In Conversation With...Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts

In this episode, Katie talks to Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts from The Bio-Leadership Project. The Bio-Leadership Project’s mission is to change the story of leadership by working with nature. A movement of people and organisations, changing human systems to be more resilient, regenerative, and designed to protect our planet.

Bio-Leadership is about challenging an outdated story of progress, about building organisations and communities that protect and replenish our world. Most importantly, it is about reconnecting human progress back into our planet’s web of life. Working at this deep paradigm level, growing a culture of interconnection, is where we support the greatest change. 

During this episode, Katie, Ella & Andres discuss:

• How the Bio-Leadership Project can to existence
• The importance of nature connection
• How environmentalism isn’t about sacrifice and punishment and how we can actually be more helpful as environmentalists if we're well resourced and taking care of ourselves
• The three circle model: Self, our community and our work
• The idea of ecosophy – deep experiences, deep questioning, deep commitment 

You can connect with Ella & Andres here

https://www.bio-leadership.org/

IG: @bioleadershipproject

 

Here are some highlights:

Collectively shifting what the story of human progress can be

“The Bio Leadership Project effectively says there are there are different stories of what human progress looks like, and they can work with nature, and they can be inspired by nature. And even more than that, they can place people or humans back into being part of nature. Its about validating as many different stories as possible and needed. What we’ve seen is that there are just hundreds, if not 1000s, of amazing, inspired, courageous people saying, Yeah, we can change the story, we're going to do it. And it's just that they're all still swimming against the tide, you know, including ourselves, and nobody can do it alone. So the bio Leadership Project and the bio leadership fellowship are ways of helping these people and projects to connect, to share learning, hope and encouragement, and hopefully helping collectively to shift what the story of human progress can be, to care for life.

 

A change is needed in how we measure leadership

“We as individuals, but collectively, and then sort of as human society probably need a different set of qualities around how we navigate this moment in time and how we bring a positive change to the world. And you could argue that we're all a little bit conditioned by a way of acting, a way of being, a way of behaving that's about pushing, it's about driving, it's about achieving outcomes. And so if we were to just continuously repeat those behaviours, we might just end up with the same outcomes, even if the intention is to do good things in the world. What if, as humans, we had a different dashboard, what if we measure our progress in a different way? What qualities would that require? We need more resilience, we need more connection, we need more systemic awareness, the capacity to understand how things work as whole systems and flow as whole system. We need to be able to navigate and adapt better. What if leadership was measured by those things?

 

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

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

Ecology of Wisdom by Arne Naess

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