Leading Like a Forest: Principles of Nature-Based, Human-Centred Leadership
There’s a moment that arrives for many leaders where all the frameworks, KPIs, and strategic plans start to feel… thin.
On paper, everything is there. In reality, things are messy. Teams are tired. The context keeps shifting. The old metaphors of “driving performance”, “pulling levers”, and “rolling out change” don’t quite fit what you’re actually holding.
In times like these, leaders often tell me:
“I know there’s a different way to lead. I can feel it. I just don’t have language or maps for it yet.”
This is where nature helps.
Forests, wetlands, river systems and reefs have been navigating complexity for millennia. They are living systems that know how to adapt, regenerate, and hold diversity — without a five-year strategic plan in sight.
Living Systems Leadership starts by asking:
What if, instead of leading like a factory manager, you led like a forest?
In this article, we’ll explore five core principles of nature-based, human-centred leadership and how they translate into everyday decisions in teams and organisations:
Interdependence over isolation
Diversity as strength
Cycles, not straight lines
Signals and feedback loops
Place, story and memory
Along the way, you’ll find reflection questions and simple practices you can bring into your leadership this week.
Why We Need New Metaphors for Leadership
Most of our dominant leadership metaphors come from machines and industrial production:
We “drive” change.
We “fix” problems.
We “roll out” strategies.
People become “resources” to be “optimised”.
These metaphors aren’t inherently bad — they can be useful in stable, predictable environments. But in complex systems, they can quietly lead us into control, fragmentation, and burnout.
Complex systems — communities, organisations, ecosystems — behave less like machines and more like forests:
They are dynamic and relational.
Cause and effect are not always linear.
Small shifts in one part of the system can have profound impacts elsewhere.
Health is defined by relationships, flows, and patterns over time.
We need leadership metaphors that honour this reality. Nature gives us a language that is:
Grounded (you can see and feel it)
Relational (everything is connected)
Regenerative (oriented around ongoing life, not one-off wins)
Let’s step into the forest.
Principle 1: Interdependence Over Isolation
In a forest, nothing exists in isolation.
Mycelial networks connect tree roots, exchanging nutrients and information. Leaf litter becomes soil. A fallen tree becomes habitat. What happens in the canopy affects what happens on the forest floor.
Leadership in organisations is often framed around individuals: high performers, “difficult” people, star talent, poor culture-fit.
Living Systems Leadership invites a different lens:
Instead of asking “What’s wrong with this person?”, we ask “What’s happening in the system around them?”
How this shifts leadership
From blame to curiosity
You stop locating problems solely in individuals and start exploring patterns: structures, incentives, history, relationships.From heroics to stewardship
You move from being the one who must “hold it all together” to tending the conditions that allow the whole system to function more healthily.From silos to relationships
You pay as much attention to the quality of relationships and flows between teams as you do to the performance of each team.
A small practice
Think of a recurring challenge you’re facing at work right now — a conflict, a bottleneck, a stalled project.
Take 5–10 minutes and map the system around it:
Who is involved?
What relationships are strong? Which are strained or absent?
What structures, policies, or unspoken norms are shaping behaviour?
What might this situation be telling you about the interdependence in your organisation?
You’re not looking for a single person to “fix”. You’re looking for a pattern to understand.
Principle 2: Diversity as Strength
Walk through a healthy forest and you’ll find diversity everywhere:
Different species, ages, and sizes of trees
Understory plants, fungi, insects, birds, mammals
Multiple layers of canopy, shrub, and ground cover
This diversity isn’t decorative. It’s functional. It’s what allows the forest to:
Absorb shocks (fire, storms, disease)
Adapt to changing conditions
Share resources and create resilience over time
In organisations, we often say we value diversity, but we design systems for sameness:
Hiring in our own image
Rewarding people who think, speak, and work in similar ways
Avoiding “difficult” perspectives that surface discomfort or dissent
Living Systems Leadership treats diversity as a core condition for resilience and innovation, not a side project.
How this shifts leadership
From “culture fit” to “culture contribution”
You stop asking “Will this person fit in?” and start asking “How will this person expand who we are and how we see?”From tokenism to participation
Diversity isn’t just who is in the room; it’s who speaks, who decides, and whose knowledge is centred.From comfort to generative tension
You recognise that not all discomfort is bad. When held well, difference creates the friction needed for learning and healthy change.
A small practice
Look at your immediate team or project group:
Whose perspectives are consistently present and heard?
Whose voices are missing — by role, identity, lived experience, or worldview?
Where might sameness be quietly limiting your options or blinding you to risk?
Choose one decision you’re currently making and intentionally seek out one additional perspective you wouldn’t normally include.
Ask them:
“What do you see here that we might be missing?”
Listen without defending. Let their view widen your own.
Principle 3: Cycles, Not Straight Lines
Forests don’t grow in a straight line. They move through cycles:
Germination
Growth
Maturity
Decay
Regeneration
There are seasons of abundance and seasons of apparent stillness. Fire in some ecosystems is not just a threat; it’s a renewing force.
In many organisations, we expect perpetual growth — more, faster, bigger — as if we can endlessly accelerate without consequence. Rest, reflection, and consolidation are often seen as “non-productive”.
