Feminist Leadership as Regenerative Leadership: Living in the Tensions

by Dr. Deborah Bayntun-Lees

In an era of exhaustion and complexity, sustainability is no longer enough, leadership must become regenerative. Feminist leadership offers a powerful model that restores energy and capacity through cycles of care, accountability, and renewal. Rooted in relational ethics and inspired by natural ecosystems, it reimagines how organisations can give back more than they take, from people, communities, and the planet.

Feminist leadership embodies regenerative principles by replenishing people, relationships, and systems. It thrives not by avoiding tension but by holding space for contradictions – care and accountability, hope and reality, closeness and boundaries. Far from being “soft,” trauma-informed and relational leadership demands emotional discipline, ethical courage, and structural intention, positioning it as a model for leaders who wish to navigate today’s challenges with resilience and depth.

Why Feminist Leadership Matters Now

We are living through an age of depletion. Leaders, teams, and communities alike are worn down by constant crisis, complexity, and change. Too many organisations cling to sustainability as their goal – maintaining the status quo and preventing further harm. But in times of exhaustion and fracture, maintenance is not enough. We need leadership that restores, renews, and regenerates.

This is where feminist leadership offers a radical alternative. It draws on the wisdom of care, the discipline of accountability, and the courage to live inside contradictions. It shows us that regeneration is not only about protecting ecosystems – it is about cultivating human flourishing within our workplaces.

Regeneration as Leadership in Action

Sustainability maintains; regeneration replenishes. Like natural ecosystems, regenerative leadership thrives on cycles of renewal, reciprocity, and transformation. It gives back more than it takes. Researchers Amy Bradley and Katherine Semler have argued that organisations can only ever be as sustainable as the people who inhabit them. If our people are depleted, our systems cannot thrive.

Feminist leadership offers precisely this regenerative orientation. In my work with Rising Sun Domestic Violence and Abuse Service, a UK feminist, trauma-informed charity where leadership is shaped by both survivor experience and allyship, leadership is not a theory but a lived practice. Leaders and staff often carry personal histories of trauma, which makes care not an optional extra but the very bedrock of trust, safety, and performance.

Regeneration here means compassion with discipline: restoring emotional energy, balancing competing demands, and renewing collective capacity through reflection and courageous decision-making. It is a way of leading that prevents burnout by weaving boundaries into care, cycles of rest into productivity, and accountability into hope.

Living in the Feminist Double Bind

Boundaries as a Form of Care

Perhaps the most powerful insight emerging from Rising Sun’s leadership stories is this: boundaries are acts of care. In trauma-informed settings, closeness often develops through shared experience, but trust can be both hard-won and fragile. Without boundaries, care can blur into over-responsibility, and empathy can obscure accountability, increasing the risk of burnout.

One example involved a colleague who was supported for many months through shared survivor experience, where both they and some leaders carried lived experience of trauma, creating a deep sense of empathy, solidarity, and understanding. This connection allowed flexibility and care, but it also blurred the line between support and accountability. When change did not come and the team’s wellbeing was at risk, leaders made the difficult choice to initiate formal processes and support their transition out. This was not compassion failing but compassion with discipline – regeneration through boundary-setting.

The Compassion-Accountability Matrix

The Compassion-Accountability Matrix (see Figure 1) helps to illuminate this tension. When compassion is high but accountability is low, leaders can drift into indulgence or “rescue” behaviours. When accountability is emphasised without compassion, fear-driven cultures take hold. Neglect occurs when both are absent. Regenerative leadership lies in the quadrant where compassion and accountability are held together – care with boundaries, empathy with expectations. This framing makes clear that boundaries are not the opposite of compassion but its partner, enabling both individuals and systems to thrive.

Figure 1: The Compassion-Accountability Matrix

Hope, Grounded in Accountability

Hope is at the heart of Rising Sun’s identity. Staff described the organisation as a “hope merchant” – offering a kind of “unique medicine beyond words” to survivors and colleagues alike. Yet the leadership team recognises that hope without accountability can harm.

As one leader noted:

“Hope alone is not enough. We have to put things in place to make it happen.”

Regenerative leadership turns hope into strategy, pairing belief with structure, emotional support with measurable plans, optimism with honest reviews.

Closeness and Boundaries in a Trauma-Informed Culture

The tension between closeness and boundaries is especially poignant in trauma-informed teams. Shared lived experience builds trust and connection, but also makes difficult conversations harder.

“I’d much rather take the emotional side of things and be a bit tired at the end of the day than have my team feel like they couldn’t come to me,” one leader reflected.

