NATURE WORKS

Giles has written a series of important books on leadership and consciousness, and this is his most comprehensive, while also remaining accessible. He works as an executive coach, senior advisor and keynote speaker on regenerative leadership and what he calls future-fit business, facilitating formative experiences in nature with his clients. Carolyn Eddleston writes about her own journey and the crucial importance of spending quiet, undistracted, still time in nature that enables real connection to take place. Returning to a business context, this can enable leaders to encourage people to come from the heart and soul rather than simply the mind. They realise that they are ‘part of an intricate web of interconnected living systems; nature becomes their teacher in a living classroom.’

The 12 chapters begin with exploring the worldview shift and the journey towards regeneration, then understanding how Nature works in terms of living systems, and finally journey into right relation. The fundamental need, as many readers will agree, is for a revolution in consciousness that transcends our current limited ways of thinking as well as our sense of separation, ‘which is the very hallmark of the Western mindset that dominates business, politics, and society through much of the world today.’ (p. 2) In addition, Giles remarks that ‘we have entered the area of transhuman materialism and surveillance capitalism, offering counterfeit connection through commercialism,’ meaning that we are sleepwalking into what he calls technospheric totalitarianism – I agree entirely. With many diagrams and charts, Giles clearly articulates the fundamental shifts required from mechanistic materialism to quantum complexity, from self as separate to self as participatory, from organisation as machine to organisation as living system, and from a leadership dynamic of control-manage to sense-respond. Hence, our future relies on our capacity to revolutionise our consciousness and adopt a genuinely regenerative view of right relation, including sensing the inner dimension of Nature.

Giles explains the evolution of the western world view, so as better to understand our current situation dominated as it is by mechanistic materialism that dispensed with the Anima Mundi that we urgently need to recover – he calls this returning to Inner-Nature, and throughout the book shows an impressive grasp of key thinkers and trends. He argues that the achiever needs to become an awakener and regenerator within the business context, while also explaining the seven levels of leadership consciousness within the spiral dynamics model. We need to see through three lenses – the voice in the head, our deeper nature, and opening into the Field where Nature’s Wisdom can be directly sensed; this involves finding our bodymind coherence and opening the eye of the heart. Giles clearly explains the steps and processes involved, enriching his text with many inspiring quotations.

It is essential, as he argues, that we come to understand how nature actually works, so here he explains the nature of living systems and the three levels of living systems awareness. Nature is in ceaseless transformation and relation, with permeable boundaries as well as diverse rhythms and tensions, from which emergence can arise. Giles has coached many regenerative leaders through death – rebirth metamorphoses, incorporating learning from Nature, participating within Nature, then attuning with Nature – seeing with new eyes. He expounds how we can learn from the logic of life’s seven principles, coining the term ‘panarchy’ to evoke the rhythm of life. Nature’s Wisdom involves the three esoteric aspects of receptivity, where life is both immanent and transcendent, creativity and the interpenetration of inner and outer, and finally, synchronicity where life is working with a correspondence of above and below. Overall, this involves letting go, opening in (surrender) and bringing forth or manifesting in a process or rather a journey of becoming, so that we can truly embrace life and right relation.

This takes us on to the third part of the book, embodying the hero’s journey of departure, disintegrate-reintegrate, and return. We not only need an open mind and heart, but also an open will whereby through an alchemical process we can re-emerge to serve the whole – all this corresponds to the passage of the seasons, also explained symbolically. Then we come to the 4 D foundational pillars for regenerative living and leading – dedication, discernment, discipline, and devotion. This is followed by the 5 E dynamics of the process of becoming: essence, energy, emergence, evolution, and enthusiasm. Giles also proposes four soul virtues of regenerative leadership in terms of balance, patience, courage, and purposefulness. We also need to cultivate soil conditions involving respect, spontaneity, gratitude, and listening. It is an epic journey, with Giles acting as an inspirational guide, reminding us that the revolution starts in our hearts and souls, not in our heads, with how we perceive and attend to life. Aspiring leaders in all walks of life will benefit greatly from this comprehensive and very well-informed handbook.