What we learnt in the woods – by Tom Rippin, CEO of On Purpose
This is a guest blog by Tom Rippin, CEO of On Purpose
I went down to the woods a couple of weeks ago. We were a motley crew that set off from the welcome reception and wended our way in double file into the Springwood Forest, an ancient woodland in West Sussex tended by regenerative leadership expert and author Giles Hutchins (I recommend his latest book Leading by Nature)
The group included senior colleagues from sportswear retailers, consumer goods businesses, interior design companies, nonprofits, journalists, and Ashley Pollock, Head of Transformation at Vivobarefoot, the barefoot shoe and lifestyle company.
Conversations wound and circled and deepened as we walked further into the forest, punctuated by occasional inputs from Giles about how the woods we were immersing ourselves in could help us see things differently – new forms of leading, of being and doing.
The woods worked their wonder. In the handful of hours we spent together, the quality of sharing and conversation went well beyond the usual city-based get together. And yet it remained firmly rooted in the real world situations of those present. Not a free floating spiritual experience, divorced from everyday life, but a demonstration of how we can and must “transcend and include”. Go beyond the well-worn patterns of our legacy mindsets to visit new ambitions for how the world can work whilst ALSO acknowledging the realities of our everyday lives and the constraints and ideas by which they are currently still bound.
This was a message repeatedly highlighted by Giles. Whether it’s the balance of new and traditional forms of management (think hierarchy vs. holarchy) or the balance of working locally with stakeholder communities or globally across the wider business ecosystem – it’s not an either-or but a yes-and. It’s going to new ground and then being able to look back and bring with you what is useful from where you have come. It’s enjoying the journey that’s full of tensions, and realising the tensions are what yield the learnings.
The practicality of the day was boosted by Ashley Pollock’s open hearted sharing of Vivobarefoot’s journey towards becoming a regenerative business, which they embarked upon with Giles three-years back, starting in the very same woods at Springwood.
Ashley’s enthusiasm and straightforward openness about Vivo’s journey was inspiring and comforting at the same time. You can do amazing things – but even those who have been doing this for a while haven’t sorted it all out yet! And perhaps it’s not a case of sorting it all out, but rather an ever-learning, ever-deepening journey towards regeneration. Perhaps it’s more about the journey than the destination?!
One particular piece of advice I gleaned from Ashley about finding the balance between the old and the new, between transcending and incorporating was: “Never forget to ask why”. We are not making change happen for the sake of it. Knowing why you are trying to make something happen, and how it relates to the your organisation’s mission, will sharpen your focus and increase the chances of success. It’s a valuable lesson – one I, of all people, should know but I’m glad I was reminded.
Oh, and the picnic that Giles and his team served up in the woods was amazing too! What a wonderful wander into the woods. Thank you Giles & Ashley for your co-facilitation and open-hearted sharing.
For more on Leading by Nature the book and podcast see Giles Hutchins’ website here
And for more on Regenerative Leadership Immersions at Springwood Farm, – see this post here where future dates on immersions are shared https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/10/05/leading-by-nature-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness-2/
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 regenerative leader, coach and practicioner.
Whilst my main work is providing bespoke regenerative leadership coaching for leaders and practitioners 1-2-1 and with intact leadership teams, I hold two one-off ‘open’ immersions per year, and have been asked by a few people recently to advertise the dates for 2024 to help with planning travel and logistics for those interested in attending.
These two immersions are quite different, yet complementary:
One-day Immersion – Friday 23rd February 9.45am-4pm – price £400 per person
Two-day Deep-dive – Thursday 23rd/Friday 24th May – price £800 per person
The one-day immersion is open to anyone, leader and/or practitioner seeking an embodied experience of regenerative leadership. No previous experience of regenerative leadership is needed, and yet it is also relevant for those immersed and practiced in this work.
The two-day overnight deep-dive is for leaders and practitioners who have already embarked on the regenerative journey, perhaps through reading around the subject, practicing it through work, and/or attending courses and journeys, or perhaps already attending a workshop at Springwood Farm. If you have attended a one-day immersion at Springwood previously, then this two-day immersion is the next-step of embodiment, providing advanced tools and techniques for your own work and working with clients/leaders and the wider organizational-system.
If you wish to attend the one-day immersion on 23rd February, then you may also wish to attend the 2-day immersion on 23rd May, which allows for 3 months processing/integrating from the one-dayer before the two-dayer. For those attending the one-dayer in February you will also receive a £100 discount on the two-day immersion if booked together.
Here are some basic logistics for each of the Immersions:
One-Day 23rd February Immersion Logistics – £400 per person
9.30am Arrivals – refreshments upon arrival. Workshop commences at 9.45am
4pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ Springwood Farm
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 preparatory 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 Leading by Nature book
- Organic lunch and refreshments throughout the day
Some quotes from previous one-day open-day immersion workshops at Springwood with Giles:
‘A powerful experience helping me grow as a citizen, leader and change-maker. Thank you Giles!’ – Danielle Thompson, Lead Ecosystem Facilitator (COO), Greenheart Consulting
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO, Pulse Brands
‘Giles is an excellent teacher, facilitator and host – it’s been a tremendous honour to learn with him.’ – Simon Jones, Founder, Thrivemind Body & Whole
Two-Day 23rd May Deep-dive Immersion Logistics – £800 per person
9.45am Arrivals Thursday 23rd May– refreshments upon arrival. Immersion commences at 10am
Overnight camping – either bring own tent (or there are some basic bivvy structures to keep out the rain, if do not wish to use a tent) 14hr solo experience immersed in ancient woodland
Friday 24th May – 3pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ Springwood Farm
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for no later than 9.30am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £800 – To confirm your place email giles@ffla.co (Discounted to £700 if you book with the one-day in February, i.e. total fee £1,100)
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 preparatory information.
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 two-days, and the time includes a 14hr solo in nature for intentional work and reflection on your life-work/self & system. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- Specific practices to work with the essence & emergence of your living-system/organization/practice
- Energy cultivation and somatic practices carefully crafted for regenerative leadership
- 14hr solo in private ancient woodlands with pre-and-post reflection processing
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Advanced techniques for working with intention, intuition, insight and Nature’s Wisdom
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of any of Giles Hutchins 5 books
- Organic meals and refreshments throughout the two-days
- Follow-up reading material post immersion
Some quotes from previous deep-dive immersions at Springwood with Giles:
‘Your deep 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
‘The nature immersion with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘Powerful and provocative. The best leadership event I’ve ever attended!’ – Ian Ayling, Director, The Soil Association
‘Giles’ immersion at Springwood had a profound effect on me as CEO.’ – Galahad Clark, CEO, Vivobarefoot
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), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). 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, certified advanced coach, with Master of Science in Business Systems, higher diploma in senior leadership, certifications in solonics, action-logics, and guest lecturer at international business schools, as well as Master Reiki practitioner and sound healer. He blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org
Both the 23rd Feb and 23rd /24th May are one-off open programmes for 2024; places are limited, and treated on a first-come-first-serve basis Email giles@ffla.co if you wish to book a place.
Into the woods, by Carolyn Eddleston
My decision to work with Giles Hutchins was not rational, but heartfelt and rapid. A word-of-mouth recommendation plus a fleeting Google search, and my mind was made up.
The best decisions in my life have always been made in the moment, and from a gut feeling, not a head space.
I signed up for the full package over 6 months, and I purchased and started to read his latest book, Leading by Nature.
Giles has a unique style and nature that holds a safe container for curiosity, humour, honesty, and the invitation to find my own way. The process is a refreshing co-creative relationship, fostering a deep internal inquiry, and discovery of myself, returning home to the magical child-like fascination and understanding of our connection with the natural world. After several monthly 90 minute zoom sessions, I was apparently ready for my day and night immersion in Giles’ 60 acre wood in Sussex, UK.
I didn’t really know what I had signed up for, but dutifully did as I was told, arriving with tent, sleeping bag, mat, and lots of warm and waterproof layers. No phone, No torch, No watch.
Despite loving my work, involving deep connections with other humans, I have always felt nourished in solitude in nature, so I was excited to walk into this oasis of native woodland, with its own Spring water. Giles has literally macheted paths and created sacred clearings and firepits. He describes feeling called to this land, and I can see why. He is the guardian of these trees, and has developed a synergistic relationship with this land, that he does not question. The same symbiotic connection that the tree roots have with the rhizome fungi.
(artist – Jodie Harburt)
The natural world is grieving for humans to walk with it again, to remember our sacred contract with Mother Earth, that has been understandably forgotten with the constant, loud distraction of our material and political external environment.
After some fire-cooked delicious pasta, and a chat/intention-setting around the fire, I was invited to choose my spot for the night. A giant redwood caught my attention immediately, and my mind was made up!
Camping is a great love of mine, as is being outside. However, it was raining by the time the tent was up, and I realised that I had no distractions, not even a notepad!
The Redwood had created a very grand clearing around it, perfect to pitch my little tent. The boundary was a circle of Beech, Birch, Holly, Yew and Rhododendrons, with one younger Redwood standing to attention nearby.
A guided meditation helped settle my somewhat apprehensive nervous system, and then he was gone! It was a 15 minutes walk out, and there was no way I would have been able to navigate the labyrinth of paths. So this was me, and the trees for the next 14 hours or so. On my own, or was I?
I was encouraged to stay up as long as I could, to observe what Giles called “witching hour” when day becomes night, and birdsong becomes owl song.
It took a while to relax and settle, my mind frantically rambling, in an irritating, distracting manner.
The rain was more intense now, but I snuggled into the small hollow in the soft Redwood’s trunk. There was nothing to do. A rare gift of space and solitude in the exquisite arms of my tree. My breathing slowed, my body unfurled a little, and I began to surrender to the experience.
I realised that despite exercising frequently in nature, I was rarely still, and this was a very different experience for my senses. Something began to shift within me. I took off my glasses to sense more, and that magical childlike curiosity started to be with this natural oasis. I felt content, safe, held, awake, open, alert. The blurred perspective allowed me to be more playful with what I perceived. As if more information became available to me, as I slowed my system down.
I saw a clingfilm-like dome created by the canopy, and despite heavy rain and large gaps, no water was coming through. I sensed the privilege of this event, and decided to greet every tree, and sense how each would convert to human form. The upright, formal beech, the serpent-like rhododendrons, and the Redwood, the Guardian. I was having fun. No-one else was within earshot and I started to sing, dance, shout. Quite liberating!
Witching hour was fascinating. Like a light switch. Immediate colour to black and white, my retina switching from cones to rods as the light intensity dimmed. The world became shades of monochrome. A stillness only broken by the hoots of owls. I felt an odd, intimate connection, embraced by this Redwood, as if it too needed to be truly seen as we all do, for the beautiful essence that we all share.
I eventually surrendered to sleep, which was only broken by the amplified pitter patter of rain on canvas.
As promised, a Gong was sounded at 8am, and I packed up my tent and was collected by Giles. We gathered round the fire pit and I was struggling to find words. I felt quite overwhelmed by my experience. With skilled guidance, I began to piece together an experience that has changed me, and the way I now lead my life and my business. Now leading from this connected inner, calmer space that needs constant vigilance and tending to. The action no longer leads. That is the end result of a much more natural, softer process of trust and noticing. The few weeks following this adventure, I had a huge amount of creative ideas and inspiration, and I continue to seek similar experiences in nature, to guide me back to my true essence that is far easier to live with!
Because my senses were heightened by the slowing down, the lack of external stimulus and distraction, and the power of the natural environment, I was able to receive stronger inner knowing, guidance, intuition that was far more advanced than intellect was capable of. Afterall, the mind purely gathers information, evidence. It cannot possibly sense the unseen as well as our hearts can.
I understand that we are intimately connected to the cycles of the earth and sky. My immersion into the stillness of Springwood imbued me with confidence in my knowing and a deep respect for the trees. My work now is to stay awake, and not become a slave to the madness of the mind, but rather follow the quiet whisperings of my heart. The longing has gone. I have everything I need to live an even more delicious, abundant life, leading by nature. Giles has a precious place in guiding me to full, unapologetic expression, no matter what life throws at me!
This is a guest blog written by Carolyn Eddleston who spent 25 years as an NHS GP, more fascinated with those that thrived despite horrific stories, than those that remained unwell and stuck in their illness and life pattern. She found the Daoist philosophy that underpins Traditional Chinese Medicine refreshing in its honouring of the human connection with the natural world. She then immersed herself in a full-time 3-year training in NZ in the late 90’s and has been a Traditional Acupuncturist ever since this transformational adventure. She continues to evolve her curiosity and self-cultivation to be open to the next piece of guidance. She works with humour and softness. Her container is strong, as are her boundaries. She wonders what is possible for herself, and humankind moving forwards. www.cyclesofchange.com
Giles Hutchins is a regenerative leadership coach, adviser and author. His latest book is Leading by Nature.
Living-Systems Awareness – Making Decisions Within Nature, by Giles Hutchins
As the rising interest in regenerative business unfolds, with an increasing number of conferences, consultancies, think tanks and practitioners positioning the journey toward regeneration as vital for the times we are in, it feels timely to explore the essence of becoming ‘regenerative’ in relation to Leadership & Organizational Development (L&OD).
