Episode 11: Leading by Nature with Giles Hutchins

Marking Climate Coaching Action Day 2024, the AoEC’s George Warren is joined by Giles Hutchins to discuss his work in helping organisations and leaders learn to attune with the rhythms and ways of nature, so they are better able to adapt to change. Discussing his latest book, Leading by Nature, they also explore how coaches can help support this much needed shift in leadership and organisational design.

You can link with the speakers here:

George Warren, faculty at the AoEC – Host

Giles Hutchins, pioneering practitioner, executive coach, author, thought leader and keynote speaker - special guest panellist 

Useful links

Find out more about some of the resources mentioned in the discussion here along with some further miscellaneous content:

Giles Hutchins’ website

https://gileshutchins.com/

Giles’ Deep Dive Immersion – 23 & 24 May 2024

https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2024/02/21/leading-by-nature-a-deep-dive-into-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness/

Giles’ blog

https://thenatureofbusiness.org/

Giles‘ books including Leading by Nature

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Giles-Hutchins/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AGiles+Hutchins

Giles’ Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/

Gregory Bateson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson

https://batesoninstitute.org/gregory-bateson/

Otto Scharmer

https://ottoscharmer.com/

Donella Meadows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donella_Meadows

https://donellameadows.org/

James Lovelock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

Fritjof Capra

https://www.fritjofcapra.net/

Professor Peter Hawkins

https://www.renewalassociates.co.uk/

Climate Coaching Action Day:

Hashtag: #climatecoachingactionday

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/ClimateCoachingActionDay

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/groups/8869975/

Twitter:  @climatecoachday

Website: https://www.climatecoachingactionday.info/

Coaching in the Climate Crisis – A Certificate in Climate Coaching -  https://www.aoec.com/programmes/certificate-climate-coaching/

Climate coaching related resources from the AoEC – 

https://www.aoec.com/coaching-climate/

Transcript

George 0:06

Hello and welcome to the AoEC podcast. My name is George Warren and I'm a member of the faculty team here at the AoEC. Marking Climate Coaching Action Day 2024, we are honoured to be joined by executive coach and leading author Giles Hutchins. I'm delighted to be talking about his work with organisations and leaders and his latest book, Leading by Nature. So I give you Giles Hutchins. And it's a great honour to be joined by Giles. Giles, welcome. How are you doing?

Giles 0:39

Thank you, George, for inviting me to this conversation. Very much looking forward to diving in with you. All is well here. I hope it's good with you.

George 0:47

Thank you. It is. And well, one of the words that in my experience you've been synonymous with is regenerative, and you've done so much work in this space of regenerative business. So perhaps you could say a bit about what you mean by that and what that that looks like, becoming regenerative.

Giles 1:09

Yeah, there's a quite a big upswell around the word regenerative these days, which I think is a good thing. Regenerative really just means working the way life works. And so for regenerative business, that is a business that is seeking to work with or is journeying, is intentionally journeying towards working with the grain of nature, working with life and creating life-affirming solutions. And I think it was Gregory Bateson, the systems theorist some decades ago, who said that the world's problems stem from the gap between the way people think and how nature works. And I think that's so true. So, really, that's what regenerative is dealing with is closing that gap or helping bridge that gap between the way we think and how nature works.

George 1:59

Beautifully and fittingly, today that's the second time someone's mentioned Gregory Bateson and that exact quote, which is very exciting for me and very serendipitous quite a beautiful coincidence for me. So, for those specific coaches listening, what advice would you give about how - whether an internal coach or or an external coach, - we as coaches can operate with a more regenerative approach?