This is how we end up with:
Burnt-out leaders and teams
Initiatives launched before they’re ready
Change fatigue and cynicism
A shallow, frantic approach to transformation
Living Systems Leadership honours cycles. It recognises that sustainable impact relies on periods of:
Emergence (ideas forming)
Experimentation (trying, failing, iterating)
Stabilisation (embedding and integrating)
Rest and composting (reviewing, letting go, absorbing learning)
How this shifts leadership
From constant urgency to intentional pacing
You become more conscious of when to accelerate and when to slow down.From exhaustion to renewal
You design rhythms that include rest, reflection, and celebration, not just output.From project thinking to seasonal thinking
You start to see your work as part of longer arcs of change, not just quarterly targets.
A small practice
Take your current year or project and ask:
What “season” are we actually in — emergence, growth, consolidation, or composting?
Does the pace and expectation we’ve set match this season?
What might need to pause, end, or be simplified to honour the reality of where we are?
Then ask the same questions of yourself as a leader.
Where are you in your own cycle? What would it look like to lead in a way that honours that?
Principle 4: Signals and Feedback Loops
Healthy ecosystems are full of signals:
Changes in bird activity
Shifts in water clarity or flow
Early arrival of certain plants or insects
These signals tell us something about the health of the system. When feedback loops are intact, small changes can be noticed and responded to before they become crises.
In organisations, feedback loops are often:
Blunt (annual surveys that go nowhere)
Distorted (people say what they think leadership wants to hear)
Absent (no safe way to speak up, no visible response when people do)
Living Systems Leadership treats feedback as a vital nutrient, not a threat.
How this shifts leadership
From performance reviews to ongoing sensing
You create simple, regular ways of listening for what’s happening in the system.From defensiveness to learning
Feedback, even painful feedback, becomes data about the conditions you’ve created — not a personal attack.From lag indicators to early warning signs
You learn to notice subtle shifts (energy, engagement, small conflicts) before they crystallise into bigger problems.
A small practice
Choose one feedback loop to strengthen over the next month. For example:
A 10-minute weekly “temperature check” with your team
A short, anonymous pulse on one specific question (“What’s one thing making your work harder than it needs to be right now?”)
A practice of ending key meetings with:
“What did we learn today, and what might we do differently next time?”
The key is not just collecting feedback, but closing the loop:
“Here’s what we heard. Here’s what we’re going to try. Here’s when we’ll review it together.”
This is how trust grows.
Principle 5: Place, Story and Memory
As an archaeologist and cultural landscape researcher, I’m always aware that no place is “just” what you see on the surface.
Every site carries layers:
Deep time – geological formations, ancient ecologies
First Nations custodianship, stories, and law
Waves of migration, building, industry, conflict, care
Policy decisions, planning frameworks, community campaigns
Organisations are the same. They are living cultural landscapes.
They hold:
Founding stories and invisible agreements
Old decisions still echoing through current structures
Unresolved conflicts sitting just below the surface
Moments of courage, care, and creativity that shaped who they are
Living Systems Leadership honours place, story, and memory. It recognises that you can’t drop a new framework onto a site — or a team — without understanding what’s already there.
How this shifts leadership
From “blank slate” thinking to working with what is
You stop designing as if the past doesn’t exist and start engaging with history as a resource and teacher.From generic to context-specific
You adapt tools and strategies based on local culture, community, and Country, instead of assuming one model fits all.From erasure to acknowledgement
You make visible the stories, contributions, and First Nations knowledges that have too often been ignored.
A small practice
Choose one team, project, or organisation you’re part of and ask:
What’s the story of how we came to be here?
What past decisions are we still living with?
Whose stories are missing or under-acknowledged?
How might Country, place, and local community shape what good leadership looks like here, not in the abstract?
You might be surprised what emerges when you listen for the deeper layers of the landscape you’re working in.
Bringing the Principles Together: Leading Like a Forest
When you bring these principles together, a different picture of leadership emerges.
To lead like a forest is to:
See and steward interdependence, not just individual performance
Design for diversity and generative difference, not comfort and sameness
Honour cycles of emergence, growth, consolidation, and rest
Strengthen feedback loops so the system can learn and adapt
Lead in relationship with place, story, and memory, not as if you exist in a vacuum
It doesn’t mean you throw out all structure, strategy, or accountability. It means you anchor them in a deeper understanding of how living systems actually function.
This approach is both deeply human and rigorously practical. It creates environments where:
People feel seen as whole humans, not just roles
Complex work has enough structure to be held, without being over-controlled
Leaders can navigate uncertainty with more orientation and less overwhelm
You’re no longer trying to force a forest into behaving like a factory. You’re learning to work with the grain of life.
A Gentle Invitation: Go Deeper with the Living Systems Leadership Toolkit™
If these principles resonate with you — if you can feel that tug of “this is how I want to lead, I just need a map” — that’s exactly why I created the Living Systems Leadership Toolkit™.
The Toolkit is a practical, nature-based framework that helps you:
Map the systems you’re working in with clarity and compassion
Work with interdependence, not against it
Bring diversity, cycles, and feedback into the way you lead and design
Translate these principles into everyday practices, conversations, and decisions
Inside, you’ll find:
Visual maps and models that make complexity more navigable
Guided reflection prompts you can use for yourself or with your team
Simple facilitation tools to support deeper, more grounded conversations
Practices that align leadership with the living systems you’re part of — people, place, and planet
If you’d like to be the first to know when the Toolkit opens — and access founding member pricing and early bonuses — you can join the interest list and sign up below.
Lead like a forest, not a factory.
Your leadership is part of a much larger living system. Let’s help it thrive. 🌿