No doubt there is an art to leadership, captured in thousands of books and stories of famous leaders. But there is more to guide us – there is a science of leadership underpinning the art that is mostly out of sight and out of mind. Most rigorous studies found in academic journals fail to land on the desks of busy executives, let alone get put into practice. The most recent research brings regenerative leadership into the pantheon of emerging science. This important work urgently needs to find its way into the world’s boardrooms.
Regenerative leadership is an emergent domain for researchers – not yet demonstrably proven yet built upon the evidence-based foundation of years of leadership science. In our recent book, The Science of Leadership: Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact, my co-author Margaret Moore and I present nine science-backed capacities as a basis to support leaders on a journey of personal and professional growth: conscious, (see clearly – including myself), authentic (care), agile (flex), relational (help), positive (strengthen), compassionate (resonate), shared (empower), servant (serve), and transformational (transform). These capacities, grounded in thousands of well-documented studies, when put into action enable leaders to serve their teams and organizations to perform at their best.
And while the nine capacities serve as a strong foundation for effective leadership, they are not enough. Given the degraded state of our planet, leaders need to do more. Integrating all of the above, regenerative leadership is an additional domain – a continuous engagement with nature and life on its own terms – that takes the nine science-backed capacities and extends them beyond organizations to positively impacting communities, nations and, ultimately, the planet as a whole.
The facts are known: the planet we all live on is in a terrible state. Statistics show the human race facing imminent disaster in just a few decades, a century at most. Species are going extinct at unprecedented levels. The air we breathe and the temperatures we endure are becoming less and less capable of supporting life. At its core, regenerative leadership is based on systems theory, environmental and climate science, design and engineering constructs that have been around for over fifty years. They include grounded systems and living systems theories.
The grounded systems approach looks at how parts of a system interact with one another and with the system as a whole. Systems theory emphasizes holistic thinking and the interdependence of system components, involving iterative cycles of data collection, coding, and analysis, which are used to develop emergent theories about how systems function and evolve.
Researchers have utilized GST to analyze complex environmental systems by understanding the interactions between natural and human systems. A significant study in this area involved the Human–Technical–Environmental (HTE) systems framework, which helps identify and analyze critical components and their interactions within sustainability-oriented systems. This framework has been applied to various case studies to capture the dynamics of human, technical, and environmental components in achieving sustainable outcomes.
In one example, HTE was utilized to evaluate the impact on energy supply, natural life, human health, and climate change of mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants. The interaction matrix helps analysts design interventions that reduce the impact of mercury pollution.[i]
Living Systems Theory (LST) is a conceptual framework developed by James Grier Miller in the 1970s. [ii] It aims to explain the nature of life by examining how systems at various levels of organization (from cells to societies) function and interact. One study focused on incorporating principles from complexity theory and biomimicry to successfully reinvent wastewater treatment approaches by instituting natural systems.[iii] These scientific foundations help leaders understand and leverage the interconnectedness of organizations with broader ecological and social systems.
The collective conflict faced in moving to regenerative organizations, is the one between entrenched financial models and infrastructure which sustain businesses, human jobs, families’ welfare, and communities, and new financial models and infrastructure. Regenerative leaders must come up with compassionate, affordable, and scalable strategies that course correct in ways that minimize the damage to humanity and the planet.
In his recent article in The Journal for Field Actions special edition on innovation for ecological transformation,[iv] researcher Emmanuelle Aoustin describes regenerative business models as:
“Fundamentally, the regenerative business model works with and within the cycles of the living world. It operates ‘within the doughnut’ (meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet) and seeks harmony with life, protecting earth’s life-supporting systems. Beyond the ecological aspects of regeneration, it also embraces social regeneration; enhancing social justice, diversity, participation and collaboration.”
Studies based on the above theories focus on how leaders with a regenerative mindset can create more resilient and adaptive organizations. Currently, regenerative tools are in use across a broad spectrum of organizations dedicated to regenerative principles. One example being the Regenerative Lens: A conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological system[v], which has been tested across a number of organizations showcasing its effectiveness and promoting holistic and sustainable business practices that bring about improved environmental stewardship.