Giles 2:28

Well, I think first one has to obviously go through that process oneself. This isn't just head-based learning, and it's is an embodied experience. You're guiding, you're coaching people through that gap, if you like. And that gap between the way we think and how nature works is a shift in consciousness. It's a journey towards wholeness, essentially. And so coaching people through that journey it's not horizontal development, it's more vertical development. So horizontal being, you're not just helping people become better delegators or more efficient or effective in achieving things, you're actually helping them go through stages of eco-stage development in their meaning making, expanding how they see the world and and how they relate to themselves and others around them. So that's what it invites of the coach, and I think Sherpa guide. I think that a Sherpa guide you would want working alongside you who has probably travelled the journey a few times themselves. So I think there is something about the coach therefore intentionally engaging on the journey.

George 3:37

Yes, there's something really powerful about us coaches doing the work on ourselves first so that we can safely and I guess effectively take our clients to the places that they might want to or need to go. Well, perhaps you could speak a bit about leading by nature and some of the work that you do there.

Giles 3:56

Yeah, well, Leading by Nature is my latest book. So really it's about helping leaders. But what do we mean by leaders? But anyone really is a leader. So it doesn't have to be that you're leading a big organisation. I work with a whole host of different people and coaches, actually, a lot of coaches now wanting to embark on understanding more about regenerative leadership consciousness. So really it's leading by nature is the reason why it's framed that way, is it's not learning from nature, and it's not just seeking to participate with nature, it is actually an embodied, immersive experience of being in nature, in our own nature, in human nature and in the world around us, life more than human world. So there's sort of three levels, if you like, of living systems awareness that I often frame for people, leaders and coaches. The first level is learning from living systems. So that's relates if you're using Otto Scharmer's Theory U, that's kind of like the open mind stage, where we open our minds to recognising that we can learn from nature and that there's all sorts of things that would help inspire us in starting to look at how we lead our organisations in ways that are more future fit. So that first level, learning from nature, is really about things like biomimicry, circular design, circular economics, industrial ecology, biophilia, all of this. There's a lot around nature connection and taking inspiration from nature these days. So that whole area is really exploded in interest. And often it can just sort of stay at that level, and there's nothing wrong with to stay at level one , although that's not the regenerative leadership coaching that I explore. It goes further than that. It goes, because you see, when you learn from nature, whether that be, for instance, taking inspiration from patterns and principles we find in nature, the tree, the mycelia, whatever it is, and then applying them to our ways of leading and operating, often we can still be standing apart from, we can be analysing, we can be in the head, hence open mind. Certainly it's helping open up the left and right brain hemispheres, as nature connection does, but it's not necessarily allowing us to shift from a self as separate ego into a self as participating within nature. And that requires a shift. So that's where level two and level three come in. So level two is systemic participation within the living system. So it's more of an open heart to use Otto Scharmer's phrase, where we're starting to really embody and open up, and that's where things like systemic coaching as tools come in to help. And the key aspect I focus on there is seeing the organisation no longer as a machine, but as a living system, and with all of the repertoire that that brings to us, opening up and sensing and working with complex systemic dynamics. And then we go into level three, which again, sometimes people can just stay at level two, and again, that's fine. But the regenerative leadership coaching I look at, we do all three levels. And so the third level, which Otto Scharmer calls open will, is very much recognising that we are immersed within an interconnectedness, whatever you wish to call that, source, field, whatever. And so to really tune in to nature, to work with what I call nature's wisdom, is a bio-psycho-spiritual opening, so receptivity that we can develop, which isn't just about our five senses, it's also about our supersensory capacity to bring in insight that and our human nature help with. And when we work at all three levels, which again are just using as a framing, in reality, they can happen in an instant. We can be drawing upon all three levels, then we are working in a way that is deeply in tune with life, which is regenerative.

George 8:04

Thank you for for talking us through those. And hearing you speak, it sounds profoundly exciting and interesting and and spiritual and profound work to be doing. I'm wondering if you'd be comfortable while respecting confidentiality, of course, sharing some of your most joyful or exciting moments and experiences in your experience of working with this framework and methodology so far.

