From Disembodied ‘Coping’ to Embodied ‘Thriving’ Amid Rising Complexity = Future-fit Leadership

When you think about it, it’s rather odd that while business likes to pride itself on being innovative cutting-edge and future-ready, most in business still promulgate and proliferate an approach to leadership development that creates disembodiment and disconnection which undermines organizational future-fitness.

Advances in neuroscience, adult developmental psychology, cognitive studies and consciousness research point to a massive ‘complexity gap’ in mainstream leader development. Most of today’s leaders are ill-equipped for the rapidly rising complexity coming downstream.

Current approaches to leadership development (at best) aid a level of ‘coping’ amid rising complexity, leaving the ability for the leader (and the organization) to actually ‘thrive’ amid rising complexity desperately wanting.

It’s patently clear – on all counts, across all radars – that the emerging future landscape for any leader of any organization is one of massively increasing complexity. The new-norm is ‘permacrisis’ - interlocking crises feeding off each other bringing a long period ahead of rising complexity, volatility and uncertainty.

Why then, with this obvious backdrop, are we failing to upgrade our leadership development? Why do we still draw upon an outdated 400-year-old paradigm (aka Mechanistic Materialism – ‘MM’ for short) the very mindset that created the permacrisis in the first place, and which actually undermines future-fitness?

The quick and easy-to-digest answer for this woeful lack across mainstream leadership development/adult education lies in Einstein’s truism - you can’t change today’s problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.

I’ve had the real pleasure of guest lecturing, speaking, facilitating and partnering with many of the world’s leading business schools, management consultancies and leadership service providers over the years. No doubt about it, these institutions and organizations are full of bright people switched-on to what’s happening in the world and passionate about what they do. Yet, time and again, the ones making decisions on leadership development approaches, client interventions and service provision, are driven by the very level of consciousness that created the problems in the first place.

It’s asking rather a lot of these leadership providers to design and deliver developmental journeys that reach beyond the level of consciousness that they themselves operate at.

Even now in 2025 (which sounds futuristic to those of us who were business leaders back in the nineties) it’s rare to find leadership development providers who deeply understand adult psychological development, quantum and complexity science, living-systems thinking/being, vertical leadership development, regenerative leadership and business, consciousness and neuroscience, immersive embodied developmental experiences and transformative/threshold-crossing developmental journeys. Without an understanding of these areas, leadership development fails to be future-fit.

Yet, times they are a changin!

There’s a number of interesting developments, at the edges, where institutions are forming unconventional partnerships and programs. Also, new leadership development offerings and adult education programs are on the rise. By example, see – Ubiquity University,? Presencing Institute U School, The Green School, The Regenerators Academy,? Coaches Rising, The Butterfly School.

Ubiquity University Presencing Institute Green School Bali Regenerators Regenerators Academy en Espa?ol Coaches Rising Butterfly School

Thankfully there are more initiatives like these emerging by the day.? Yet, mainstream leadership development, which serves the many thousands upon thousands of today’s leaders (who are at the front-line of manifesting our futures) further ingrain wrong behaviours that exacerbate organizational fragility.

The problem goes deep.

Because the very MM mindset we need to move on from to become future-fit has an insidious carcinogenic characteristic that kills-off anything that might threaten its domination. Much like in the beginning stages of metamorphosis, the caterpillar’s immune system suppresses the imaginal cells trying to become the butterfly, in perceiving them to be a threat to the status quo.

The new-norm permacrisis is forcing our paradigm on leadership development to transform, to metamorphose. There’s simply no way that today’s mechanistic approach to leadership will navigate teams and organizations through the rising complexity ahead.

Yet, the problem goes even deeper.

We’re creatures of habit who’ve been generationally accultured into routines that now tyrannize over us. We’ve imprisoned ourselves with mechanistic ways, including how we approach ‘learning’.

From early on in our lives, we’re taught that ‘learning’ is largely a head-based rote activity. We sit in classrooms and in front of screens programming our heads in disembodied ways.

It’s all-too-easy to carry on this routine.? Today’s leadership programs tend to revolve around talking heads, digital presentations and screen content feeding a disembodied, disconnected ‘head-learning’. I am reminded of the philosopher Ken Wilber’s evocative phrase ‘brains on a stick’.

