The 6 core principles of Regenerative Leadership

Before I provide you with the six principles of regenerative Leadership, let me remind you that it’s a managerial approach aimed at creating healthy and sustainable organizations by focusing on the well-being of its stakeholders and the environment.

The key principles of this leadership evolution include promoting collaboration and open communication, encouraging collective decision-making and co-creation with employees and clients, recognizing diversity and inclusion, adopting a long-term perspective, committing to environmental sustainability, and fostering continuous learning and progress. This contrasts with traditional management practices that often prioritize short-term gains, indiscriminate performance pursuits, disregard for employees’ future beyond immediate employability, and lack of consideration for the connection between management and business models and their impact on the environment and society.

In recent years, however, there has been a growing movement toward regenerative human resource management, which seeks to create sustainable and resilient organizations capable of thriving amid uncertainty and a succession of multifaceted crises. Regenerative management is based on the idea that organizations can be agents of positive change in the world by fostering healthy work cultures and adopting managerial practices that go beyond mere sustainability.

From Sustainable Management to Regenerative Management

What if businesses reinvented their managerial model, drawing inspiration from the practices of companies that are striving to combat climate change while consolidating their performance and brand image? This is what this emerging model proposes, to address this concern and evolve from sustainability towards regeneration.

While it’s too early to determine if this is a consultant concept, a conference topic, a passing fad, or a genuine trend, regenerative management is starting to take shape by adopting the responsibilities of sustainable development:

1. Environmental Responsibility calls for creating or recreating a stimulating work environment where psychological safety, collaboration, and active listening prevail. The aim is to move beyond the “parental” manager role and let employees develop the skills they need independently.
2. Social Responsibility encourages autonomy and responsibility among employees, freeing them from the comfortable infantilization of obedience. However, this goes beyond merely sustaining employability. With the rapidly increasing obsolescence of skills, employability becomes almost unpredictable. The focus should not only be on helping employees accumulate skills but also on assisting them in discovering their aptitudes, talents, and soft skills that enable them to tackle current challenges.
3. Economic Responsibility surpasses maintaining employability and aims to make employees “invincible” to change and “antifragile” in the face of challenges. To achieve this, consider an employee’s career holistically, not just the time spent together.

Moreover, we can draw direct parallels between environmental transformations and human changes involving management:

• Climate change is worsening, and resources are depleting faster than anticipated. Earth Overshoot Day moved from December 29th in 1970 to July 28th in 2022. From a human perspective, skill obsolescence is also accelerating rapidly. According to the OECD, the average lifespan of a skill was 30 years in 1987. Today, 50% of skills must be renewed every 12 to 24 months. This means managers and HR departments can no longer decide on their own which training paths employees should follow.
• The pandemic has exacerbated socio-economic disparities in the world. Using the Gini coefficient, we discover that Slovenia is the most egalitarian European country with a score of 20.9, Australia at 33.0, and Lithuania at 60. According to NAB, 40% of Aussies are under financial stress in 2023. As a result, employees are seeking meaning and values, not just among Generation Y, Z, or Millennials. Translation: taking a stand against inequality and contributing positively to society is no longer optional or merely about image or economic models.
• The consumer behavior of certain candidates. Candidates with in-demand skills (increasingly numerous due to demographics) want companies to go beyond diversity to offer inclusion and surpass sustainability to help repair the planet. For them, CSR and sustainable development are subjects too easily “greenwashed” and almost “off the mark.” The challenge is now to broaden one’s socio-ecological footprint, as Greg Norris, a Harvard professor, suggests. If the American trend is confirmed in France, nearly 80% of American consumers prefer “regenerative” brands over “sustainable” ones, considering the term “sustainable” too passive. It’s evident this is the case, as I’ve received several testimonials from people who avoid traditional supermarkets because they’re stressed by the sight of so much plastic.

Enter regenerative management, which, in summary, offers employees opportunities for individual and collective development, participation in a project that goes beyond their job and company, and encourages responsibility, autonomy, and initiative.

The 6 Principles of Regenerative Leadership

Regenerative Leadership or Regenerative People Management is based on six fundamental principles that guide an organization’s operations.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these principles.

Principle 1 – Cultivate a solid, genuine, shared, and long-term purpose

The first principle of regenerative management is, of course, to have a company culture that embraces it! Most French companies with this culture have a shared purpose and vision. This purpose describes how the company intends to play a role in society beyond its economic activity. If this purpose is genuine, it manifests in concrete managerial practices, recognition of employees who embody the organization’s values, tailored training, a well-aligned work environment, and clear, understood missions.

This means that each employee understands how their work contributes to the overall mission, which helps break down silos and encourage collaboration. From the recruitment stage, you must be able to identify individuals capable of sharing this purpose and values.

To do this, when recruiting candidates, it’s crucial to ensure their values align with those of your company and that they aim to become or remain autonomous team members, not just high-performing employees. Here are some strategies to identify if a candidate’s values match those of your organization:

1. Ask value-based questions: Ask the candidate how they interpret your purpose and values and whether they feel aligned with them.
2. Check their previous experience: Ask specific questions to see if they have worked in companies with similar values to yours. If not, try to understand during the interview if you’re facing a candidate seeking meaning and applying to your company because their previous experience lacked it.
3. Analyze their behavior: Observe how the candidate behaves during the interview and in interactions with others. This can give you an idea of their values and personality. Simple but effective.
4. Examine their extracurricular activities: Perhaps your candidate is involved in causes or activities that reflect your company’s values.
5. Understand their commitment: Ask them about their environmental commitments, what upsets them about current business practices regarding the environment, and sustainable development practices.

