Hello Everyone,
This has been a most unusual week, one with winds of challenge blowing fiercely - both through my holler as the winter makes its way closer, and through my life.
Unexpected debris of medical emergencies creating time obstacles were knocked onto my path.
The sting of potentially being under prepared for the leg of the journey I’m on bites at my face.
But seeds of support and encouragement blow in on those same winds.
A reminder that tomorrow’s Coffee Chat livestream will be at 12 PM EST instead of the usual time. I hope to see you there.
Kizuna Open Encounters fall 2025
Living Connections: Authentic Leadership as a Relational Practice
I invite you join me and other emerging thinkers, creative practitioners, and those seeking new forms of leadership, on 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗡𝗼𝘃. 𝟭𝟴𝘁𝗵, 𝟭𝟮 𝗣𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧 / 𝟵𝗔𝗠 𝗣𝗦𝗧 at Kizuna’s fall 2025 Open Encounters pathway, to collectively explore the question:
“How does our understanding of authentic leadership change when we reframe it from a cultivated inner trait to a relational conversation between entities?”
𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆 here
There was a time, when I would have avoided the wind of life - and not that long ago. But the challenges I’ve faced this week are ones I have faced before, and now realize many others have faced just as, if not more often, and in far greater extremes.
This week, is the first time in a long time I’ve been able to hold “I got this” in one hand and “I don’t know if I got this” in the other; all the while understanding that both are true, and that both require a firm grasp to let the winds actually pull me forward.
The interesting part to me is that I don’t think I would have been able to hold both truths simultaneously even a year ago. A year ago, I was still trying to fit my leadership guidance approach into neat little boxes, define it before I even fully understood it.
That’s one of the terrible crimes of this age, definition preceding understanding.
The moment we label something we enclose it, and limit our ability to perceive it’s potential to evolve. It can still grow, yes. but in our perception of it only within the prescribed boundaries.
This subsequently limits our understanding of an entities agency and true potential, whether it be an individual, a company, a terrorist network, or national sentiment.
When we do this to ourselves by holding onto titles and roles before capabilities and perspectives, we limit our own potential.
I think started to realize the importance of seeing organizational and systemic dynamics back when I was studying insurgencies, and doing regional collapsing state analysis for the Conflict and Stabilization Operations Bureau. I hadn’t quite made the connection to the individual contributor or leader yet, but it was just barely there underneath the surface.
The same dynamics were visible in my brief stint in the corporate world, but the ethics were (at the time) even worse than the ones I had worked with before. But the link from individual to culture and systems began to emerge in my mind.
It wasn’t until I dove into my interest in mythology and belief systems, though, that I started to see things as dyadic rather than binary, relational versus transactional.
But apply animism to corporate settings? I’d be laughed out of a board room, in similar fashion to my asserting to my thesis chair that insurgency tactics could be applied in global power dynamics between countries.
The applicability of the idea didn’t fit the definition of the industry context, even if whomever I was speaking to could understand it the vague concept.
So, I came up with different ways to coach and develop leaders absent the vernacular. Something became lost in translation because of it.
The entire time, I only felt like I knew what I was doing part of the time, but simultaneously, if I didn’t feel like I was using the appropriate language - whether to explain my philosophy or to fit into corpo speak - well then I must be an imposter.
You’ve heard enough from me in the past few weeks about authenticity being relational - but this is my personal example of it.
This was my binary life, despite nearly everyone I came in contact with finding truth in my perspective.
Since launching Cultivar, building-in-public and speaking on organizational dynamics from an animistic perspective, I’ve connected and talked with so many incredible people who actually understand not just the applicability, but the why, and more than that, are open to challenging the models of leadership we’ve been handed by those before us.
I’m not sure if it’s because the fractures in the economy, society, and job market are helping people return to a more connective, empathy driven perspective, or if “culture is alive” is just a good metaphor for systems thinking equaling corporate animism.
The encouragement, support, and opportunity to grow, and show you my perspective on how we can change the way we understand leadership and culture for the better is the biggest gift I could hope for from all of you.
By trusting in others, and myself to practice what I preach, by standing in my authentic self in relation to the authenticity of others, I’m able to meet these winds head on and use them to go past enclosure, taking the seeds of inspiration to scatter around the world.
So thank you.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Chris
Welcome, and thank you for your presence!
I am a leadership ecologist rooted in Appalachia, raised through environmental respect, military service and Western educational institutions. I use an animistic lens to better understand the relationship between individuals, organizations, and systems.
When working with leaders and organizations, my approach not one of doctrine, but of guidance and tending to: to memory, to culture, to systems and people. I believe leadership is not a fixed role, but a living, relational practice.
My work draws from my lived experience and research into myth-making, insurgency and business strategies, regenerative philosophies, creative works, the landscape I inhabit, and the mundane, because the ember of humanity is often nurtured in and between those spaces.
If something resonates, leave a comment, or reach out to chat - I always love hearing people’s stories.
You are always welcome to book a free call to either get fresh perspective or see if we’d work well together in cultivating your capacity to lead.
I offer a variety of services, 1:1 coaching, group programs, leadership training development, and culture consultation.