• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Polycentric Leadership

Collaborative, communal leadership empowering multiple centers of influence

  • About
  • Traits
    • Charismatic
    • Collaborative
    • Communal
    • Relational
    • Entrepreneurial
    • Diverse
  • Articles
  • Resources
    • Case Studies
    • Video
    • White Papers
  • Book
    • Press Release
    • Author Announcement
    • Endorsements
    • Book Reviews
  • Requests

leadership

Polycentric Leadership / 13-June-2025

Embracing Polycentric Leadership: A Biblical Alternative to Hierarchy

GUEST POST BY BOB WILSON For much of its history, the church has largely disregarded Jesus’ teaching in Luke 22:24-30 to lead differently from the Gentiles. Instead, it has “established and embraced the leadership models of ‘the Gentiles’”, leading to church history being “replete with examples of leaders actively accumulating, protecting, and abusing power, frequently […]

Unilever graphic

Polycentric Leadership / 9-June-2025

Unilever: Leading Globally, Empowering Locally

Case Study Executive Summary By the late 2000s, Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, faced growing complexity across its operations in over 190 countries. Under the leadership of CEO Paul Polman (2009–2019), Unilever embraced a polycentric leadership model, empowering regional hubs while advancing a unified purpose: “Making sustainable living commonplace.” This case […]

Group Planning and Partnership

Polycentric Leadership / 6-June-2025

Reimagining Missions: Paradigms Paths & Partnerships

GUEST POST / CASE STUDY BY KIRK FRANKLIN Facing momentous change, missional leaders and practitioners face daunting complexities and remarkable new opportunities. Long-held patterns of sending and receiving are giving way to vibrant, interdependent, collaborative efforts spanning languages, cultures, contexts and continents. Instead of relying solely on inherited structures or leadership models of a bygone […]

Polycentric Leadership / 1-December-2023

Polycentric Christian Mission and Ministry: An Introduction: From Everyone to Everywhere

A PCL whitepaper by Graham Joseph Hill: Polycentric Christian Mission and Ministry: An Introduction: From Everyone to Everywhere

Polycentric Leadership / 11-October-2023

Leadership, Hierarchy, and Resilience

GUEST POST BY DR. KATHY ALLEN I have been reading the resilience literature to create a simple framework that would be easy to grasp while providing a directional heading for our organizations and ourselves. This is the first of a series of blogs that reflect this theme — building resilience in our systems.

Polycentric Leadership / 27-March-2023

View from the shared ‘top’: A case study in leading as a team

Anonymous case study In 2017 our organization decided to go from a single International Director to an International Director team. There were lots of questions about whether this would work. No one knew of a good example of this at a top level of an organization. In fact, one leader that we suggested the idea […]

Polycentric Leadership / 3-September-2021

Polycentrism in the Missio Dei

Kirk Franklin1, Nelus Niemandt1 Structures for mission have been under review as a result of many factors. In particular have been the widening influences of globalisation, and to a lesser degree, glocalisation. Various models of leadership praxis and structures have been proposed along the way. As Christianity moved farther away from the Christendom model of […]

Polycentric Leadership / 2-September-2021

A Case Study: A Journey of Leading in Polycentric Theory and Practice in Mission

by Kirk FranklinOCMS, UK Abstract Leadership and governance structures for any organisations involved in God’s mission need to come under review because of the growing influences of the interconnected globalised world. As Christianity moved farther away from the Christendom model of centralised control to other models of leadership and governance, other paradigms have been proposed […]

Polycentric Leadership / 1-September-2021

A Case Study in Polycentric Leadership Structure for a Movement

R. Elliott Snuggs This case study is taken from an article titled “How Movements Organize” written by R. Elliott Snuggs. The article helps modalities and sodalities understand themselves as movements rather than organizations. It was written for the Asian Access movement and is adapted here to understand movement structure in relationship to polycentric leadership Core-Network-Cloud: […]

Polycentric Leadership / 12-August-2021

Accelerating the Great Commission

Where Do We Need More Research? GUEST POST BY JOSH LAXTON This is part of an article series I wrote with Ed Stetzer. Question 4: Where is further research needed to accelerate the Great Commission?  We live in a world that’s always conducting research. Because we are bombarded by various kinds of research every day, […]

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Discover Polycentric Leadership…

Check out Polycentric Mission Leadership for an innovative look into the 21st-century mission vision. Available for purchase at Regnum Books, Amazon and Barnes & …

Read more... about Book

Recent Posts

  • Embracing Polycentric Leadership: A Biblical Alternative to Hierarchy
  • Translocal Futures: Michel Bauwens and the Polycentric Transformation of Governance
  • Unilever: Leading Globally, Empowering Locally
  • Rethinking Leadership for Wicked Problems
  • Reimagining Missions: Paradigms Paths & Partnerships
  • A Movemental Turn in Missions: Thoughts on New Eras and New Wineskins
  • From Hierarchies to Haier-archies: The Return of Internal Ecology Management as a Form of Agility and Decentralization
  • Who’s at the Table?
  • Gospel Impact Networks
  • Recommendations for Mission Practice

Categories

  • Book Reviews
  • Case Studies
  • Charismatic
  • Collaborative
  • Communal
  • Diverse
  • Endorsements
  • Entrepreneurial
  • Guest Post
  • Introduction to PCL
  • PCL Traits
  • Relational
  • Video
  • White Papers

Popular Topics

A3 Allen Yeh Asia book book review case studies case study charismatic christian leadership church collaboration collaborative DAO decentrailization Decentralising leadership decentralization definition diverse Elliott Snuggs EMQ global hierarchy Joseph Handley Kirk Franklin Lausanne Lausanne Movement leadership leadership model leadership principles management Mary Lederleitner missiology mission MissioNexus Noel Becchetti partnership polycentric Polycentric Leadership Stanley McChrystal Takeshi Takazawa teams Ted Esler video web 3.0 World Evangelical Alliance

Continue the Discussion

Let’s talk further. Feel free to connect with me on social media or via email. You can find out more here… 

  • •  Joe Handley’s blog
  • •  Joe Handley’s bio

Press Kit

  • Bio
  • Images & Logos
  • Interview Requests
  • Link Tree
  • About the Book
  • Order Book

Stay Updated

Get new posts by email...

Footer

Follow PCL

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
Post on X
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Share
YouTube
YouTube
Set Youtube Channel ID
Instagram

Search

Copyright © 2020–2025 Polycentric Leadership · Design by HCS · Log in

  • About
  • Articles
  • Book
  • Resources
  • Privacy
  • Contact