Giles 8:34

Well, yeah, I mean, happy to. I coach a variety of different leaders across the world, some of which I never meet. A lot of the work I do is online. And as I say, a lot of these people are also coaches and advisors. I would say that there's a process that one works with when online as well as in person. So some people come here to Springwood Farm. So we live now, we have this place happened very synchronistically, a centre where we run the leadership immersion work. So it's 60 acres of ancient woodland, and it's quite near London and international airports. So people do come often from around the world here, and and and obviously if you're in the UK, come. And there's a process. There's a process I explain in detail within Leading by Nature, and I also unpack a number of coaching tools that one can use for the leader, but also for the coach to help the leader with. And I would say that probably the most important thing that I experience in this work is the R moment or the Aha moment, which is where you know something happens, a shift happens in the coachee, and one drops some armory, usually a protection racket of some sort, that's what I call them, which we've either developed in this lifetime or ancestrally to help protect ourselves because of wounds that have happened. It could be from the playground, from parent, from first jobs, whatever it is. And when that loosens and the person sees behind or sees an aspect of themselves that had previously had been hidden, and you see that aha, but it's not at the head level, it's in the body, somatic, and it's the body-mind has opened in a way, then that is interesting because you can invite the client to really ponder on what has shifted and to notice not just what they've learnt, because it's important for the ego to understand it and to process it and to see the future self emerge, but there's also something about sensing into the body, mind, and the feeling of that, upstretch that mini release of energy, because it is then stored in the muscle memory forever and can be recalled at a time of challenge and stress in the workplace, just as much as it's going to also that challenge and stress is going to trigger the old tension, and it's not about suddenly thinking that has gone. No, but by having that memory of the shift, we can start to allow the old to ease. So having those little embodied experiences in nature, in person, but also online, I think is what I gain probably the most enjoyment from, if you like. In terms of a process, though, I've over the years learnt to work in a way that helps a very busy leader go through a process of quite quickly being able to feel that they can let go of their protection rackets. And so in the book I talk about actual immersion, the sort of process I do when taking people into nature. And it's slightly different when I'm online. The framing for an immersion is one of welcoming, of easing, noticing, presencing, and then letting go. So those are the sort of stages. The welcoming is just them arriving and meeting here. I have a specifically designed arrival space for that initial intention work and setting up the contract, if you like, the sense of trust. And there's some head-based, if you like, that level one learning that I do about why are we going into nature, why is it of relevance and some scientific facts and so forth, and then call upon some psychological research about you know what we're doing and so forth. So the person feels comfortable and met because they often arrive into a coaching session online or in person, very much in high beta, achiever, left hemispheric ego consciousness. And so one is shifting that, and that's what that welcoming does, and then there's an easing, and that is in nature. That's a simple case of walking alongside in nature, letting them process, letting them ease, let them get become comfortable quite quickly in nature. We're not talking about a corporate hotel parkland, and that's fine, but we're talking about real, sort of wild nature. Quite quickly, a client, no matter how intense or caught up they have become, will start to ease. And so they start to drop and feel that they're not being kind of you know analysed, which can sometimes happen for people in a coaching session when you're sitting opposite them, or even if you're in a corporate hotel or a very nice room, it can still feel a little bit too similar to the environments in which they've been judged or critiqued before. So that easing phase really helps them soften and open. And then we go into what I call noticing, which is where I actually do some forest bathing practices to really encourage them to just start noticing nature around and also their inner nature and that sort of pattern of inner outer nature. And then we move into presencing, where they just start to become aware of that opening, expansive sense of relaxation, of active relaxation, sort of form of flow, where they just feel a clearing in their inner ears, in their and we do practices that help with the neocortex, the left and right bone hemispheres, the heart and the gut to really enliven the body-mind. And then from that presenting, we're then in a position to start engaging in letting go, which is actually to start processing what is it that they wish to let go of. And that really just forms the beginning of actually the coaching session, even though that can take some time. Then you really are in a place where you know rich work can happen. And what's funny is often in busy coaching sessions, you know, slammed in the diary, one doesn't have that opening process.