‘Regenerative leadership consciousness’ is what our leaders today need to embrace in order for their organizations to become regenerative – without this shift in consciousness we are unanchored and rudderless, tossed this-way-and-that amid stormy seas. But what does this shift into regenerative leadership consciousness truly entail for the leader?
First, its important to acknowledge what we are moving away from (or ‘letting-go’ of) as a leader.
Today’s mainstream leadership is rooted in Mechanistic Materialism, a reductive perspective of life/nature/world/humanity; from which a mechanistic view of adult development and leadership development is formed. Whether its agile leadership, responsible leadership, sustainable leadership, transformational leadership, etc., often these approaches draw from a Mechanistic Materialistic worldview that prioritizes left hemisphere over right hemisphere thinking, masculine tendencies over feminine, outer-achieving/mechanism over inner-awareness/connection, and humanity as separate from (or trying to ‘save’) nature.
The important first step toward regenerative leadership consciousness is becoming aware of how inured in seeing the world through a materialistic lens we really are. Much of what we are taught at school is Mechanistic Materialism. Seeing nature as a competitive struggle, where random mutation and incremental adaptation fuel evolution. For many decades now, science has shown us that this is a woefully superficial view, yet the inured thinking remains ingrained. Take, for instance, the quest for agile business through agile leadership. Nothing wrong with it, in fact it’s an important aspect of evolving business, yet it’s not necessarily ‘regenerative’ if it isolates ‘adaptation’ and overlooks how essence, purposefulness, coherence, complexity and connectedness play out in living-systems. (For an exploration of ‘essence’ within the process of becoming a regenerative business see this recent article: Activating Regenerative Potential with the 5 E’s – Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiasm.)
Nature’s emergent evolution is not simply about adaptation. For sure, we can learn a lot about agility from living-systems, copying nature’s design principles and applying these insights to our ways of designing products and running our organizations. Yet what ‘regenerative’ really demands is a far deeper way of perceiving life beyond mere survivalism, adaptation to outer-change, and bio-mimetic design.
For instance, the essence of each living-being impels it to become a more whole manifestation of itself. Whether it’s the acorn becoming the oak tree or the caterpillar the butterfly, there’s much more going on than adaptation to external conditions. There is a metaphysical process of becoming that informs outer forms and designs we measure, categorize and copy. Ignore this ‘inner’ dimension and we superficialize and mechanize life.
What I am highlighting here is a step beyond the mechanistic application of nature’s biological forms, functions and designs and the materialistic quest to colonise nature’s secrets, package them into patents, securitizing assets of ‘natural capital’. The act of packaging and copying nature can be useful, but not necessarily ‘regenerative’ unless it involves a step beyond surface mechanism. This step beyond, is what Albert Einstein points to when he says, ‘Look deep, deep, deep into nature and you will understand everything better.’ There’s good reason the genius repeats ‘deep’ three times. Nor is it a mere coincidence that opening into deeper nature is essential to all wisdom traditions and indigenous peoples the world over.
This ‘opening’ involves an embodied attunement with the essence and energy of living-systems. Living-systems are far more than survival, they show us how to thrive by harmonizing with the sentience of life. This necessarily evokes existential questions for the leader: what is the true essence and purpose of my organization, and how does this impel the value propositions and culture of the living-organization to continuously evolve in life-affirming ways amid increasing volatility? (I explore the key ingredients of the thriving living-organization as DEE – Developmental Emergent & Evolutionary, see Leading by Nature).
This step takes us beyond the short-sight of machine-organizations managed through top-down levers, controlled through P&Ls, while sweating assets for short-term returns. No matter how sustainable or values-led, this is a bi-product of mechanistic-materialistic logic, and simply not regenerative, regardless of how much it gives back to community or ecology.
As our lenses widen, we gain a deeper understanding of viability, resilience, profitability and systemic value creation amid volatility through a deeper understanding of nature, human nature, the organization-as-living-system, and its capacity to work with and serve life. Life is regenerative. Reconnect with the rapture of reality and regenerative leadership conscious flows through us. This is the beautiful simplicity the other side of all this complexity. Soul-wisdom beyond ego-cleverness.
‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
It is a virtuous endeavour – as fresh as it is ancient – to seek inspiration from nature amid metamorphic times. Yet all-too-easy is the application of a mechanistic-materialistic lens to our acquisition of findings ‘from’ nature that ignore deeper nature’s energetic interconnectedness; thus, applying the very same level of consciousness to our well-intended solutions that created the problems in the first place.
‘Learn how to see. Realize everything connects with everything else.’ Leonardo Da Vinci
Essentially, we are nature, we are ever-immersed in nature, never separate from it/Her. Nature is a participatory affair steeped in consciousness. Sentient, energetic, informational, rhythmic; held within a depth of dimension one might call ‘metaphysical’, ‘inner’, ‘implicate’ or ‘quantum’. From the quark string humming away, the water tumbling down stream, the sapling and Mother tree, the bee and hive, to the leader and organization, there’s not just ‘systems nested within systems’ but ‘fields immersed within fields’, interpenetrated with intentionality. We participate in this, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Becoming regenerative is an act of waking-up to Nature’s Wisdom.
Think – Indra’s Net: living-systems participating within living-systems which participate within wider living-systems, reciprocating across both tangible-physical and intangible-metaphysical dimensions. Each unique individual essence finds its tune within the team-essence, within the wider organizational-essence which finds its tune within wider systemic interplays (business ecosystem, society, Earth/Gaia, cosmos).
Feel – The Dance of Life: tunes playing within tunes playing within tunes that inform diverse dancing moves while finding right-relation amid a unity-of-multiplicity, improvised-yet-choreographed unique-yet-unified, emergent-yet-evolutionary. And underpinning all this movement is a pervading stillness. The way into the dance is through nothingness. How magical!
‘Understanding the illusion only comes after the understanding of reality, not before. Until we have the experience of reality, in all its stillness, we are still lost.’ Peter Kingsley
(Artist – Jodie Harburt)
Today, our mainstream leadership mindset is inured in a heightened ego-consciousness which prioritizes left-hemisphere over right, masculine over feminine, outer over inner, humanity over nature. It’s this fragmented imbalanced ego-consciousness that creates an illusion of separation that infects our daily consciousness – enter energy sapping stress, inauthenticity, dis-ease, control, fear, bureaucracy, inefficiency.
From the moment we wake up, its all-too-easy to slip into Mechanistic Materialism regardless of whether we might wish to be regenerative or not. Before we know it, the organization-is-a-machine to be managed by the P&L FOR the P&L. Rather than the P&L serving as a useful tool to help the vitality and purposefulness of the living-organization, it becomes the master, enslaving the life-force of the organization.
Enter the matrix. The wasteland of the wounded Fisher King becomes reality. First – we need to catch the slip into the machine-matrix, in order to notice the entrapment. Then we can begin to find our way out.
Through death-rebirth metamorphoses we learn to let-go of old ways and start to see with new eyes. In-so-doing, cultivating mastery of ego-consciousness in order to open our hearts and minds to learning from AND attuning with living-systems.
During many years of coaching regenerative leaders and practitioners through death-rebirth metamorphoses, I have found the framing of a three-level learning from living-systems useful:
1. ‘open mind’ – learning from nature – educating ourselves about nature’s design principles, biomimicry, circular economics, regenerative design, biophilic design, systems thinking, nature connection, etc.
2. ‘open heart’ – participating within nature – cultivating self-and-systemic awareness, sensing the organization-as-living-system, learning to work with L&OD living-system dynamics
3. ‘open will’ – attuning to nature – opening into deeper nature, finding accord with the rhythms and wisdom of life, alchemizing inner-outer nature in service of life
These three levels of learning from-and-within living-systems enable a shift in how we perceive reality – a ‘seeing with new eyes’, which is both ontological (a shift in our being) and epistemological (a shift in our knowing); both scientific (a shift from mechanistic-materialistic science to quantum-complexity science) and spiritual (a shift in how we experience the ‘inner’ metaphysical dimension of nature amid our day-to-day).
‘The true ground-of-all-being is the infinite, intangible, spirit that infuses all living beings.’ David Bohm
Essential to enabling regenerative leadership consciousness, these three levels are not a nice-to-have luxury to contemplate only when on silent retreat or round the camp-fire. They are the prerequisite for dealing with the root of today’s breakdown of civilisation, and for enabling future-fit business. Not climate change, not the money system, nor capitalism, corporatism or consumerism – these are downstream effects of an ungrounded perception of life. Dealing with these crises with the very level of consciousness that created them is unwise.
All three levels of living-systems learning, when embodied, allow us to work with the flows, rhythms and wisdom nature affords us. This is what lies before us, as a humanity. Nothing more, nothing less: A full-bodied immersive experience into what it means to be human in this more-than-human world.
‘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
The adult developmental psychologist Clare Graves, through his painstaking research, saw this latent regenerative potential in human consciousness being born on our watch, and his prescient work is coming true through the exponential take-up of regenerative business, leadership, economics, farming, medicine and more.
Welcome to the wisdom that’s fresh yet ancient, momentous yet timeless, full of dynamism yet born of stillness. Welcome to the Wisdom of Regeneration!
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water…All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ Hopi Elders’ Prophecy
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner, regenerative leadership coach 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), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). 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 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. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
For the latest episodes of the Leading by Nature podcast see here
Leading by Nature – The Necessary Shift in Leadership & Organizational Development Now Required for Future-Fitness
We are living through a once-in-a-civilization moment marked by great upheaval, where the breakdown of global systems has become impossible to ignore and signs of breakthrough are starting to emerge. This metamorphic breakdown-breakthrough moment is characterized by the need to evolve our enterprises from polluting extractors into life-affirming contributors. Our collective future requires that we learn to flourish within planetary boundaries while respecting all life on Earth. This is what the term regenerative means, to adapt and evolve towards life-affirming futures.
There is a rising zeitgeist around regenerative. Yet what regenerative truly points to is a timeless journey of becoming more in harmony with life, more attuned to nature’s ways. For an organization to be on this regenerative journey, it must work toward enriching all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, investors, the wider society, and the environment. Key to this is leadership, and in particular Leading by Nature, which establishes a regenerative leadership consciousness that is more in harmony with life.
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. This regenerative approach works with a living-systems worldview by unlocking self-and-system consciousness within us so that 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.
Alas, we can’t just activate a new quality of leadership consciousness with the flick of a switch. Instead, we must endure a journey of transformation that involves a deep psychological renewal—a process of dying and being reborn, a threshold-crossing from one state of being to the next by letting go of the old while bringing in the new. This threshold-crossing morphs how we relate to our inner selves and our outer world. 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. It’s a profound undertaking that affects us in deep and partly unconscious ways. It’s not something to be taken lightly, and without this personal shift in consciousness the looming crises our organizations and societies now face will be unavoidable.
Over many years of coaching leaders from all walks of life, experience has shown me that for a leader—or any adult for that matter—to undergo such a psychological metamorphosis, one needs to hold space for both inner and outer shifts. Outer is the way we relate with others and attend to the world around us, and inner is the way we attend to our inner psyche and its deeper nature.
The way in which we respond to the world shapes our own world, in turn shaping us. As Ghandi insightfully said, “As one changes their own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward them.” Our leadership consciousness influences our teams and the wider organization, just as the organizational culture influences us. Likewise, the organization’s inner culture, its values and behaviors, has an influence on the organization’s outer brand, its value propositions and stakeholder relationships. Vice versa, the changing nature of the organization’s outer market and stakeholder ecosystem has an influence on the organization’s inner culture. Both the inner and the outer aspects of the leader and of the organization are ripe for transformation in these metamorphic times.
As our leadership consciousness shifts, we become more aware of the reciprocal and participatory nature of relationships within and beyond the organization-as-living-system.
The Necessary Evolution from Machine to Living-systems L&OD
When, as leaders, we are able to let go of the outdated mechanistic tendencies and expand our restricted view of the organization, we open ourselves and our teams up to how life inherently operates—in harmony. We learn how to work with natural rhythms and methods that encourage the vitality and adaptability of the organization. We learn to lead by nature.
Table: Worldview Shift
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
This evolutionary shift in L&OD is a learning-in-action process. First and foremost, it’s an internal shift, an embodied process—rather than a linear tick-box exercise—where one must become self-aware of old habits while patiently practicing new ones. Secondly, it requires enriching the cultural soil of the organization so that each person can draw nourishment from everyday interactions as they learn and adapt.
The good news is that we need look no further than within and all around us to find inspiration for this L&OD shift from a machine into a living-systems worldview.
When we observe a forest or woodland, reductive machine logic sees trees struggling against each other in a competitive battle for survival of the fittest. However, when we sharpen our lens of perception—using a living-systems lens—we start to see the immense, inter-relational venture at play. Different species of trees share nutrients with each other through the soil, and tree roots form intimate relationships with mycelia, bacteria, and microbes. The forest floor is teaming with networks that benefit the vibrancy, resilience, and evolutionary dynamics of the whole ecosystem. In only a handful of healthy soil there’s more living beings working together than there are human beings on the entire planet.
What Charles Darwin originally meant by the phrase “survival of the fittest” was not “dominate or become dominated,” but rather each species adapts to an ever-changing context by “fitting-in” to its niche. It’s not the strongest species that survive nor the most intelligent but the ones most able to adapt to change. This adaptive edge is what our organizations need to foster by welcoming in the living-systems worldview into our L&OD.
