The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Regenerative Leaders

For over 30 years, Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People has helped millions of leaders - including me - focus on what matters.?

And I believe we need to build on Covey’s important habits to better lead ourselves, our teams, and our organizations through today’s new challenges.?

The world is changing fast. It’s more complex and unpredictable than ever. Leaders are being tested in new ways. To thrive in this VUCAH* environment, we need to build on the current best practices of leadership while inviting a nature-based mode of leadership—one that regenerates people, planet, and profit.

What is Regeneration?

Regeneration is the process of renewal, restoration, and growth. In nature, regeneration allows ecosystems to restore balance after disruption. In leadership, it’s about enabling systems—whether teams, organizations, or individuals—to renew, adapt, and thrive. It’s not just about sustaining what we have but fostering environments that evolve and flourish, where both people and the planet can regenerate their potential.

What is Regenerative Leadership?

Regenerative leadership extends beyond the traditional concept of leadership by emphasizing the restoration of energy, purpose, and alignment within teams and organizations. It’s rooted in principles that prioritize the health and well-being of the leader, the team, and the ecosystem they operate in. It fosters resilience, adaptability, and collective thriving. Rather than leading from a place of depletion, regenerative leaders cultivate environments that generate energy, growth, and innovation.

Dr. Joel Carboni, in his article Regenerative Leadership in Project Management: Essential for 2024 and Beyond, writes “regenerative leadership is a holistic approach that integrates personal, organizational, and ecological well-being. It emphasizes systems’ interconnectedness, resilience, adaptability, and transformative growth, rooted in a deep respect for all living systems and a proactive approach to sustaining and enhancing them”:?

Given the context above, I offer for your consideration The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Regenerative Leaders. These habits build on Stephen Covey’s time-tested habits to help leaders not just survive but thrive - creating lasting impact for people, profit, and planet - for all future generations.

1. Be Proactive: Take Responsibility Not Only For Our Needs But Also For the Needs of Future Generations

Covey’s “take responsibility for your actions and life” - is empowering. What would a regenerative variation of this habit be? What if we combined Covey’s phrase with Gro Brundlandt’s (former director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the former, youngest, prime minister of Norway) thought-provoking decision criteria to create an even more empowering habit:? Be Proactive: Take responsibility for your actions and life that both “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Regenerative leaders focus on mindsets and behaviors that benefit themselves as well as other people. A thought experiment: how could we be even more proactive - choose to act even better - if we treated our planet as our best friend or better yet even a cherished loved one??

2. Begin with the End in Mind: Envision a Regenerative Future

Successful regenerative leaders start with a clear vision for long-term sustainability. They focus on building value that balances the short term and long term. If you’re only thinking about the next quarter’s numbers, you might as well be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Instead, look at the challenge of balance as a polarity to be managed, rather than as a problem to be solved. Imagine what’s possible when you, your team, your organization, your community, and our planet are all thriving. Simple and not easy!

3. Put First Things First: Prioritize Balancing People, Planet, Profit

Covey’s habit teaches us to focus on what’s important, not just urgent. In regenerative leadership, that means making decisions that regenerate your well-being as well as others, and nurture? environments where people can do their best and most creative work. Balance on long-term gains rather than short-term wins. If you keep cutting corners, you’ll run out of corners to cut.

4. Think Win-Win: Collaborate for Regenerative Solutions

Regenerative leaders seek partnerships where everyone benefits. They look for ways to create shared value for people, communities, and the environment. “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.” - African Proverb.

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Lead with Empathy

Leadership is influence. Regenerative leadership starts with listening deeply on multiple levels -? non-verbal and verbal, what is said and frequently what isn’t. You can’t regenerate anything without understanding the needs of others.?

6. Synergize: Harness the Power of Systems Thinking

In regenerative leadership, synergy means recognizing how everything is connected. Great leaders see the bigger picture and harness the power of collaboration to embrace constraints or balance polarities for the benefit of all stakeholders. A regenerative leader envisions and works with others to build systems that make everything work together—creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

7. Sharpen the Saw: Regenerate Yourself

To be an effective regenerative leader, you need to take care of yourself. You can’t sail far with broken masts or torn sails. Take time to get outdoors, in nature. Reflect, renew your energy, and build resilience. Your health - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, creative - and leadership will be stronger for it.

These seven habits have been an empowering blueprint for my teams, my clients, and me, supporting us along our regenerative leadership journey. They help us leverage “yes and” rather than “or” thinking and better understand and manage polarities to balance delivery of short term results with long-term value. By building these habits into your leadership, you won’t just lead yourself and your team—you’ll also leave a legacy that lasts not just this quarter but for future generations.

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If you’re familiar with regeneration and regenerative leadership, what “go to” habit are you leveraging most often to nurture yourself or your team, to be able to work even better together and create a greater IMPACT??

If you’re curious about how regenerative leadership can accelerate your well being and more consistent delivery of positive results for all stakeholders, please check out: https://regenerativeworldgroup.com/ or reach out via https://calendly.com/healthier-planet/15-min-letschat.

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*VUCAH - Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous, Hyper-connected