George 14:58

I notice if I check in with myself, even hearing you talk about it, I notice myself relax and transport myself to my favourite forest place. And there's something sort of deeply relaxing evoked in me hearing you speak. And what I'm thinking I'm hearing is that some of the practices and rituals and the use of the natural setting helps the coachee arrive into a sort of cognitive and state of being where they are more receptive to change, more resourced, and perhaps in an ideal state to think or feel differently and essentially get the most out of the coaching. Have I got that right?

Giles 15:42

Yeah, I think that's partly right. I think there's then another aspect to it, which is that more the opening into something beyond so look, that I mean, we're shifting worldview here from mechanistic materialism into quantum complexity. And that's quite a significant undertaking. And that's not for everyone. So there's often leaders who come here that are recommended by other leaders who one works with before one goes into the worldview shift, you know, i.e. you're helping them open, you're gaining trust, you're helping them journey in their own way, but you don't have to necessarily talk about a shift in worldview. But at some point, one wants to bring that into the space. And that, you know, as a coach, you judge when that time is right. Because you don't want to bring in baggage that sort of, you know, they then get ensnared on. What you want to do is bring in something that opens them further. And what a worldview shift can bring is really help the person feel comfortable with probably senses of knowings they had when they were a child or other perhaps epiphany moments they've had through their life, or whatever it is, where they've sensed an interconnectedness. They've sensed more to life, they've sensed a glimpse beyond the ego. And that's important on this journey. So mechanistic materialism, you know, it's a worldview that's really dominated for the last 400 years, is how we're pretty much running our businesses today, the organisation's machine, top-down, hierarchic, siloed, all of that stuff. And what we're exploring here with regenerative is recognising, and as science now shows us, that actually, and we've known this for now 100 years, so the quantum, you know, physicists like Schrödinger, Planck, Burr, Bohm, Einstein, many brilliant minds, explored this over 100 years ago, but still hasn't, that the dominant mainstream is so dominant that it's still struggling to catch up. And then complexity science that happened a bit later in the 50s, 60s and then 70s, and later with you know, people like Bateson, who I mentioned earlier, Donna Meadows, Lovelock, Capra, many other people exploring this shift in how we view life from something which was very reductive into something more relational and interconnected. And that shifts then how we see ourselves as sense of self as separate to self as participatory, and it shifts our way in which we see the system as mechanistic into a more living system. And what that does from a consciousness perspective, or from an awareness perspective, is help us recognise that we're not, our brains are not producing consciousness. They are inhibitors, they are filtering consciousness, and that we are immersed within something. We're immersed within a whatever you wish to call it, field that we're participating within. And there are fields within fields within fields, and that the living system, the organisation is part of that, and that we can help tune in and work with and help unlock stuckness and enliven and create a field, a collaborative field that actually encourages people towards their own journey towards wholeness, encourages them to bring more of themselves to work through trust, through dialogue, through various practices. But that the leader themselves has to work on their own body-mind coherence, their own attunement to be able to create that space rather than if you're in the achiever mind still, you know, you read a book on trust, for instance, and you then talk about how to apply trust to the organisation. It's kind of like a top that is it's sort of inserting in, or let's create a culture where people feel wellbeing. Well, fine, but if you're not careful, it becomes another corporate slogan rather than something that's truly lived from the inside. And I think getting that shift in the leader and for them to feel it themselves to truly understand how life is different from a mechanistic way, then allows them to start opening into their living system in a different way.

George 19:47

Yeah, it's really beautifully put. And the place my mind goes to hearing you speak, and you know, you mentioned Fritjof Capra, and you know, one of the teachings I had from his work is that that we are learning from quantum physics, which the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism have been talking about for thousands of years. And I wonder if there's something in what you said earlier about when we're younger, we are innately feeling these feelings, and somehow we learn to detach or disconnect from the sensibility. And I wonder if there is a resonance in the idea of coming back to nature, immersing ourselves in nature. We are learning feelings or relearning feelings or connectedness that we have somehow unlearned or had conditioned out of us through, well, childhood, school, or other practices.