The ability for our sophisticated, digitized, yet stressed-out organizations to attune with Nature’s Wisdom is the next frontier. It means aligning with life itself, nothing more nothing less. All of life—including human society, the organization, and the leader—is immersed in an ever-changing rhythmic and relational dance. When off kilter with the rhythms of this dance, chaos and fragility ensue; when in-tune, all parts find flow and the capacity to flourish. It’s the same for life within the organization as it is for life beyond the organization. Those organizations and leaders who learn to attune with the rhythms and ways of nature are the ones most able to adapt to change.
Leading by Nature
I call my regenerative, nature-inspired approach to L&OD Leading by Nature. It is simultaneously completely natural and radically different from today’s dominant leadership narrative. Above all, Leading by Nature is a journey not a destination, a journey that includes both inner and outer dimensions for the leader and the organization to embark upon.
For the leader: The inner dimension is the capacity to connect to our true nature within; tapping into our essence so we can lead with authenticity, coherence, and purposefulness. The outer dimension is about attuning with life around us; being open and receptive to the ever-changing nature of life and creating generative spaces where trust, responsiveness, and developmental learning thrive. This inner-outer leadership coherence allows us to create regenerative potential in ourselves and through our relationships with others.
For the organization: The inner dimension is the mission, culture, values, meeting conventions, and decision-making protocols that support the organization’s way of being. Creating a more purposeful, adult-adult, entrepreneurial, self-managing, diverse, and inclusive way of working unlocks the organization’s regenerative potential. The outer dimension is the customer value propositions, supply-chain, and wider stakeholder relationships that drive how the organization shows up in the world. This inner-outer organizational coherence allows diverse stakeholder relations to flourish through the products, services, experiences, and communities the organization facilitates.
The upshot of regenerative L&OD is a working environment where people feel welcome to bring their whole selves to work. An adult-adult culture of agility and empowered entrepreneurialism allows failures to be continuously transformed into learnings, which ultimately reduces the burden of bureaucracy. This humanness invites innovation, collaboration, and purposefulness into the heart of everyday meetings and decision-making where individuals are able to discover more of their natural, creative spark.
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), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). 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 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. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“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
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
For the latest episodes on the Leading by Nature podcast see here
Activating Regenerative Potential with the 5 E’s: Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiasm
The root cause of our social and ecological crises today is an impoverished and imbalanced way of attending to life. Put simply, our prevalent experience of life is corrupt. Rather than a natural flowing-with experience, we are often distracted, anxious, fearful, judgemental and war-torn.
At present, there is a near total disequilibrium between what modern humanity aspires to and how nature works. This disequilibrium is due to a disharmony – a debasement, fragmentation and consumerisation – of our embodied experience of life. This spawns an underlying corruption deep inside the individual and collective psyche, creating anxiety, fear and insecurity. This fear drives a desire to grasp, to fix, assert, control, achieve. We then go about achieving and fixing things from this imbalanced disharmonious way – exacerbating the very problems we seek to solve.
Without attending to this imbalance within side our own selves, and in our systems, we miss-the-point of life, become purposeless, out-of-synch with our true nature, cut adrift and rudderless, tossed this-way-and-that by ego-fickle desires, wants and mores, ‘fixing’ and ‘fighting’ at the surface-level, avoiding the deeper challenge this trilemma of social, environmental and economic crises reveals = what it truly means to be human in this more-than-human world of ours.
To limit our future-vision of humanity to managing carbon and transitioning to a ‘green economy’ in order to keep our imbalanced consumerisation of life rolling hedonically onward, would be a grave error leading to further downfall for humanity and the wider fabric of life on Earth. Don’t get me wrong, climate change is clearly very important but a symptom of a deeper malaise. Try and patch up the symptom through a narrowed-focus on carbon while leaving the underlying corruption intact is not a way for the wise.
What is well within our capacity in this epochal hour is a real transformation toward future-fit life-affirming futures. But, what do terms like ‘future-fit’ and ‘regenerative business’ actually mean?
You will find definitions here on The Future-Fit Leadership Academy website written over 8 years ago by myself and future-fit business specialist Geoff Kendall. These definitions are as relevant today as back then, though now seem more mainstream, popular, perhaps even trendy. Back then (only 8 years ago – not a long time in humanity’s history) they were viewed as pretty edgy.
For the benefit of this article – see a summary of definitions here:
What do we mean by the term ‘Future Fit’?
The scientific definition of a future-fit organization is one that in no way undermines – and ideally increases – the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever.
The question I ask you to reflect on, right now, is: ‘Why would we wish for anything less?’ Surely humanity can contribute to life? Ofcourse we can, and in-so-doing we activate our purposefulness.
In practice this means:
- The organization is actively working towards reaching a threshold of performance across a range of social and environmental issues. This can be quantifiable through holistic benchmarking, such as the Future Fit business benchmarking goals.
- The organization’s sense of purpose, culture and leadership is aimed at becoming a regenerative business. This life-affirming strategic intent drives behaviour throughout the inner-nature (culture) and outer-nature (value propositions and stakeholder relations including interrelation with society and nature).
What do we mean by ‘regenerative business’?
Regenerative business seeks to be life-affirming by aiming beyond the preservation and restoration of our human communities and natural ecosystems – i.e. it is not simply ‘net positive’. It is about operating in ways that contribute, replenish and evolve within the evolution of life: business that is not just copying living systems logic but seeking to embody this logic, by seeking harmony within the rhythms, flows and evolutionary currents of life. Regenerative business seeks to serve life while tending toward harmony with life. This necessarily involves a shift in consciousness; and directly attends to the root problem, the corruption in our way of attending to reality.
What do we mean by the term ‘life-affirming’?
Life-affirming is a quality: an intent, attitude and mind-set.
This mind-set can be characterized as a shift from an overly mechanistic and materialistic perspective rooted in separation/fear, toward recognition of the inter-connectedness of life. It is an awakened and embodied recognition/remembering that our selves and our organizations are living systems immersed within the living systems of society which are immersed within the living systems of our more-than-human world. Everything inter-relates with everything else, and in sensing life beyond separateness our fearful self-as-separate-and-in-competition with life eases, and a deeper self-as-participating-within life emerges.
This mind-set shift affects how we lead, manage and organize in business and beyond. And a future fit regenerative leader is anyone who is actively pursuing the development of a future-fit regenerative organization.
Sounds great in theory – but how are organizations and leaders actually embodying this in practice? Its this that I unpack in detail with frames, tools and examples in my latest book Leading by Nature.
Practical business examples are exponentially growing in number by the day. I have the real pleasure and honour to be directly assisting a wide range of different organizations across the globe on the regenerative journey – by example:
The B Corp consultancy Greenheart – who explain ‘Sustainability is no longer enough. For a meaningful transition to a future-fit economy we need more.’ With their expertise in B Corp, impact management & planetary health they help clients build businesses that are regenerative by nature. You can check out their work here.
The award-winning minimalist footwear and wellbeing brand Vivobarefoot – who say ‘Why is Vivobarefoot becoming a regenerative business? Because the status quo needs shaking up with actions that urgently revise ingrained, habitual approaches to commerce.’ You can check out their work here.
The insurance and professional service provider AXA Climate – who affirm ‘Reducing our negative impact on the planet is not enough. Our collective challenge is to switch from extractive companies to regenerative companies. To that end, we are transforming our business models, our organizations and our collective missions. And this transformation movement drives us.’ You can check out their work here.
The consultancy, footwear producer and insurance company (along with the investment bank, food retailer, design agency, fashion brand, manufacturer, creative agency, wellbeing provider, food charity, global corporation, local housing association, and many other diverse organizations I directly engage with on the regenerative journey) all share in common an authentic deeply-felt sense of the challenges and opportunities in unfolding toward becoming regenerative – to work the way nature works – not just in some theoretical way, but through practical methods enabling future-fitness, agility, entrepreneurialism and synergistic value throughout the business ecosystem, society and ecology.
Over more than a decade of coaching leaders through their process of becoming regenerative, I’ve found that vital to the rebalancing/reconnecting into living system logic is an embodied shift. This embodied felt-sense deepens our coherence and awareness of how life works. A letting-go of the ‘achiever mindset’ and a welcoming-in of the ‘regenerative-mindset’ involves a comprehension of, but also an embodied tuning-in to, living-systems.
A simple frame I offer coaching clients is the Three Levels of Learning from Living Systems
Three Levels of Learning from Living Systems
These three levels of learning from living-systems go hand-in-hand with a shift in how we perceive reality – a ‘seeing with new eyes’, which is both ontological (a shift in our being) and epistemological (a shift in our knowing). Another simple frame I use when coaching is the Three Lens which I explain in detail in my latest book Leading by Nature.
In this article I offer another simple, yet important, framing – the 5 E’s – as a way into embodying a regenerative mindset. The 5 E’s are: Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiasm. Each of these words have a dynamism to them, and partake in a ‘process of becoming’, a revealing, unfolding, regenerating potential essential for the leader and the organization. Let’s explore each of them through the dimensions of self (leader) and system (organization):
Essence
Self – What is our individual essential nature? Underneath all the habits, acculturations, norms, family conditioning, and personality traits, what is unique to us? It’s a powerful inquiry to ask oneself ‘Who am I, really?’ What is my reason-for-being? What are my deepest and most profound gifts and loves? Such an inward inquiry might be misconstrued as a selfish endeavour, and yet it’s through this self-inquiry that we can learn how to truly serve others in regenerative ways that nourish ourselves and others reciprocally.
‘The one who looks outside dreams, the one who looks inside awakens.’ – Carl Jung
The times we are in demand leaders who are awakening to their true nature, and unlocking their essence. The capacity to sense-in to one’s essence comes through inner attentiveness, stillness, and an embodied knowing. There are various practices I explore in Leading by Nature that help us sense-in and reveal essence. Then we can start to work with the grain of our own nature, rather than struggling against it. This is a vital step from ‘Achiever’ toward ‘Regenerative’.
System – The tap-root that deeply nourishes the regenerative business draws upon knowing the essence of the living-organization. This involves learning to cultivate the systemic-sense of when activities, projects and missions are working with (rather than against) the essential life-force of the living-organization. This, in-and-of-itself, demands a fundamental shift in being-and-knowing. It invites us to sense-in to the living-system dynamics of the living-organization. It’s not just a simple case of using nature metaphors or imagining the organization as a certain creature or aspect of nature, it’s a deeper sensing-in to how the living-organization behaves, its shadow aspects as well as its more overt behaviours, the historic journey including pivotal shifts, trauma and unconscious bias that cause habits and patterns that warp the way the living-system adapts to change.
The organizational essence is deeper than a purpose statement or mission. What’s the organization’s unique gift/service to the world in terms of how it can help manifest life-affirming futures? Why is this living-organization needed now in the world? What makes it unique from other similar product or service providers? Who are the conduits/guardians/stewards of this unique potential? How might they describe its essence, and how might they regularly come together to sense-in to the living-system? The analogy here might be one of a parent truly listening to the child, looking deep in the eyes, connecting at a soul level, rather than interacting at the everyday reactive, largely unconscious level while engaging in daily errands, getting ready for school, tidying the room, etc. All-too-often we are superficially engaging in errands and to-dos while busying ourselves in the living-organization, getting-the-job-done, but rarely consciously and authentically connecting with the organization as a living-system with its own unique potential. Otherwise we run the risk of conditioning the organization into the very mechanistic mindset we are then wanting to transform it from with our regenerative business initiatives. One of the tools I share in detail in Leading by Nature is the role ‘systemic enablers’ can play in revealing and working with the essence of the living-organization.
Energy
Self – Life is full of stillness and movement, essence and energy. Energy flows from essence in a ‘process of becoming’ through ‘emergence’ (which we explore next). This energy is the very life-force of nature. It impels the essence of each living-system to unfold.
We can learn to work with this life-force. Rather than achieving, controlling, opposing, we find coherence and connection, letting-go of what’s not serving our potential and welcoming-in authenticity to flow more fully. This is an act of surrendering which involves courage and trust in life.
The more we practice this surrendering/opening-up process, the more we become sensitized to the life-force and learn to discern when we are out-of-kilter and off-balance. Interestingly, we may find dissonance or tension arising as we shift from ‘achiever’ to ‘regenerative’ when old habits are challenged and released. Some teachings purport that dissonance or tension is a sign that something is wrong, so we ought avoid situations or experiences that trigger us or create discomfort. I have found through my leadership development work that this is far too simplistic. In fact, dissonance and tension can become the very crucibles that catalyze our deeper development, as uncomfortable as it may feel to the ego. And so developing a level of discernment is crucial in order to sense the difference between negative energy that ought be handled with due-care, and dissonance that upsets us and yet is inviting a learning-challenge for us to work-through and evolve. Cultivating the capacity to work through tensions, and become more comfortable with the uncomfortableness these tensions create is a vital part of the process of becoming a regenerative leader.
Also, energy flows between our inner and outer worlds. Outer experiences affect us inwardly, and our inner-being informs the way we perceive and experience the outer world.
‘As one changes one’s own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward oneself.’ Ghandhi
Cultivating what I call ‘bodymind coherence’ is a vital aspect of learning to work with energy in becoming regenerative. Bodymind coherence is not only about cultivating our inner being, its also about our inner-outer alignment, by sensing when our experiences and ‘ways of doing’ resonate with our sensations and ‘ways of being’. This inner-outer alignment enables energy to flow more readily, and we find accord with the life-force. Our essence can unfold more readily, and we can learn to work with the essential nature of the living-organization.