As an example, let’s meet Bill Reed and his consulting organization, Regenesis. Bill has as deep an understanding of the practical application of regenerative design as anyone on the planet. An acclaimed architect and a pioneer of sustainable building practices, he is a principal of Regenesis, Inc., a consultancy that helps developers build regeneratively – in a way that adds to, rather than detracts from, the living systems that they are a part of.
Bill led an enormous public works project in British Columbia, Canada – the design and construction of two major wastewater treatment plants. The director approached Regenesis because they needed a facilitator, someone to coordinate all the moving parts and make sure the project stayed on schedule and on budget.
“We asked them, ‘Why are you building this plant?’”
“And they said, ‘You know what? We commissioned a report on that,’ and they found it had been sitting unread for the past five years. As it turned out, it was a phenomenally good set of guidelines. We used it to construct a purpose statement that became the driver for the entire project.”
“Ultimately, we took the fifty principles from this report and boiled them down to nine concepts, and from those, one big one: think big. Don’t design until you know what you’re designing for, which is the whole system. For example, the plant was being built on the bay. What do we know about the bay? For place-sourced design, you need to know the essence of a place. An intertidal wetland is a unique place. Every place is unique.”
But that’s not even the final punchline.
The second project Regenesis undertook for the utility was even bigger than the first – $10 billion, the biggest and most expensive public works project in British Columbia’s history. “This time,” Bill said, “When we sat down to discuss purpose, the first thing the director said was, ‘We want to save the orcas.’ It was just a huge, huge shift. This guy had experienced an epiphanic shift in perspective.”
“The big takeaway,” he concluded, “is that regenerative leadership is a practice – a continuous engagement with nature and life on its own terms. Ultimately, it’s honoring the life that is in the system instead of trying to run the system.”
The work that Bill and Regenesis does is the essence of regenerative leadership. What’s especially wonderful about this story is that it’s not even metaphorical. It’s about sewage plants – about cleaning up the effluent we create as human beings.
This real-life example reflects a positive view of the forces of nature and leadership in synchrony. Bill and the Regenesis team demonstrate mastery of attuning to nature’s potential for quality action, then integrating all nine capacities that manifest effective leadership, into an emergent, elegant complex system committed to thriving for all.
What practices can we do immediately as leaders and organizations if we want to be regenerative? We think a good place to start involves shifting your fundamental mindset as a leader from a “power over” perspective to “power with” perspective that incorporates behaviors, values and actions in the nine capacities. By developing all the science-backed capacities – seeing clearly, caring, flexing, helping, strengthening, resonating, sharing, serving, transforming, and ultimately, regenerating – leaders can have a huge positive impact on three levels: self, other, and system – including the planet.
We believe the three “C’s” below are a starting guide for regenerative action as leaders undertake the journey.
The science of leadership – built on thousands of studies of what works in the real world – or as we like to say, “science made real”, provides a solid foundation to lead us towards a regenerative way of being. Regenerative leadership is more than just hope; it is a path to reclaim our vitality as humans, re-insert humanity into assessments of performance (and results), and bring us into alignment with the planet we depend upon for our very existence.
— Jeffrey Hull, co-author (with Margaret Moore) of The Science of Leadership: Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact (Penguin Random House, July 2025)
Regenerative Leadership at the Thinkers50 2025 Awards Gala
Regenerative Leadership is one of the key themes for the Thinkers50 2025 Awards Gala taking place in London’s Guildhall 3-4 November 2025. For more information on the Gala and to apply for tickets, please click below.
[i] Selin, H., Selin, N.E. The human–technical–environmental systems framework for sustainability analysis. Sustain Sci 18, 791–808 (2023).
[ii] Grier, M. Living systems. New York: Mc Graw-Hill, 1978.
[iii]Stefanakis, Alexandros. (2016). Constructed Wetlands: Description and Benefits of an Eco-Tech Water Treatment System. 10.4018/978-1-4666-9559-7.ch012.
[iv] Aoustin, Emmanuelle. Regenerative leadership: what it takes to transform business into a force for good. Field Actions Science Reports. The journal of field actions Special Issue 25 (2023): 92-97.
[v] Buckton, Sam J. et. al. The Regenerative Lens: A conceptual framework for regenerative social-ecological systems. Volume 6, Issue 7: 761-932 (21 July 2023)
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