For years, people believed that leadership was primarily a matter of technique: mental models, methodologies, and processes. But by closely accompanying forest communities, Meli learned that there is another dimension of leadership. Much older, much deeper, that rarely appears in business schools, MBAs, or executive programs. That dimension is life itself.

Author: Ivi Pauli

Leia em Português. Léalo en Español.

And it was the peoples who still live connected to it who taught us this. Between August and November 2025, we brought together leaders from Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, the Philippines, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia for a series of trilingual conversations as part of our Think Tank activities.

This initiative was carried out in partnership with researcher Júlia Martins Rodrigues, from the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder (USA), and Vivianna Rodriguez Carreón, researcher at the University of Sydney (Australia).

The intention was simple and powerful: to ask forest peoples, who still maintain an active and intimate relationship with nature, how they understand and practice leadership in a living world.

Let us begin with a reflection from Antônio, a leader from the Alto Solimões region, who said something that became the backbone of this entire inquiry:

“The forest is always a surprise.
                 Even when you know it, every time you walk in, it surprises you.”

And at that moment we realized: perhaps what broke modern leadership was the exact opposite of this truth. The need to control everything, predict everything, dominate everything. When we lose the ability to live with the unpredictable, we begin to distrust life. And in distrusting life, we replace it with artificial systems. Economic, political, institutional, which are designed to impose order where there once was relationship.

That disconnection produced the reality we now call polycrisis.

But among them, the leaders of forest peoples, that relationship remains intact. Despite coming from different countries, histories, and biomes, a single principle emerged in every conversation: leadership begins by listening to nature.

Cacica Joana explained how, in the forest, animals announce the dawn and that birds change their behavior before heavy rains. The absolute silence at midday is as precise as a clock. Leaders told us that the forest itself guides time, rhythm, and pace.

In the Philippines, community leaders can predict ecological disasters simply by observing animal behavior. Often with more accuracy than technological instruments. In communities in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, decisions are still guided by Pachamama and Taita Inti (Mother Earth and Father Sun). In Mexico, traditional communities continue to observe winds, waters, and seeds to decide when and how to act.

For forest peoples, leadership does not begin with a person. It begins with the living world, of which human beings are only one part, just like any other species or element. Listening to this world is an act of profound responsibility. There is no romanticism.

This insight resonated deeply when Vivianna, a Peruvian researcher living in Australia, introduced the lens of the Inner Development Goals: before leading projects, change, or people, we must lead our own internal state. Emotions, clarity, awareness. Everything influences how we perceive and how we decide.

The remarkable thing? What is seen as a major innovation in other places is simply what forest peoples have always done: align the inner and the outer before acting.

As we moved into personal stories, narratives emerged that disrupt many assumptions of modern society.

Rômulo, Omágua-Kambeba, recounted that in his family, the ones who made decisions were the women. Mothers, grandmothers, matriarchs. Household leadership was exercised by them, while men cared for protection, food, and the relationship with the forest and the external world. Orlando, from the Cubeo people of Colombia, confirmed that he grew up within a very similar structure. It was not that hierarchy did not exist. It did. Clearly. But it was not a hierarchy based on power. It was a hierarchy based on care. And that remains true today. When we asked Antônio what leadership for the future should look like, he answered without hesitation:

“A leader must be a partner. A leader must be humble.
                  A leader must think about the good of everyone, not only their own family. The present passes quickly. The future does not.”

Rômulo added another layer: the importance of renewing leadership, teaching young people to listen to elders, understanding that wisdom is accumulated across millennia and transmitted through generations. Youth, he said, is the living bridge between the past and what we can still build.

Edgar, from Mexico, affirmed that leadership only exists when there is real participation from all parties, including Indigenous communities, who are almost never heard in decisions that affect their lives.

                  “Governance without listening is guaranteed failure,” he said.

Adrián, from the Kichwa–Kañari people in Ecuador, reminded us that leadership also requires balance: always protect the forest, yes, but without ignoring the families who live there. As an Indigenous agronomist and schoolteacher, he confronts daily the contradiction of agricultural frontier expansion, a form of “progress” justified by economic necessity but one that threatens springs, forests, and vital cycles.

For him, regeneration does not mean rejecting development. It means redirecting it. Agroecology and beekeeping are practical paths to reconcile livelihood, territory, and future.

And Orlando, in a closing reflection that brought everything together, said:

“Governance must be rigid and flexible at the same time.
                  You must follow the community’s agreements.
                  Without that, there is no leadership.”

This balance between firmness and flexibility may be one of the deepest lessons of all. But no sentence was as striking as Antônio’s final words:

“When you listen, you learn.
                 When you talk too much, you get confused.
                 Leadership must be friendly. It must be a partner to life.”

After these conversations, a certainty emerged with unprecedented clarity: the leadership crisis we face does not come from a lack of tools, knowledge, or technology.

It comes from a lack of relationship.

Relationship with nature, with community, with time, with what is alive. Forest peoples have not lost the thread. They continue living within life, not beside it. Listening to them is not an act of inclusion. It is a matter of survival.

And this article is, above all, an expression of gratitude: to Antônio, Elane, Rômulo, Orlando, Nilda, Edgar, Adrián, and all the communities that were part of these circles. And gratitude to the forest, for still allowing us to learn, even after all we have taken from her.

The answers we seek are not in the future. They already exist. They are alive, pulsing in every territory that still remembers how to live in relationship. And they have guardians: the forest peoples.

It is time to listen.