This energy provides an aliveness, an active-yet-relaxed presence and purposefulness. We are more available to our own selves (our authenticity, truth and intuition) to others (listening attentively, holding-space, and sensing-responding) and to the living-organization (deep listening, systemic-awareness, systemic enablers).
As leaders, we’ve become well-heeled in the control-manage dynamic. We can unlearn this dynamic through a developmental journey of learning-in-practice. As we unlearn, we create space for a deeper knowing inside ourselves to be heard. We start to trust our natural, inner capacities (non-rational intuitions, hunches, gut-feelings, heart perturbations) as well as our rational reasoning. It’s these natural capacities which help us sense how dynamics play out across the living-organization. This calls upon a combination of self-awareness and systemic-awareness.
In Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, he refers to the Voice of Judgement, the Voice of Cynicism, and the Voice of Fear. These three voices speak to us all the time, keeping us safe from potential danger, yet in the process they are also keeping us small and reducing our capacity to adapt and evolve. As we become more intimate with our own inner ways, we learn how to acknowledge these inner voices and the habitual patterns of reactivity they create, so they do not hijack us as much. That way, we keep ourselves receptive and sensitive to the present moment, along with challenges and tensions. We improve our ability to sense-respond rather than control-manage.
Instead of the usual judgement, cynicism and fear closing us down and keeping us safe (yet stuck) we open with vulnerability, surrendering to what presents itself to us, conscious of our inner emotions and somatic sensations. This allows for a deeper flow of energy to unfold in us that helps reveal our true nature, our essence, from which insight for emergence and deeper connection forms.
‘To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature.’ David Whyte
To work with the energy of nature is to open oneself into the dance of life, full of stillness and movement. Three tools I provide in Leading by Nature to aid this attunement to the life-force within and all around: Stillness, Surrender, Sensitivity.
This sensitivity and surrendering enhances our systemic-awareness – the capacity to sense the wider relational system we lead and operate within and its hidden ordering forces, patterns of behavior, historic conditioning, habituated responses, and energetic networks of participation, learning, and evolution. As we begin to realize that life itself is developmental (ever-learning) so too our living-organizations.
System – The living-organization thrives on relational energy affected by how people show-up and engage with each other. Complex Adaptive Systems research into the complexity of human organizations shows the importance of allowing processes of human-relating through structure and unstructured engagement: structured – meeting conventions, check-ins, feedback processes, appreciative inquiry frames, developmental coaching conversations, etc.; unstructured – office gossip, water-cooler moments, whatsapp/teams/Slack chats, etc. Systemic leadership coaching can help here. While conventional executive coaching focuses on the leader as an individual actor, systemic coaching seeks an understanding of the ever-changing relational field with its relational tensions and developmental dynamics. A couple of tools I have found particularly useful for helping the sensing-responding relational energy of the living-organization are Organizational Acupuncture and Systemic Enablers, which I explain in detail in Leading by Nature. Upon identifying and acknowledging systemic patterns, Systemic Enablers learn to discern where and in what way to engage in small systemic interventions that send positive ripples across the system—just like acupuncture pinpricks do in aligning us to our inner healing potential. We re-pattern relational stuckness into better flow, richer purposefulness, and increased outer impact. This helps the living-organization tune-in to its essence and flow with the energy of its life-force emergently amid an ever-changing business context.
Emergence
Self – Emergence is the way life unfolds. As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, “It’s nature’s creative advance”. All living-systems express themselves through the self-generating, self-organizing property of emergence. Our selves as leaders and our organizations-as-living-systems are no different in the need to creatively adapt.
Rather than fearing change and struggling to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, we open up to opportunities, recognising that change and tension is what impels development and growth. This invites a deeper attitude toward oneself, others, and the living-organization in working more in harmony with inner-outer nature.
Fundamentally, this opening into the emergence of life is a process of letting-go, of surrendering in order to work with the essence-energy-emergent flow of life. In my coaching sessions I use the three dimensions of letting-go: micro, meso, and macro – which I explore in detail in Leading by Nature.
Micro Level
The micro letting go process is like the frontline of transformation. It’s the daily noticing and surrendering of our own reactivity so that we can deepen into life. It’s the life-learning revealed through everyday challenges. Each tension and trigger, and the resistance it creates within us, becomes the crucible for opening up to more of life, through noticing and relaxing. Each twinge of cynicism or pang of fear or defensive or aggressive reaction is in itself a useful learning for us, an insight from which to gain perspective on what is within us—our habits, wounds and shadows.
Meso Level
The meso level process involves the leader learning to hold space for the transformation of the organization as a living-system by releasing the control-manage tendencies driven by fear and reactivity and beginning to sense-respond more by learning to listen and allow the system to become more developmental and emergent. The leader begins to sense the dynamics of the system and reveal 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, dialogic circles of sharing, liberating structures, Systemic Enablers, non-violent communication methods, giving and receiving feedback, coaching conversations, and more, are all part of cultivating this meso level letting go process. You can find more about many of these systemic processes on my website.
Macro Level
The macro level process happens not daily or weekly but over many months and years. It involves a death-rebirth, a moving from the Achiever to Regenerative on the spiral of the figure eight panarchy. Adult developmental psychology shows us that as we gain greater self-awareness (facilitated through the micro level) we gain greater systemic-awareness (facilitated through the meso level) and we also gain greater worldview awareness (facilitated by the macro level). Recall Jung’s individuation process of revealing and integrating our deeper nature by coming to terms with our own inner shadows and learning to release them—shining the light of our own conscious awareness on to the darkness within, and so making the darkness light. It’s a lifetimes’ work, and yet there is a figure eight rhythm to this macro process.
Life can be seen as a tapestry of interrelated figure eight cycles continually spiraling back and forth, creating and decaying. The breakdown of one process informs the creation of another. This continual and nested unfolding of creative potential is what the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, referred to as a “bringing forth” or “poiesis” as the fundamental creative dynamic of life. As we learn to become conscious of these spirals, we engage in a bringing forth process of becoming—an unfolding self-expression of who we truly that deepens the authenticity of our interactions with the world. This tuning-in to both the outer-nature of spiraling life condition changes and the inner-nature of spiraling psychological development allows us to become more integrated, more purposeful, more able to embrace complexity, and therefore more future fit.
We now realize that the journey toward regenerative leadership is actually a letting go into how life really is, beyond the habituated and acculturated patterns, wounds, shadows and projections we all-too-often get caught-up in. This acknowledgement is an important step on the Achiever to Regenerative journey – that we need to work on our own selves in order to more truthfully serve the regenerative futures we know in our hearts are possible.
‘What is within us is within everything. Once we understand this truth, we step outside of the parameters of our individual self and come to realise the power that is within us. This shift in awareness is a very simple step that has profound consequences’ – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
System – The living-organization is in a state of constant flux, full of complex emergent processes of human relating. It is emergent by nature. These energetic relationships participate and inter-relate across the system. Small interventions in one part of the system can have great influence on other parts of the system, just as releasing stuckness through acupuncture enlivens not just the localized area that was stuck but the flow of energy throughout the whole system.
Upon learning to recognize the organization-as-a-living-system, we cultivate our capacity to navigate the emergent systemic dynamics of the living-organization while transmuting tensions into adaptation, innovation, and growth. Rather than communicating through power-control based bureaucracy we learn to work with the right rhythm of divergence-convergence for emergence. We start where we are at, with each day framed as a learning journey that invokes the growth, adaptation, and evolution in us and the living-organization as we transmute tensions through listening, noticing, reflecting, and sharing.
Emergence is propelled by tensions. Tensions create anxiety in us that stimulates and cajoles us out of the status quo and into emergence. These tensions arise between the space of divergence (diverse perspectives) and convergence (alignment around purpose and values). The sweet spot between divergence and convergence creates emergence—not too much divergence or chaos ensues and not too much convergence or rigidity forms. Living-systems thrive on this edge of chaos and order, and it’s this edge that enables adaptability and vitality across the living-organization.
The life-force of the living-organization is stimulated through the alchemy of divergence and convergence, and it is that combination of divergence and convergence that enable emergence. Because it’s the life-force of the living-organization, emergence is fast becoming the Holy Grail in L&OD.
Evolutionary
Self – Evolution is not a chain-reaction or a blind process of random selection, but a flow-response that sensitively and seamlessly connects all life. Everything is in continuous participation with everything else. Tensions of emergence reciprocate and interpenetrate across networks of relationality, in complex and unpredictable ways and yet there are non-sequential evolutionary dynamics at play that we can learn to work with rather than push against. To truly comprehend the participatory, inner-outer essence-energy-emergent nature of evolution is not just a head-based rational-analytic reductive-scientific activity, it’s an embodied felt-sense, a shift in our being-knowing. It’s a transformation in consciousness no less—a momentous movement of our being in the world—whereupon we let go of the personal will’s ego-orientated, achiever drive and step into the deeper purposefulness within ourselves and also within life itself found through our own inner journey, as I explore in Leading by Nature. Its what Ghandhi gestures toward when saying that as we change our nature, so the attitude of the world changes toward us.
What’s relevant here is that this deeper purposefulness we awaken within provides a less acquisitive and ego-needy “What’s in it for me?” and a more open vulnerability, sensitivity, and availability to work with the deeper purposefulness of the living-organization. Our inner truth or dharma then resonates with the purpose of the living-organization. We begin to ask.
How can I best help the organization become a truer version of itself?
Psychological energy that was consumed by the need to relentlessly achieve in order to better one’s career, status, salary, and personal ambition is now flowing into sensing what genuinely serves the organization and its purpose beyond hitting the numbers.
What is the organization here to do and be?
The more we become attuned with the systemic dynamics within the organization, the more we sense what best serves the evolutionary potential of the organization and the more we acknowledge what is holding it back from serving its purpose. An apt example comes from Buurtzorg with its active commitment to sharing its own hard-won innovations on cultivating an effective self-managing culture with competitors, because it sees the purpose of the organization to improve neighbourhood care, therefore helping competitors improve does not undermine Buurtzorg. Rather, it helps serve its purpose for system-wide impact. It’s this kind of capacity to collaborate across organizational boundaries without the fear of competitiveness and associated need for protectionism that the business world now needs for its future-fit ability to work on inter-woven systemic challenges such as the Climate Emergence, reversing nature loss, and tackling rampant social inequality. We simply can’t deal with these challenges with the same level of consciousness that created them.
System – For the organization, the evolutionary shift in focus is from profits to purpose. For sure, profit is vital for any business, yet healthy profits flow from purpose not the other way around. I like the analogy of breathing. We need to breathe to live and yet breathing is not our reason for living. The organization needs to live by generating healthy profits, yet that’s not its reason for living. As Brian Robertson, founder of the consultancy Holacracy explains, we need to learn to listen and tune into the evolutionary purpose of the organization, “The key is about separating identity and figuring out ‘what is the organization’s calling?’ Not ‘what do we want to use this organization to do, as property?’ but rather ‘what is this living system’s creative potential?’ That’s what we mean by evolutionary purpose: the deepest creative potential to bring something new to life, to contribute something energetically, valuably to the world…It’s that creative impulse or potential that we want to tune into, independent from what we want ourselves.”
Hence sensing into the systemic dynamics of the living-organization becomes a vital capacity. The role of Systemic Enablers (as explored in Leading by Nature) is key here, and everyone in the organization has this latent capacity to sense-in if they so choose to cultivate it. Self-awareness-in-action and systemic-awareness-in-action is not just for leaders or Systemic Enablers, it’s for everyone to embrace in helping the organization become more alive, more adaptive to change, more future-fit.
“We are all natural sensors; we are gifted to notice when something isn’t working as well as it could or when a new opportunity opens up. With self-management, everybody can be a sensor and initiate changes—just as in a living organism every cell senses its environment and can alert the organism to needed change. We cannot stop sensing. Sensing happens everywhere, all the time, but in traditional organizations, the information often gets filtered out…In a self-managing organization, change can come from any person who senses that change is needed. This is how nature has worked for millions of years. Innovation doesn’t happen centrally, according to plan, but at the edges, all the time, when some organism senses a change in the environment and experiments to find an appropriate response.” Frederic Laloux
As well as receptively listening to what wants to emerge while tuning-in to the underlying evolutionary purpose of the living-organization, we can also proactively scan the future horizon. In Leading by Nature, I explore a comprehensive methodology that includes foresight, back-casting, scenario-planning, system mapping, stakeholder interviews, and other tools for Systemic Innovation by identifying emerging trends that resonate with the evolutionary purpose of the organization. This combined capacity of anticipating the future horizon a few years hence while being ever-receptive to the emerging future right before us helps ensure evolutionary fitness—future-fitness
Enthusiasm
This final one of the 5 E’s is quite different from the previous 4 in that it describes the deep inner-outer dynamism flowing through the whole process of becoming a regenerative leader. The other 4 E’s all feed into each other: sensing-in to essence, cultivating coherence and flowing with energy, working with emergence, tuning-in to evolutionary fitness. Flowing through all of this is the soulful energetic attentiveness of enthusiasm. This enthusiasm works with the 4 Regenerative Leadership Virtues of Balance, Patience, Courage & Purposefulness which I explore in detail in Leading by Nature.
