Clearly there is a hell of a lot going on for organisations of any shape and size. Not just volatility across markets, but also immense change within the workplace – hybrid ways of working, the desire for more meaning and purpose through work, the quest for agility, entrepreneurialism and self-management and distributed decision-making.
It’s to this transformative business landscape that The Future Fit Leadership Academy’s founder, Giles Hutchins, and specialist employment law firm Ramsay Paterson’s co-founder, Stephanie Paterson, come together to co-create a practical Reflection Tool aimed at helping leaders engage in reflection, dialogue and exploration for enabling thriving future-fit organizational cultures. The tool is provided as a thought provoker by offering a set of reflective questions that invite contemplation and discussion about where your organisation is on its regenerative journey towards a more agile, developmental and adult-adult culture.
The story of this co-creation between Giles and Stephanie started a few years ago now, when our paths first crossed back in 2016, shortly after Giles published his third book Future Fit, whereupon he was invited to give a keynote about his work on future-fit organizational development at a CIPD conference for about two hundred HR professionals. Stephanie was collaborating with a client to host a workshop on ‘Doing thing differently – can we find another way?’.
We both fondly recall meeting up for coffee in a café in Clifton, Bristol, where we passionately exchanged ideas about the future of business, purposeful and conscious workplaces, developmental cultures and self-managing systems. Back then, there was a real buzz around the ‘new world of work’, what self-management meant for people, teams and organizations, and how digital/hybrid ways of working were challenging the norm.
We shared a flurry of emails after our café meeting, while our respective businesses grew. Then Giles re-located from the south-west to Sussex and set up his international leadership centre at Springwood Farm, to be closer to London and international clients (direct links to Gatwick & Heathrow airport and Kings Cross International station). And COVID hit.
Then a mutual client re-ignited our conversations, and we picked-up our thread earlier this year, and started to spark ideas again, while Giles was finishing off his latest (now fifth) book Leading by Nature. We explored updating the Future-Fit health-check that was in his earlier book Future Fit with a refreshed and reflective style as we felt clients so often need something that helps them pause, reflect and question how their organisations are doing, particularly amid these frantic times. This Reflective Tool we have co-created helps leaders ask the vital question ‘Where are you on your regenerative journey, towards truly thriving as an organisation?’
We envisage this tool being used most usefully in bite-sized chunks, focusing on each section at a time, to enable meaningful and intentional reflection. As a starting point, the tool might be used by the CEO or the Director of HR/People, for individual reflection. We then intend these initial reflections to be further explored through dialogue within one or more small groups, perhaps across the business to get a broader perspective. This in turn will help focus the business on the areas which require attention to ensure vibrancy and future-fitness is embedded into the organization during these ever-changing climes.
The questions provided in the sections below offer a framework for reflection – what we call a ‘Reflection Practice’ that can act as a catalyst for:
1) intentional self-reflection,
2) dialogue with others,
3) planning organisational change.
You might wish to think of this Reflection Practice as a three-step flow: 1st take some time out to pause and reflect on these questions, seeing what comes up for you, 2nd share the Reflection Practice with others and dialogue together, and see what themes emerge, 3rd start to hone-in on areas for potential change that can help your organisation adapt and evolve toward a more regenerative and developmental culture
Section 1 – Organisational Purpose: Often we come to think of profit as a prime-mover, but it’s not. The purpose of the business is its ‘reason for being’. Think of profit as the air we breathe – we need it to exist, yet breathing is not our reason for being. Likewise for the organisation, it has a purpose beyond hitting the numbers, a reason for being that galvanises and coheres the organisation amid volatile fast-moving climates.
Section 2 – Values & Culture: If the purpose is your organisation’s ‘why’, think of its culture & values as the ‘way’ – the way people behave while delivering the purpose. Values and culture guide the organisation and its people as they go about their business day to day.
Section 3 – Decision Making: The day-to-day decision-making processes and protocols greatly influence both the tactical and strategic vitality of the organisation.
Section 4 – Collaboration & Innovation: In this fast-paced ever-changing business environment the ability to innovate and collaborate across teams and also between organisations greatly influences the future-fitness of the organisation.
Section 5 – Interpersonal Relationships & Tension Transformation: The organisation is made up of complex processes of human relating. The capacity to work with tensions and transform mis-understandings or differences into creative potential, helps the organisation continuously learn, adapt and evolve.
Section 6 – Working Environments: Over the last couple of years, hybrid working and the capacity to embrace different working requirements has created a new world of work.
Section 7 – Leadership Mindset: The way we show up as leaders has a great effect on those around us and the overall vitality of the living organisation. Ways of leading that are incongruent with the organisation’s values and ethos can undermine trust and disempower people, greatly affecting organisational future-fitness.
You can download the Reflection Tool here for free – we hope you enjoy using it – and you can find a host of other useful tools and practices related to Giles Hutchins latest book Leading by Nature – The Process of Becoming A Regenerative Leader here: https://gileshutchins.com/content/
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner, author, speaker and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organisational and leadership consciousness drawing on regeneration principles.
Stephanie Paterson is an experienced employment lawyer, who takes a human focussed and more holistic approach to employment law advice, working with organisations in a purpose and values driven context.
join the LinkedIn group if you have not already:
Leading by Nature – A radical new handbook for regenerative leadership from business transformation strategist, author, speaker and leadership advisor, Giles Hutchins
“A truly exceptional and timely book that redefines the locus of power in relationship to leadership; leadership that seeks harmony and alignment with nature. Giles reminds us to bring awareness/presence to everything that unfolds. This book is the teacher we all need.” Sue Cheshire, Founder and former CEO of The Global Leaders Academy
Climate change, Covid and conflict have resulted in an increasingly dispersed multi-generational workforce that is crying out for meaning and belonging. The unrelenting pace of these leadership challenges is demanding an evolution in organizational thinking in response.
Giles Hutchins latest book Leading by Nature goes right to the heart of this approach, informed by the regenerative systems in the natural world to inspire practices, tools and techniques that will help us lead organizations capable of transforming and thriving in a fast-emerging future.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for regenerative leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.” Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
Rampant inequality, structural racism, the climate emergency, the COVID crisis, and conflicts such as Ukraine, all share an underlying root which, when dealt with, can improve the health of our organisations, society and wider fabric of life on Earth. This underlying common root – the Mother of all our problems – is human consciousness.
The former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, was spot on when he said in his address to US Congress that, ‘Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed, whether it be ecological, social or a general breakdown of civilization, will be unavoidable.’
In the same vein, systems scientist Donella Meadows researched system interventions, and observed that the highest leverage point at which to intervene in a system is the mind-set/consciousness/worldview out of which the system arises.
And yet how much of our activities on ESG, circular economics, social inequality, sustainable business, wellbeing at work, and such like actually enable a shift in consciousness?
Unless we address today’s dominant yet out-dated worldview and the leadership logic that flows from it, then all our best endeavours for new ways of working and more sustainable, ethical and inclusive business models will be short-lived.
“Leading by Nature gets to the heart of the shift in leadership that is now required to create a sustainable future for humanity.” – Richard Barrett, Director of the Barrett Academy for the Advancement of Human Values.
Leading by Nature is a fundamental departure from the traditional mechanistic management theory that much of today’s mainstream leadership and organizational development (L&OD) is rooted in. Instead this living-systems approach takes its insight from the way life works, and perceives our organisations as living-systems full of complex processes of human relating. By unlocking self-and-system consciousness within us as leaders, we can better sense and respond to dynamics at play across the organization-as-living-system, enabling future-fitness amid these volatile and metamorphic times.
Machine Worldview Living-Systems Worldview
Dominator culture > Partnership culture
Parent-child > Adult-adult
Control-manage > Sense-respond
Disempowering > Empowering
Unnatural > Natural
Life-denying > Life-affirming
“I love this book and it is one to go back to time and again to full appreciate its inherent wisdom, directing us into Leading By Nature not as a destination but as a path well-travelled. Drawing its insights from many fields, including Appreciative Inquiry, Adult Development, Systemic and cutting-edge Organizational thinking, Jung and his collective unconscious along with Eastern philosophies – it challenges us to move from a constraining, mechanistic approach. How exciting and thank goodness!” – Eve Turner, Chair, APECS, co-founder Climate Coaching Alliance, author Ecological and Climate-Conscious Coaching – A Companion Guide to Evolving Coaching Practice.
“Leading by Nature is a powerful book for people who are serious about regenerative change, people who recognize that outer transformations grow from inner transformations, and understand that adopting techniques without understanding their scientific and philosophical foundations is a trap. Giles lays out a pathway that both guides and educates in what Ursula Le Guinn called the critical work of relearning our being in the world.” – Pamela Mang, co-founder of Regenesis Institute & co-author of Regenerative Development and Design
The time has come to get radical and deal with the root problem, the very way in which we engage with reality.
Author of four previous books, Giles Hutchins, draws upon over 25 years experience in leadership and organizational development, and over 10 years of executive leadership coaching and regenerative leadership practice to apply an approach to next-stage future-fit business. This is a must-read for leaders interested in leading thriving organizations amid the increasingly volatile times ahead.
You can purchase the book either direct from the publishers Wordzworth or from Amazon and other channels.
You can also listen to the podcast series where Giles Hutchins interviews CEOs of pioneering organizations pushing the envelope toward life-affirming regenerative business, here at Leading by Nature.
Giles Hutchins is an author, speaker, business transformation leader and CEO coach. He has written 5 books on regenerative leadership and how organisations can learn from nature to become more resilient and future-fit. He is a senior advisor for a number of leading organisations and business schools on the future of business, and has worked in organisational change for over 25 years. His international practice is anchored at Springwood Farm amid ancient woodland in Sussex, UK. His latest book is Leading by Nature.
Feel free to join the LinkedIn group Leadership Immersions if you have not already:
It’s a fascinating yet challenging time to be a leader. We are in the midst of an old system dying and a new one being born, all amid unceasing transformation – change upon change upon change is the new-norm. Yet as the genius Einstein knew, when we look deep in to nature we understand everything better; we see with new eyes and bring a different quality of consciousness to the solutions than that which created the problems in the first place.
Through over a decade of working on regenerative leadership and nature-based coaching, I have developed a range of practices, coaching-frames and processes that aid the journey of becoming a next-stage future-fit leader.
On 17th June, I will host a special nature-based leadership immersion providing an embodied experience of what it means to become a Regenerative Leader and the magical Springwood Farm, West Sussex, – direct trains from London to Three Bridges station.
The Immersion – Logistics:
9.30am Arrivals – refreshments upon arrival. Workshop commences at 9.45am
4.15pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ .
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for no later than 9.15am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £400 – To confirm your place email giles@ffla.co
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, you will be sent some preparatory material and guidance. Another email will also be sent near the immersion with further information.
What can you hope to gain from the experience: You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire day. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- An embodied experience of regenerative leadership
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Consciousness-raising practices and modalities
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of Giles Hutchins yet-to-be-released Leading by Nature book
- Organic lunch and refreshments throughout the day
Some quotes from previous open-day immersion workshops at Springwood with Giles:
‘The nature immersion workshop with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘What an inspiring day in the woods Giles, a great balance of talking, contemplation, meditation, being in nature – Thank you so very much!’ –Participant, CEO of non-profit organization
“In these challenging times, Giles offers those of us in the ‘business as usual’ world both hope and the opportunity for deep connection with nature, spirit and ourselves. I highly recommend joining Giles for one of his immersion journeys of reconnection for a beautiful perspective on how we might do business differently and better.” – Will Adeney, Management Consultant & Nature Connection Mentor
‘Your immersion into nature opened our minds, opened our souls, to deeply connect with our place and purpose in life. With love and deep appreciation for your inspiration.’ – Sue Cheshire, Founder of the Global Leaders Academy
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO of Pulse Brands
After 14 months of lockdown, I joined Giles and others on a day-long ‘Leadership Immersion’ at Giles’ magical and awe-inspiring 60 acre ancient woodland in West Sussex. Having read his last book – Regenerative Leadership, I had high expectations. They were surpassed, magnificently.
Giles took us on a journey that saw complete strangers enter into a state of connection, high trust and intimacy – in a matter of hours. We emerged nourished, energised, connected, centred and better equipped to deal with the challenges of life in the early ‘20s. For those seeking answers around their personal and professional development – I can’t recommend Giles and his work highly enough. – Richard Tyre, CEO of Good People
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres in total, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://www.leadershipimmersions.com/gallery
About Giles Hutchins:
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016) and Regenerative Leadership (2019). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership center at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership, and guest lectures at international business schools. He blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org
The 17th June is a one-off open programme for 2022, and places are limited. Email giles@ffla.co if you wish to book a place.
In to the Woods
As the Spring Equinox beckons in longer days and winter falls away for another year, I thought I’d share this lovely article written by writer Mark Hooper who came to explore and write about my leadership immersions at Springwood Farm, for Hole & Corner magazine’s 2022 edition, and in partnership with the natural lifestyle and barefoot living brand Vivobarefoot
From his own Sussex wood, Giles Hutchins is using nature to show businesses a more regenerative way to flourish and grow…
Following nature’s lead, suggests Hutchins, allows us to develop more responsive ecosystems within business, and allows companies to evolve, adapt and flourish
Hutchins is respected author, executive coach, keynote speaker, and TED-talker who has developed a consciousness-shifting coaching-based concept of ‘regenerative leadership’. Formerly a Director with KPMG Consulting, as well as Global Head of Sustainability Solutions for the multinational company Atos Origin, he has developed a radical approach to business by offering on-site and virtual leadership coaching experiences that are immersive in the truest sense.
