A recent conversation with my colleague and friend Sam Spiegel about the evolving nature of leadership sparked the reflections that led me to write this piece. Our dialogue centered on how leadership, too often, is still defined by independence, the myth of the lone visionary who succeeds through sheer autonomy. Yet as we spoke, it became clear that the most powerful and enduring forms of leadership are not solitary but symbiotic.
That exchange reminded me that true leadership is not about self-making (autopoiesis) but about making-with (sympoiesis), the act of co-creating meaning, direction, and growth through connection. It is within this space of shared evolution that Elastic Leadership finds its full expression, where interdependence, collaboration, and collective growth redefine how leaders and teams thrive together.
In this spirit, I explore the principle of Sympoietic Leadership, drawn from Humberto Maturana’s original biological insight and expanded by Donna Haraway in 2016, which describes how living systems evolve through cooperative co-creation, not isolation.
Within the framework of Elastic Leadership, sympoiesis becomes the defining feature of human and organizational growth: a movement from independence to interdependence, from rigidity to relational elasticity.
At the heart of this principle lies Ring 11 of the MAGNUS OVEA Theory “Social Connectivity or Threads of Connection.” It is here that leadership transcends command and becomes communion.
The End of Autopoiesis
In the 1970s, biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela introduced the concept of autopoiesis, “self-making,” to explain how living cells maintain integrity through continuous internal renewal. The concept revolutionized biology and later influenced systems theory and cognitive science.
But as the world grew more complex and interconnected, philosopher Donna Haraway proposed an evolution of this concept: sympoiesis, meaning “making-with.” She argued that nothing, not even a cell, truly exists in isolation. Every system is shaped, sustained, and evolved by relationships.
“Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic.” — Haraway, 2016
Leadership, too, is not self-generated. It is co-created through a web of interactions, shared meaning, and mutual evolution.
From Self-Making to Co-Making
In a volatile world, autonomy without attunement leads to fragmentation. Elastic Leadership recognizes that resilience and innovation emerge not from independence, but from interdependence. Sympoietic leaders:
- See themselves as part of a living ecosystem, not a hierarchy.
- Understand that growth happens through connection, not control.
- Encourage co-adaptive intelligence — the ability of teams to evolve together, learning and adjusting in real time.
Where autopoietic systems preserve boundaries, sympoietic systems blur them — allowing energy, ideas, and empathy to flow freely. This is the essence of Elastic Leadership: to remain open, responsive, and alive in the constant dialogue of change.
The Science of “Making-With”
In systems ecology, sympoiesis describes a collective metabolism, an ecosystem’s ability to adapt and thrive through cooperation among diverse parts. In human systems, this principle mirrors the neurobiological truth of attunement: when humans connect deeply, their neural rhythms synchronize, creating shared regulation, shared creativity, and shared meaning.
Elastic Leadership builds on this foundation. It treats teams as symbiotic organisms, networks of emotional, intellectual, and ethical exchange where each member’s growth amplifies the whole.
This transforms leadership from directive command to collective emergence.
Elastic leaders are not architects of the system; they are gardeners of its relationships.
Ring 11: Threads of Connection
Within the MAGNUS OVEA framework, Ring 11, Threads of Connection, captures this very principle: that connection is not a peripheral virtue; it is the infrastructure of evolution.
When teams are sympoietic:
- Communication becomes attuned rather than transactional.
- Trust evolves through shared creation, not compliance.
- Resilience multiplies, because adaptation is distributed across the system.
Elastic leaders cultivate environments where relationships become regenerative forces, not dependencies. The organization itself becomes a living ecosystem of mutual growth — what I call Elastic Ecology.
The Sympoietic Shift: From Ego to Eco
Traditional leadership models have been ego-centric — focused on the individual leader’s strength, charisma, or authority. Elastic Leadership introduces an eco-centric paradigm: leadership as a dynamic field of shared intelligence.
The shift is subtle but revolutionary: The evolution from traditional to elastic leadership represents a profound shift in mindset — from autonomy to interdependence, where success is shared rather than solitary; from self-regulation to co-regulation, where stability arises through mutual attunement; from control to collaboration, where influence replaces authority; from resistance to adaptation, where flexibility becomes strength; and from command to communion, where leadership is not imposed but co-created through trust, connection, and shared purpose.
The sympoietic leader operates from collective agency, not personal dominance. They measure success not by compliance, but by the system’s capacity to co-evolve.
Elastic Leadership as Sympoiesis
In practice, Sympoietic Leadership means:
- Listening as creation: Leaders who attune create coherence across differences.
- Feedback as flow: Every exchange becomes a site of mutual adaptation.
- Purpose as ecology: Vision is not imposed but discovered through dialogue.
In this model, the leader is both participant and catalyst — an integral node within a self-organizing field of intelligence.
Elastic Leadership, therefore, is the practice of sympoiesis applied to human performance: the continual act of making-with, learning-with, and becoming-with others.
The Future of “Making-With”
As technology reshapes connection and uncertainty defines the landscape, leaders face a profound choice: cling to the illusion of autonomy or embrace the evolution of sympoietic intelligence.
The future of leadership will not belong to those who stand above the system, but to those who move fluidly within it — those who understand that the strength of a system lies in the elasticity of its relationships.
Leadership of the future will not be about directing motion, but about conducting connection.
Conclusion
Sympoiesis reframes leadership as a living system, one that thrives through relationship, resonance, and reciprocity. It reminds us that no leader, no organization, no culture evolves alone.
In nature and in leadership alike, evolution is a duet, not a solo.
In the era of Elastic Leadership, our survival, and our significance, will depend not on how well we make ourselves, but on how well we make-with others.