I recorded this live on Earth Day, reflecting on the future of leadership and what I’m seeing across the sustainability space right now.
If you prefer to listen, the full video is above.
If you want to listen, check out Edge of Change Leadership Podcast.
If you prefer to read (or want the distilled version), keep scrolling.
Every Earth Day, we talk about what needs to change out there…from policy, to systems, to behavior, to industry.
But we don’t talk enough about the thing shaping all of it: how we lead.
Because if we’re honest, many of us are trying to create a radically different future using the same leadership patterns that created the current one.
And nowhere is that more visible than in the sustainability and social change space.
We are doing incredibly important work.
And we are leading it in ways that are not actually sustainable.
Over-responsibility.
Urgency as the default.
Burnout as normalized.
Pressure to perform….the list goes on.
We say we want long-term, more sustainable outcomes, but we are making decisions from short-term, depleted states.
And that doesn’t just impact us.
It shapes the systems we are building.
The Leadership Problem We’re Not Naming
If we aren’t doing the inner work leadership requires, it shows up in our leadership and in the systems we create.
Because how you lead under pressure isn’t strategy, it’s pattern.
And most of us have been conditioned into patterns that prioritize:
speed over discernment
control over trust
individual performance over collective capacity
comfort over innovation and growth
So even as we try to build more collaborative, equitable, and innovative systems, we unintentionally recreate the very dynamics we’re trying to change.
What’s Being Asked of Us Now
What’s required right now isn’t just better strategy.
It’s a different way of leading.
Not just sustainability in what we build, but sustainability in how we think, decide, relate, and lead under pressure.
This is where regenerative leadership begins.
It asks a different question:
Can the way we lead actually sustain the future we’re trying to create?
We Are at a Leadership Threshold
Right now, we are in a moment of disruption.
Industries are shifting.
Structures are being challenged.
Certainty is dissolving.
Most leaders respond to this by trying to move faster, to fix, control, or stabilize what’s happening.
But what if this moment isn’t something to manage?
What if it’s something to listen to?
Because these moments are not breakdowns.
They are thresholds.
And most leaders don’t fail at thresholds, they exit them too early.
The Shift: From Reaction to Recalibration
When we stay in a threshold long enough, something different becomes possible.
We begin to see more clearly what is actually needed.
This is where leadership evolves.
Not through urgency but through discernment.
Not through doing more, but through recalibrating how we lead.
Because if we don’t pause long enough to recalibrate, we end up recreating the same patterns in new situations.
So the real question is no longer:
How do I respond faster?
It becomes:
What is actually being asked of me as a leader right now?
Why This Is Bigger Than the Individual
This isn’t just about individual leadership.
It’s a systems issue.
Because we cannot build regenerative systems with extractive leadership patterns.
Right now, many organizations are in a transition:
Moving from centralized, top-down leadership into something that looks more collaborative.
But here’s the tension:
Even as we invite more voices, more collaboration, and more shared thinking…we are often still operating inside the same underlying structures.
Decision-making remains permission-based.
Power remains concentrated.
Responsibility remains unevenly held.
So what we get is a model that feels better, but doesn’t actually function differently.
The Real Work of Leadership Evolution
Real change isn’t just about adding more voices.
It’s about changing how we relate to:
power
responsibility
decision-making
It’s relational.
It’s structural.
It’s internal.
And it requires us to lead in ways most of us were never taught.
Because there is a kind of wisdom we’ve moved away from:
in how we understand systems,
in how we work with rhythm instead of urgency,
and in how we build in relationship, not just in structure.
These aren’t new ideas.
But they are new to how most of us have been taught to lead.
An Invitation
This moment we’re in is not just disruption.
It’s an opportunity.
Not to react to what’s changing, but to lead differently because of it.
To build differently.
To decide differently.
To stop recreating the same systems in new language.
This is the work I’m exploring in real time—
the future of leadership, regenerative leadership, and what it actually looks like in practice.
If you’re in this work, I’d love to have you in the conversation.
What got us here won’t sustain what’s next.
And that includes how we lead.