Giles 20:36

Certainly. And I agree with that. I think it's funny, there's a fractal going on in life in many ways. It's amazing this life experience, such an exquisite learning experience. And you've got this journey of departure, initiation, return, the monomyth that you find in all traditions and communities throughout the world. And that journey of departure out of the garden, if you like, through initiation and then a return, a remembering, is happening at a civilizational level. We've gone through a process of becoming kind of called out of the flow of life, which has brought sort of advances, if you like, in self-agency and liberalism, and also advances in science and technology and so forth, that we don't have to lose, and yet we're now returning in some way and remembering. And it's the same happens in our own mini journey, our own life journey. We're born, and if you've ever looked in a baby's eyes, you know, they often seem far wiser than us looking at them. There's a knowing in there, and then of course the ego goes through its stages of development with the increased sense of separation, essentially, which comes with all sorts of heightened understanding, then we can, through adult developmental psychology and through leadership development and coaching and so forth, actually allow ourselves to go through processes of death and rebirth. If we're fortunate enough to have that self-consciousness to go through those changes. And of course, indigenous communities had these baked in their culture's initiation processes, but we've lost that. So bringing in that, and modern one is the midlife, you know, which has been kind of outer, you know, superphilized. Everything has been outer, it's been focused on the outer and the inner's become impoverished. So, you know, it's like buying the motorbike or changing your partner or buying a different house or going to Spain. Whereas instead, what we're talking about is actually a death rebirth of our psychological development going through a shift. And you're right, that is a remembering. It's an embodiment, and it's also remembering. And that's what all the ancient traditions show us. That's what the ancient practice of the Egyptians of Horus being divided up and dismembered and then remembered again. That's what the crucifix is all of these different symbols, sleeping and sleeping beauty, whatever the analogy, are showing us. And it's the same for our own development. And what an honour, it's a sacred, humbling gift or service for a coach to help navigate that twilight zone, that liminal space through the death rebirth. And that's the real humbling service that this provides. If you are wishing to become a regenerative leadership coach, to coach people through those profound shifts, you're helping them reconnect into their own deeper nature whilst connecting to nature to life on earth, and you're equipping leaders who will then help work with the grain of nature and bring a quality of consciousness in that is fundamentally different from that which has created the problems in the first place. And so this is the way to help us shift on from the meta-crisis, whether it's climate change or child labour or deforestation, whatever the outer issue, it stems from that inner issue, that shift in how we view ourselves and the world around us.

George 24:24

I'm in full agreement. And I'm in appreciation of how you articulate it there. To link to something you said earlier, in my experience of coaching in the climate crisis and doing a fair bit of work in this space, when we speak about climate change, we speak about child labour and the many interconnected crises that form the metacrisis, it can be an open invitation, a smorgasbord for those armories you spoke of, those protection rackets, sometimes also referred to as sort of psychological defense mechanisms. And what in your experience helps in discussions around this unfolding crisis that that we're in? What's a coach to do when encountering these armories or protection rackets with our clients?

