Connected Leadership

At the Yale Center for Business and Environent, Peter Boyd frames this leadership course around a framework he calls “Connected Leadership”, designed to move beyond traditional hierarchical leadership models and emphasise connection — connection to purpose, to people/teams, and to larger systems. This live Chronicles interview will cover the key basics of this technique for a live audience.

Here are the main structural components and principles:

1. Four “P”s: Purpose • Priorities • Potential • Progress

A central organising idea is the set of four “P”s: Purpose, Priorities, Potential, Progress. These are meant to be connected and aligned at the individual, team and system level. 

Purpose: discovering and clarifying what matters most to you or your organisation. 

Priorities: what you will pay attention to & focus on given that purpose. 

Potential: visualising what success or impact could look like. 

Progress: holding yourself accountable, tracking movement toward that potential. 

2. Multi-level scaffold: Self → Team → System

The course is structured so you start at the individual (‘self’) level, then move to how you operate in and lead teams, and finally how you engage with broader systems (organisations, institutions, societies). 

At the Self level: reflect on your own purpose, strengths, time-use, energy, priorities. 

At the Team level: apply similar ideas to how a team defines its mission, values, aligns around purpose, priorities, potential, progress.

At the System level: shift to system-thinking, identify a systemic challenge and deploy leadership for change at that level. 

3. Connectedness and systems thinking

The concept emphasises being “connected” — to your purpose, your team, the systems you inhabit and/or aim to change. 

Systems thinking is a key part of the latter modules: understanding that leadership isn’t only about direct control, but about influencing interconnected systems, stakeholders, feedback loops.