Hole & Corner heard about his work through Galahad Clark, co-founder and CEO of the footwear brand, Vivobarefoot. Clark mentioned that he was working with Hutchins to help grow the roots of his brand and to deepen the connections of his team to nature, and to the wider world. Clark was so impressed by Hutchins’ ideas around transforming business models to make them more in tune with nature and the planet and less motivated simply by profit and growth that they have started working together.
‘The only excuse for creating more stuff in the world is if products help us connect more closely with nature, help us be more healthy and ‘human’ and or help address important ethical or environmental issues,’ said Clark. ‘But by 2019 while we were making great progress in the way we made shoes, something didn’t feel right in the hierarchy of the organisation. So, as we came out of the woods in business terms, we went back into the woods with our people.’ Over 100 members of the Vivo team have spent time in Springwood in the past year. Intrigued, we arranged a walk in the woods with Hutchins to find out more.
Having bought Springwood Farm near Haywards Health, just before the Covid pandemic struck, Hutchins has tapped into something that all of us discovered in some degree during the global lockdown: the restorative power of nature.
Walking through the woods, there is an overwhelming sense of serenity, solitude and calm. At one point, as we step into an atrium like space under the shade of a canopy of trees, the temperature noticeably drops, producing a physical chill that literally sends a shiver down the spine. Hutchins grins as he spots my reaction. It’s a deliberate, dramatic demonstration of the power of nature – and of our connection to it.
Hutchins uses the trees themselves to explain his theories – sometimes through metaphor, but often going deeper than that, showing how we are a part of the nature that surrounds us, bound by the same laws and processes. As companies are beginning to finally understand and fully take on board the need for sustainability, so he is trying to help them to realise that any meaningful change has to be internal as well as outward-facing.
‘To start off, I was quite selective and only wanted to work with companies that I felt were already on this journey,’ he says. ‘But now I realise you have to work with everyone. It’s about changing our mindset by deepening our consciousness.’
Key to Hutchins’ theory is that companies tend to adopt what he describes as a ‘mechanistic’ approach – an unwieldy, top-down structure that compartmentalises individuals and activities in silos. This hierarchical system makes things easier to control, but it comes with a massive downside.
‘It objectifies things and splits us off,’ he explains. ‘Often when companies talk about “purpose”, it’s some brand mission statement.’ It has the effect of de-humanising the people the company relies on – treating them as mere ‘resources’, when in fact they should all be seen as vital – and equally important – parts of a greater ecosystem. ‘It’s quite fragile, it’s not very creative, it’s disempowering, and you can’t adapt. It should be about asking, how are people showing up in the workplace?’
This is where the woodland metaphor takes root. Studies have shown how a complex system of mycelium in the soil helps trees to share resources – a symbiotic relationship that allows different organisms to thrive rather than working in competition. Similarly, Hutchins suggests we need to develop more responsive ecosystems within business organisations, allowing the individuals and the company as a whole to evolve, adapt and ultimately flourish.
All of which is great in terms of theory – but Hutchins’ mission is to demonstrate these ideas by helping us get back to nature in the purest sense. It’s often an emotional experience and one that resonates deeply. He talks of CEOs with tears in their eyes. And in explaining how businesses can be run better, the focus often shifts to how we can become better people.
At another clearing, Hutchins takes me to a length of rope coiled into a simple figure-of-eight shape, and encourages me to walk along it, thinking about anything – work, relationships, life – as he explains how it mirrors the natural cycle of the seasons. As we follow a curve representing spring turning into summer, he suggests that we have become too hung up on thinking that the paths of our lives, as well as business, should always be about following an upward trajectory – chasing a need for everything to constantly improve, always wanting more. But this isn’t how nature works. Instead, the curve leads us back downwards, as nature and then winter take hold. Typically, these are seen as negative stages in business or personal growth: a time shrinking, where we are less productive or efficient; and consequently something to be avoided.
But trees don’t avoid winter. It’s just another stage in the process – where leaves are shed, providing nourishment for the soil, helping new shoots to form during the rebirth of spring. Equally, this can be a daunting time, where we face new challenges in terms of growth.
Hutchins lets me walk the route at my own pace in silence, and it’s a genuinely moving experience – the realisation that the process of letting go (‘letting your leaves fall’) is an important step for all of us.
The setting helps of course. As the pathways and clearings lead us through subtly different environments, we are frequently confronted with deer, stags, muntjacs and other woodland creatures – who stand momentarily startled, before crashing back through the undergrowth. ‘I don’t want to talk too much about the auspiciousness of different species, because it can sound too shamanic,’ says Hutchins, ‘But often interesting things happen while we’re walking. Just this morning, a gentleman was sitting by the lake, sharing something quite insightful that he was just beginning to reveal, when a kingfisher flew straight past. That felt really special.’
I get a sense from Hutchins that the actual process of path making was a restorative one for him – sometimes finding and expanding natural holloways and clearings, other times finding the path of least resistance.
As we walk, Hutchins points out the surface underfoot – a raised, chipped wood carpet (created from the trees cut to create the path), often laid over a base of wooden stakes – and you get a sense of the sheer effort that has been put into Springwood.
He stops and grabs a handful of soil, and says, ‘There are more organisms in that than there are human beings on the entire planet. So it’s about making people aware that they are in life: and that life is continuously interrelated.’
He elucidates this thought by talking about the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ aspect of our lives. For any organisation, there is an ‘inner’ culture – its way of being and values – a well as an ‘outer’ strategy, which can by anything from the supply-chain to customer and stakeholder relationships. The key, he suggests, is to create a balance or coherence between these two aspects. ‘It’s not just external – the way the company is showing itself to the external world, through its products or its relationships. It’s also internal. We work with a lot of people who have a great sense of purpose, but they need to change the culture.’
This equally applies to the individual, and much of Hutchins’ coaching centres around helping leaders to understand their ‘inner’ nature, giving them greater authenticity and purpose, and their ‘outer’ relationship with the environment, helping their personnel to trust each other and thrive.
‘I take them on a bit of a journey around regenerative leadership,’ he says. ‘Asking them what does wellbeing mean to them, and helping them to move to an adult-adult ecosystem rather than a parent-child one.’
For example, his ongoing work with Vivobarefoot. ‘I’ve worked with Galahad Clark, coaching him one-on-one,’ explains Hutchins. ‘But then we’ve also had the leadership team coming here, having meetings, sleeping overnight, and then we had the whole organisation coming through in these pods, where people from different parts of the organisation come together and have a connection. We’ve also had webinars with them, talking through the book, Regenerative Leadership. It’s all about using that as a text to help them to become a more regenerative culture. So that’s been more inward, but I’ve also touched on how we can help them in terms of educating people, so it’s not just about the product, it’s about creating communities around wellbeing.’
For Clark, the work is only just beginning, but already he has noticed a significant change in the way his business is organised, a shift, he says, ‘to networked communities that collaborate across the system, foster entrepreneurialism and nurture the barefoot/regenerative culture’.
Hutchins is the best advert for all of this: he has an air about him of quiet satisfaction: a man who has found his calling, hewn from these beautiful woods. If you build it, they will come.
Thank you to Galahad Clark, Vivobarefoot, Mark Hooper and Hole & Corner for this lovely article that has managed to capture some of the essence of the nature-inspired regenerative leadership coaching I take leaders on both in-person at Springwood and also on-line through bespoke programs of leadership and organizational transformation.
Hole& Corner magazine is published biannually, dedicated to stories of craft, beauty, passion and skill. It is distributed internationally, with stockists including Do You Read Me ?! in Berlin, Athenaeum Niewscentrum in Amsterdam and 300 Barnes & Noble stores in the US.
I love Hole & Corner – there is a tranquility to all the subjects it specialises in that is very much needed.
– Sir Paul Smith
If interested in attending an immersion, there is a special one-off open programme immersion at Springwood Farm on Friday 17th June this summer. Places are limited – you can email Giles at giles@ffla.co or through the Leadership Immersions website
For more on Giles Hutchins’ work, visit his website here
Leading By Nature
Earlier in October, before we launched our new communications agency Wilful, the leadership team went for a walk in the woods with author and regenerative leadership business coach, Giles Hutchins. Just before the pandemic took hold, Giles moved his family and his practice to Springwood, 60 acres of ancient woodland in Sussex. Despite the challenges of launching a venture in the midst of COVID, hundreds of people have already experienced the inspiring and restorative power of time spent reflecting on leading regeneratively whilst walking in Springwood’s glorious setting.
Giles uses the serenity of the woods, focusing parts of the walk on specific trees to help people let go of their day-to-day work stresses to reflect on the way nature organises and manages things. We talked about how trees can sense when we are there through vibrations in the ground; how they share resources with other species through mycelium in the soil and how nature has evolved symbiotic relationships that create conditions for different organisms to thrive simultaneously by working with, rather than against each other.
Reaching a clearing, and sitting around an open air fire, we were asked to think about how the old mind-set of leadership and organisational development is no longer serving us well. It’s mechanistic, top down, silo’ed approach compartmentalises activities and relationships in an effort to make things easier to control. Organisations are treated like machines, Giles contends, with people classified as ‘human resources’ alongside other inputs like capital and energy.
In this way of thinking, value and success have been measured narrowly on growth and profit which can lead to poor decision making when it comes to externalities like the environment and fairness. This mind-set has contributed to the stress we face today in the workplace where there are still too many inflexible, unsustainable and ultimately fragile organisations.
Giles proposes instead that we adopt the logic of life, a timeless ethos which takes its inspiration from nature. By recognising that our organisations are complex, relational systems (rather than machines) we can start to create conditions for the ecosystem to flourish, adapt and evolve. Organisations need to balance the needs of stakeholders rather than species, but the goal remains resilient, sustainable living systems.
Nature is regenerative, we need our organisations and systems to learn from the natural world because we only have the resources of one planet. What do we mean by ‘regenerative’? To work the way life works, creating conditions that allow life (and all stakeholders) to thrive. Giles has called this approach to regenerative leadership, Leading by Nature and explains that it has two dimensions:
For the leader – the ‘inner’ is connecting to our true nature within; tapping into our essence so we lead with authenticity, coherence and purposefulness. The ‘outer’ is about harmony with nature, creating generative spaces where trust, responsiveness and developmental learning thrive. This inner-outer coherence allows us to create regenerative potential in others.
For the organisation – the ‘inner’ is the culture, values, meeting conventions and decision-making protocols that pervade the organisation’s way of being. Creating a more agile, adult-adult, diverse and inclusive way of working unlocks potential. The ‘outer’ is the strategy, customer value propositions, supply-chain and wider stakeholder relationships that drive how the organisation shows-up in the world. Reaching beyond ‘sustainability’ into ‘regenerative business’ we help stakeholders (including society and the environment) flourish through the products, services, experiences and communities the organisation facilitates.
To summarise: Leading by Nature taps into nature’s wisdom by shifting from a mechanistic mind-set into a regenerative mind-set that enables individuals, teams, organisations and our stakeholders to flow, adapt and evolve in these volatile times. Interested? You can read more about Giles’ thinking Here.
This article was written by Narda Shirley Co-CEO of Wilful.
About Wilful
Wilful is a new kind of communications agency that works at the intersection of innovation and sustainability to amplify the ideas solving the world’s biggest problems. The Wilful team is on a mission to help clients in the transition to a low carbon, regenerative economy.
Wilful’s task force approach blends disciplines to deliver an agile and adaptable client service drawing on the expertise of two well established agencies with a complementary focus: Cherish with its track record of working with mass market digital disruptors and Gong with its focus on corporate and B2B, often in sustainable development.
Headquartered in London, Wilful has a global network of partners: in Africa it is anchored by Gong’s business in Kenya and in Europe and the US it is represented by Over There, the group of independent agencies that Cherish co-founded.
To find out more, visit www.thewilful.com
For more on Giles’s Leadership Immersions in Nature, visit https://www.leadershipimmersions.com/
You can listen to a recent podcast by the World of Wisdom with Giles Hutchins
If you wish, you can also join the LinkedIn Community Leadership Immersions
Why Regenerative Leadership has to be the new norm in business? by Giles Hutchins & Laura Storm
There is no doubt. We are living in a time marked by great upheaval and change, where the breakdown of global systems has become impossible to ignore. Leaders – both political and business – are being forced to cope with rising challenges: pandemics; resource scarcity; high levels of stress in the work place; unpredictable, frequent and disruptive innovations; rampant social inequality; constant competition for top talent; increasing volatility and changing stakeholder expectations; rapid digitization and globalization; mass migrations and refugee populations; fragile supply chains; mounting social tensions; political extremism…The list goes on but you get the picture.
On top of all this, the climate of our planet is changing faster than expected, putting additional critical pressure on all our systems. Our biosphere is collapsing with up to 1000 species going extinct every day.
We have created production systems that are based on a linear, take-make-waste approach focused on immediacy and dehumanization. We have created financial systems based on short-term profit maximization that ignore life and debase human integrity. Our organizational systems are dominated by hyper-competition, power-and-control hierarchies, and rising stress. In our current environment, the few benefit at the expense of the many.