To truly understand the inner-outer potency of enthusiasm, I’d like to draw upon the ancient Greek meaning of ‘enthusiasmos’ – a quality of consciousness whereupon we open our awareness to the subtle energies flowing within nature. For this shift in consciousness, the ego-self permeates its boundaries of self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with life into self-as-participating-within life.
This activation of our super-nature happens by alchemizing different ways of knowing within ourselves, which allow us to connect more deeply to the Field where Nature’s Wisdom resides. From this integral awareness we sense into essence-energy so as to flow in a more attuned emergent-evolutionary way.
This shift in attentiveness is an enthusiasm for being alive, and requires cultivating a condition of the human soul – the spiritual aspect of the journey of becoming a regenerative leader – whereupon we become receptive to Nature’s Wisdom – a transpersonal experience. For animist cultures from which we all originate, and too for today’s shamanic cultures, this is to live more deeply at the archetypal level, open to transpersonal spirit energies that infuse nature. This transpersonal openness helps permeate ego-boundaries so the illusion of separateness that haunts modern humanity’s malaise is healed through a deep knowing of human-nature-spirit – an embodied experience within the psyche and soul.
Enthusiasm is a discipline; an embodied undertaking to be activated each and every day. It draws upon a deep trust in life as a quintessential learning experience that can be co-created with our intentional attentiveness. This embodied way of attending to life informs our coherence, mindset, actions and moral rectitude, in seeking to flow the way life flows.
‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
Enthusiasm is not a ‘new age’ positive psychology technique, nor is it a creed or moral code, but a way of becoming that embraces each day as a learning journey, each day as a portal into deepening our flow with life. Through this intentional attentiveness we create a sacred space-time – a temenos, a deep sense of place and purpose – through which regenerative potential of essence-energy-emergence-evolutionary dynamics unfold harmonizing metaphysical forces emanating from the spirit-realm of nature with the world of form; uniting one’s own nature with the field of nature – this harmonizing effect lies at the heart of regeneration. The ancient Egyptians – for whom regeneration was a key principle – knew how vitally important this inner-outer harmonizing effect is to the regenerative life.
Cultivating this depth of enthusiasm across the living-organization’s culture is no mean feat, yet it allows for a future-fitness fostering developmental, learning, growth-mindsets for high-performing purposeful teams with a depth of connection into what really matters – authenticity and wholeness. This is what Teal/Evolutionary cultures seek to nurture as an important aspect of the journey toward regenerative business where both the inner-nature (culture) and outer-nature (value propositions) seek life-affirming futures.
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), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). 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 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. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
For the latest episodes on the Leading by Nature podcast see here
Weaving ancient Nature Wisdom with the Science of the New Time
This is a guest blog by Claudia van’t Hullenaar
Change is in the air
We are living in a time of transformation. There are forces at play in the world that are harmful and polarizing in addition to massive global challenges, sustainability crises, injustice, habitat loss and degradation, greed, me-ism, uncertainty and disruption, mental distress and unhappiness on individual levels. Do you feel or sense that things are falling apart or changing in hard ways?
A reversal of the world towards a New Earth
At the same time, an increasing movement to care for our world is arising. We are living in the time that has been foretold by numerous ancient prophecies. This earth upheaval, ancient wisdom traditions, indigenous peoples and tribal shamanic societies long have known as a time of The Great Turning, a quantum leap in collective consciousness. The ancestral Andean Cosmovision speaks of the Pachakuti, a period of change and transformation, when the world is turned upside down which marks the transition to a new time. The ancestral Andean mystical traditions I am referring to, are based on the wisdom of Nature and the Cosmos and at its core it is about Life in sacred reciprocity with All Our Relations and deep love for our Mother Earth, in Quechua Pachamama, and all of her beings.
This process of evolutionary transformation has the potential to move us from our current paradigm of separation into an emerging paradigm of unity and wholeness, into an era of a wisdom society that values the sacredness of Life.
The need of balance and equilibrium for the Sacred Feminine
We are clearly living in a world of imbalances and the natural result is chaos, destruction, and uncertainty. To help shape a possible beautiful and thrivable future, we must create more inner equilibrium that includes bringing into harmony the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine.
The wisdom, presence, intuition, ability to connect with the natural world, and creativity associated with the feminine archetype, is known as the Sacred Feminine and embodies nurturing, loving, compassion, tenderness, care and fearlessness.
The Sacred Feminine complements the Sacred Masculine which represents positive aspects of masculine energy which include strength, integrity, logic, practicality, protection, and the ability to take action. To make it clear, it is not about gender. All of us, women and men have both feminine and male energies, representing aspects of the human psyche.
In the Andean mystical tradition, the physical embodiment of the Sacred Feminine is also referred to as Pachamama or Mother Earth. She is seen as a living being that sustains all Life on earth. We human beings are her children, she protects us, loves us, nourishes us, and allows us to flourish.
However, there has been an excess of masculine energy with the oppression and longtime imbalance in masculine-dominated societies for many centuries, where the shadow sides of the Sacred Masculine of dominance, intimidation, competition, rigidity, suppression of emotions, and disconnection from nature, led to let us believe that power comes from overshadowing others. Many of these perspectives and beliefs have shaped our social, institutional, cultural, and political systems. The aggrandizement of “The more is better”, “getting”, competition, power over, aggression, and individualism can be witnessed everywhere. The devaluation and diminution of traditionally feminine qualities, voices, perspectives, and skills has been prevalent in patriarchal structures and had significant and far-reaching impacts on the Sacred Feminine and women, perpetuating cycles of marginalization, objectification, violence, inequality, and spiritual disconnection. This in turn, had, and has a profound impact and has serious consequences for women, men, girls, boys, individuals, communities, and the planet.
Many of us women are struggling with unique developmental challenges and hidden power blocks which express in a myriad of ways like self-sacrificing, overgiving, shame-based and victim mentality just to mention a few, even if we have lots of outer success.
The return of the wisdom of the Sacred Feminine is essential. One urgent task in these times is the developmental growth and maturation of our adult selves and represents a shift in collective consciousness towards a more balanced, loving way of being and creating harmony and wholeness in the world.
Imagine if these two equally important polarities melted into each other, finding their full expression and supporting each other, as our feminine nurturance, love, and connection to life become fearless and our actions naturally determined, and our masculine clarity, discernment, and actions become tender, compassionate where the feminine is integrated. How would the world look like? How would all of our relationships look like?
Re-membering and embracing the Sacred Feminine and deepening our relationship with Mother Earth
I was long living in imbalance and disconnection with the Self. Too often I was unconsciously doing it the masculine way compromising myself in order to fit in, be seen as woman, leader, family and home manager, to be worthy and loved. It was very painful. On my ongoing own transformation journey, I re-connected, embraced my feminine aspects, worked with the shadows, and life started to open up for me in so many wonderful ways. The greatest gift has been to have been led to and follow the call to the sacred path of the Soul of the ancient healing traditions of the Peruvian Andes and Amazon. This awakening of the Heart journey is life changing. As I continue studying and training the compassionate depths of this medicine, the profound meaning of Ayni, the sacred reciprocity, embracing and honoring the Sacred Feminine, I see that this is a potent medicine in service for an awakening world in this time of transformation.
The Andean mystical tradition is as ancient as profound. It is a deeply earth-honoring and earth-regenerative, soul-awakening and life affirming wisdom tradition, which has a deep reverence for the Sacred Feminine, Pachamama and all of Creation.
Embracing the Sacred Feminine helps us to reconnect with a multidimensional natural world, and reminds us of our deep interdependence with all Life and offers a recalibration of values and worldviews that transforms our relationship with Self and the Universe.
Realizing through visceral embodied experiences that the Mother Earth is our Sacred Mother is an insight of profound significance. It changes everything and cannot be unseen anymore.
After several years of walking the path of the Soul going through breakdowns and breakthroughs, I profoundly see the world from a different perspective: from the wisdom of the heart and our Sacred Nature within. It is an irreversible shift in perception. And the journey continues with ever more amazements, deepening and openings.
I came to deeply believe that the future of our world depends on our reverence and love and care for ourselves, each other and Mother Earth. Once we realize and embody this sacred relationship, that she is a living and conscious being, and the source of our birth, love, and nurture, we will choose differently.
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“We are all indigenous children to Mother Earth.” Chief Phil Lane Jr.
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The importance of expanding one’s beliefs to create new stories
I have come to re-cognize and believe that to become true stewards to our beautiful planet and all of Life:
- we need more loving and make Love our new bottom line
- it takes courage to open and soften our hearts
- healing starts with ourselves first, and that healing, growth, and transformation needs to happen on both a personal and collective level
- we need to embrace, integrate and bring wise and compassionate feminine intelligence into the world
- we need to put love and wellbeing of humanity and Mother Earth at the heart of business and leadership purpose, as well as in education and politics
- a moral foundation and integrity is centered on the wisdom of the Heart
- sustainability and climate change is also an inside job and journey
- we have to become the embodied change we wish to see
- knowledge alone does not bring the shift, it has to be integrated and embodied
- it is an evolutionary journey from the inside out
- this ancient yet new understanding must be shared and will reach those who are ready to receive
Addressing the pressing social, environmental and human concerns confronting humanity today, will require a shift away from individuality, indifference and competition toward cooperation and care. This can only happen if we finally give the inner dimension of our being the importance, space and attention it deserves.
Cutting-edge technologies, elaborated strategies, and business innovation alone will not make it. It begins with each and every one of us, within our own hearts, mind and spirit, within our families and within our communities and workplaces.
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“I think what we need at this crucial time is empathy … We need to think about our world in the sense of taking care of our world. Maybe culturally, historically, they are seen as feminine values.” Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas, a climate scientist and an IPCC author.
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How we can start or continue developing ourselves
There are many ways, approaches and paths, wonderful mentors, guides, and teachers that can help developing a more loving, inclusive, and empowering relationship with ourselves, each other, nature and Mother Earth. Everyone who is ready will find their own way and preferred mentor. Research for a deeper understanding of the true nature of reality, new discoveries in various fields of science are profoundly resonant with what ancient wisdom traditions always have known. So, there are a lot of exciting things unfolding out there.
In view of the limited possibility here, I would like to share some brief ideas that come from my own inner journey, learning and practice supporting my re-membering and opening up to feminine energies:
- Simply “Be” more
- Be open to the possibility that there might be another way for any condition, relationship, event and situation
- Cultivate self-awareness, be conscious, observe and learn, and befriend your inner world and mind
- Death and rebirth cycles are normal and part of life
- Words have power – be conscious with your words
- Caretake yourself, be tender to yourself – it starts with you first – no matter who you are or what position or role you hold
- Be curious, be open to question and inquire, dare to expand your thinking
- Commune with nature: be with Mother Earth, imagine her as a living conscious being, talk to her
- Appreciate ever always
- Use inner technologies like mindfulness practices and or meditation that help awaken one to greater awareness
- Practice, practice, practice – all the greatest mentors do the same
- Trust – there is a Higher Power that is bigger than your mind
It is time to go deep and work deep. It is time to address the longtime imbalances in our societies and it is up to each and everyone to choose to see with new eyes, open up to new perspectives and potentials on how we understand and see the world, the relationship with ourselves, each other and our planet and what impact that has.
What have your own experiences been on your path of growth and discovery on your life’s journey? What does this message open-up for you? What resonates with you?
To go deeper in transformational work in the field of business, I trained Transformational Coaching and Facilitation with the Institute for Women-Centered Coaching, Training and Leadership to weave the novel and the ancient with all my life and professional experiences.
If you are interested to learn more about how I can mentor and accompany you through a transformative approach to authentic and heartfelt empowerment (both for female and male individuals), please contact me directly.
If you are interested in joining an upcoming transformational workshop for women “Embracing the Sacred Feminine Power for a new leadership paradigm”, please send me a message on my website or on LinkedIn.
I am open to synergestic collaboration with like-minded progressive individuals or companies who are curious and want to bring forth new ways of addressing the challenges of our times.
In gratitude and appreciation.
Claudia van’t Hullenaar helps progressive organisations, leaders and women in sustainability to evolve from the inside out, see with new eyes and shape unitive pathways that create impact-focused action. She is an evolutionary leader, transformational coach and facilitator, holistic sustainability advisor, new paradigm storyteller, and a student and practitioner of Peruvian Ancient Nature Wisdom Traditions, Energy Medicine & Shamanic Healing Arts.
Claudia has extensive strategic sustainability and business experience including the industry of global meetings and events, tourism, and destination management. She spent more than 25 years in multi-disciplinary, cross functional, international businesses including an 11-year tenure in the corporate sector at Symantec, as well as in sustainability and consulting environments.
Claudia certified in various conscious and soul-centered leadership, personal development and spiritual transformation programs including a graduation from the Inner MBA, a leadership and business development program that integrates business and spirituality to achieve exceptional and meaningful results, focusing on inner development for conscious leadership, exceptional team building and business as a force for good. Peruvian-Austrian, raised in three different continents, Claudia lives, works and plays in English, Spanish and German. Claudia’s website is www.sustained-impact.com
Claudia on LinkedIn
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For those interested in a special 2-day overnight Regenerative Leadership Immersion with regenerative thought-leader Giles Hutchins at Springwood Farm, near London on 13/14th July – see here, places are limited.