Giles 25:18

Yeah. Well, I think first, you say, what's a coach to do? I think first is what's a coach to be? The quality of space that they can hold obviously comes in part from their own consciousness in the moment and the relational dynamic they set up with their coach, their coachee. So hence one of the reasons why I work with nature. And even if I'm coaching people online, I will spend time in nature intentionally reflecting on and tuning in with that person in mind well ahead of the online coaching sessions and after. So I think there's something to be said about working with that quality of consciousness. Because that either consciously or unconsciously, the coachee will feel it. So listening, it's just such a simple thing in many ways, is possibly the most important tool, I would say, in all of this. The ability to truly listen to oneself, to pick up what's going on from all the different intelligences that we have, to listen to the other, to create that deep listening space, not just listening and nodding. It's not like an active listening, it's a deep listening where we're creating or holding space and listening to the field and to the system that you're working with. So we're continuously always working with the self and the system. And all of that doesn't become like loads of different layers of listening. It just becomes one. You cut through it. It's what Oliver Wendell Holmes was referring to when he says, there's a I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I'd give the world for the simplicity the other side of complexity. And there is a beautiful simplicity through all of this. When we're truly in that space and we allow the leader to be in that sense of connection, they can see their protection rackets or their psychological defense mechanisms. And once they can start to notice them, then they start to ease. So it's George and the dragon, if you like. You know, we can either fight and try and kill the dragon, or we can just start noticing them and working with their energy, and then in time start riding with these energies. I actually feel that a lot of these protection rackets have energy to them and these psychological defense mechanisms. And by noticing them and easing their unconscious way over us and allowing them to become a bit more conscious through our own noticing, often smiling at them, , just being aware of them. I mean, Otto Sharma talks about the voice of judgment, cynicism, and fear, and they're just there playing out all the time, and often the leader can anyone can relate to that all the time, this voice of judgment, cynicism, and fear going on in the background. And let's not judge that, let's smile at it and recognise that these voices are here in us because we've been hurt in the past or because we've learnt that it's safer to have in certain situations to judge or to critique or be fearful. And so it only becomes a challenge when they're taking us over or they're blocking us from actually being able to grow, which often they are. So I would say, in short, to your question about psychological defense mechanisms and in the midst of all of the challenges that we're dealing with, climate change, one of them, is to not get too caught up in the energy of them, but rather notice them and hold space for them. So a lot of this work is about tension. The more I go into nature and work with nature's wisdom, the more I am fascinated with how tensions work. That's what Laozi, you mentioned Taoism before, it's across others, you know, Egyptians and Vedic and lots of different ancient ways, have this pattern to them, which is from the one comes the two, from the two comes the three, and from the three comes the hundred thousand things, or the many. And it's this shift of one, two, three, which you see in the Christian kind of analogy of the Trinity and the unity or the multiplicity or the diversity and unity, it's this shift from the silence, the stillness, the connection, the being in one's center in this in the stillness of the one, the connection, and then being in the two of the duality, the tension, so working with tensions, rather than making the tension a right and wrong, rather than judging it, rather than blocking it or suppressing part of it, which may well be a fine coping mechanism to get you through the days. There's nothing wrong with doing it, as long as you're aware that you're just coping. I just don't want to deal with this now. I'm just going to be cynical about it, or I'm just going to suppress it, or I don't agree with it and push it down, because that's easier for you to inverted commas cope with complexity. Then you start to notice it and you start working with the duality instead and go, this is interesting. What's come up here? How can this give me insight on my own psychological mechanism and what's going on behind it? Or how can it help me empathise with what's emerging in my sphere right now, whether it be with the other person, whether that be with the system, whether it be with this challenge that I'm working with. And you then realise that that tension, rather than trying to be collapsed, is the very energy that's pulling something forth, that's bringing forth something within us, an insight. And that's when you then are in the trinity of working with that insight and sitting in that insight in the stillness and allowing the imaginal and the intuitive and the insight that we gain to really come in and inform us. And that is an act of regeneration fundamentally. It's a mini death rebirth in itself that we're going through all the time of letting go, opening up, holding the tension, working with the tension. And then we're no longer coping with complexity. We're not even managing complexity. We are thriving in complexity, and we recognise that the complexity isn't something to be solved. It's actually the very energy of life that is allowing us to upstretch through this massively transformative period of time that we're going through as a human species. And that we're not here to try and fix it or solve it or make it easier. We're actually helping our clients be comfortable with the uncomfortable to navigate through and thrive on this edge of chaos.