The old systems and structures of a post-industrial hyper-consumerist culture are slowly breaking down. The old ways cannot go on, and through this breakdown, we are witnessing pioneers all over the world birthing the conditions for a new way. These pioneers believe there is a better way – to live and do business. They are rebuilding systems and structures and instilling new business practices that actually contribute to life on Earth rather than destroying it.
For years we have been studying these pioneers, worked with them and witnessed how they impressively through every little action are carving out news ways of doing business, of leading and of living. A new paradigm, not only for business but for life on Earth, is being born these years. What these pioneers have in common is how they focus on ensuring their organisations have both an ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ regenerative approach. The ‘inner’ being culture – everything from meetings, feedback, conversations, decision-making, self-managing approaches, adult-adult relations, diversity and inclusion and wellbeing. The ‘outer’ being value propositions – everything from products, services, stakeholder-relations, product design, supply chain, etc. For a business to be on the regenerative journey it ought be attending to both the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dimensions so that all aspects of its business seek life-affirming futures that enable the employees, the stakeholders and wider society and the environment to thrive.
What does regenerative mean? Is it the same as sustainability?
We were running Regenerative Leadership retreats and workshops many years ago when seldom folk had even heard of ‘regenerative business’. Now, a few years on, and there is a rising zeitgeist around ‘regenerative’. The term is getting more and more attention and major corporations such as Walmart, Danone, Unilever, General Mills and PepsiCo have started to use the term to communicate aspects of their strategic vision.
But what does the term ‘regenerative’ actually mean, and what about ‘regenerative business’ and ‘regenerative leadership’? Regenerative means to renew, replenish, heal, revitalize. Which, in practice, means to understand and work with the living-system dynamics of the organization and its wider ecosystem; to work in ways that allow the business to become life-affirming. Essentially, ‘regenerative’ is to attune with the way nature works. And ‘regenerative business’ enriches all stakeholders including wider society and the environment; a business that is committed to becoming life-affirming in all its facets, both inner-and-outer: culture, operations, strategy and ecosystem. ‘Regenerative leadership’ is a way of leading that cultivates life-affirming conditions. It is a shift in consciousness from a reductive/mechanistic way of leading into a systemic/living-systems way of leading. We engage in this shift by working with the Logic of Life (which we shall explore in a moment). This is a fundamentally different mind-set from traditional linear mechanistic management theory that much of today’s mainstream leadership approaches are still rooted in. And this is not the same as sustainability. Sustainability, as stated by the Brundtland commission in 1987 means “meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While ‘sustainability’ is an important aspiration, with the systemic challenges our organisations now face, we need to go further than ‘sustaining’, into working with life, and creating the conditions for life to flourish and creatively adapt both within the culture of the organization and throughout the organization’s relationships and value propositions with its wider stakeholder ecosystem (which includes wider society and the natural ecosystems upon which life depends).
Hence, a regenerative approach works with a living-systems worldview, a quality of leadership consciousness that understands how life works.
This might sound like fanciful utopia to some. Surely business is about the bottom-line? For sure, regenerative businesses need to survive in today’s world, and there is good evidence that shows clear financial benefits in becoming regenerative (see The Global Lamp Index for instance, showing companies that mimic life consistently outperform their mechanistic counter-parts). We have spent many years coaching leaders on the ‘business case for regenerative’ to help meet the scepticism it invokes in many of us, and in the book Regenerative Leadership we provide tools to help in this regard. This is not just about survival, it’s also about thrival – to attract and retain high-quality talent, to innovation, out-perform, adapt and evolve in increasingly volatile times. This is simply good business sense, especially amid a societal shift that seeks a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, engagement and creativity in the workplace.
It is only natural, that as ‘regenerative’ becomes more popular, there can be some confusion or misunderstanding around what ‘regenerative’ actually means in practice, when applied to leadership and organizational development. Hence the reason for the book Regenerative Leadership which spells out in detail the complete regenerative DNA model required for regenerative leadership and regenerative business. In summary, there are 3 levels of learning from living-systems: 1) Living Systems Design; 2) Living Systems Culture; 3) Living Systems Being
In brief:
Living Systems Design: upon sensing in to how living systems work, we find certain life dynamics, patterns and principles. We can apply these principles and patterns to how we design our products, services, processes, places and economic models. This is the exciting, and revolutionary, space of biomimicry, industrial ecology, circular economics, regenerative design, cradle-to-cradle, biophilic design, bio-innovation, doughnut economics, regenerative economics, and more.
Living Systems Culture: as well as applying living-systems insights and systemic-leadership to the design of our processes, products and places, we can explore a shift in our organizational cultures from organization-as-machine to organization-as-living-system. This is the space of complex adaptive systems applied to organizational development, adult developmental psychology, systemic leadership and systemic coaching, self-managing team dynamics, purpose-driven business, adult-adult coaching culture, shifting power-dynamics, and more.
Living Systems Being: this shift from reductive to systemic ways of leading and operating, involves a shift in our consciousness, a shift in our ‘being’. The very practice of being-in-nature is scientifically proven to help us become more systemic, empathic, integrated and balanced. Through various practices we can learn to more deeply attune with life, by opening up into our deeper truer nature, while opening into more of how life really is. This is a life-long journey towards wholeness, and is the nutritious soil from which regenerative leadership grows.
Apply all three levels of living-systems and you have embarked on the Regenerative Leadership Journey.
Those already on this journey know that this is first-and-foremost about a shift in consciousness, which can be neatly articulated as a shift from separateness to interconnectedness, and yet there is nothing neat-and-tidy about this journey of a lifetime which requires us to open into our deeper truer nature, individually and collectively, while opening into how life works.
The 7 key principles of the logic of life
So let’s explore how we can take learning from living systems to help our organizations become more regenerative, through 7 principles we call the Logic of Life. These 7 principles are informed by science (from a range of scientific disciplines such as biomimicry, facilitation ecology, evolutionary biology, complexity theory, living systems theory, regenerative design, complex adaptive systems thinking, ecological psychology, quantum physics, and more), and are also inspired by indigenous wisdom and other ancient wisdom traditions.
In brief, these 7 principles of the Logic of Life are:
- Life is life-affirming. This is the over-arching principle. Life creates conditions conducive to life. The Regenerative Leader seeks only life-affirming activities and outcomes, being watchful for anything that could be toxic, life-denying, degenerative.
- Life is ever-changing and responsive. Change is an inevitable aspect of life we can embrace for the opportunity and leverage it offers us for learning, adaptation, resilience and evolution. Life learns and adapts through emergent, developmental and evolutionary dynamics. When we tune-in to life we can discern these dynamics and apply them to our living-organizations.
- Life is relational and collaborative. Everything in life consists of inter-relating, interconnected systems nested within each other. Understanding these interconnections frees our perception from seeing and thinking in silos and instead into systems. Life is full of relationships; systems nested within systems. From the cells in our body, to our neighbourhood, organization, society and economy, relationships abound. Sensing the relational nature of our organizations helps us notice stuckness, flow and nodal points for leveraging emergent change.
- Life is synergistic and diverse. Life thrives on diversity – there wouldn’t be life without diversity! Monocultures of sameness or group-think undermine creativity, innovation, adaptability and resilience. Likewise tensions of difference act as crucibles for learning and development.
- Life is cyclic and seasonal. Life unfolds through ebbs and flows of cycles and seasons. We are all cyclical beings in need of the processes that all seasons bring: The emergence of spring, the intensity of summer, the letting go in autumn, and the deep restoration and reflection of winter.
- Life is flows of Energy & Matter. Life depends on innate ecosystem flows and cycles that enable recycling, reuse and renewal. There are innate ecosystem processes that life depends upon, and as such everything flows in a cyclic interconnected way. Designing and operating with this understanding of energy flows enables us to recycle, reuse and renew in ways that do not undermine life’s ecosystems.
- Life is pervaded by a Living Systems Field. Both shamanic and scientific evidence points to an all-pervasive field, a ground-of-all-being that informs all form. We have been brought up in an age where the understanding of this field is largely absent from how we see the world. As we step-change into Regenerative Leadership Consciousness, we sense the interconnectedness of all life and recognize this field of interconnection.
In our workshops and learning journeys with leaders and organizations we apply this living-systems lens to all aspects of the business, from business transformation, strategy development, customer journey design, culture change, branding, team performance, organizational renewal, and agile ways of working, so the organization can become a thriving living-system that works with life, while unlocking the brilliance of its people.
One such business we’ve been working with is Vivobarefoot, which helps people connect with nature through providing high-performance minimalist shoes and nature-connection experiences. Vivobarefoot has been on a regenerative business journey with us for a year now, and its great to see the organization shift from a top-down silo’ed traditionally structured business into a vibrant living-system which embodies ‘regenerative’ both within its culture (by helping people connect more with their own inner-selves and with others through regenerative practices and self-managing methods) and wider throughout its diverse business ecosystem (by helping its stakeholder community engage on this regenerative journey).
Where do I start?
We know it can feel overwhelming to embark on a regenerative journey and therefore we’ve tried to make it easier for you by creating the Regenerative Business DNA framework.
This Regenerative DNA assessment model embraces both the inner and outer technologies, tools, and consciousness that are required for the new regenerative business paradigm to unfold. It’s a unifying framework that integrates vast bodies of research, different domains, and specialist methodologies – connecting the dots instead of creating yet another silo-approach.
We have tested this DNA model of Regenerative Leadership in our coaching and consulting work with leaders from myriad organizations (from small social enterprises through to massive corporations). We have showcased it at international conferences, seminars and workshops. And we have introduced it into our many conversations with practitioners and seasoned specialists working in this emergent field of living-systems applied to leadership. It is clear: There’s a readiness for a holistic model that equally addresses the inner and outer aspects of how to lead and thrive in this next stage of human civilization.
Two questions have guided our work on this framework for next-stage Regenerative Leadership:
How can we be truly life-affirming in our collective way of doing business?
How do we reclaim nature within us and around us in our modern-day urbanized lives?
The DNA framework consists of 3 main elements of learning from living systems we mentioned earlier: 1) Living Systems Design; 2) Living Systems Culture; 3) Living Systems Being – and provides inquiry questions for each section for you to assess where there are areas you ought to start to focus on during your regenerative journey.
Activate your Super-Nature for your continued journey
Those already on this regenerative journey will know that this is first-and-foremost about a shift in consciousness, which can be neatly articulated as a shift from separateness to interconnectedness, and yet there is nothing neat-and-tidy about the journey. It’s an organizational journey as well as a personal journey. On an individual journey you need to activate your Super-Nature to be able to hear, see, feel and analyse everything around you. You need to dare move beyond analysing the progress or health of your organization in excel sheets and instead tap into a greater wisdom.
As a culture, we no longer feel a deep empathic connection with life and the ecological systems that sustains all life on this planet. Instead we primarily focus on outer forms of technological innovation and material progress, while deprioritizing inner wellbeing and consciousness.
The separation of inner (mind) and outer (matter) creates a wounding duality that divorces us from the immense richness of knowledge and wisdom we can only tap into when our inner-outer ways of knowing are integrated and we dare tap into what we call our Super-Nature. Even in this century, many of us don’t know what it means to have a strong inner connection, or how we feel in our own body about certain situations. Do you? Do you know how it feels to be strongly anchored within; at peace and grounded in yourself?
Many leaders today deem bodily reactions and insights as irrational and unreasonable. Our relationship with nature’s innate wisdom may often be seen as hippy-dippy and not to be taken seriously. Intuition is something that is not really understood, and viewed as questionable. Any such irrational thinking we might mock as second-rate or woo-woo. In any given situation, many of us go immediately to our brains, to analyze the situation, while disregarding any intuitive insight or gut-feeling. We react (one might say ‘habitually re-act’) instead of taking a pause, breathing deep, and addressing a challenging situation wisely.
We have unwittingly removed ourselves from ourselves and out of our natural reality! Just look at the way we approach living. Have you ever looked to outside comfort – a new gadget, shopping spree, special food, a weekend getaway, an extreme sport experience, maybe even a date or an affair – when feeling confused or troubled inside? Have you ever put in more hours at work in an attempt to feel (temporarily) good or worthy? While we busy ourselves with outer ‘doing’ we are numbing our inner ‘being’.
Activating our super-nature is about tapping in to our full potential by drawing on our whole-body intelligence, beyond the rational, analytical and mechanistic tendencies we have been trained in. It’s about opening up to a greater wisdom than the rational and analytical left-hemisphere of our brain allows.
The famous psychologist Carl Jung was fascinated by the notion of tapping in to our whole-body intelligence and extensively studied our different ways of knowing: intuitive, rational, emotional, and somatic. Essentially, crossing the threshold from separateness (mechanistic logic) to interconnectedness (living-systems logic), involves an integration of these four natural intelligences to activate our super nature.
When we allow these four ways of knowing (intuitive, emotional, somatic, and rational) to cohere within us, and thereby get access to a deeper kind of wisdom and intelligence. We become wiser humans and wiser leaders.
It may be easier to continue doing what you’ve always done, and it may seem sensible amid all this uncertainty and volatility to stick with what you are comfortable with. But in the long run it eats you up inside, weakens you and undermines your organization’s vitality and its stakeholder ecosystem.