We need to realize that this way of learning is part of the problem. It’s rooted in the very level of consciousness we’re trying to move beyond.

So, it’s not just ‘what’ we’re learning, but also the ‘way’ we’re learning, that needs to metamorphose.

Not only do our leadership development providers need to become savvy in quantum complexity, living-systems, vertical development, neuroscience, consciousness, regenerative, circularity, etc., they also need to integrate a different order of being/knowing. ?

The whole way in which we learn needs to radically up-stretch by becoming far more expansive, experiential and embodied for it to enable future-fitness in our leaders and organizations.

Earlier today I was asked on a podcast interview to define what ‘learning’ meant for me.

To do this justice and respond to it in a way that also calls forth future-fitness is an act of learning in itself. And this is the very essence of regenerative learning - each step in life, each interaction, question, challenge, constriction, reaction, tension, experience and inquiry is a crucible for learning. Life IS the learning. The organization IS the classroom, beyond the conventional four-walls.

So, one could respond to the question ‘What does learning mean for me’ with: ‘Learning is life embodied consciously’. Then, we start to see that ‘learning’ depends on the ‘way’ we engage in life as a learning experience - how embodied, conscious and present we are to emergent learning experiences throughout the busy working day is our developmental learning-edge.?

This approach to life is not limited to the work-day, it’s a way of living and leading that pervades all our lives and aids a threshold-crossing out of MM into a new stage of meaning-making. A level of leadership consciousness that appreciates life as a richly woven inner-outer learning experience. This goes hand-in-hand with realizing that the organization is not a top-down hierarchic machine but a complex adaptive learning living-system.

To uncover and reveal what form of ‘learning’ is required for Future-fit Leadership Development is to necessitate a process of unlearning-surrendering-remembering-reembodying-renewing-relearning.? In other words, learning as a radical act of regeneration. No longer can ‘learning’ be limited to the narrowed rational-analytic head-based disembodied learning that’s a product of the mechanistic consciousness that created our problems in the first place.

For ‘learning’ to enable our future-fitness it has to bring us forth across a threshold – a death/rebirth process – in order to embrace a new relationship with reality, a new level of existence.

‘It’s not merely a transition to a new level of existence, but the start of a new movement in the symphony of human identity.’?? Clare Graves, developmental psychologist

A Future-fit Leader is someone who cultivates conditions for their team, living-organization and stakeholder ecosystem to thrive amid rising complexity. And by ‘thriving’ I mean ‘life-affirming’ i.e. creating conditions for all life to thrive. This is not a wishful dreamy utopia or overly-ambitious ‘north star’, it’s an inherent human capacity that happens in-the-now, and depends on our meaning-making, our conscious capacity to embrace life.

This ‘life-affirming’ way of leading is corroborated by latest findings on consciousness studies, neuroscience, adult developmental psychology, complex adaptive systems theory, systemic and regenerative leadership. Its also reinforced by ancient wisdom traditions found the world over, and by anthropological-sociological-archetypal-mythological patterns.

There’s simply no other way of learning, leading and living that’s going to enable our organizations (and wider civilization) to deal with the rising complexity coming downstream. That fact that so many leadership development providers are slow-on-the-uptake to this necessary new-norm is symptomatic of how inured we’ve become in today’s dominant yet dying MM paradigm.

During my near three-decades of exploring the psyche of leaders in all manner of organizational settings across the globe, I’ve come to see that what’s innate in the leader’s psyche is no different from what we find in all humans regardless of acculturation and belief/creed. Granted, there are idiosyncratic sophistications related to culture, creed, background, life-experience, etc. that need to be taken into account for any transformative developmental process, but the underlying psychology of the leader’s ego-stage development contains a core pattern.

When we unpack each of our acculturated baggage, there’s a ‘soulfulness’ (aka ‘essence’, ‘true nature’, ‘dharma’) that seeks to learn, and seeks life-affirming ways - instinctively, emotionally and intuitively. It’s essential to our nature as Homo sapiens.

But – and this is quite a BUT – life has thresholds built-in to its learning experience. To learn, one needs to cross thresholds: ‘micro’ ones every day, ‘meso’ seasonal rhythms over the months, and ‘macro’ life-stage ones over multi-years.