George 31:56

Yeah, I'm there. Very beautifully put. I love the idea of being at the edge of chaos. And that's a bit scary for me as a coach, but that's often where some of the most interesting coaching takes place. The question I had would be from where you are today, if you could take a big paintbrush and with some broad brush strokes make some changes to the world of coaching, be that training or accreditation, what changes would you like to see taking place in the world of coaching?

Giles 32:31

I think the world of coaching is like many modalities, steeped in the very system that we are evolving out of. And so anything that's helping it evolve out of is beneficial. So let me give an example. It could be, for instance, that you know, coaching has you know - I'm a personal friend of Peter Hawkins and have been for many years now. He very kindly when he came across my first book, Nature of Business, back in 2012, and we've been friends ever since and we've run workshops together around systemic coaching and ecosystemic coaching and so forth. And he's helped, we've been in dialogue around how important it is for coaching. You know, coaching shouldn't be consultancy. There's a fundamental difference between coaching and consultancy. And it shouldn't be necessarily advice you know about giving advice either. However, there is something about being in one's own place of insight and intuition. And if you feel comfortable, and it really is up to you what you how you wish to be, that you can create a space that encourages a bringing forth. So it's an encourage, not an encourage as a kind of like cajoling achiever way, but an encourage coming from within and a bringing forth through the heart, courage, the Latin cur. So that encouraging, that enthusiasm, which again enthuse actually comes from theist to work with the soul within the divine. So anything that is working at that soul-heart level, I think, is helping bring forth something. Now, that all said, there is a whole raft of coaching that doesn't have to do that, and that can be quite happily continuing as it is with helping the achiever mind be a better achiever mind. And there's nothing wrong with that, really isn't. I'm not saying that you know suddenly everybody has to be moving towards a regenerative way, not at all. In fact, a regenerative business is one that honours and has space for anyone, any different type of developmental approach. That said, we do need more and more leaders, and it doesn't have to be a wholesale shift. Tipping points happen actually with quite, you know, some studies have said as little as sort of 10% in a system. But we do need more and more people who are really awokened to their own understanding of life and nature that have helped bridge that gap between the way people think and how nature works, to go back to Gregory Bateson's quote. So I think in that case, a coach is helping one through navigate through a journey, a metamorphosis, and that is going to call upon all sorts of tools that the coach needs to become comfortable with, many of which challenge perhaps a you know a neat view of I'm only here to ask questions.

George 35:55

And for those coaches who are listening who are really interested in taking it outside and working more with and within nature in their coaching work. I wondered if there are some specific pieces of extra advice that you would offer for those that are are keen to do their work outdoors and to appreciate the nature in their coaching work.