In the book Regenerative Leadership, we explore 4 imbalances within us that we can allow to reconnect and find flow with life, as so become regenerative in ourselves and in our systems. These 4 areas are:
- Inner-outer: these days, due to stress and busyness, we have increasingly focused on the ‘outer’ aspects of life, and impoverished the inner. We have deprioritised the imaginal, intuitive inner-being and prioritised the tangible outer-doing. This creates an imbalance inside ourselves and also in the way we perceive reality. Reality has become a collection of separate objects and subjects, names and categories. The spacious ‘field’ that interconnects all life has been all-but forgotten or ridiculed as a flight-of-fancy. As the great mythologist Joseph Campbell notes, ‘separation of matter and spirit, has really castrated nature. And the Western mind, the Western life, has been, as it were, emasculated by this separation”. The Journey of Regeneration allows us to start to integrate this inner-outer dynamic of life once again.
- Masculine-Feminine: We each have masculine and feminine psychic-energies, characteristics, emotions and behaviours within us. Today’s society favours the masculine, competitive, assertive, controlling, doing aspects of our psyche and impoverishes the feminine, metamorphic, empathic, listening, receptive, intuitive aspects. Learning to integrate these masculine-feminine aspects within our psyche is a vital part of the Journey of Regeneration.
- Left-right brain hemisphere: Neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist has extensively explored left-brain hemisphere dominance in our Western culture. The left-hemisphere of the brain, according to McGilchrist’s and other neuroscientists’ findings, focuses on the parts of the problem by decontextualizing, narrowing down, and abstracting the problem in a closed system. This of course, helps us analyse and find neat solutions and metrics to the problem at hand. However, only a solution in the context of an isolated closed system, not in a living, emergent, complex system – like a business environment with ecosystem challenges. By the same theory, the right-hemisphere of the brain focuses on the whole of the problem by broadening perspective, forming connections, and viewing the problem within an open system; we seek context, think creatively (out of the box) and develop greater understanding. It is both the knowledge of the parts (left-hemisphere) and wisdom of the whole (right-hemisphere) that we need to solve today’s problems. Learning to integrate both left-hemisphere (analysing) and right-hemisphere (expansive) attention and also engage in practices that encourage simultaneous integration of both hemispheres at the same time (like playing a musical instrument, active-seeing, dancing, or being in-flow during a creative yet analytical endeavour) is an important aspect of the Journey of Regeneration.
- Human-nature connection: The mini Ice-Age/Climate Change around the 16th century in Europe witnessed a rising sense of separateness and increasing desire to control nature, hand-in-hand with banishing any sense of the sacredness of nature. This sense of separateness from nature begun much earlier with the advent of civilisation, and yet it was alongside the 16th Century Scientific Revolution, the Witch Hunts and the increasing rationalistic portrayal of nature as a resource to be plundered for human betterment that drove a hard stake of separateness into the Western mind. Over the centuries that followed, the Western mind has become increasingly separate from nature, and with it deep psychic atrophy has set in. As the leading biologist Edward O. Wilson explored, our need to relate to nature is an integral part of human development. He called this ‘biophilia’ (which comes from the Greek bios ‘life’ and philia ‘love’ – ‘the love for life’) which he saw as an innate tendency we have as humans. This ‘love of life’ or nature-connection is foundational to our physiological and psychological wellbeing and development. A sense of separateness from nature creates physiological and psychological problems (increasing fear, competitiveness, anxiety, stress, greed, etc.). These are the very root problems of the systemic challenges ourselves as leaders and our human societies face today.
As we cultivate integration within ourselves across these 4 areas, we Journey towards Wholeness and Reconnection. In-so-doing we open up into our deeper truer nature and open up into a deeper truer reality. We become more human, more conscious, more purposeful, more in harmony with life. This is a process of ‘becoming’, not a one-off hit or neat-and-tidy change-management plan or 10-step process; it’s a messy, full of eddies and undercurrents, trip-wires and shadowy cul-de-sacs. It’s a challenging learning journey which is well-worth enduring. It’s a labyrinth that liberates us into who we truly are.
What we have spent years working on is bringing an approach to business that meets busy executives where they are at and enables themselves, their teams and their organisations and ecosystems to embark on a Journey of Regeneration, which enables them to come alive and their organizations to thrive amid increasingly volatility. This regenerative leadership journey results in more resilient, innovative, purposeful, agile organizations that attract and retain high quality talent and deliver truly meaningful products and services into society. This is the future of business, and it glowing brighter and strong by the day now. Organizations such as Vivobarefoot, Houdini, Patagonia, Pukka Herbs, North Star Housing and many more that we case study in the book are forming part of a new way (see this recent article for more on these cases just mentioned). This new way is a regenerative way that celebrate and works with life. This is the future we all know in our hearts is not only possible, but the only viable pathway ahead if we are to overcome the systemic challenges we have created through working systematically against the rhythm and logic of life.
We hope you will join us among regenerative pioneers sooner rather than later.
Giles Hutchins & Laura Storm are co-authors of Regenerative Leadership
“This is the must read book of the year! I couldn’t put it down. The clarity, inspiration, synergy and wisdom of this book is breath-taking” Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE, former Chief Executive of 157 Group, Centre for Excellence in Leadership
“The world is changing fast and organizations are not keeping up with the pace of transformation. This book invites leaders to catalyze the necessary regeneration to not just catch up, but to lead the world into the 21st century.” Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary UNFCCC 2010-2016
“Giles and Laura bring their vast experience and deep wisdom to create an evolutionary blueprint for a sustainable future for business, people and the planet” Richard Barrett, President of the Barrett Academy for the Advancement of Human Values
“This book is full of wisdom and determination! It will inspire leaders to succeed in the 21st Century.” Tim Flannery, award-winning scientist
“Storm and Hutchins confront the challenge of redesigning the world to deliver a sustainable future with vision, energy, and creativity.” Dan Esty, environmental Lawyer & Policymaker, author of best-selling Green to Gold
“Seeking inspiration in the natural world, the principles in Regenerative Leadership provide a framework for a more inspired path forward in business and life.” Ryan Gellert, CEO EMEA Patagonia
“Hutchins’ and Storm’s Regenerative Leadership shines a bright light on one of the most critical, and least understood capacities required of anyone and any institution seeking to work regeneratively – understanding and living into the three-fold dynamics of what the book calls the DNA of regenerative leadership.” Pamela Mang, co-founder of Regenesis and co-author of Regenerative Development and Design.
‘Hutchins and Storm demonstrate that they are clearly at the forefront of a new leadership paradigm that maps an emerging model for sustainable organization in any institution that wishes to thrive. Regenerative Leadership is built upon developing awareness of self and system that embraces the wisdom of Nature alongside creative human consciousness.” Kingsley L. Dennis, The Sacred Revival – Magic, Mind & Meaning in a Technological Age
“This book succinctly brings together the importance business leaders have in redefining and supporting their organisations and communities to do more good.” Nigel Stansfield, President of Interface EAAA
Surrendering to Transformation, by Giles Hutchins
We live in epochal times.
Transformation abounds across myriad levels, from approaches to health and wellbeing right through to how we lead and work together. Macro-systems are changing too – not just our digital and industrial ones but also our social and ecological ones. Nothing is spared.
This level of change upon change is simultaneously freeing and frightening.
As a Regenerative Leadership Practitioner, an important aspect of my work is coaching leaders through profound inner and outer shifts.
Over the last decade, I have guided well over a hundred senior leaders from diverse backgrounds through deep transformational processes. These journeys of transformation not only help the individual grow, they also inform how the leader holds-space for the organisation to up-stretch into its next stage of future-fit potential, purpose and value-creation. The systemic effect creates conditions for other stakeholders touched by the organisation. Thus, the leader – in turn affecting the organisation in turn the stakeholder ecosystem – is an important positive leverage-point in these times of breakdown-breakthrough.
The coaching approach I have crafted over the years draws upon many different modalities. A primary focus is to allow the essence of the whole-person to emerge through a metamorphic process of transformation.
This article highlights a powerful method I draw upon as a conduit and catalyst for transformation: the process of letting-go.
The phrase ‘letting-go’ feels rather unassuming, perhaps even a little apathetic, nonsensical or counter-intuitive in the face of so many challenges and problems to solve in our organisations and social systems.
Yet the reality is, letting-go is a radical act of the upmost importance amid these pivotal times.
The meaning of the word ‘radical’ finds its origin in the word ‘root’. To get to the root of the matter is what it means to be radical. Often people think they are being radical yet busying themselves with down-stream effects while leaving underlying causes gapping.
‘The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.’ Jim Morrison
The good news is, this most vital and radical act of letting-go is rather simple (though not necessarily easy).
Essentially, the act of letting-go requires relaxation. It’s a surrendering, like a deep in-breath and then a long out-breath. It’s a release, an opening, an allowing. When we feel triggered by something, we go into the inner feeling, notice it, and allow it. That’s it! Nothing more.
The reality is, much of our lives we have been conditioned to hold-on, react to, or suppress any uncomfortable feelings that arise in us. Hence, ungrasping and opening vulnerably to an uncomfortable trigger is not at all easy – but it is simple, uncomplicated, natural.
In a moment, we will dive a little deeper into this process of letting-go. But first, let’s explore how this process relates to Regenerative Leadership.
The essence of ‘regenerative’ is about flowing the way nature flows; creating conditions conducive for life to flourish within our own selves and through our stakeholder relations within and beyond the organisation. This involves tuning into oneself and into the system we are operating in. It’s about allowing the blind-spots and constrictions undermining evolutionary self-and-system transformation to become more accessible and less repressed. This is where the process of letting-go can help. The process of noticing the inner trigger or uncomfortable feeling and allowing it to arise and release, rather than hijack us or the system. This letting-go is what allows ourselves and our systems to flow with life and so become regenerative.
The essence of ‘leadership’ is about crossing thresholds, facilitating transformational development. The word ‘leadership’ finds it root in the old European word ‘leith’ which means to cross the threshold, to die and be reborn, to undergo metamorphic renewal time and again. One might say that true leadership by definition IS regenerative, as to truly help transform self-and-system requires an understanding of the essence and potential of the self and the system, in order to create conditions for life to flourish within the team, organisation and wider ecosystem. Who knows, maybe we are edging closer to the day when ‘leadership’ will be synonymous to being ‘regenerative’ and therefore the phrase ‘Regenerative Leadership’ will become redundant. I hope so, but reckon that’s atleast a few years away.
For now, let’s dive a little deeper into letting-go.
The leadership specialist Otto Scharmer speaks of ‘letting go’ as the primary movement into gaining deeper presence and awareness, so as to see beyond ingrained habitual patterns of though and action. He identifies three inner voices that prevent us from gaining presence. These voices create resistance within us: the voice of judgement, the voice of cynicism, the voice of fear.
We all have these voices of judgement, cynicism and fear inside our heads; sometimes they are dormant, sometimes they are active. These voices reduce down our capacity to flow as life flows. They are at the root of our own degenerative behaviour which then infects our wider stakeholder relations, business actions and decision-making. When we enter into situations of change, tension, conflict or transformation, these voices become louder and so resistance builds within us. We create conditions inside ourselves that reduce down our life-affirming capacity. To let-go and presence, we need to cultivate the courage to notice these voices of judgement, cynicism and fear and not be overcome by them; to go through these resistances rather than let them run the show.
Life is fractal in its nature, and so are the nature of our inner constrictions, biases, fears and cultural conditions. Hence, there are fractal dimensions to the process of letting-go.
To keep things simple, I use the framing of 3 dimensions: micro, meso, macro.
The micro-level process of letting-go is the life-learning revealed through everyday challenges. Each tension and trigger, and the resistance created within us, becomes the crucible for our opening-up to more of life, through noticing and relaxing. And before we judge our own process of letting-go, its OK to sometimes close-down, go into habit, get caught in the voices of judgement/cynicism/fear or react defensively or aggressively. We ought not judge ourselves too harshly or we undermine this simple yet radical act of letting-go. Each twinge of cynicism or pang of fear or defensive/aggressive reaction is in itself a useful learning for us; an insight from which to gain perspective on our own inner-selves, our boundaries, our habits, our wounds and shadows, and our deepening capacity for courage amid differing contexts.
The ‘micro’ letting-go process is like the front-line of transformation. It’s the daily noticing and surrendering of our own reactivity so as to deepen into life beyond the separateness of the ‘ego’ self into the deeper Self which opens into the interconnectedness of real life.
The meso-level process of letting-go involves the leader learning to hold-space for the transformation of the organisation-as-living-system, letting-go of control, fear and reactivity by learning to allow the system to become more emergent, agile and authentic. This involves learning to sense the dynamics of the system and reveal, and then heal, system blockages and blind-spots by nurturing regenerative ways of working that help the system become more purposeful, adult-adult, self-managing, diverse and inclusive. Deep listening, holding-space, generative dialogue, case clinics, liberating structures, structured constellations, systemic enablers, sharing circles, non-violent communication methods and coaching conversations, are all part of cultivating this meso-level letting-go process.