Put simply, to enter the ‘Learning Zone’ one needs to move out of the ‘Comfort Zone’ and endure the uncomfortableness of the ‘Fear Zone’, or we fail to learn, adapt and evolve.? Enter the insidious carcinogenic anti-life tendency in today’s dominant mechanistic mindset. Because today’s mindset seeks security, safety and certainty through quick-fix remedies, pre-packaged content and outsourced solutions. ?In-part, this is why so many of us find it easy to sign up to an on-line program and sit in front of a screen for hours at a time with talking heads, but then struggle to effect meaningful transformation in our lives.

We’re caught up in mechanistic tendencies that undermine future-fitness, and warp the innate learning process baked into life. Self-awareness of this blind-spot is an important aspect of the developmental learning process.

This is why ‘unlearning’ is an important part of any future-fit learning process, because we’ve got caught up in layers of acculturated psychodynamic stuff that needs sifting through, so we can see through it, into our deeper truer nature within and all around us. Because its right ‘in here’ – in our hearts and souls - we find the keys for future-fitness that open the doorways into our natural ways of knowing to thrive amid complexity.

This is what the ancient Greeks meant by ‘education’ – educere meaning to ‘draw out’ or ‘bring forth’. And why the ancient Greeks were so keen on ‘self-awareness’ – Know Thy Self – as this metacognitive capacity allows us to unlearn/relearn, to be able to see reality beyond our own bias, and learn to adapt, grow and evolve in life-affirming ways that are true to our nature.

It’s also what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger meant by ‘poiesis’ – being-in-the-world by ‘drawing forth our potential’ to be who we truly are, in-the-moment. ‘Poiesis’ is an ancient Greek word meaning ‘to create’– to embrace life as a creative learning adventure, to become who we’re born to be.

This ‘bringing forth’ of our inner essence while engaging authentically in-the-moment to what arises around us, is an inner-outer co-creative dance which is soulful, somatic, sensorial, empathic, intuitive, embodied. Sure, some facts and figures, graphs and pie-charts, power-point slides and website links, can aid this learning process, but to make head-thinking the centre of this learning experience is part of the problem NOT the solution.

If we’re brutally honest with ourselves, we might see that today’s leadership development approaches are largely inured in yesterday’s mechanistic logic. Whether it’s applying ‘mindfulness’ as a technique to make us better achievers by ‘coping’ with stress, or wellbeing-at-work initiatives that espouse ethics, values and behaviours like clothes to put on and take off à la mode while leaving the underlying ethos and level of consciousness of the organizational system unchecked. Most leadership development these days is mainly ‘horizontal development’ and too light-touch on ‘vertical development’, thus failing to change the very paradigm that creates the problems we’re trying to move beyond.

Whereas ‘horizontal development’ informs what to know by acquiring new skills and capabilities within the same stage of meaning-making, ‘vertical development’ transforms how we know by up-stretching us into a new stage of meaning-making – inviting in a different quality of consciousness from that which created our problems in the first place. An individual’s vertical development stage (stage of consciousness) significantly affects how a leader functions in work and life, not just the tools and skills we have but the way we embrace complexity and guide the up-stretch of the organization toward future-fitness.

Let’s use the metaphor of filling-up a cup, as indicative of horizontal development. We pour into the cup more skills and content through courses, training, papers, seminars, webinars, masterclasses, books. Nothing wrong with this, as it equips us. Yet, if the cup is shaped by today’s dominant mechanistic worldview, then our learning and development will be limited by the constraints of machine-mentality – the size of the cup. Finding a bigger cup, bucket, swimming pool, ocean even, is indicative of vertical development. We significantly expand the amount of knowledge and embodied wisdom we can hold and work with. We call upon far more wisdom for navigating complexity, and our worldview expands. No longer are we limited by the level of consciousness that created our problems in the first place.

This is why Future-fit Leadership Development (and also ‘Regenerative Leadership Development’) is an embodied transformative undertaking that calls upon all of our natural ways of knowing, a process which I call ‘activating our super-nature’.

While I’ve written books about what’s entailed in activating regenerative leadership consciousness, the punch-line is: a lived embodied experience that evokes our somatic, emotional, intuitive and rational ways of knowing, in doing so, opens the mind-heart-will to life-as-learning beyond MM’s illusion of separation, and so emancipating our true nature.