Giles 36:33

Yeah. Well, first I'd say you can do nature-based coaching and regenerative leadership coaching through online sessions and you don't have to be outdoors, but you can still work with nature's wisdom. That's the first thing I think is important to say. And that's very difficult for people to get without having probably experienced it. So I understand that could feel a little semantic. But second, then if we're actually going into nature, then the invitation is to not just go, not just stay at the open mind level, not just learning from nature, not just looking out there, but actually starting to really connect and make that shift and to start working beyond metaphors into a psychospiritual shift and working with the energy of nature, which in and of itself invites the coachee and the coach to go through a journey. So, I would say what I frame in the book, Leading by Nature, is really help the client with that welcoming and easing and noticing phase as you go into nature. And I hope in the book I also provide other frames, living systems frames like panarchy, you know, working with the seasons, processes, working with tensions, with right relation and so forth, which are aren't just looking at nature out there, aren't just looking at aspects of nature and applying them in, they're working with how living systems work. So that would be, the invitation I would say to a coach is to work with nature out there, but also work with nature in and out, inner and outer nature, work with the consciousness pervading nature. And then you've got something quite interesting. You're helping the leader really open and shift whilst working with nature and participating in it. And you can then work with the organisation as well as a system, as a living system, and start to see how the living system dynamics in the organisation can be worked with. Little tips, I would probably say, I think there's something at this hygiene factors that need to be taken into account when working in nature. I've got this little image just came into my mind when someone said to me ages ago, they never work with kids and they'll never work out in nature. And I sometimes get that because you know, at being in nature, obviously do a lot of work in nature. Even if I'm coaching online, I'll be in nature reflecting on clients. You know, it to start off with, this is sort of when I left corporate life 12 years ago, you know, the idea of just sleeping outside in a bivvy or or sitting next to a tree in the pouring rain probably didn't fill me with the same now it just doesn't bother me at all. In fact, sometimes sitting in the rain is a very enriching experience that you don't quite get, the same as sitting in the sun or whatever. So the time of year does not bother me, the weather doesn't bother me. Obviously, one needs to be having the frame of mind and the right clothing and equipment. And we can't take that for granted. You know, a lot of people, especially coming out of COVID or whatever, just busy urban environments, are not necessarily used to being in nature. So we've always got to empathise and recognise that it's a journey for people to get comfortable with it. We have compost loose here, for instance, and there's a head of people and culture for a large corporate who's here this morning, and bless her, she was laughing at me about how she was when she first came here and used the compost loos for the first time. She was horrified. Now she actually looks forward to it because it's a bit different. But that's a journey. That's a simple thing, but it's a journey. And we've got to meet people where they're at, and some people aren't comfortable. There's been many people I've coached who have slept in the woods overnight, senior women who are strong, powerful women in their own right, who I've only realised in the morning when they've told me round the fire that have had quite difficult experiences in nature when they were younger, ranging from sexual abuse and all sorts of things. So I think don't ever take things for granted. You don't have to pry or know any of that. That's not our job. I think there probably is a bit of a caveat about you know ensuring that people's mental health is perhaps okay if you're doing a deeper immersion. But otherwise, just embrace it and love it. And it's just walking alongside someone in nature is, I feel, just such a much more welcoming way than than sitting opposite someone.

George 41:14

And for those that are interested in coming down and experiencing it, perhaps you could say a bit more about the immersions themselves and how folks can get more involved in them.

Giles 41:28

Yes, as I say I do coaching journeys for coaches who want to learn about this work. So by all means just get in touch on my website - gileshutchins.com. And I actually have an open immersion. Most of the immersions I do are private, either for intact leadership teams or for the people I coach. But once a year I do uh an overnight deep dive immersion. And the next one is in towards the end of May, I think it's the 23rd, 24th, or something like that of May. So again, if you're interested in that, reach out to me either on LinkedIn or via my website, gileshutchins.com. And that's a nice way to come and spend time, have a deep experience and gain a sense of this work. But as I say, I'm very happy for people to contact me for one-to-one journeys if they wish.

George 42:21

And as we as we bring this conversation to a close, Giles, what feels a fitting and appropriate way to end our conversation today?

Giles 42:33

Well, George, to to say thank you. Very grateful to yourself, to Kaz, to Lee, the support team that do this work which is so important. Let's be honest, the coaching community in many ways has gone through quite a significant change over the last 10 to 15 years, and it's thanks to some of the work that you do and at the Climate Coaching Alliance and so forth. So thank you. And just to say that you know these are pivotal times. I think this is really is humanity's hour of reckoning. There are significant shifts happening. Much is changing actually quite quickly in the grand schemes of of human evolution. It can be a very challenging yet also exciting time to be alive and to be a coach in this time, I think, is is a particularly special thing to be doing with great humility to helping people not just cope with complexity but really thrive in complexity and to go through a journey towards wholeness. So thank you to all the coaches out there doing the work you're doing, helping with this process of becoming in this really challenging time. So we help leaders essentially work with the grain of nature rather than against it. Thank you, George.

George 43:48

And thank you, Charles. Thank you for today, all the places we've been to together, and more broadly, thank you for all the work you're doing. It's fascinating and profoundly valuable the work.