In short, to identify if a candidate’s values align with those of your company, it’s essential to ask value-based questions, check their previous experience, analyze their behavior, and examine their extracurricular activities. This will help you recruit candidates who share your company’s values and are likely to integrate well into your team.

Principle 2 – Foster Inclusion and Collaboration

The second core principle of regenerative management is to embrace inclusion and collaboration, not just diversity and cooperation. This means that you need to value and celebrate inclusion in all its forms, including thought and experience inclusion, not just the usual diversity of backgrounds. By focusing on inclusion, organizations can create a more collaborative and innovative culture that is better equipped to adapt to change.

Collaboration is essential because it not only helps break down silos and promote cross-functional teamwork, but it also helps address complexity. By working together, team members can share ideas and knowledge, leading to more unexpected and innovative solutions. To encourage collaboration, managers should provide opportunities to work with other departments, clients, researchers, or consultants within the organization. This can be done through cross-functional projects, team-building exercises, or dedicated creative spaces like “decision rooms.”

Inclusion in the workplace can be a significant asset for boosting creativity, productivity, and innovation. Here are some strategies to make it ongoing:

1. Recruit diversely: Hire candidates of different genders, ages, cultures, socio-economic backgrounds, and cognitive functioning. This will help create an inclusive team, not just a diverse one.
2. Raise awareness among employees: Educate teams on the importance of inclusion in the workplace. This can be done through training workshops, awareness sessions, or mentorship programs. The goal is not just to have a balance with a percentage of women, but a work environment where everyone feels free to contribute their ideas!
3. Encourage cross-cultural collaboration: Give employees the opportunity to work together and better understand each other’s cultural differences, including environmental cultural differences between vegans and flexitarians, and those who compost their waste and those who don’t care. This will also help stimulate creativity and innovation.
4. Adopt a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination: It’s crucial to implement a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination in the workplace. This will help create an inclusive and respectful work environment.
5. Don’t forget the neurodivergent: Call them what you will – neurodivergent, iconoclasts, rebels, or crazy frogs – identify and value them! They may well hold the key to your company’s future.

It’s clear that regenerative management draws inspiration from the fundamental principles of permaculture! A company that brings together people with complementary backgrounds and skills is a natural fertilizer for innovation because everyone learns from each other. And, like in permaculture, managing a diverse team requires more listening, time, adaptation, and flexibility.

Productivity may not necessarily be optimal with permaculture, but the results will be richer, as they’ll stem from the confrontation of varied and complementary expertise and experiences.

In summary, inclusion is to diversity what regenerative is to sustainable – the next step!

Principle 3 – Encourage Innovation and Experimentation

As you might have guessed, a shared purpose creates inclusion, and inclusion leads to innovation. The third principle of regenerative management is to encourage innovation and experimentation to make practices more respectful of stakeholders and the environment. Remember, the regenerative company belongs to the world of balance. On this topic, have a go at my article about “Enableship”.

This means that organizations must be willing to take risks and try new things, even if they might fail in the short term or, worse, cost more for the same result. Yes, being regenerative in the face of competitors who aren’t is like running a marathon with concrete soles! By encouraging innovation and experimentation, organizations can stay ahead and find new ways to solve problems – the basics, really.

To encourage innovation and experimentation, leadership must provide the resources and support employees need to explore new ideas. This could include funding, access to new technologies, design training, or time for experimentation. It’s also important to create a culture that values innovation and recognizes employees who take risks to live their values and try new things for the better. Among the six principles of regenerative management, this is perhaps my favorite.

The role of Enableship is to remove obstacles to employee development and protect against errors. For your information, Enableship is based on four pillars:

1. A trusting environment. Engagement and innovation cannot be achieved through a simple program but rather through a conducive managerial environment. To achieve this, the Enabler must implement the six circles of managerial transformation by being transparent and open with their team. They can encourage honest and open communication and be available to listen to everyone’s concerns and ideas. The regenerative manager must also be reliable and honor their commitments to the team, creating a work environment where everyone feels safe to express themselves and where their contributions are valued.
2. Empowering everyone. In the context of regenerative management, the Enabler seeks creative collaborators with a keen eye, passionate about environmental issues, and capable of quickly adapting to changing circumstances. The Enabler develops and empowers their team by delegating tasks and offering opportunities for professional growth. They can also clarify expectations regarding results and deadlines while giving the team enough freedom to find solutions and make decisions.
3. Removing obstacles. The Enabler removes obstacles for their collaborators by identifying problems that hinder their work and finding practical solutions to resolve them. They clarify expectations regarding roles and responsibilities and provide the necessary resources for team members to effectively accomplish their tasks. It is essential for the manager to be attentive to their collaborators’ concerns and challenges, offering constructive feedback to help them overcome obstacles.
4. Ensuring a creative sanctuary. This means the Enabler provides a work environment where ideas are valued and encouraged. They create a safe space where employees can share their ideas without fear of judgment or criticism. Managers can also offer opportunities for creative development, such as workshops or training, and encourage their team to explore new ideas and approaches. It is crucial for managers to also promote calculated risk-taking so that they feel free to take the initiative and explore new ideas.

Principle 4: Design for Resilience and Adaptability