‘The greatest illusion in life is the illusion of separation.’ Albert Einstein, genius

During a recent interview with a journalist, I was asked why I take people out in to nature on Leadership Immersions when its far more common these days for people to teach Regenerative Business on-screen. For the same reason that when I coach leaders and practitioners on-line (as many of them live across the globe, and can’t always attend an immersion in-person with me) that I enfold consciousness-raising embodied practices in to the everyday living and learning experience for my clients, because without this embodied experience the developmental learning falls short on future-fitness.

Sure, it would be ‘easier/more packaged’ for me to teach content in a push/head-based way, but that feeds the wrong kind of leadership development.

With my clients – which include leaders, non-exec directors, middle managers, change agents, practitioners and coaches, across all continents – I hold-space for multi-year-long journeys of transformation which involve threshold-crossings, embodiment practices, advanced consciousness modalities and vertical development, with applied experience drawing on living-systems, complexity, systems change, developmental psychology, business transformation and leadership development. For example, the exec team of a global NGO is engaged in a multi-year developmental program that involves on-line and off-line sessions along with Leadership Immersions in nature, and bespoke reflective ‘homework’ throughout the whole process for the individual and the team together. Ditto for a consumer goods company, food retailer, professional service provider, and more – the sector or size is not important here, it’s the appetite to embark on a transformative learning journey over many months that reaches beyond head-based learning and integrates different ways of knowing. ???

Today’s dominant paradigm IS the problem. Its what’s undermining future-fitness.? Containing leadership development within the current paradigm may (at best) allow for slightly better ‘coping’ within the current paradigm but not future-fitness. Of course, we need to work within the current paradigm while transforming beyond it. But, until we address the underlying sense of disconnection from self, from system and from life itself, we are but lost in this crisis of crises, frantically attempting to slow down the inevitable car-crash.

Find the way into reality first, then one has the embodied keys to learn to both cope/survive AND thrive/evolve amid the volatile times ahead.

‘The dominant epistemology of our times fundamentally reduces learning and knowing to exercises of a disembodied intellect. This way of knowing is at the heart of the huge crisis humanity is facing right now. A deep and lasting transformational learning requires in each of us a shift in the dynamic coherence of our linguistic, embodied and somatic being.’ ?Julio Olallo, management consultant

For those of you serious about Future-fit leadership Development, there is another step: ‘learning’ has to be playful, convivial and enchanting in order to allow an open mind-heart-will threshold-crossing.? In other words, regenerative learning is laced with wonder.

Rekindling our connection with self-other-world is ‘learning-as-wonder’ beyond method, pedagogy and program. Its spontaneous, improvisational and experientially idiosyncratic. This demands the facilitator/teacher/space-holder themselves to be enchanted by the subject-matter they teach/work with.?

I realize this may feel like a step-too-far for many in the leadership development profession (or just ‘icing on the cake’ to still others) but it’s not, it’s foundational. This wonder, conviviality and enchantment creates the fertile soil and fecundity for enthusiasm that enables thresholds to be crossed with care and love.? Afterall, as the leader becomes future-fit they fall back in love with life. A ‘re-membering’ and ‘re-turning’ back into real life that enables thriving amid complexity to become second nature.

In Summary:

What lies before us, amid this epochal hour, is a metamorphosis of our own psyches’, upgrading how we see ourselves within the world, aka ‘vertical development’.

Vertical development, infused with latest findings in neuroscience, consciousness studies, adult developmental psychology, living-systems, complexity and quantum science, and regenerative business, brought together in to a pedagogy that evokes an embodied learning experience which activates our super-nature and expands our meaning-making, enables Future-fit Leadership Development.

The best, quickest and most psychologically safe way I have found to help leaders and practitioners gain an embodied experience of activating one’s super-nature, and sense real connection beyond MM’s illusion, is with Leadership Immersions in nature.?

This is why my seventeen year-inquiry into future-fit/regenerative/life-affirming/conscious leadership (and near three-decades of professional business advisory) forms around three core areas of research and learning – Nature, Consciousness, Business.

And it’s why I regularly run one-to-one immersions for my coaching clients, and team immersions for intact leadership teams.

