradigm we need. Curran, Thompson, and Feng draw on the wisdom of nature and the Tao to show how Intent, Hope, Care, and Love can fuel team-led teams in ecosystems that adapt, innovate, and thrive amid uncertainty. The authors ground their insights in real-world examples that confirm what practitioners instinctively feel: human connection is our greatest renewable asset. Emergent Generative Team Leadership (EGTL) provides a powerful alternative: harnessing socio-emotional energy to generate agency at every level. Whether you’re managing global supply chains, leading cross-functional initiatives, or exploring organizational theory in your doctoral research, this book will change how you think about leadership. EGTL isn’t a vague ideal - it’s a practical, research-backed framework for igniting collective intelligence and resilience. The Four Forces is an essential guide for procurement professionals, academic scholars, and any leader committed to transforming chaos into opportunity.

-- Cheryl Harris, Senior Vice President, Procurement, Allstate Insurance

An insightful book that clearly describes and analyzes the necessary future of leadership: the combination of accountability and emotional traits. Creating value and purpose for people and their organizations! Congratulations to the authors.

-- Jérôme de Grandmaison VP, Talent Management, Product Lines & Functions

Emergent Generative Team Leadership in a Complexponential World is a reimagining of leadership that challenges outdated paradigms of command-and-control leadership, and offers a compelling alternative: team-led ecosystems where leadership emerges through relationships, shared purpose, and collective agency. EGTL introduces a transformative model rooted in four socioeconomic forces, Intent, Hope, Care, and Love. Although these forces are often overlooked in traditional business leadership, they are presented not as passive and soft ideals, but powerful, renewable sources of energy that ignite team cohesion, innovation, and resilience. The ideas proposed through the EGTL model draw from insights and lessons learned through the COVID-19 pandemic, the ever-increasing global market complexity, and the introduction of AI and Gen AI into the workplace. EGTL maintains that business can unlock untapped human potential to achieve both business and human outcomes simultaneously and sustainably. For leaders seeking to navigate the complexponential realities of today and tomorrow, this work is not just insightful, it is essential.

-- Lucian Blackburn, COO Royal Case Co., Inc.

In a world wracked by uncertainty and enduring permacrisis, we need to draw deeply on our human qualities to stay resilient and to thrive, despite the hardships and challenges we face. In The Four Forces: Igniting Emergent Generative Team Leadership in a Complexponential World, authors Kathleen Curran, Randall Joy Thompson and Jane Feng have done us a great service in charting a way forward for people at work as they struggle through difficult times. That way forward is thoughtfully and sensitively described, whereby teams draw on their own inner strengths of intent, hope, care, and love to achieve a level of shared resilience, innovation and strength that command and control type leadership can never achieve. Through writing this book, the authors have created a rich and valuable resource for the better understanding of self-led and self-managed teams - while at the same time invoking the power of compassionate and profound human relationships, something that has never been more needed. Readers of the book will draw inspiration not just from those four superpowers of EGTL (Emergent Generative Team-Led Leadership’s intent, hope, care and love), but from the underused leadership power of curiosity too! So exercise your curiosity and dive into this excellent book – its Tao-inspired call to action will refresh and energise you and surely help to deepen the connections you have with co-workers, team members and vital stakeholders.

-- Michael Jenkins, CEO Expert Hu