The macro-level process of letting-go happens not daily or weekly, but over many months and years for the leader. IT involves significant life-changing transformative spirals of change such as the mid-life crisis or up-stretch into a new worldview. Adult developmental psychology shows us that as we gain greater self-awareness (facilitated through the micro process of letting-go each and every day) we gain greater systemic-awareness (facilitated through the meso process of letting-go and sensing-in to system dynamics at play across the business ecosystem) and we also gain greater worldview awareness (facilitated by macro letting-go processes of fundamental reorientations in our sense of self). Metamorphic shifts happen in our lives around every 7-11 years or so. The rhythm of this metamorphic pattern is informed by many variables such as our life-story and personal courage to embrace this macro letting-go process. This involves entering into and enduring introspective times of death-rebirth that often feel deeply uncomfortable and seem at odds with what societal norms demand of us.
The godfather of psychotherapy, Carl Jung, referred to this macro-process of inner development as ‘individuation’; a process of revealing our deeper truer nature by coming to terms with our own inner shadows and learning to release them. It’s a life-times’ work, and yet there is a rhythm to this macro process, just like the spring and summer sure enough decline into autumn and then winter, so too do periods of outward growth (summer) give way to periods of inner reorientation (winter).
An interplay of micro, meso, macro is happening all the time within us. Becoming conscious of this interplay aids our success as a Regenerative Leader.
Now, let’s bring ourselves out of the framing of micro/meso/macro and back into the everyday experience of life.
Let’s take an honest look at ourselves for a moment. If we look at our everyday patterns of thought, action and decision-making, we might see that significant aspects of our life-experience are being influenced by repressed feelings, inner wounds, conditioned programs, constrictions and habitual reactivity to uncomfortable feelings we experience when triggered by events. These reactions limit our experience, affect our motivation and sap our purposefulness.
We gain liberation from these habits and conditioned programs by 1) noticing when we feel a trigger within us at any given moment; 2) then going into the inner discomfort, staying with it; rather than judging, reacting or supressing the feeling, we surrender into it, allowing the feeling to open-up in us through relaxed non-judgemental surrender.
This is the simple process of letting-go: 1) noticing 2) allowing
The key is becoming aware of the feeling within us – the constriction, pang or trigger. Notice the trigger before getting hijacked by the fight-flight reaction of either wanting to suppress it or react to it. Stay with the feeling inside. With practice we get the hang of it. It’s life changing and costs nothing.
We purposefully stay with the uncomfortableness within us. We might try and sense where it is within us and go into the feeling, say within the gut or chest. Ofcourse there will be resistance within us, and a desire to react to the trigger rather than simply notice it. Let-go of the judgement about the feeling, or the reactivity. Resist going into head-thinking by staying with the feeling in the body. Stay with the allowing of the feeling. Sure, there will be apprehension, fear, guilt, blame, anger even. Let-go of this reactivity and stay with the feeling in the body. Relax into it. Breathe into it. Sure enough, the pressure behind the feeling will release.
This is radical healing. We are attending directly to the trigger and the source of the inner-suffering in the body, and through our attention giving it the space to release. Each time we release, the next time we are triggered in the same way, the reactivity will be less. The noticing and allowing becomes easier each time.
This process of letting-go – 1) noticing 2) allowing – is our practice. And each day is our classroom. Every time we experience a trigger we are offered an opportunity to practice 1) noticing 2) allowing. Often we slip-up and get caught in reactivity. No sweat. Just keep practicing.
As we journey with this process of letting-go, instead of reactivity we find a greater sense of expansiveness, authenticity and freedom; our triggers become less intense, and our experience of life becomes more in flow.
We slowly but surely become more rooted in our own sovereignty rather than cut adrift in a sea of cultural and parental conditioning, past trauma, insecurities, wounds and fears.
As we journey along this pathway of letting-go our perception shifts, our consciousness deepens, and we begin to see with new eyes,
This process requires courage first-and-foremost. And this is not to belittle the inner-wounds many of us have due to all sorts of reasons from ancestral trauma, early childhood abuse, school bullying, mental and physical illnesses, oppression, bigotry and exploitation in the workplace, and so forth.
The point here is not ‘just let-go and all will be fine and dandy’. Not at all. The release of inner trauma is never neat-and-tidy nor is the overcoming of a life-times worth of cultural conditioning. And yet the process of letting-go does work. I know through my own hard-won transformative experiences, through my many years of coaching leaders, and having been privy to psychotherapeutic studies and specialists who have time and again tested this simple letting-go method. By example, the famous psychotherapist and psychiatrist Dr David Hawkins, through decades of clinical work experienced hundreds of patients transform their lives through this simple letting-go process.
The simplicity of this process is empowering as it puts us in the driving seat of our own transformation. It is up to us, as leaders, to have the courage, persistence and patience to continually practice letting-go. It costs nothing, yet offers freedom and sovereignty.
In a volatile world caught up in so much artifice, exploitation and ego-machination, gaining personal sovereignty is vital for our individual and collective evolution. Allowing ourselves to release, heal and come from a place of deeper essence invites in a different quality of consciousness in to our relationships, decisions and solutions than which created our problems in the first place.
It is important to acknowledge just how often we are caught up in the pre-occupations of the mind, the subversive tendencies and critical judgements of our inner-voices, the imposter syndrome fears and anxieties. All of this noise we can gain mastery over, by 1) noticing 2) allowing. Rather than struggling with life, we can learn to relax into life. It does not mean we put our feet-up, alas no, it means we have the persistence, courage and patience within ourselves to attend to the micro/meso/macro process of letting-go every day. Becoming conscious is not easy, its challenging, yet it need not be complicated.
As I have mentioned already, the virtues of courage and patience are key, and as they are such important virtues for the future of leadership, I shall dedicate a separate article to explore them in detail. For now, let’s touch on the courage we need for the micro/meso/macro process of letting-go.
Vulnerability is part-and-parcel of courage. As we courageously open to life, we become vulnerable. We open ourselves to the slings and arrows of the world. The root of the word ‘courage’ is ‘cour’ meaning ‘heart’ in Latin. The more courageous we become, the more our inner-nature and outer-nature align.
At the micro-level process of letting go, we find everyday opportunities for courageous steps into the unknown. Noticing the trigger and allowing the surrendering into the uncomfortable feeling, to step beneath and beyond our normal conditioned reactivity. We cross the threshold of our own fear and reactivity to become more of who we truly are. From this step into the unknown comes trust. Each time we allow the inner trigger to be noticed and allowed, we gain an embodied experience of surrendering and releasing. We sense a more spacious inner-presence as a result of our step beneath and beyond normal habit. With each new step inward we gain trust in the process of letting go and trust in the process of life itself. We realise that there is nothing to fear by surrendering into the uncomfortable shadow within. As we enter our own inner triggers, we release our own stuckness and insecurities that limit and constrain our sense of self.
At the meso-level process of letting-go, each time we cultivate conditions for vulnerability rather than reactivity, we create trust in ourselves and others. The demands of the leader are great, especially amid so much uncertainty and volatility these days. It’s easy to slip into parent-child directive styles of leadership while fire-fighting amid intense volatility. When we help create a working climate where it feels safe enough to take risks, fail fast, open-up, be vulnerable and welcome in the whole-self, then we are helping the system become more creative and adaptive. This helps the system flow with its own life-force, which helps the organisation learn to heal and renew itself amid all the stresses and strains of everyday working life. This is the difference between survival and thrival. To be vulnerable and step into the unknown, to allow not-knowing, to show-up authentically and hold-space for others to share and explore without top-down dictat, this requires courage.
It is quite natural as a leader to experience fits and starts, wobbles and regressions, during this process of letting-go. It is all too easy, when a problem happens, or the quarterly numbers are bad, to get caught in habits of control (parent-child), whereas the system needs to know that adult-adult behaviour is the new-norm or it will remain immature and its evolution stunted at a time when it ought be up-stretching through a period of tension into transformation rather than regression. It’s during the tough times of business that the regenerative leader comes face-to-face with their own inner-voices, insecurities and fears. Tough times demand courageous leaders.
At the macro-level of the letting-go process is the courage to step into the messy unknowable metamorphic process of a life-stage death-rebirth process, often at a time in our lives when it feels like the last thing we ought be embarking upon. As leaders we may be asking ourselves to go through significant personal transformations while still running complex organisational systems. This is not for the faint-hearted. Stepping off the well-trodden path of the ego with its insecurities and constrictions, and to venture into the unknown hinterland of the open-hearted soul with its innate faith in life, requires courage. This is what the hour of humanity’s reckoning is demanding of our leaders today.
As we begin to know our own selves, we also open to the ways of the world, and our sense of separation shifts into a sense of interconnection. This worldview shift is foundational to Regenerative Leadership, and it’s what will help usher in the systemic solutions humanity now urgently needs.
With over 25yrs business advisory experience Giles Hutchins is a seasoned practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016) and Regenerative Leadership (2019). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Business Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal/work lives, and for Exec Boards, senior leadership teams and organizations seeking transformation. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business.
THE BOOK ‘REGENERATIVE LEADERSHIP’ BY SUSTAINABILITY AND LEADERSHIP EXPERTS GILES HUTCHINS AND LAURA STORM PROVIDES A HOLISTIC AND SYSTEMIC FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING PROSPEROUS AND REGENERATIVE ORGANIZATIONS.
THE BOOK EXPLORES A NEW WAY OF LEADING AND REDESIGNING ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMUNITIES THAT IS URGENTLY NEEDED. A WAY THAT ADDRESS THE INTERCONNECTED STRESS IN OUR WORKFORCE, ECOSYSTEMS AND ECONOMY.
YOU WILL FIND THE BOOK PACKED WITH BUSINESS CASES, FASCINATING EXAMPLES FROM NATURE’S LIVING SYSTEMS, INSIGHTS FROM FRONT-LINE PIONEERS AND TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR LEADERS TO SUCCEED AND THRIVE IN THE 21st CENTURY.
You can download Chapter One for free here.
Organisations able to thrive amid today’s complexity will be tomorrow’s success stories. Those who hold-on to yesterday’s mind-set will be old news.
Time to Transform
Rapid digitization, new ways of working, disruptive innovations, system-shocks like COVID and climate change, rise of robotics, block-chain, AI, fragile supply-chains, volatile market-prices, an aging society, social-shifts, Gen Y/Z, the search for purpose and meaning through work, life-time learning, career mobility, corporate responsibility, diversity and inclusion, agile ways of working, are just some of the issues facing all businesses regardless of sector and size.
Amid all this, there is rising stress in the work-place. According to a recent global Gallup poll, we have never been so stressed out before as we are today.
One global CEO that took part in Tomorrow’s Leadership report uses the impactful metaphor of leadership these days being like flying an aeroplane into a storm, having to retrofit the plane in mid-flight, while keeping the ground-crew, the in-flight crew, and all the customers on-board happy. Change upon change upon change – volatility, complexity, uncertainty.
Unceasing transformation is the new-norm and it demands a new way of leading fundamentally different from what we are used to.
‘In times of turmoil the danger lies not in the turmoil itself but in facing it with yesterday’s logic.’ – Peter Drucker
A Shift in Leadership Logic
This metamorphic moment is hallmarked by a shift in logic: Linear to Systemic
We are shifting from the linear mentality of organisation-as-machine to be controlled through hierarchies of bureaucracy and carrot-and-stick push-pull levers. Such a linear mind-set is based on an outdated Newtonian worldview of separateness and control-predict methods of management that no longer serve the complexities, interdependencies and volatilities of the day.
Enter a new mind-set that thrives on complexity and learns from living-systems dynamics to enable agile, anti-fragile, responsive and responsible business. Enter the Age of Regenerative Business, where we see the organisation-as-living-system that thrives amid uncertainty by adapting to change.
‘It’s not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those most able to adapt to change.’ – Charles Darwin
This shift in mind-set requires a transformative journey for leaders and employees. The good news is, this transformative journey has an evolutionary imperative that seeks harmony with life while tapping into the essence of our humanity. The Logic of Life (rather than the logic of the machine) creates conditions that allow our employees to flourish, to bring their whole selves to work, to become self-responsible adults, while contributing to organisational missions and value propositions that enhance life.
Regenerative Business
Clearly there is a rising zeitgeist around the word ‘regenerative’. So let’s clarify some definitions.
What is ‘regenerative’ – regenerative means to attune with the way life works; to cultivate conditions that are life-affirming. This involves healing and renewal, and a shift from separateness to interconnectedness, which involves an understanding of how life works: ranging from complex human systems such as team dynamics and value propositions (regenerative business) through to non-human ecologies (regenerative agriculture). In learning from nature’s 3.8bn years of R&D we find principles and processes that help us become regenerative. Essentially, life thrives through relationships and banks on diversity. The more we enliven relationships and diversity within our organisations, the more entrepreneurial, agile and future-fit we become.
What is ‘regenerative business’ – a business that is committed to the transformative journey of becoming life-affirming in all its facets: culture, operations, strategy, value propositions, stakeholder relations. This covers both its ‘inner’ dimension (how employees experience working in the business culture) and the ‘outer’ dimension (how wider stakeholders from customers and suppliers through to society and the environment experience the impact of the business through its value propositions and wider activities). This is, therefore, much more than Sustainability/CSR/ESG, or even ‘net-positive’, as it is holistic, encompassing every facet of how the organisation shows-up in the world.