You can join Leadership Immersions Group on LinkedIN here
Earlier this week I was asked on camera to share what I saw as the most important step on the regenerative leadership journey.
The essential step – put simply – is an embodied one. A shift in our awareness of how we experience life, and how we relate to our own selves (self-awareness) and to the living-systems we interact with (systemic-awareness).
This shift welcomes-in a depth in our perception. This depth is the metaphysical dimension of life which has been and always will be here right in our midst regardless of whether we become conscious of it or not. Yet the more conscious we are of it, the more regenerative we can become.
The good news is, this depth of awareness occurs when we awaken our natural vitality – which can occur through all sorts of contemplative activities, exercises and bodymind coherence practices. (For practices on bodymind coherence see Leading by Nature). These practices help us find right-relation with our own selves, with others and with the systems we participate in – self-other-system attunement. In-so-doing, our sense of self shifts from self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with to self-as-participating-within life.
Whilst it’s a personal shift, it informs and also is informed by a communal/organizational shift of organization-as-machine to organization-as-living-system
Its not as simple case of focusing on the self-shift then the organizational-shift, as we need both the communal and personal working in-tandem, synergising each other. If the organizational culture is too resolutely mechanistic, then it stifles the personal shift, and if the leadership ego is too inured in self-as-separate then it stifles the organizational shift. Hence, self-awareness and systemic-awareness work together across the leadership team and the entire organization.
If it all works in-tandem then why is the first essential step an embodied one? Because without this remembrance of this inter-relational depth of life, a comprehension of the systemic nature of leader-and-organization is only ever head-based rote-learning.
Mechanistic Materialism sees only utility and functionality. A regenerative living-systems perspective senses something intangible way beyond, behind, before the facts, forms and functions of physical nature. Rather than utility, we sense a vitality pervading life. This opens us to reverence and gratitude, giving life meaning beyond commodification.
This remembrance is a physiological-and-psychological undertaking.
Physiological – Neuroscience shows how dominant left-brained hemispheric activity along with high-beta brain-wave patterns result in a grasping transactional attention that objectifies, reduces, expects and rejects experiences. Alas, this has become our dominant attention-habit during day-to-day business. For sure this narrowed-grasping can be a useful tool for getting-the-job-done and ticking the to-do’s, but it obscures our receptivity of deeper reality. Through bodymind coherence practices we integrate head-heart-gut neurology, alpha-beta-gamma brain waves, hormonal cortisol/adrenal/serotonin/melatonin levels, dorsal/ventral attention systems, sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous systems, and left hemisphere/right hemisphere brain activity. This bodymind coherence shifts our way of being (ontology) from heightened separateness into a sense of flow, co-creation and dialogue with life. It also shifts our way of knowing (epistemology) from an overly rational-analytic head-based knowing into a more full-bodied intuitive/rational/emotional/somatic integral knowing – which I call ‘activating our super-nature’.
Psychological – We shift from passive-aggressive fight-flight parent-child tendencies into a more intuitive gestalt of being-with nature – or rather Leading by Nature. No longer forcing/supressing or being forced/suppressed. Instead sensing-in to the flow of things through an active receptivity.
‘Now here is my secret. It’s a very simple secret. It’s only with the heart that one sees rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ – Antoine Saint de Exupery
Invisible to the Eye
Today’s worldview of Mechanistic Materialism prides itself on ‘what gets measured gets done’ – we quantize everything we can measure, and anything intangible and immeasurable is overlooked; it becomes invisible. Yet the invisible realm of nature is a very real and potent presence in our lives, it’s the very ground that informs the essence of each living-system – including ourselves and our living-organizations.
Many of the living-systems principles I’ve seen these days applied to regenerative business major on the corporeal: the tangible forms, material/chemical flows and biological characteristics of living-systems, largely overlooking the metaphysical.
‘Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.’ – Albert Einstein
I appreciate that exploring the metaphysical dimension is a bit controversial as it upsets the status quo scientism that can’t compute anything beyond the reductive scientific method. Its even more controversial to try and bring this metaphysical depth of living-systems into business management and leadership development.
So why am I putting my 25yrs of business management, and 13yrs of nature-inspired regenerative leadership work out on to a rocky ledge, exposed to criticism and condescension? Because, how can we venture up the regenerative mountainside without this rocky ledge being traversed? Just because its uncomfortable or challenging to come to terms with the metaphysical depth of life, does not mean we should shun it from our leadership lexicon.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying we ought to deprioritize reductive scientific examinations of living-systems. Certainly not. Great strides over recent decades have been made to advanced our empirical examination of living-systems factualising all sorts of fascinating insights that are super-useful. My point is simply that regenerative leadership consciousness draws from an awakened way-of-being and what’s essential to this is invisible to the eye.
Opening into the Invisible Depths of Nature’s Wisdom
Life is full of profound insights that challenge us in deep and partly unconscious ways. One such insight is that as we deepen our awareness of our own selves (self-awareness) we deepen our awareness of the relational interconnectedness of life (systemic-awareness).
Put another way, an awakened awareness of our individual essence happens hand-in-hand with an awakened awareness of the innate interdependent reciprocity of life. This reciprocity is not just about physical flows and forms, it’s also metaphysical – energetic and intangible.
Think – Indra’s Net: living-systems participating within living-systems which participate within wider living-systems, reciprocating across both tangible-physical and intangible-metaphysical dimensions. Each unique individual essence finds its tune within the wider living-system essence which finds its tune within an even wider one (think – business ecosystem, society, Earth/Gaia).
Feel – The Dance of Life: tunes playing within tunes playing within tunes that inform diverse dancing-forms moving in unique ways while finding right-relation with the tunes-within-tunes, improvised-yet-choreographed unique-yet-unified, emergent-yet-evolutionary. And underpinning all this movement is a pervading stillness. The way into the dance is through this stillness. How magical!
‘Understanding the illusion only comes after the understanding of reality, not before. Until we have the experience of reality, in all its stillness, we are still lost.’ – Peter Kingsley
Our individual essence informs and is informed by our day-to-day moment-by-moment life experience. How we attend to life has moral implications for ourselves and the very fabric of life we all participate within. We co-create with life each and every moment. How emancipating and humbling!
This interdependent reciprocity is first-and-foremost an embodied felt-sense – sensory and super-sensory – that opens us into the depth of nature. Its not something to think about in the head, it’s something to feel through the heart.
Scientifically, quantum and complexity scientists have found the very fabric of reality to be metaphysical – quantum field, non-locality, entanglement, emergence, and so forth. As the brilliant physicist David Bohm recognised, ‘The true ground-of-all-being is the infinite, intangible, spirit that infuses all living beings.’ Physics underpinned by metaphysics. Ignore the metaphysics and physics (and our perception of the physical) becomes ungrounded; we ignore the ‘being’ that informs the ‘doing’. Enter today’s malaise. This is the root problem. Not climate change, not the money system, not capitalism, not corporate-machines, not individualism – these are downstream effects of an ungrounded perception of life.
Receptive-responsive-reciprocity
Life is an inner-outer dance to attune with through stillness yet packed-full of movement.
‘What is within us is within everything. Once we understand this truth, we step outside of the parameters of our individual self and come to realise the power that is within us. This shift in awareness is a very simple step that has profound consequences’ – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
In The Illusion of Separation (2014) I explore inner-outer living-systems reciprocity for individual (leader) essence and living-system (organization) essence. The phrase I use for this inner-outer dynamic is receptive-responsive-reciprocity.
Receptivity:
This is an open-stance, undefended. Imagine dancing like no-one’s watching – unencumbered, alive, spontaneous, no judgement. The reality is people do watch, judge, critique, and we feel a need to manage other’s impressions of ourselves. We learnt the hard way in the school playground how to be cool by undermining our own authenticity. Unlearning/relearning a receptive undefended stance requires a journey of Knowing Thy Self, watching out for the usual protection-rackets and ego-posturing we’ve been habituated and acculturated by. This is where leadership development starts and ends.
A psychologically safe yet powerful way I have found to welcome-in this open-stance receptivity is through nature immersions. When we are in nature we can ease-out of the defensive posture, and start to open into life, and awaken the heart-mind – far more easily than being in a corporate away-day workshop/hotel venue no matter how luxurious. Simple bodymind coherence practices in nature give an embodied experience we can then take back into the corporate environment.
The more receptive we become, the more sensitive we are to systemic fluctuations, flows, undercurrents and constellations (systemic-awareness). Hence why team dialogue, deep listening and inquiry round the campfire is so much more impactful and authentic than a corporate hotel.
In Leading by Nature (2022) I offer chapters of practices to help cultivate this capacity into our way of leading in business. And in Regenerative Leadership, my co-author Laura Storm and I highlight the importance of Living Systems Being underpinning and infusing Living Systems Culture and Living Systems Design. If we overlook this depth of being, then the regenerative culture and design work we do will inevitably drift toward Mechanistic Materialism.
Responsiveness:
Open receptivity allows for a responsiveness with life. This is the shift in leadership dynamic from control-manage to sense-respond, which starts with an embodied felt-sense. To use psychological Transactional Analysis its discerning the difference when in parent-child and when we’re in adult-adult allowing generative space for dialogue beyond judgement.
Cultivating a sense-respond leadership dynamic welcomes-in reciprocity across the living-organization so the essence of the individual and the essence of the living-system synergise in-tune.
‘Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to sea.’ Lao Tzu
Reciprocity:
With receptivity (yin-feminine) and responsiveness (yang-masculine) we allow for an alchemy to flow through self-other-system. In a reciprocating ‘exchange’ (one might say ‘communion’ rather than ‘exchange’ as it is not a transaction but a commingling) the individual essence is drawn outward into the receptive-responsiveness and connects with the essence of the other we relate with, and also the living-organization’s essence. Through such a receptive-responsive-reciprocation one’s essence is in service of the evolutionary potential of the living-organization whilst also enabling developmental growth of self and other. This self-other-system dynamic becomes life-affirming. This is the magic of it all, our developmental future-fitness informs the living-organization’s future-fitness and vice versa.
Sure, we’ll trip ourselves up, get stuck in old-baggage, ensnared in tension, have a bad day, but even these challenges can provide manure for new development if we dare open-up. Nothing is wasted, everything is developmental, as revealing and painful as it may feel when our polished ego-image of ourselves gets triggered. It can take months if not years to cultivate this new dynamic across the living-organization, but its well worth the wait and work.
Learning to Fall in Love with Life
Essentially, this receptive-responsive-reciprocity is re-membering a deep love of life, a vulnerable expansive opening into reality that emancipates our sense of self, yet requires a trust in life.
Here’s a TED-style talk I gave over 8 years ago at a leadership conference on how this sense-respond leadership dynamic relates to both the metaphysical dimension of nature and the ancient Greeks’ expressions of love – agape (receptivity), eros (responsiveness) and philia (reciprocation).
To take this first step of opening into the depth of life through receptive awareness, all we need to do is relax!
To be precise, not some sedated slumber slumped-out in front of Netflix, but an intentional attentiveness – active relaxation – that continuously coheres the bodymind. I have honed safe yet powerful practices that are deeply nourishing for any leader and practitioner to engage in, which I take people through when on a nature-based regenerative leadership immersion at Springwood Farm, 60 acres of ancient woodland and Victorian parkland, dedicated to regenerative leadership coaching and training. Much of my year here is taken-up with helping intact leadership teams and 1-2-1 sessions coaching leaders and practitioners (as well as on-line coaching I provide for people throughout the world who can’t travel here easily). You can listen here to a range of podcast interviews with some of the leaders and organizations engaging in this work.
‘Giles Hutchins is at the forefront of synthesizing new logics for business with the natural rhythms of life and the human mind that will revolutionize business.’ – Lynne Sedgemore CBE
Each year I do a one-day open-programme for leaders and practitioners from different organizations to experience this work, usually in May. This year’s one is now full, and so I have decided to host a special deep-dive overnighter experience on 13th/14th July, there are a couple of places still available for this. We shall be engaging with the practices for embodying regenerative leadership consciousness, opening deeply into real-life, and applying these insights to leadership/organizational development. Contact me through my website if interested and you can find more info about the July immersion here. Some feedback from past participants:
‘Thank you for having me in this wonderful place, both in terms of the setting in nature and in myself. You have created an environment that feels welcoming, safe and one where we have had the stillness to calm the superficial mind and access the deeper parts of ourselves, our true nature. It is an inspiration, an invitation to take this ‘into the world’, a gift to any one ready to discover who they truly are.’
‘A profound experience, beautifully held. An excellent mix of theory, reflective exercises and peer-to-peer learning, providing me the strength, resilience, direction and clarity I need of my leadership work.’
‘Intellectually stimulating AND existentially exhilarating!’
‘What I didn’t expect when I signed-up to attend a nature immersion retreat with Giles was the opening up of a whole new world. The experience opened my eyes to the energy and beauty of this amazing place, and life itself. I highly recommend this programme.’
‘Excellent immersive experience that not only taught me how to change, adapt and alter (where necessary) my leadership style but also gave me the freedom and space to explore myself and my organization.’
‘The mix of learning, dialogue and experiential work was perfect.’
