The Inner Work of Systems Change

Why transformation, not just strategy, is a leadership competency

There’s a reason systems change work so often breaks our hearts—or burns us out. It’s because we were never meant to change systems without also changing ourselves.

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

Most of us probably entered leadership believing that transformation was a matter of vision, execution, and maybe a good logic model. But here’s the truth not many leaders get taught: systems resist transformation not only because of structural inertia—but because they are wired into our psyches, our identities, our trauma, and our fear.

In other words: systems live inside us and we are the ones resisting the change.

We say we want equity, but do we know how to hold power without domination?

We build cultures of belonging—but what happens when we’re the ones doing the excluding?

Consider a CEO who regularly speaks about equity and transformation. The organization uses all the right language—liberatory design, community voice, trauma-informed practice. On paper, it looks aligned with everything it says it values.

But inside the organization, a different story unfolds.

Staff who question whether the work is truly meeting the needs of clients—especially clients of color—are labeled as difficult or misaligned. Team members who challenge outdated practices or name inequities in decision-making are slowly sidelined. Invitations stop. Opportunities dry up. Some leave. Some are let go.

It’s not loud or hostile. It’s quiet.

But it’s still exclusion.

Unexamined beliefs about control, perfectionism, and professionalism—often formed early in life and reinforced by traditional leadership norms—are playing out in real time. The very patterns the organization claims to disrupt are being reenacted at the top.

This is the paradox of systems change: we can be deeply committed to transformation while unconsciously resisting it.

That’s why the inner work matters. Not as a side project or a self-care add-on—but as a central part of leadership. Because when we do not interrogate our own assumptions, our leadership—no matter how well-intended—can quietly replicate the very harm we’re trying to dismantle.

This is the inner work. It’s not something that can be fully addressed in a retreat day or a journal prompt. It’s a practice. A reckoning. Sometimes even a falling apart—so something truer can be built.

The system isn’t “out there.” It’s inside you.

Our leadership culture has long rewarded performance over presence, efficiency over empathy, strategy over soul. But systems change without inner work is very much like scaffolding on a shaky foundation. It will collapse—eventually, and often spectacularly.

Systems don’t just surround us—they live within us.

From the time we’re children, we begin forming unconscious assumptions about how the world works, who holds power, who is safe, what success looks like. These mental models—formed before we even had language to describe them—become deeply embedded.

That’s what makes them so hard to unlearn.

We inherit not just roles, but rules.
And when those invisible rules go unexamined, they show up as bias, rigidity, and resistance to change. Even when we want transformation, our inner wiring—shaped by early conditioning—can subtly push us back toward the familiarity of our comfort zones.

So when a system resists change, it’s not always just about budget, policy, or politics. Sometimes, it’s about our own belief systems. The narratives we absorbed before we ever stepped into leadership. We are the ones who keep the system resisting change.

That’s why the inner work matters.

So what does transformation look like in practice?

It looks like executive coaching that doesn't just ask "what's your goal?" but also "what's the story underneath your fear of change?" Lisa Lahey and Robert Keegan call this examination a Biography of an Assumption. Our big assumptions, typically have been living with us for a while, often without our realizing it.

It looks like teams that make space for collective reflection—not just data reviews. What is the team learning about its inner workings and what does each team member need to be a successful member of the team?

It looks like sabbaticals not as rewards, but as regenerative rituals for restoration and clarity. Even if the “sabbatical” is one day off to re-energize.

It looks like pausing—not as a luxury—but as a leadership skill and an expectation that we engage in this pause with no guilt.

And maybe most of all, it looks like embracing the wild, humbling, liberatory truth that we cannot transform systems without being transformed ourselves.

This is the work. And you're not meant to do it alone.

If this resonates, come sit with us over at Sabbaticalize—where we’re helping leaders do the courageous inner work that sustains outer change.

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