What is ‘regenerative leadership’ – a way of leading that cultivates life-affirming conditions. It is a shift in consciousness from a reductive/mechanistic way of leading into a systemic/living-systems way of leading that encourages the transformative journey towards regenerative business. This requires a shift in consciousness within the leadership team, and therefore may require some support through regenerative leadership coaching.
To be clear, this is not a complete departure from the traditional methods of focusing on the bottom-line. Tight financial management is vital for survival. There is good evidence showing how companies that mimic life consistently outperform their mechanistic counter-parts. I have spent many years coaching leaders on the ‘business case for regenerative’ to help meet the scepticism it can initially invoke. Yet, this is not just about survival, it’s about thrival – to attract and retain high-quality talent, to unlock brilliance and innovation, so as to out-perform, adapt and evolve in increasingly volatile times. This is simply good business sense, especially amid a societal shift that seeks a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, engagement, entrepreneurialism and creativity in the workplace.
Exemplars
The good news is, there are already many organisations on the regenerative journey we can take inspiration from.
For instance, Vivobarefoot is a foot-wear company operating in a highly competitive global market. Through its commitment to the regenerative journey it has been enhancing the regenerative potential of both the inner and outer dimensions of its business. The ‘outer’ shift is through developments in the sustainability of its products (e.g. using natural biodegradable ingredients and sourcing sustainably), and the shift from products to services (circular design-repair-reuse methods) and the cultivation of communities with education around health, wellbeing and nature-connection. Vivo actively attends to the ‘inner’ shift by embedding regenerative leadership throughout its culture, shifting from parent-child hierarchy into adult-adult self-managing agility, and nurturing a culture of regenerative feedback, learning and evolution that is diverse and inclusive. The company not only has high levels of employee happiness and engagement, it also has strong customer satisfaction, solid profitable growth, and the ability to attract some of the best talent from across the industry.
Ditto for Houdini, a global provider of clothes for the outdoors, again operating in a highly competitive market. As well as nurturing a healthy adult-adult culture where people are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work, it also aims to be regenerative and circular across its entire product range within a few years, and is working on global collaborations to enable attractive and regenerative lifestyle solutions. It shares its pioneering sustainable designs openly, even with competitors, through Houdini Open Source a platform for sharing knowledge on sustainable methodologies, technologies and solutions worldwide. It also sees its responsibility to educate and empower customers to become more sustainable and responsible when being outdoors.
Ditto for North Star Housing Group, a UK Housing Association. North Star has a culture that encourages employees to thrive while delivering best-in-class services to their clients so that they can thrive. Respectful relating across the culture within and beyond the business, where all stakeholder relations are conducted in adult-adult ways, with a coaching-culture that enables a blend of hierarchy and self-management to work in flexible ways. As a result of this, North Star consistently out performs in its market and wins awards for customer service and employee culture. Due to this focus on regenerative ways of working, and in the midst of a very difficult business climate, its organisation grows while others in the market contract.
Ditto for Triodos Bank, an international bank that aims to make money a force for good. Triodos’s mission as a business is to provide finance for enterprises that enhance quality of life through providing benefits to society and the environment. It has 4 core values that are shared across all of its international businesses: Transparency, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, Excellence. Through a mix of global and local activities these values are embedded into day-to-day behaviours. There is a global values workshop held three times a year where people from all countries are invited to attend three days in the woods for deep connection with the values, personal and organisational sense of purpose, and company mission. This helps cultivate resonance between people’s personal purpose and the organisation’s purpose. In terms of its value propositions, it has been ground-breaking in its openness and transparency across the banking sector. All its investments are openly disclosed to the public, and all have a clear impact on helping shift society towards regenerative futures.
In Regenerative Leadership we list many more business examples. The reality is, it does not matter whether you are a footwear or outdoor clothing company, a bank or a housing association, the regenerative journey is about future-fitness through transforming the ‘outer’ dimension in ways that enable every stakeholder to thrive, and transforming the ‘inner’ dimension so that every employee can thrive. Why would we wish for anything less? This is simply good business sense, and it’s fast becoming the new reality in business. Welcome to the Age of Regenerative Business.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016) and Regenerative Leadership (2019). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides executive leadership coaching at individual and organisational levels for those seeking regenerative futures. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business.
This article was first published in the July 2021 edition of Coaching Perspectives
Times they are a’changin. Even the nature of change itself seems to be changing – ceaseless churning change of the catalytic variety concocts this pregnant moment of seismic breakdown and breakthrough. I foresee the next couple of years as simultaneously challenging, transformative and full of potential.
Those of us engaged with transformational leadership work will know that periods of dysfunction and crisis often precede a step-change in evolutionary advancement. Therefore, these are fertile times for an evolutionary shift in leadership consciousness. Let this epochal hour of breakdown-breakthrough not go to waste, but rather spawn a necessary [r]evolution in consciousness. The future of life on Earth depends on it. The future-fitness of our clients’ organisations depends on it. So too does the mental health and wellbeing of our client’s families and personal lives.
This article seeks to explain: firstly, why a ‘threshold-crossing’ is an essential part of the evolutionary advancement of our coaching clients; secondly, what the nature of this ‘threshold crossing’ is; and thirdly, how coaching-based immersions in nature provide a powerful way of holding-space for this threshold crossing.
- Crossing the Threshold: To die before you die
The phrase ‘to cross the threshold’ means to undergo a metamorphic process of ‘dying and being reborn’- to endure a shift in ‘inner’ self-orientation and ‘outer’ worldview. It’s a deep psychological renewal that transforms how we relate to our inner-selves and our outer-world, enabling us to become more in harmony with inner and outer nature. The ancient Greeks used the term ‘metanoia’ to describe such a shift, ‘meta’ like in metamorphosis is to ‘shape-shift’ or ‘move beyond’ and ‘noia’ relates to ‘true understanding’: to transform the understanding of our sense of self and how we relate with the world.
Over many year of coaching senior leaders, experience has shown me that for a leader – or for that matter any adult – to undergo a step-change in psychological evolution, one needs to hold-space for both the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dimensions of this threshold-crossing: the worldview shift and the inner access to one’s deeper truer nature. All advanced adult developmental models, ancient wisdom traditions, and depth psychology approaches such as Carl Jung’s Individuation Journey and Parker J Palmer’s Journey Towards Wholeness, speak to this inner reorientation to ‘Know Thy Self’. And systemic change specialists, such as Donella Meadows and Peter Senge, know that shifting the worldview of the outer system is a primary leverage point for systemic transformation.
- Shifting from What to What?
In my latest book Regenerative Leadership, co-authored with Laura Storm, we explore the worldview shift unfolding during this time of breakdown-breakthrough, and how it applies to leadership and organisational development. We explore the dominant yet dying Age of Separation and an emerging Age of Regeneration – where humanity remembers its deep connection with self-other-world. You may have started to sense the word ‘regenerative’ entering the emerging zeitgeist. It’s a word that can be applied to all aspects of life, from regenerative agriculture through to regenerative leadership consciousness, and involves an opening up to life’s evolutionary dynamics of relationality, receptivity, responsiveness, rhythm and renewal.
Regenerative Leadership Consciousness, as defined in our book, correlates with developmental psychologist Clare Graves’ work on Tier 2 Consciousness (i.e. Yellow, Turquoise and Coral in Spiral Dynamics) where an embodied cognition of living-systems is activated in our psyche. It also relates to what organisation specialist Frederic Laloux and integral theorist Ken Wilber refer to as Teal-Evolutionary. It is an ecosystemic awareness that draws upon the Logic of Life, an embodied living-systems way of leading and living that seeks harmony with the way life works. This is not new, it’s timeless. For instance, over 2,500 years ago Lao Tzu noted, ‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force’ and Confucius noted, ‘Those in harmony with nature hit the mark without effort and apprehend the truth without thinking.’ Yet this is also cutting-edge contemporary thinking confirmed by scientific findings that show how being in nature, and opening up to nature’s wisdom, helps us become more compassionate, creative and connected. The explosion of interest in everything from forest bathing to wild swimming speaks to this rising interest in reconnecting to the rapture of real life.
Today our dominant leadership awareness is largely mechanistic and reductive, tuning-out the rhythmic and relational dynamics of how life works. The result being: linear chains of production that create ‘outer’ toxicity and silo’ed hierarchies of management that create ‘inner’ toxicity. The vast majority of people today work in organisational cultures that sap people’s creativity, purposefulness, ingenuity, resilience and empathy. Whilst many organisations pride themselves on being efficient and effective the cold reality is that many of our human interactions, decision-making protocols and meeting conventions are woefully inefficient and ineffective. The root problem here is mechanistic leadership logic. Change the underlying consciousness, and the logic shifts. Shift the logic and the culture can transform in inner and outer ways.
To shift from a worldview of separateness and its mechanistic logic into a worldview of interconnectedness and its Logic of Life, requires a threshold crossing. This allows leaders to sense the organisation as a complex adaptive emergent system rather than seeing it as a top-down hierarchic machine. Our understanding of change, systemic interventions and transformation deepens in recognition of how life works. It also helps us perceive the ecosystemic nature of our own presence as a leader, and the presence of the organisation immersed in a sea of stakeholder relations including the wider social and ecological systems which are all interdependent and interwoven in measurable and immeasurable ways. The other side of all this complexity is a beautiful simplicity, found by crossing the threshold.
In terms of the ‘inner’ dimension, regeneration is a return to our true nature through a journey towards wholeness. This journey is as fresh as it is ancient, and it opens us up to living with more presence and purposefulness; exactly what these times invite of us. Through my coaching working in nature, I blend the shamanic and spiritual with the scientific and sensorial so all of our natural intelligences (rational, emotional, intuitive, and somatic) are enlivened. Then we unlock human potential, touch our true nature, and connect more deeply with the world around us. As Ghandi noted, ‘as one changes their own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards them.’
- Why Nature Immersions?
There is now a wealth of scientific evidence showing how being in nature significantly improves our empathy, our ability to reason, to deal with change, cope with stress and listen more effectively to others. These are all basic qualities for 21st century leadership. Yet there is much that science is still only scratching the surface of when it comes to the transformative effects of being in nature.
I have taken hundreds of leaders through nature immersions. Immersions can range from half a day in the woods through to multi-day sessions that include overnight solos or even structured vision quests (you can find out more about the practicalities and science of these leadership immersions here).
Many of the senior executives I coach can have strong aversions to anything that might seem hippy-dippy or woo-woo at first glance. Some fear it might involve tree-hugging or Kum Ba Yah moments. Hence, I have learnt to interweave time in nature with science-based insights about how nature works so the intuitive, emotional, somatic and rational aspects of our knowing are engaged adequately, usually starting with the rational as that is the most dominant in many leaders today. For instance, I might explore the interconnected systemic nature of life through microscopes whilst out in the woods, and by describing how trees communicate through the soil and the air, or how bacteria display highly sophisticated communication and adaptation methods. Or I might draw upon how organisational cultures can learn from nature’s 3.8bn years’ worth of tried and tested R&D by explaining about biomimicry, bio-design thinking, chaordic cultures and regenerative leadership. Or I unpack how ecosystems work by visually explain the shift from mechanistic thinking to ecosystemic awareness in a way that satisfies the rational intellect while providing an embodied experience that the coachee can fondly recall many moons after.
Within an hour or two any hesitation or resistance a client might have to an immersion in nature usually evaporates to reveal receptivity for inner and outer developmental work. Then, around the camp-fire a deep dialogic space for generative listening is held, as ego-masks and psychological armour melt for true nature to be touched. The client does not easily forget these moments of deep presence and purposefulness, and can call upon them when back in the busy work environment. Thus, both horizontal and vertical development takes place in these immersions, as clients gain a wider capacity for everyday resilience (horizontal) and an invitation into up-stretching their inner and outer orientation (vertical).
What happens in just a handful of hours in nature is – in my experience – of an order of magnitude deeper than a coaching session held either in a comfortable armchair or over zoom. And socially distancing in fresh forest-bathing air proven to strengthen the immune system is a COVID-mitigated way to do deep work. Now more than ever people crave time in nature, time that is held in a way that gives them permission to be vulnerable, open-up and let-go of masks, while sensing into blind spots, projections and developmental learnings.
Giles Hutchins runs on-line executive coaching, bespoke on-line coaching on Regenerative Leadership, in-person nature-based leadership immersions for leaders, and facilitates deep-space for coaches and their clients, provides training for coaches, and personal adult development amid 60 acres of ancient woodland in an area of outstanding natural beauty with easy connections to London and airports, visit Leadership Immersions. He is also Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy. His latest co-authored book is Regenerative Leadership, other books are Future Fit, The Illusion of Separation and The Nature of Business. He blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org His personal website is www.gileshutchins.com
There is a rising zeitgeist around ‘regenerative’. Yet what ‘regenerative’ truly means is as ancient as it is fresh. It’s a timeless journey of becoming more human, more alive, more in-harmony with life.
These days, I am regularly contacted by folk wishing to dive deeper into what ‘regenerative’ means for them and their work. How times have changed over the last decade. A decade ago, I got many-a-blank face when I used to explain how business could learn from living-systems. These days people seem to ‘get it’ more readily – and I have become a much better practitioner, communicator and coach along the way.
