What kind of leadership do we need in a world facing systemic crises? In this conversation, Rachel Brooks (Head of Curriculum Development for Responsibility & Sustainability at the University of St.Gallen) and André Hoffmann (Co-founder of InTent and Vice-Chairman of Roche) explore the cultural shifts needed to shape regenerative leadership. From redefining success to reclaiming time for reflection and purpose, they reflect on what it takes to educate and empower a generation capable of leading in uncertain times, not despite complexity, but through it, within organisations, and beyond.
InTent: You both work to challenge dominant assumptions in your respective fields: education and business. What disconnects do you see between what management schools teach and what today's world actually demands from leaders?
Rachel Brooks:
What I see here at the University of St. Gallen is students that have their time packed full. They start in the assessment year competing against each other from the very beginning to build the most knowledge that they possibly can in certain areas. I recently asked a student what he was most afraid of. I expected it was going to have something to do with geopolitics. He said it was having time wasted. And he's a student that really cares about change and about sustainability. So this is how students start. They fill all their time. They pack their CVs with various different kinds of activities. And what this leaves little room for is creativity and time to figure out their purpose. When I read André’s book - The New Nature of Business - for example, what I see is that purpose is at the absolute center of everything.
André Hoffmann:
Indeed, sense of self is crucial. Thank you for bringing it up. I believe what we are really talking about is defining success. As long as we define success as studying rewarded by the assessment system that we have now, I think we're missing part of the target. The important target is to know why you're there, who you are, what is the purpose you would like to execute with the tools you are acquiring, and then go in that direction. Or to put it differently, fostering happiness. A student under stress because he has to reach certain metrics or certain milestones that have been imposed by the curriculum is unlikely to be particularly successful at whatever he does afterwards. Because you do need to have this conviction that you are in the right place at the right time contributing to a bigger picture. It's not just something you do on your own, it's something you do with others and for others.
“You do need to have this conviction that you are in the right place at the right time contributing to a bigger picture. It's not just something you do on your own, it's something you do with others and for others.”
InTent: Leading regeneratively often means going against the grain, especially in systems that reward short-term results and individual performance. What does it take to stay committed to long-term, systemic transformation? What kinds of leadership cultures enable it?
André Hoffmann:
Courage, integrity, and passion: these are things which have been the cornerstone of our business for a long time now. But for leaders in general, the biggest quality is humility. You need to be able to understand that what you say and think is not necessarily what is true. You need to be able to listen and to act on what people tell you. That's not easy. When you come out of an elite university like St. Gallen thinking you’ve been taught the answers. When you get into a business function and you say, look, I'm going to tell you how to do it, you're lost. You have to take the group with you. For me, a true leader is somebody who listens and acts according to it.
Rachel Brooks:
It really begins within the business school, teaching this ability to ask questions, and starting to find ways to reduce the importance we place on this 'be-all and end-all' idea of expertise. Leading regeneratively requires a holistic, worldly perspective. This perspective also contributes to resilience in the face of challenges. Key to developing this perspective is the ability to ask questions, and to critically reflect one’s own role within a broader whole. This requires management education that can cultivate a culture of asking and listening. Currently in business schools there is an incentivized, structural need to prove ourselves, perform, be the best. Yet to lead regeneratively and to build regenerative organisations, we need to support future managers and leaders in developing confidence in not knowing, and learning how to fill these knowledge gaps through openness, curiosity, and a sense of humbleness. This requires intentionally designed, experiential learning.
André Hoffmann:
Dealing is not just something where you have a cost and an income, but it's something where you have an impact on the three capitals – social, human, natural – and making sure that after you use them, they are not depleted and if possible, constituted. You cannot apply linearity to decisions. A plus B equals C works in certain trigonometry calculations, but it definitely doesn't work in business. It's so complex. You just have to accept that as a part of uncertainty. That's something that develops with experience. The idea of taking people out of the classroom and putting them in the real world, I think that's a good ingredient to make this move forward.
“It really begins to find ways within the business school, teaching this ability to ask questions, and starting to reduce the importance we place on this 'be-all and end-all' idea of expertise.”
InTent: Looking ahead, what would it take to create the conditions — in education and beyond — for bold, regenerative leadership to truly emerge and thrive?
André Hoffmann:
I think one of the successes in business is often expressed by recognition from your peers. At the moment, this recognition from your peers is expressed in terms of salary. Your boss gives you a bonus if you perform well financially. If we are saying that the good management of global resources, of the common goods benefit society, we need to find a way of rewarding the individual which demonstrates his success not only at helping the company, but at helping society at larger humanity. Now for that, we need, again, to develop a new metric. That depends on the purpose of the company, it depends on the ethics of the employer, and it depends on a number of other factors. But it's not impossible.
Rachel Brooks:
I ran a lot of executive leadership programs before I started getting more involved with students. We used this method that is not new in any way called “action learning.” Someone brings a leadership challenge, then all four other participants ask questions to clarify the challenge and to figure out what's been done. This circle of questions can really spark new pathways for action, particularly people that don't know anything about the field. Empowering students to design and lead change, also within the context of their own educational journey, is key to building the kind of intrinsic motivation and new impact pathways that nurture collaboration and can lead to transformation. In my current and previous work, I’ve seen asking questions, and also questioning the obvious and accepted, to be a force for new connections. It’s a pathways for action across sectors and levels of society, leading to impact-driven change.
André Hoffmann:
It’s – again – about redefining success. Success is not individual, success is collective. If we get there, which happens only by questioning what we've been doing in the past, we have a better chance of doing something that sticks.