A couple of times a year, I offer special ‘open’ immersions for anyone (whether or not an existing client) to gain a sense of this embodied experience applied to next-stage leadership development, and also to see how Leadership Immersions can be embodied in practice.

The next ‘open’ Leadership Immersion at Springwood Farm is on 12/13th May, ￡800 per person for a special two-day/overnight embodied experience for leaders, practitioners and change agents interested in Future-fit Leadership, including supplementary learning material.

See here for more info about 12/13th May immersion, and feel free to Direct Message Giles Hutchins on LinkedIn or contact him via his website if interested in attending this immersion or exploring coaching with Giles.

?‘Giles has been called a wise medicine man for our time and a magician of consciousness. When you are with Giles you get why these words are apt.?When you choose a coach in your life, choose someone that will challenge you to be better than you are. Thank you, Giles, for doing that for me this year.’ ?Jannine Barron, Founder of The Growth?Experience & Regenerative Business Mentor

‘Last year, I chose Giles Hutchins as my coach, and I continue this year. I chose him because I had read all his books slowly and found them to be brilliant.?I wanted to work with the leading regenerative leadership coach in the world, and I think it's Giles.?Working with Giles provides great support, expansion and DEEP WISDOM during a challenging period for me, and now supporting me into?my next chapter. He creates an incredibly safe space, so I share anything. Giles' energy is so powerful that I leave each session feeling completely recharged and inspired.?Thank you, Giles, for the guiding light in my work and life.’??Jenna Robertson,?Founder of Gaia's Wisdom & Regenerative Leadership Coach

‘For anyone looking for a unique coaching experience with a material pact on individual, and team, growth journeys, I highly recommend getting in touch with Giles.? My sessions?with Giles are always deeply impactful, but also enjoyable, light, and fun!’ ?Russell Smith, Major Capital Projects?Executive Advisory & Director of This Is Agency

?

Photo Credit: Jonathan Perugia Gaia Visual - Environmental & Social Impact Photography and Video

About Giles:

From as early as he can recall, Giles has felt a deep sense of connection with and love for nature. Having experienced a number of altered-state/peak experiences, by his early twenties he made a decision to dedicate his working life to exploring how business could best contribute to life-affirming futures. Over the past thirty years, he’s worked across diverse sectors, advising blue-chip corporations, successful start-ups, family businesses, public sector departments, pioneering B-Corps, and a range of international charities. Giles has occupied several senior leadership positions including Director at KPMG Consulting and Global Director at Atos International, led large multinational teams, delivered complex multi-year transformation programs and held multi-million P&L ownership. He became one of the first wave of Global Sustainability Directors in Europe over fifteen years ago, and is a recognized global thought leader on Future-Fit Leadership (aka Regenerative Leadership), coaching leaders and practitioners across all continents. He hosts the podcast series Leading by Nature, is the author of several books and leadership papers, and his coaching work has been called ‘life changing.’

For more on Giles Hutchins visit https://gileshutchins.com/

?

“Unless living in oxygen tents on Mars is your idea of the future, then our realignment with nature is essential. Giles Hutchins is growing in significance and channeling existential knowledge to help this essential realignment. His work has had a profound impact on me as CEO, countless individuals across our business, and massively on our wider organizational culture.” Galahad Clark, CEO & Co-Founder, Vivobarefoot

?“Giles’s Springwood is not just about being in an ancient woodland—it’s about being with him. The energy of the forest has taken hold of him and you will get to appreciate the calm wisdom of being close to nature through his leadership programmes. A modern sage!”? Courtney Holm, Vice President, Sustainable Futures, Cap Gemini

‘Simply the best leadership course I’ve ever attended.’ Ian Ayling, Director, Soil Association

Giles' latest book Nature Works - Activating Regenerative Leadership Consciousness found on Amazon here? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112?? as well as other book providers and all good book shops, and directly from the publisher here: https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112

Here's a short video on Nature Works & Leadership Immersions:?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU50XI0UDXU&list=PL4fiSooXivB7D83ut1Igssgg0xZcf-mGN&index=21

?

For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.

To sign-up for free content, newsletters & whitepapers go to https://gileshutchins.com/newsletter-subscribe/

?

?

?

?

?

?