It seems much more than a decade ago when I co-founded BCI: Biomimicry for Creative Innovation (along with biomimicry specialist, Dr Denise Deluca, and Chief Exploration Office of TYF and Founding Partner of the Do Lectures, Andy Middleton). We had great fun together running workshops for diverse leaders at places like Kew Gardens, Amsterdam and Schumacher College on Business Inspired By Nature. It felt like we were at the fore-front of a necessary revolution. Over the years that followed, I’ve had the real pleasure of engaging with or speaking alongside other ‘regenerative/systemic’ specialists from different parts of the world, such as Pamela Mang (co-founder of Regenesis and co-author of Regenerative Development and Design), Carol Sanford (founder of The Sanford Institute, and author of Regenerative Business), Michelle Holliday (founder of Thriveability), Janine Benyus and Dayna Baumeister (co-founders of the Biomimicry Institute), Peter Senge (author of Fifth Disciple, Presencing and other books), Darcy Winslow (Chair of the Academy for Systems Change), Daniel Wahl (author of Designing Regenerative Cultures), Peter Hawkins (Systemic and Ecosystemic Coaching), Frederic Laloux (author of Reinventing Organisations), Norman Wolfe (author of The Living Organisation), Chris Laszlo (Aim2Flourish co-founder, and co-author of Quantum Leadership), Jay Bragdon (author of Economies that Mimic Life), John Fullerton (founder of Regenerative Communities Network), my wonderful co-author Laura Storm, and many other thoughtful practitioners and experts related to this emerging ‘regenerative leadership’ field which is growing wider and deeper all the while.
I can recall how back in 2011, when I used to write articles for the Guardian Sustainable Business network about the Firm of the Future – Inspired By Nature, that applying living-systems-thinking to organisational development was super-niche. Now, thank goodness, it is more widespread and finding take-up in leading business schools across the globe.
Back then, I avidly studied biomimicry, systems thinking, complexity theory, regenerative design, biophilia, ecological psychology, adult developmental psychology, and worked on aligning these schools of thought with my direct experience in business transformation, leadership development and organizational change. At that time I was Global Head of Sustainability for Atos, after recently handing over from 5 years as Head of Business Transformation/CRM for KPMG working across all sectors and sizes on strategy, transformation, sustainable business and change management.
The excitement of this fusion of business/living-systems/sustainability led to me deciding to leave the jet-set corporate life (and endless global travel) and instead focus 100% of my time on Future Fit and Regenerative Leadership. Over the years that followed I have been working with a great variety of leaders and leadership teams to facilitate this regenerative leadership journey for them and their organizations, across many different countries and sectors. Such journeys include many different aspects as a coherent flow – from helping cultures become more self-managing, agile and entrepreneurial to adult-adult, transparent, authentic and purposeful cultures, as well as aligning this ‘inner’ work with the ‘outer’ work of regenerative value propositions, partnerships and stakeholder ecosystems. My work has also taken me in to work that spans many organisations, communities, cities and bio-regions as part of the shift towards regenerative futures. Exciting times!
It is only natural, that as ‘regenerative’ becomes more popular, there can be some confusion or misunderstanding around what ‘regenerative’ actually means in practice, when applied to leadership and organizational development. Hence the reason for the book Regenerative Leadership which spells out in detail the complete regenerative DNA model required for regenerative leadership and regenerative business.
In summary, there are 3 levels of learning from living-systems: 1) Living Systems Design; 2) Living Systems Culture; 3) Living Systems Being
In brief:
- Living Systems Design: upon sensing in to how living systems work, we find certain life dynamics, patterns and principles. We can apply these principles and patterns to how we design our products, services, processes, places and economic models. This is the exciting, and revolutionary, space of biomimicry, industrial ecology, circular economics, regenerative design, cradle-to-cradle, biophilic design, bio-innovation, regenerative economics, and more.
- Living Systems Culture: as well as applying living-systems insights and systemic-leadership to the design of our processes, products and places, we can explore a shift in our organizational cultures from organization-as-machine to organization-as-living-system. This is the space of complex adaptive systems applied to organizational development, adult developmental psychology, systemic leadership and systemic/ecosystemic coaching, self-managing team dynamics, purpose-driven business, adult-adult coaching culture, shifting power-dynamics, and more.
- Living Systems Being: this shift from reductive to systemic ways of leading and operating, involves a shift in our consciousness, a shift in our ‘being’. The very practice of being-in-nature is scientifically proven to help us become more systemic, empathic, integrated and balanced. Through various practices we can learn to more deeply attune with life, by opening up into our deeper truer nature, while opening into more of how life really is. This is a life-long journey towards wholeness, and is the nutritious soil from which regenerative leadership grows.
Apply all three levels of living-systems and you have embarked on the Regenerative Leadership Journey.
Those already on this journey will know that this is first-and-foremost about a shift in consciousness, which can be neatly articulated as a shift from separateness to interconnectedness, and yet there is nothing neat-and-tidy about the journey. This article seeks to convey some of the inner-depths of this journey.
First, some simple definitions:
What is ‘regenerative’ – regenerative is to attune with the way nature works; to cultivate conditions that are life-affirming.
What is ‘regenerative business’ – business that enriches all stakeholders including wider society and the environment. A business that is committed to becoming life-affirming in all its facets, both inner-and-outer: culture, operations, strategy and ecosystem.
What is ‘regenerative leadership’ – a way of leading that cultivates life-affirming conditions. It is a shift in consciousness from a reductive/mechanistic way of leading into a systemic/living-systems way of leading. We engage in this shift by working with the Logic of Life (which I will define in a moment).
This might sound like fanciful utopia to some. Surely business is about the bottom-line? For sure, regenerative businesses need to survive in today’s world, and there is good evidence that shows clear financial benefits in becoming regenerative (see The Global Lamp Index for instance, showing companies that mimic life consistently outperform their mechanistic counter-parts). I have spent many years coaching leaders on the ‘business case for regenerative’ to help meet the skepticism it invokes in many of us. Yet, this is not just about survival, it’s also about thrival – to attract and retain high-quality talent, to innovate, adapt and evolve in increasingly volatile times. This is simply good business sense, especially amid a societal shift that seeks a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, engagement and creativity in the workplace.
Here is a talk I gave back in 2015 on this threshold happening in business towards regenerative:
‘Regenerative’ is the very-human act of re-connecting with our own deeper nature, while understanding how life works, and applying the insights from life to enable our organisations to be life-affirming.
It is simply the act of becoming true to ourselves and true to reality, nothing more, nothing less.
It’s well within our grasp. It’s inherent in our evolutionary dynamic. It’s our birth-right.
If we fail to become regenerative, we fail in our humanity, and we fail life itself.
So, let’s dive in to the detail of what this means in terms of our own leadership development.
First, we need to meet ourselves where we are at, to know where we are coming from, in order to know how best to shift our consciousness.
The context we find ourselves in today is a predominantly mechanistic leadership paradigm. It’s a quality of consciousness that creates a sense of separateness in our own sense of self, in our relation with others, and in our view of reality. We view the organisation-as-a-machine, and we seek to manage and control change. This perspective is rooted in a worldview of separateness.
The reality is:
Life is interconnected, relational and ever-changing. The more we understand the dynamics innate within life, the more we can learn to flow with life.
At the heart of this shift in consciousness from separateness/mechanistic to interconnectedness/regenerative is the embodied recognition of reality as it really is. There is a deep stillness/spaciousness, or ‘field’, pervading all life including our organisations and business ecosystems.
An embodied attentiveness to this underlying ‘field’ of interconnectedness was an inherent part of all shamanic and wisdom tradition practices for millennia. For 95% of our human history, we lived with a deep sense of this interconnectedness. In-so-doing we viewed life as a sacred experience.
However, over the last handful of centuries, more and more focus has been applied to the reductive and rational-analytic way of attending to reality, which tries to cut-up this fluid connective reality into neat-and-tidy bits-and-bytes so we can seek management and control. This has led to a utilitarian view of life. Life is to be exploited for human betterment. Life is not sacred, it is perfunctory. Enter degenerative behaviour.
We have overly-prioritised form-matter-doing (yang) and deprioritised formless-energy-being (yin).
Increasingly, over the last century culminating in today, we have impoverishment our sense of the interconnectedness of life. This has come with dis-harmony, rising stress, social and ecological degradation, and an out-of-kilter civilisation that is now breaking-down.
This dis-harmony finds its root cause in the separateness we inflict on how we attend to reality; a way of attending that has created a sense of dis-connection from nature – our natural habitat. A deep, deep wound, so to speak, that manifests as a psychic trauma within our species. This collective trauma and imbalance is the underlying cause of increasing fear, anxiety, egotism, individualism, and consumerism. When we don’t feel complete or whole on the inside, we start searching ever more ‘out there’ to fix a deep wound which is ‘in here’. No matter how sophisticated and well-thought-through our sustainability metrics are, unless we address the wound of dis-connection we are but lost, rudderless in a storm of increasing head-winds and rising tides.
In the book Regenerative Leadership, we refer to this rising disconnection as the Journey of Separation which is showing signs of reaching its nadir and starting to arc back into a Journey of Reconnection.
The Journey of Reconnection allows 4 imbalances within us to reconnect and find flow. These 4 areas are:
- Inner-outer: during the Journey of Separation we have increasingly focused on the ‘outer’ and impoverished the inner. We have deprioritised the imaginal, intuitive inner-being and prioritised the tangible outer-doing. This creates an imbalance inside ourselves and also in the way we perceive reality. Reality has become a collection of separate objects and subjects, names and categories. The spacious ‘field’ that interconnects all life has been all-but forgotten or ridiculed as a flight-of-fancy. As the great mythologist Joseph Campbell notes, ‘separation of matter and spirit, has really castrated nature. And the Western mind, the Western life, has been, as it were, emasculated by this separation”. The Journey of Reconnection allows us to start to integrate this inner-outer dynamic of life once again.
- Masculine-Feminine: We each have masculine and feminine psychic-energies, characteristics, emotions and behaviours within us. Today’s society favours the masculine, competitive, assertive, controlling, doing aspects of our psyche and impoverishes the feminine, metamorphic, empathic, listening, receptive, intuitive aspects. Learning to integrate these masculine-feminine aspects within our psyche is a vital part of the Journey of Reconnection.
- Left-right brain hemisphere: Neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist has extensively explored left-brain hemisphere dominance in our Western culture. The left-hemisphere of the brain, according to McGilchrist’s and other neuroscientists’ findings, focuses on the parts of the problem by decontextualizing, narrowing down, and abstracting the problem in a closed system. This of course, helps us analyse and find neat solutions and metrics to the problem at hand. However, only a solution in the context of an isolated closed system, not in a living, emergent, complex system – like a business environment with ecosystem challenges. By the same theory, the right-hemisphere of the brain focuses on the whole of the problem by broadening perspective, forming connections, and viewing the problem within an open system; we seek context, think creatively (out of the box) and develop greater understanding. It is both the knowledge of the parts (left-hemisphere) and wisdom of the whole (right-hemisphere) that we need to solve today’s problems. Learning to integrate both left-hemisphere (analysing) and right-hemisphere (expansive) attention and also engage in practices that encourage simultaneous integration of both hemispheres at the same time (like playing a musical instrument, active-seeing, dancing, or being in-flow during a creative yet analytical endeavour) is an important aspect of the Journey of Reconnection.
- Human-nature connection: The mini Ice-Age/Climate Change around the 16th century in Europe witnessed a rising sense of separateness and increasing desire to control nature, hand-in-hand with banishing any sense of the sacredness of nature. This sense of separateness from nature begun much earlier with the advent of civilisation, and yet it was alongside the 16th Century Scientific Revolution, the Witch Hunts and the increasing rationalistic portrayal of nature as a resource to be plundered for human betterment that drove a hard stake of separateness into the Western mind. Over the centuries that followed, the Western mind has become increasingly separate from nature, and with it deep psychic atrophy has set in. As the leading biologist Edward O. Wilson explored, our need to relate to nature is an integral part of human development. He called this ‘biophilia’ (which comes from the Greek bios ‘life’ and philia ‘love’ – ‘the love for life’) which he saw as an innate tendency we have as humans. This ‘love of life’ or nature-connection is foundational to our physiological and psychological wellbeing and development. A sense of separateness from nature creates physiological and psychological problems (increasing fear, competitiveness, anxiety, stress, greed, etc.). These are the very root problems of the systemic challenges ourselves as leaders and our human societies face today.
“The modern onslaught upon the natural world is driven in part by a degree of alienation from nature. Our modern environmental crisis — the widespread toxification of various food chains, the multifaceted degradation of the atmosphere, the far- ranging depletion of diverse natural resources, and, above all, the massive loss of biodiversity and the scale of global species extinctions — is viewed as symptomatic of a fundamental rupture of human emotional and spiritual relationship with the natural world.”— Stephen Kellert & Edward O Wilson
As we cultivate integration within ourselves across these 4 areas, we Journey towards Wholeness and Reconnection. In-so-doing we open up into our deeper truer nature and open up into a deeper truer reality. We become more human, more conscious, more purposeful, more in harmony with life. This is a process of ‘becoming’, not a one-off hit or neat-and-tidy change-management plan or 10-step process; it’s a messy, full of eddies and undercurrents, trip-wires and shadowy cul-de-sacs. It’s a challenging learning journey which is well-worth enduring. It’s a labyrinth that liberates us into who we truly are.
