The underground network
What leadership can learn from mycorrhizal systems.
In the hush of a forest floor, far below the surface, a complex, intelligent system thrives - weaving fungi and roots into vast, cooperative networks that feed, warn, protect, and regenerate the entire ecosystem. It’s called the mycorrhizal network, often dubbed the “Wood Wide Web.” And it turns out, the most effective leaders today have more in common with these fungal superstructures than they do with command-and-control hierarchies of the past.
At DISCO, we believe future-ready leadership isn’t about being at the top of the tree. It’s about being part of the network that sustains the forest. Here's why.
Mycorrhizal leadership: interconnected, adaptive, regenerative
1. Networks Over Hierarchies
Just like fungi connect trees underground, complexity leaders thrive by connecting people, departments, and systems. They’re not the tallest trees shouting directions, they’re the connective tissue ensuring information, nutrients (resources), and warning signals flow where they’re needed most.
This aligns beautifully with complexity leadership theory, which sees leadership as an emergent property of interconnected human systems, not just an individual trait. The DISCO approach helps organisations design leadership as a system, not a person.
2. Symbiosis, not extraction
Mycorrhizal fungi don’t control trees, they partner with them. Trees provide carbohydrates; fungi return minerals and water. It’s a mutual benefit.
In the same way, leaders in flourishing organisations co-create value with their teams. They don’t extract productivity, they nurture conditions for thriving, psychological safety, and purpose. Flourishing leaders learn to align meaning, well-being, and impact as a regenerative force.
3. Sensing and signalling
When pests or drought threaten one part of the forest, mycorrhizal networks transmit warning signals across vast distances. This gives others time to adapt, increasing resilience.
Complexity leaders do the same. They sense shifts (technological, social, ecological) early and help organisations adapt before disruption hits. As Heifetz and Linsky put it, adaptive leadership is the art of mobilising people to thrive in a changing environment. Preserving what’s essential, shedding what’s not, and evolving the system to handle greater complexity.
4. Support for the vulnerable
In a healthy mycorrhizal system, stronger trees often share nutrients with weaker or younger ones, especially during times of stress.
This mirrors the flourishing skill of ethical leadership and relational intelligence, where leaders actively support those who may be struggling - across power dynamics, life stages, or cultural contexts. It’s about stewardship, not status.
From forests to boardrooms: applying the analogy
How might this reframe our leadership development, especially in public institutions or legacy-heavy industries like utilities, health, or education?
Here’s how the mycorrhizal metaphor can inspire real organisational practice:
Leadership development becomes less about “training the top” and more about weaving relational coherence across the system.
Strategic alignment shifts from rigid top-down plans to emergent coherence across structures, culture, and capability (coherence over compliance).
Transformation is no longer a war cry of urgency, but a “slow-change” stabilisation strategy that values grounding, flourishing, and trust before disruption.
Final spores of thought
In the coming decade, leaders will need to act more like ecosystems and less like executives. They will need to listen to the signals in the soil (the data, the people, the planet) and respond not with authority, but with adaptive generosity.
Flourishing, like fungi, spreads best in connected, moist, well-fed ground. The question isn’t: how do we lead the future?
It’s: how do we lead like the future’s already here… quietly weaving something regenerative beneath the surface?
Interested in building a mycorrhizal-inspired leadership system in your organisation?
Let’s grow together (contact us).