This willingness to absorb emotional labour is admirable, but unsustainable without boundaries. Regenerative feminist leadership means finding ways to hold space for others while also protecting the leader’s own capacity to serve. It requires role fluidity – knowing when to step in, when to step back, and when to invite others into shared decision-making.

The Feminist Regenerative Leadership Tension Map

To navigate this complexity, Rising Sun’s leadership team now uses what might be called a Feminist Regenerative Leadership Tension Map, which highlights three key polarities:

• Care ↔ Accountability
• Hope ↔ Reality
• Closeness ↔ Boundaries

Effectiveness isn’t about choosing one side over another, it’s about learning to move with agility between them. Boundaries aren’t the opposite of care; they are one of its deepest expressions. Hope doesn’t deny reality; it gives us the strength to face it. And closeness isn’t diminished by boundaries; it is sustained and safeguarded through them.

To lead regeneratively, we must resist the temptation to collapse complexity into simple binaries. Feminist leadership calls us to hold the tensions of care and accountability, hope and reality, closeness and boundaries. These are not opposites to be resolved but dynamic forces to be navigated.

The Feminist Regenerative Leadership Tension Map (Figure 2) visualises these polarities. It reminds us that the work of leadership is not to choose one over the other, but to move fluidly between them, without losing either our values or our effectiveness. This map offers a compass for leaders seeking to embody care with discipline, hope with realism, and closeness with the protective strength of boundaries.

Crucially, this requires ethical reflexivity – the daily practice of pausing, noticing ourselves, questioning assumptions, and being open to change in relationship with others. Far from being “soft,” reflexivity demands courage. It ensures that holding these tensions is not only a skill, but also an ethical stance: one that resists exploitative models of power and reconnects leadership to human dignity. The Tension Map is more than a framework – it is a practice of ethical reflexivity, helping leaders hold complexity with courage, dignity, and renewal.

Figure 2: The Feminist Regenerative Leadership Tension Map

Why Regeneration Requires Feminist Leadership

Feminist leadership matters now more than ever, not just for gender equity, but for organisational and planetary resilience. It teaches us how to:

• Prioritise human flourishing alongside performance.
• See care as a strategy, not just a sentiment.
• Use power with others, not over them.
• Embrace emotional intelligence as a leadership discipline.
• Renew leadership from within, by living in the tensions rather than denying them.

In essence, regenerative feminist leadership helps organisations give back more than they take – from people, communities, and ecosystems. It prevents burnout by creating cycles of care and renewal that continually restore capacity and wellbeing.

So where can organisations begin? Some questions worth asking include: 

• How do we ensure our practices give back more than they extract – from our people, our communities, and the planet?
• Where in our culture are care and accountability out of balance – too much “rescue,” or too much pressure without support?
• What boundaries could actually function as acts of care, protecting both wellbeing and performance?
• How do our leaders model reflexivity – pausing, listening, and learning – rather than defaulting to control or certainty?
• What rhythms of renewal (for people and for the system) are we building into our ways of working?

These questions act as a compass, guiding organisations toward regenerative feminist leadership as a lived practice. More than a programme or initiative, it’s a way of leading that sustains people, strengthens performance, and creates lasting resilience.

The Art of Living in the Tensions

In an era of volatility and emotional exhaustion, leadership must become a regenerative force. Feminist leaders show us how: by practicing emotional courage, setting ethical boundaries, and building structures that sustain both care and accountability.

Regenerative feminist leadership centres human flourishing, treats care as a strategic strength, shares power in partnership, and makes emotional intelligence a daily discipline. Grounded in presence, reflection, and deep human connection, it renews leadership from within, helping us live with tension creatively, restoring capacity and wellbeing while giving back more than we take from people, communities, and ecosystems. It is leadership that embraces uncertainty with integrity, holds space for hope alongside accountability, and navigates the tensions of our shared future with steadiness and care.

Dr. Deborah Bayntun-Lees is a leadership scholar, practitioner, and educator focused on feminist and trauma-informed approaches to organisational change. Her work explores the ethics of relational leadership, gendered power, and regeneration in complex systems. She is a faculty member at Hult International Business School and co-leads research on regenerative leadership within purpose-led organisations.

References
Bradley, A. & Semler, K. (2022). Running on Empty: Navigating the Dangers of Burnout at Work. LID Publishing. A compelling, narrative-driven analysis of burnout that reframes it not as an individual failing but as an organizational and systemic issue, offering embodied healing practices and collective strategies for restoration.