‘Becoming is not a logical process. It is an emergent process, and a creative one. To create is to experience the pains of becoming. To be in the process of becoming is to experience creative pains. As we evolve, we change. As we change, we leave behind old shells. As we reconstruct within, we suffer a temporary dislocation of our identity. As we suffer the inner dislocation, we are in pain. All this is natural and inevitable…part of individual growth and of evolutionary growth.’ Henryk Skolimowski
In Regenerative Leadership, we unpack 7 principles inherent in life, which we call the Logic of Life. These 7 principles are informed by science (from a range of scientific disciplines such as biomimicry, facilitation ecology, evolutionary biology, complexity theory, living systems theory, regenerative design, complex adaptive systems thinking, ecological psychology, quantum physics, and more). In brief, these 7 principles of the Logic of Life are:
- Life is life-affirming. Life creates conditions conducive for life to evolve. It is innately regenerative and non-toxic.
- Life is ever-changing and responsive. Life learns and adapts through emergent, developmental and evolutionary dynamics. When we tune-in to life we can discern these dynamics and apply them to our living-organizations.
- Life is relational and collaborative. Life is full of relationships; systems nested within systems. From the cells in our body, to our neighbourhood, organization, society and economy, relationships abound. Sensing the relational nature of our organizations helps us notice stuckness, flow and nodal points for leveraging emergent change.
- Life is synergistic and diverse. Life thrives on diversity. Monocultures of sameness or group-think undermine creativity, innovation, adaptability and resilience. Likewise tensions of difference act as crucibles for learning and development – hence dinergy and synergy are vital to organizational healthy.
- Life is cyclic and seasonal. Life unfolds through ebbs and flows of cycles and seasons. We are all cyclical beings in need of the processes that all seasons bring: The emergence of spring, the intensity of summer, the letting go in autumn, and the deep restoration and reflection of winter.
- Flows of Energy/Matter. Life depends on innate ecosystem flows and cycles that enable recycling, reuse and renewal.
- Life is pervaded by a Living Systems Field. Both ancient-shamanic and modern-scientific evidence points to an all-pervasive field, a ground-of-all-being that informs all form. Heightening our receptivity to the field helps us to flow with Life.
‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force’ – Lao Tzu
The Field
‘All of space is full of presence’ – John O’Donohue
This ‘field’ has always been here, it’s as fresh as it is ancient. And while the quantum scientists of the West have brought it into the scientific-lens of Western reductionism with all its investment and commercialisation (we now have quantum computing that uses the ‘field’, and also mobile telecommunications like 4G and 5G that transmit and receive using the electromagnetic spectrum that pervades life) this ‘field’ has long been revered as a presence to engage with in order to help our conscious evolution, both personally and collectively. It is a presence that gives access to deeper levels of wisdom and knowing.
‘The dance of our mind with the quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us… it opens our mind to society, to nature, and to the universe. This openness has been known to mystics and sensitives, prophets and metaphysicians throughout the ages.’ – Dr Ervin Laszlo
By learning to attune with this real and potent presence we open up to more of our humanity, become more creative, more alive, more purposeful, more in flow, more human – one might say ‘activating our super-nature’. It does not have to be some esoteric undertaking for the elite or privileged, far from it, it is available for everyone –regardless of education or bank-balance – and is what allows us emancipation from the enslavement of today’s rising ego-need for control, dis-ease, consumerisation and exploitation.
Pioneering psychologist Carl Jung extensively researched different human intelligences we each have access to: intuitive; rational; emotional and somatic
The intuitive way of knowing has also been referred to as SQ – intuition informs us as we bring this insight into our daily awareness, influencing our decisions. Opening up to this intuitive intelligence requires us to reach beyond the grasping busy-mind, to quieten, and still ourselves, so we can better cultivate this receptivity.
The emotional way of knowing has also been referred to as EQ – the feelings within us which inform and enrich our daily awareness, influencing our decisions. Opening up to this emotional intelligence requires us to not simply react to feelings but sense-inward, allowing our feelings to have space, so we can consciously respond to these feelings. It is a subtle yet important shift from reactivity to responsiveness, from blind emotional outburst to informed emotional intelligence.
In 1995, Daniel Goleman’s work on Emotional Intelligence highlighted the importance of emotions and emotional intelligence (EQ) for leadership development and organisational learning. Goleman found that how we cultivate awareness of our own and other’s feelings and unconscious bias, then consciously respond to these feelings and filters in appropriate ways, helps our leadership potential. Studies show that EQ out-performs IQ as a predictor of job success and performance capability.
Then in 1997, the neuroscientist Candace Pert’s ground-breaking work Molecules of Emotion provided more insight into the integration of body-mind sensations, feelings and thoughts, in what Pert referred to as the ‘psychosomatic network’ – an integrated system of psyche and soma. The psyche comprises the nonmaterial aspects such as mind, emotion and soul, and the soma comprises the material aspects such as the cells, organs and tissues.
This brings us on to another of Carl Jung’s ways of know: somatic intelligence. Our somatic and sensorial way of knowing has also been referred to as PQ. This is the sensations we have in our body, for instance, gut pangs, or tickle in the throat, hairs on the back of the neck, or chest perturbations. Our soma (as Pert scientifically explored) is full of psychosomatic sensations that inform our psyche. As we allow ourselves to quieten and sense into the somatic intelligence within us, we enrich our conscious awareness and invite intelligence into our daily awareness, and become better at sensing and responding to changes within and all around us.
And finally, Jung’s fourth way of knowing, is the rational intelligence – which has also been referred to as IQ. This tends to be the dominant intelligence we call upon in today’s busyness. Our head-logic, the analytic mechanisations it creates, is what dominates today’s meetings, conversations and decisions. It is but one intelligence within our human repertoire, yet when it dominates too much, it can suppress our other ways of knowing.
When we allow these 4 ways of knowing to cohere, we allow our nature to integrate in its rightful way within is. As we integrate we open ourselves up to the generative ‘field’ that permeates space, if we so choose to tap into it with our intention and attention.
Then, we cultivate our self-awareness and our systemic-awareness as leaders, and when our self-and-systemic awareness alchemises, we cultivate Regenerative Leadership Consciousness, as I have written about here.
‘The greatest breakthroughs of the 21st Century won’t occur because of technology. They will occur because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.’ – John Naisbett
Deepening our self and systemic awareness, and learning to attune with the ‘field’, is perhaps the greatest frontier for our contemporary humanity to explore. Hence the rapid rise in interest in ‘consciousness’ – much of it, alas, is a mechanistic exploration based on what we can extract, gain and manipulate for yet more power, control and exploitation. Yet, a whole-hearted and integrated masculine-feminine exploration into our deeper truer nature while accessing the ‘field’ is a way into dealing with the root problems of today’s systemic challenges. It’s the only way to ensure we bring a different quality of consciousness to our solutions than which created our problems in the first place, by over-coming the Journey of Separation as we move into the next-stage of our human-symphony, the Journey of Reconnection.
Here is a TEDx talk I gave a few years back about this necessary shift in consciousness
The Chair of the World Economic Forum Council on New Models of Leadership, Dr Nick Udall, notes, ‘It’s not intellect that makes a great leader – although it helps. Rather it’s the quality of their consciousness – their personal and systemic awareness… This level of self-awareness, or presence, refers to an ability to be still… What is needed now is for us to develop social and organizational containers that are robust enough to hold us through periods of creative tension, as opposed to reacting to every presenting issue, and collapsing tension at every turn.’
This new kind of leadership, is actually a timeless human quality. It’s a quality of consciousness that enables us to become more of who we truly are while allowing our organisations and social systems to become more life-affirming, more in-tune with life, more regenerative.
Stepping into this Regenerative Leadership Consciousness is a metamorphic undertaking, hence why I take leaders on multi-month bespoke coaching-based learning journeys, as its not straight-forward and is tailored to each leader’s own life-experiences, intelligences and capacities. It takes time to notice old habits and start to cultivate new habits. It’s beyond any 10-step guide, so I hesitate to even try and break-it-down in words here, yet I offer 5 areas-of-practice that can help with this life-long learning, where the destination is not pre-defined but actually the journey itself:
- Create space in our own daily rhythms to allow a deepening of our own self-awareness. Cultivate the capacity to tune-in to the field, and activate our super-nature. This is the journey of opening-the-eye-of-the-heart, trusting in the wisdom of life, and learning to flow with life. It is a daily practice of noticing our own ego-personas, while regularly practicing an opening-heart/mind/will process of connecting deeper in to our own truer nature, and the deeper truer nature of life.
- Create space within our organisational rhythms, through meeting conventions and decision-making protocols. For instance, through liberating structures, deep listening, generative dialogue and regenerative feedback. This cultivates the regenerative-soil within the organisation/social-system.
- Create space for systemic catalysts or ecosystemic facilitators within the organisation to embark on their own journey of self-awareness/systemic-awareness. These systemic catalysts are people from different parts of the organisation, with differing levels of seniority, who display informal-leadership qualities and good levels of self-systemic awareness, listening skills and empathy, adult-adult behaviours and post-conventional (individualist/strategist/alchemist) action-logics. Give these systemic catalysts permission to regularly sense-in to the organisational living-system and to notice nodal points, tensions, stuckness and flow, and where systemic-nudges may be required during the journey towards regenerative business.
- Create space for diverse stakeholders to come together and engage in heart-based dialogue on a regular basis. Regularly convene different people from different silos and functional units, and from different external stakeholder groups, and hold dialogue-based sessions for allowing the system to see itself across boundaries of separateness.
- Create space to hold-tensions. Through the above 4 areas-of-practice as leaders, systemic catalysts and internal-external stakeholders, we start to take self/system responsibility for sensing tensions, and allowing these tensions to bring forth their own creative potential, holding-the-tensions, rather than collapsing tensions through reactivity. Then, the living-system (whether a team, organisation or community of organisations) can start to learn to flow as life flows, and become life-affirming = regenerative.
When the adult developmental psychologist Clare Graves spoke of the shift from Tier 1 (orange-green) into Tier 2 (teal-turquoise), he noted that this shift is ‘not merely a transition to a new level of existence but the start of a new movement in the symphony of human identity.’ This death-rebirth in human identity brings all sorts of challenges, shadow-projections, dis-eases, personal and collective trauma to the surface. This is what we are going through in today’s world, from rising stress and depression, to new ways of working. This time of breakdown-breakthrough, can (with the right intention, courage and discipline) be a time of moving into a deeper version of ourselves, and with it a new human identity, a rebirth. This enables the evolution of humanity, which also affects the evolution of life on Earth (as human behaviour has an intimate effect on the matrix of life and the health of the Earth-biome).
The ‘winter’ or ‘yin’ is where the Wisdom enters the cycle: the out-breath pause before in-breath, the night-time, the space between things, the liminal moments at sun-rise and sun-set, the pregnant pause amid conversation, the holding of the tension before the decision to act, the space between back-to-back meetings to slow-down and reflect, the coffee-break or walk outside, the weekend to switch-off, the daily routine of connecting deep within, the mid-life crisis or life-reboot – all of these slowing-down moments allow a deeper connection into the wisdom of life, if we so choose. From this depth, evolution unfolds.
We learn to become like an echo chamber for the Field simply by creating an empty, hollow space within ourselves. This is an act of humility, surrender, crucifixion – an act of Love. This is a challenge in a world full of fear, busyness and mask-wearing inauthenticity.
Within the heart-organ of our being is a natural capacity (‘super-nature’) to perceive the Wisdom inherent in Life – this is the Wisdom that lies before/beyond the everyday wisdom revealed by attuning tensions of difference, whereupon we sense the natural rhythm of things, and sense right-relation when dancing to the Music of Life. It is a sacred space, a Temenos, guarded by Love. A safe space we create for people to come together and deeply listen. Without an open-heart this safe-space loses its integrity.
It ‘simply arises from an attitude to all the circumstances of life, even the most trivial and ordinary – an attitude of relaxed openness, detachment and receptivity – a rootedness’ as Cyprian Smith knew.
For some 30 years the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied ‘flow’ as the human experience of ‘relaxed openness’. He uncovered two simple tools to help us cultivate flow even amid stressful or busy situations during our working day: Intention + Attention. Creating an Intention, each day, or before a meeting about the quality of presence we wish to bring. And noticing our Attention, our quality of presence, how are we listening to ourselves, to our body, to our different intelligences, are we ‘activating our super-nature’ or caught up in our mind-chatter ruminations and judgements.
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret, it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye, said the Fox to the Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
As a person sees so she is.
The Regenerative Leader has mastered life, not through conquering but through surrendering, not through fear but through love, not through exploitation but through emancipation.
Degenerative behaviour arises from disconnected opaqueness that clouds and clutters the unfolding process of life.
Regenerative behaviour arises from connected coherence that creates space for tensions to transmute into crucibles for creativity and learning.
This is the Way of Nature, and its as fresh as it is ancient.
Here you can watch a short 4min video about Regenerative, with myself and CEO of Volans Louise Kjellerup Roper
And here is a longer conversation about Regenerative, with myself and Designing Regenerative Cultures author Daniel C Wahl
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016) and Regenerative Leadership (2019). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organisational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership.
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