I often get asked why our education in regenerative leadership isn’t conducted in the nature or focused more on leaders being in nature. To me, this reflects a significant misunderstanding of regenerative leadership and organisational development.
Regenerative leadership and the effort to develop a regenerative organisation are not about being in nature. Instead, it involves creating a regenerative everyday life within the organisation, for its employees and across all its different ecosystems.
Yes, I am aware that my headline risks public scrutiny.
But I am taking the risk. It is my experience that this very misunderstanding often prevents many organisations from engaging in regenerative work.
It’s extremely unfortunate and a wholly miserable situation for all employees in these organisations, who thereby miss out on the opportunity for a much better work life.
I would like to try to explain why it’s not about going out into the nature: Regenerative means to rebuild and revitalize.
The word originates from nature’s ecosystems, which are regenerative. They continually create the conditions for life and for life to constantly evolve and unfold.
When we use the concept in a management and organisational context, it means that we need to create the conditions for life. Similarly, for life to unfold among employees and within the organisation – in their everyday lives. Every day.
We know that nature’s ecosystems are regenerative because they follow/build on specific regenerative principles. In my view, regenerative leadership and organisational development are not about going out in the nature, but rather about creating organisations/structures that are based on the same regenerative principles – and thereby can be regenerative in line with nature’s ecosystems.
The goal is to create organisations that are healthy and life-giving to reside in; organisations where we actually do not become stressed and/or unhappy.
And we already know the principles, so we don’t need to go out in the nature to look for them.
We can focus on the challenging part – transforming the organisation so that it actually operates on those principles. And then practice leadership in a regenerative everyday life.