To summarise, embodied experience for the regenerative leader opens us to the metaphysical depth of living-systems, whereupon our individual essence can find the systemic rhythms of the living-organization. Such embodied experience is both personal (contemplative and reflective) and communal (cultural rituals like regenerative feedback, dialogue and deep listening). This deepens the relational experience of the organization-as-living-system beyond the noisy-ego transactional nature of organization-as-machine. The quest here is not a ‘bio hack’ to enhance efficiency to drive high-performing teams, but to deepen our relational awareness and sensitivity to self-other-system dynamics, a biproduct of which is agile, purposeful, high-performing teams in-tune with the mission of the living-organization, its customers and wider ecosystem.
For two quite different yet equally illuminating experiences of over-nighters at Springwood read:
Journeying into Ourselves, The Power of Nature Immersions by Christine Nicholson
The Insights Time in Nature Bring, Moving Beyond the Busy Mind by Yonnatan Ghemit
To finish on a quote from the poet and former Prime Minister Vaclav Havel (found in the ground-breaking book Designing Regenerative Cultures by Daniel Christian Wahl) which aptly sums up what this article is about:
‘A genuine, profound and lasting change for the better can no longer result from the victory of any particular traditional political conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a structural or systemic conception. More than ever before, such a change will have to derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world, their relationships to each other, and to the universe…This is not something that can be designed and introduced like a new car. If it is to be more than just a new variation on the old degeneration, it must above all be an expression of life in the process of transforming itself. A better system will not automatically ensure a better life. In fact the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed.’
You can listen here to Daniel Christian Wahl and I discussing this quote and other related matters on the RSA’s Regeneration Rising podcast here.
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), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). 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 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. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“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
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
To take part in the 13/14th July immersion contact Giles here
For the latest episodes on the Leading by Nature podcast see here
Recognizing the Original Corruption and Finding our Way Home
My oh my, there seem to be a plethora of initiatives bubbling up these days across the leadership and organizational development (L&OD) terrain. What with emotional intelligence, mindfulness, personal and organizational resilience, sustainability, social entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship, conscious leadership, evolutionary-teal organizations, net-positive strategies, regenerative design, biomimicry, ESG, corporate responsibility, circular economics, agile ways of working, self-managing systems, JEDI (justice, equality, diversity & inclusion), regenerative business, conscious capitalism, feminine leadership, and more, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. What common ground inter-relates all these initiatives? Are they all aspects of a general shift toward something?
Sometimes, amid the stresses and strains of leading amid these fast-moving climes, we can overlook the forest for the trees, missing the unifying theme within this bubbling cacophony of terminology. All these initiatives are part-and-parcel of the same evolutionary up-stretch in leadership and organizational development (L&OD) consciousness, from ego-centricity to human-centricity to life-centricity.
This L&OD evolution rides on the back of a wider system-worldview evolution. How we see the world, and our sense of place and purpose within it, is shape-shifting.
We are undergoing a metamorphosis no less. To use the caterpillar/butterfly analogy: the caterpillar is inured in a mechanistic mindset of the dominant status-quo which actually sets us apart from nature and corrupts our potential for harmony with life; the butterfly struggling to be born in our own selves and in our organizational systems is one that seeks integration and harmony with life, aka = a regenerative mindset. This ‘regenerative mindset’ is not new, it’s not something that’s be born out of a small group of practitioners over recent decades, its ancient and yet fresh, its timeless and yet very much of-this-time. Afterall, this is about attuning with life on Earth – nothing more nothing less. Ancient minds have come up with regenerative insights thousands of years before modern minds started toying with the term.
Worldview: Mechanistic Regenerative
Consciousness: Separateness Relational interconnectedness
L&OD Metaphor: Organization-as-machine Organization-as-living-system
L&OD Dynamic: Control-manage Sense-respond
(source: G. Hutchins, Leading by Nature, 2022)
A shift from a mechanistic to a regenerative worldview can give us a nice-and-neat sense of what’s going on, but this technical terminology may mean precious little, in actual fact miss-the-entire-point, if it’s not recognized as an embodied lived experience.
So – what does this evolution in worldview really mean in terms of how we attend to life? That’s what we explore here in this article, with sign-posts for those who desire deeper exploration.
“The greatest voyage of our lifetimes is not in the seeking of new landscapes but in the seeing with new eyes.” Marcel Proust
For the vast portion of our human history we’ve lived in deep communion with nature, attuned to the way nature works. Not a rational-analytic quantized set of facts and figures of ecosystem services mapped into bioregions, but the practical know-how our ancestors possessed was underpinned by a deep qualitative, relational and psycho-spiritual attunement to the rhythms and resonances of nature. The physical AND metaphysical quality of nature went hand-in-hand.
For many centuries, science in the West and East drew from a metaphysical cosmology that understood a depth of dimensionality to nature. Humans were seen as innately part of nature’s ensemble and yet with the seemingly unique self-reflectivity to either fall-out of rhythm or learn to consciously attune with the wisdom of nature. Harmony was the guiding principle for ancient traditions the world-over, and defined through a metaphysical comprehension of nature. For instance: Daoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Vedanta, Zen, Buddhism, Sufism, Tantra, and such like in the East and Alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbalism, Pythagorean-Platonic, Gnostic, Druidic and such like in the West. All these traditions are shamanic in origin and centre around the practice of attuning with nature/cosmos in order to be in right-relation with life, just like the core shamanism found throughout indigenous peoples across the world today. All of these ancient wisdom traditions and present-day shamanic practices of indigenous peoples are rooted in a worldview of Animism where nature is seen as sacred – all life is informed by an animating spirit or primordial ‘tune’ which is both transcendent (beyond space-time) and immanent (here in-the-now). Cultivating our consciousness to become more transparent to the transcendent and intimate with the immanent wisdom in nature brings harmony for self/other/world. Nature is experienced as not just ‘out there’ perceptible only to the senses as a purely physical dimension, but also metaphysical with a depth of interiority connected to ‘in here’ through an open heart whereupon we attune with a wisdom that enacts eternal myths and archetypal narratives amid everyday life-experiences.
To no longer sense the sacred metaphysical dimension of nature is to fall out-of-tune with nature, and in-turn corrupt our humanity, lose our way, become sick individually and societally, and forget who we truly are.
This ‘losing our way’ is a Journey of Separation that has defined the Western mindset over recent centuries. The separation of spirit from nature corrupts the science that flows from the 17th Century Scientific Revolution onwards. Today’s mechanistic science is flawed and yet lauded as the upholder of truth throughout society. As the Persian scientist Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes, today’s Western science is divorced completely from any ontological aspect other than pure quantity. The metaphysical aspect of nature is all-but overlooked, or even mocked as mere superstition. Science today is utilitarian, a tool to support human utilisation of a de-animated nature for material betterment, whether it be dressed-up in ethical reasoning or economic motive. There can be no metamorphosis into ‘regeneration’ without a recognition of nature in all its fullness of depth.
Even our present-day Theory of Evolution – which most of us have taken-for-granted as set-in-stone fact, passing-it on to our own children without a thought to question it – is a theory based on this flawed science of Mechanistic-Materialism which ignores the essence of things, and condones all kinds of exploitation in the name of evolution-development-progress. As we expand our worldview, and begin once again to open our minds and hearts more deeply into nature, we are now noticing the gaping holes today’s Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution is littered with.
I have written extensively elsewhere about the Journey of Separation of the Western mindset and the purpose of this article is not to revisit the whys-and-wherefores of the desacralisation of nature in the West but rather to shine a light on the vitality of welcoming-in the metaphysical dimension of nature so our contemporary (r)evolution in worldview can become truly regenerative.
(For those interested in a comprehensive exploration of Western worldview development see The Illusion of Separation, and for a brief canter through Western worldview shifts of Animism à Greco-Medieval à Mechanistic-Materialism à Quantum-Complexity see this recent blog article.)
The beginnings of the twentieth century witnessed the breakdown of classical physics so foundational to Mechanistic-Materialism. Yet the spiritual force within the Western psyche was not potent enough to integrate this new science into a more universal and organic perspective – until now.
Throughout the 20th century and into this 21st century, discovery after discovery has aided the breakdown/breakthrough of a 400yr-old mechanistic worldview into a new one struggling to be born. For instance: breakthroughs in psychology – developmental, integral, transpersonal, depth, ecological psychology, etc.; in biology – facilitation ecology, Gaia theory, biomimicry, biophilia, etc.; in systems science – general systems theory, complexity theory, complex adaptive systems theory, living-systems theory, holistic science, etc.; in systems design – systemic design thinking, ecosystemic innovation, regenerative design, etc.; in L&OD – teal-evolutionary, deliberately developmental organizations, organizations-as-living-systems, regenerative leadership, etc.; and across so many other domains like health & wellbeing, economics, agriculture, urban planning, social sciences there are similar breakdown/breakthroughs.
Yet when sifting through these shifts it can become all-too-easy to get absorbed by the facts, figures, frameworks, models and methods, busying ourselves with new principles and processes while overlooking the metaphysical ground-shift required in our consciousness: an ontological-shift in our very being from ‘self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with’ into ‘self-as-participating-within’ life.
Is the spiritual potency within the human psyche yet mature enough to integrate all this breakdown/breakthrough into an ontological metamorphosis that is grounded in a truly holistic and regenerative way of being-in-the-world? I believe this time has come. The metaphysical dimension of nature is becoming available to us once again, and welcoming-in the sacredness of life will tip-the-scales of this necessary (r)evolution in human consciousness.
Transcending-and-Including the Mechanistic Mind
In reawakening our capacity to connect with the metaphysical animating-force within nature, we are ‘transcending-and-including’ the mechanistic mind. The tools and capabilities we have gained through the Journey of Separation are not thrown-away but evolved into a deeper worldview context, a more life-centric rather than anthropocentric/humanist one. The reductive mechanistic tool we have honed through the Scientific Revolution (along with all the technological advancements in digitisation, medicine, transportation and so forth that we benefit from today) is still available to us, but as a tool we can pick-up and put-down rather than totalizing over our way-of-being. We transcend the allure of mechanistic dominance by reconnecting to the rapture of reality, and begin to gain perspective on mechanistic reductionism as a useful tool that can serve life, rather than life serving it – a tool that aids our regeneration rather than distracting us toward further fragmentation and separation.
To give an example for illustrative purposes: the rising interest in blue-green nature economics based on quantizing nature’s ecosystem services into a value-based model that attracts impact investment. If this is utilised by a Mechanistic-Materialistic consciousness then this quantization of nature ignores the intrinsic sacred quality of nature, with ‘ecosystems’ and ‘bioregions’ mechanised into quantized ‘services’ that serve human utility. However, this does not then mean that the quantization of ecosystem services is inherently wrong or degenerative, as it can be a tool that helps serve the Regenerative (R)evolution. To banish, polarize and judge the mechanistic in this way would be no better than the Scientific Revolution’s banishment of the relational and metaphysical dimension of nature. What the metamorphosis into regeneration holds-space for is an integration, a transcending-and-including of what came before it, not just a swinging of the pendulum against history in a purely ‘revolutionary’ dynamic, but a spiralling integrative metamorphic ‘(r)evolutionary’ dynamic that shape-shifts while learning and integrating earlier phases of the caterpillar into the butterfly. We have a mechanistic left-brain hemisphere for a reason and yet it ought to serve the more relational and nature-attuned insights of the right-hemisphere tapped into heart awareness/bodymind coherence.
Back to our blue-green nature economics example – if the rise of impact investment in ecosystem services is a tool that serves the quest for life-affirming futures then it is a useful tool for the regenerative journey ahead, as long as it finds itself within a deeper consciousness that respects life as inherently sacred and intrinsically qualitative (not just quantized/mechanized). The nature-economics tool ensures ecosystems are not valued at zero and so plundered without any mechanism of value-based economics to save it. Though to merely expand mechanistic domination for impact investment to plunder the last great frontier of capitalism’s exploitation of life is not a regenerative tool but a caterpillar-mind at work. Discerning the difference comes from an inner-knowing of what feels true to our being – an ontological undertaking.
So, we may see that the metamorphic movement is not a neat-and-tidy linear transition from mechanistic to regenerative, it’s more a spiralling inward-outward transcending-and-including integrative process of reawakening a deeper inner-outer awareness of nature’s animating metaphysical quality, while allowing the modern mechanistic tool to serve an expanding consciousness from ego-centric to anthropocentric to life-centric.
It is clear to me that while the regenerative movement is gaining traction across myriad disciplines, more attention needs to be given to the metaphysical aspect of this necessary (r)evolution. A deeper awareness of psyche/nature/cosmos is rebirthing within us. Regenerative leaders and practitioners are being invited to open their hearts and up-stretch their bodyminds to attune with the inherent wisdom in nature, and truly embody the Journey of Reconnection beyond separation.
No worldview shift can be truly regenerative without deepening our transparency with the transcendent and intimacy with the immanent nature of reality within and all around us. This is at once a profoundly personal embodied experience and a relational-communal affair. Through the inward connection to the metaphysical essence of nature within and all around us (aka: ‘Nature’s Wisdom’) a simultaneous felt-sense immanence and super-sensory transcendence engages us with quality beyond quantity, and a force without form that informs all form. To gain an embodied sense of this is vital as we journey back home to our true nature.
Nature’s Metaphysics Applied to Regenerative L&OD
Metaphysical realisation is first-and-foremost an embodied experience, not a head-based formulation. With this caveat, I offer some words that can provide sign-posts into the metaphysical dimension of organizations-as-living-systems. The 4 E’s – Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary. There is a lot in these 4 E’s and it’s a topic worthy of a separate blog-article – watch this space 😊
For now, a very brief description of the 4 E’s:
Essence: accessing the metaphysical dimension by tuning-in to the essential nature within self and system.
Energy: Becoming conscious of and sensitive to the life-force patterns and rhythms infusing and radiating through self and system. So as to enliven, heal and renew the regenerative capacities of the living-organization.
Emergence: life unfolds through emergence – a ‘process of becoming’ more fully in-tune/in-flow by working with micro-emergence/meso-emergence/macro-emergence tools and practices.
Evolutionary: Contrary to popular belief, evolution is not a chain-reaction but a flow-response with spiralling phase-change sense-respond dynamics influencing the developmental capacity of self and system. We can learn to work with these evolutionary dynamics in order to better realise the evolutionary potential and purpose of the living-organization toward life-affirming futures.
As said, there is much to all this and words on a screen simply don’t do this justice. The primacy here is an embodied experience of Nature’s Wisdom. The simple intention of this article is to highlight the vital importance of welcoming-in the metaphysical dimension into the Regenerative (R)evolution.
To summarise:
We are living amid a once-in-a-civilisation metamorphic moment. The time has come to awaken from mechanistic slumber and remember the sacred sentience of life each and every day. This is not some wishful-thinking utopia. Movements across the world are already mobilising toward this deeper connection, and nothing less than the future of humanity is at stake (let alone the future of the vast proportion of biodiversity on Earth).
It’s also a time of great distraction with powerful forces pulling us toward transhumanist anthropocentric degenerative futures. Think of the billions (some estimate trillions!) being invested in alternate realities, algorithmic digitized transactions, smart devices continuously connected to a global infrastructure called ‘smart planet’, the exponential rise of satellites rocket-fuelled into orbit each month, and micro-sensors erected at every street corner to track-and-trace our every move for ‘surveillance capitalism’. This is not some dystopian rhetoric, it the reality right now on this planet pulling us further toward fragmentation and separation, if we so choose.
Yet the blackest hour brings the dawn; a time of rising awareness about the real depth of this reality we call life, whereupon we learn to work with the wisdom of nature rather than against it.
This dawn consists of a simultaneous inner-outer awakening – shifting our own inner self-awareness and our outer systemic-awareness of how living-systems really work beyond the confines of Mechanistic-Materialism. This inner-outer awakening is not simply an intellectual comprehension of living-systems-thinking, it’s a psychological and embodied undertaking; a metamorphosis that endures for months/years as our consciousness deepens in becoming more life-centric.
Through over more than 12 years of exploring regenerative leadership in practice, I have found that the most psychologically safe yet powerful way to aid this inner-outer shift is through nature-based immersions.
This is why I’m hosting a special 2-day immersion in the secluded ancient woodlands of Springwood Farm on 13-14th July (secluded yet within easy access to international trains/planes) to immerse in consciousness-raising practices, an overnight solo experience, and tools specifically designed to aid leaders and practitioners on their regenerative leadership journey.
If you wish to be a part of this small-group summer immersion you can find more information about it here – places are very limited and allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis. Participants will gain a certificate at the end of the immersion certifying their engagement in this embodied experience.
‘The best leadership course I’ve ever attended.’ – Ian Ayling, CMO, Wilco
‘Life-changing.’ – Jayne Mayled, Managing Director, True Story
‘I felt I’ve been in the presence of a real master.’ – Simon Milton, CEO, Pulse Brands
‘Magical.’ – Sue Cheshire, CEO, Global Leaders Academy
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), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). 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 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. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“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
“Leading by Nature is a must-read for those involved in the future of business. I can’t recommend Giles’s work highly enough.” – Norman Wolfe, CEO of Quantum Leaders and author of The Living Organization: Transforming Business To Create Extraordinary Results
You can join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn group here
Changing yourself to change the world: How can you become a regenerative business leader?
EXCLUSIVE from ‘edie’ www.edie.net written by award-winning senior reporter for edie, Sarah George original article was published here
Several pioneering businesses are pledging to deliver a net-positive impact on people and the planet. But will they be able to do so without first changing to their internal mindsets, structures and cultures?
Recognising that companies can often move faster than countries on climate, and accounting for the ways in which the climate crisis intersects with the nature crisis and with widening social inequalities, a growing cohort of visionary businesses are pledging to have a net-positive impact on people and planet.
The term ‘net-positive’ itself is not new. But the movement has certainly been growing in recent years, particularly due to the increased questioning of the purpose of businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic and other global challenges of the 2020s.
2021 saw former Unilever chief Paul Polman teaming up with Andrew Winston to publish a book on the matter, and Harvard Business Review publishing a net-positive manifesto. The net-positive movement has been gaining big-name business advocates in recent years, including Ikea, BT, Target and Levi Strauss.
As with many sustainability movements, net-positive visions had been pioneered by smaller organisations for years before these corporate giants really began to move.
But can a business of any size contribute to the regeneration of climate, nature and society without first transforming its internal cultures, structures and leadership styles?
Vivobarefoot’s founder Galahad Clark believes that the answer is likely ‘no’. He confesses to edie that he found that “in many ways, the company’s layout and its vision were at odds with each other for several years” after it was founded in 2012, aiming to be one of these smaller and bolder entities on net-positivity.
Vivo had stated a mission to bring people closer to nature from the outset, partly by literally selling them footwear which promotes grounding and is suitable for outdoor activities, made with a low environmental impact. But, as the global footwear market is highly fragmented and competitive, Vivo grappled to sell enough pairs. The team also did not necessarily set aside the time and headspace for the non-urgent but crucially important task of embedding its purpose beyond its products.
“In the very early days of the business, we were, arguably, in survival mode… learning business 101, as it were,” Clark says. “Once we were out of the woods metaphorically, it felt overdue to come into the woods for real.”
Organisation as organism
The ‘real’ woods that Clark refers to are based at Springwood Farm in West Sussex. Clark and his team regularly attend the Farm for what are known as ‘leadership immersions’, hosted by strategist and coach Giles Hutchins.
Hutchins elaborates on Clark’s point, telling edie:“VivoBarefoot’s mission is about connecting nature with human nature. Having an internal culture, an environment that does not encourage that would be a nonsense.
“Mechanistically, we turn purpose into a mission statement or a chart… deeper purpose is about how people and organisations gain meaning from everyday interactions.”
Hutchins is perhaps the UK’s longest-serving regenerative leadership coach, working with executives an impressive array of businesses including Unilever, Wilko, Sky, Capgemini and Toast Ale. Chief executives, board members and sustainability professionals from these and other organisations have
edie asks Hutchins to summarise what it actually means to be a regenerative business leader. He says that such an individual is “essentially attuning with the way life works, allowing themselves to get back into accord with nature”.
Hutchins elaborates: “There is a rising zeitgeist around the term ‘regenerative’, which is everywhere at the moment.. In things like regenerative agriculture, regenerative medicine or regenerative economics, we look at how living systems work and apply that knowledge. For a business as a whole, and for leaders, it’s a bit different. A key piece is being able to recognise that an organisation is not a machine, or a top-down hierarchy – it is full of human relationships.
“It sounds quite obvious, but it’s surprising how often we do think of a business like a machine made up of charts, functions, siloes. That creates a certain narrowing of our awareness.
“Sometimes, when we critique capitalism, we fail to critique the mindset that sits underneath it. In trying to change capitalism with a mechanistic mindset, we don’t get very far…. A lot of the environmental movement, which I’ve been in for most of my life, is getting caught [here].”
For Hutchins, a key part of the “mechanistic mindset” – thinking of a business or even a person as a machine disconnected from nature – is the compulsion to divide things into categories and hierarchies. There are managers and their subordinates. There is the sustainability team and the finance team and the strategy division, separate from the innovation team. In contrast, a regenerative business will have less of a vertical structure.
Another key division made in the mechanistic mind is that between the internal workings of an organisation and its impact on the world externally. Hutchins says: “The inner nature of an organisation, as a living system, is its culture. The outer nature is the value proposition – not just the product, but also community participation. They are absolutely connected.”
After all, old business cultures and structures, overseen by old-style leaders, are what have enabled businesses to externalize the true negative impact of their value chains for decades.
Over the past few years, there have been more than a few examples of business’s stated external value propositions being found to be at odds with their stated or perceived culture and governance. Four in ten fashion retailers withheld payments from suppliers during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite many stating commitments to better livelihoods for garment workers. Energy majors have been increasingly pushing adverts relating to their investments in low-carbon technologies, despite fossil fuels still accounting for more than 90% of their overall investment plans. The likes of P&O and British Airways have been hauled over the coals for mass firing and rehiring.
For Hutchins, a truly regenerative business is one that always “goes beyond the presentational”. Making a ‘race to the bottom’ is against the nature of a regenerative leader and their organisation, who would instead “not cut back on things that genuinely enable them to be future-fit”.
New kinds of value
We know that the general public are getting better at calling out businesses that are greenwashing and racing to the bottom, with regulatory structures improving at a pace to give consumers ways to better hold businesses to account. At the same time, businesses with strong purpose tend to out-perform their sector, with Unilever’s Sustainable Living Brands being an oft-cited case study.
We also know that investors are increasingly requesting environmental and social information from the businesses they invest in. Earlier this month, 746 investors collectively managing more than $136bn of assets wrote to some 15,000 companies urging better disclosure, via the CDP platform. Their call to action mentioned both that inaction builds up risks for the business and the whole system over time, and that bold action presents innovation opportunities.
Nonetheless, a business may still feel loathe to transform more in line with nature. Living in line with nature, in a personal capacity, is often referred to as ‘slow living’. And can a business afford to have this mindset in an increasingly fast-paced, increasingly digital economy? edie puts this challenge to Clark and to Hutchins.
Clark says: “Nature never rushes but gets everything accomplished. It’s time for us to embrace that.
“It is true that having a more networked organisation with less of a pyramid does make it arguably more complicated. But, I think, it’s worth it in the end. A lot more of our people are now closer to our customers, and, ultimately, we’re providing a better service to society.”
More broadly, beyond VivoBarefoot, Hutchins elaborates that a need to “drill down” and achieve record-breaking project after record-breaking project in rapid succession is a sign that a company is still in a mechanistic mindset full-time. But he emphasizes the importance, in a regenerative mindset, of only being able to tap into mechanistic thinking when necessary, rather than becoming stuck there all the time.
He explains: “Leaders have to be able to embrace fast-moving change. Cultures have to become more self-managing, because hierarchies become very burdensome in this time, creating a real drag.”
“The mechanistic mindset prides itself on efficiency and effectiveness, but our organisations today are woefully inefficient. And the biggest inefficiency is that we are managing others’ impressions of ourselves.”
For VivoBarefoot, the framework for regenerative thinking (which it calls ‘The Vivo Way’) links closely to its own advice on effectively wearing its shoes. It consists of upright posture (clear and robust governance), taking little steps (failing fast, remaining agile), relaxing and falling into rhythm (embedding regenerative culture through day-to-day work) and taking on sensory feedback (assessing for present and future opportunities and challenges, quickly correcting course).
A key part of implementing the ‘upright posture’ was conducting what Clark describes as a “radical restructure” of roles and responsibilities within the company. “Although some hierarchy remains,” the company’s latest annual report states, “we’re consciously shifting our individual and organizational relationship with power and control, from a parent-child to an adult-adult coaching culture”. The report argues that this “invites” staff to “bring more of themselves to work”.
‘Bringing more of oneself to work’ refers not only to their ability to be honest, making for faster failure and course-correction, but to chances to showcase and nurture different skills, Hutchins says.
“The mind has different capacities… which we close out when we get into mechanistic thinking. Insights. Opportunities to learn. Creativity. Chance meetings. Intiution.
“We’re not wasting time, we’re actually improving time by bringing in far more ways of knowing from our repertoire.”
Hutchins’ overarching conclusion is that businesses led in a regenerative manner are “not slower, just different”.
Clark adds that, although most can see the benefits of this way of working, human nature involves “clinging to what we are comfortable with”.
He says: “I am surprised every day… the most surprising thing is probably seeing people coming into the business from bigger organisations with more structure and more hierarchy in roles and needing to let go of this. A lot of people have spent their career feeling they are climbing up a ladder and they don’t want to be told to step down, even if it is to walk across the hall and start climbing a different ladder.”
“It’s certainly not easy. In many ways, it’s a more complicated path.”
Yet taking this path has clearly opened opportunities for VivoBarefoot to become a more entrepreneurial business. It recorded a 36% year-on-year growth in revenue in 2022 and announced numerous new innovation streams. For example, it is in the final stages of preparing to launch bespoke shoes in 2024, created using 3D scanning and printing, under an innovation known as ‘Vivobiome’. It is also going beyond products by offering health assessments, courses and coaching known as ‘VivoHealth’.
This was an article written for the sustainable business network ‘edie’ www.edie.net and written by award-winning senior reporter for edie, Sarah George original article was published here
For a podcast conversation of Galahad Clark and Giles Hutchins and also other leaders on the regenerative journey see here
For Giles Hutchins’ latest book Leading by Nature see here.
The Nature of Business 