Did you know that when a giraffe starts feeding on the leaves of an acacia shrub, something fascinating happens?
As a form of self-defense, the shrub begins to produce more tannins, making its leaves increasingly bitter and unpalatable. But the response doesn’t stop there. The shrub also releases airborne chemical signals that alert the surrounding plants, triggering their own tannin production, essentially a silent, invisible communication network that warns the ecosystem of an impending threat.
The giraffe, instinctively aware of this, will often walk against the wind to avoid shrubs that have already received the warning and have begun their chemical transformation.
This intricate interplay—between the sensing, responding, and adapting of nature—is something we, as humans, once understood intuitively. But in the modern world, particularly in business and leadership, we have dulled many of our natural sensory abilities.
We often expect one and other to be sensible and make practical, well-reasoned decisions. Weighing the pros and cons, acting logically, and make choices based on sound judgment. But while we’ve come to associate sensible with rationality, it originates from the Latin sensibilis, meaning “perceptible by the senses.”
That got me thinking: what if being truly sensible wasn’t just about logic, but about sensing more deeply? What if we made decisions not just with our intellect, but with an acute awareness of our surroundings, like the animal world does?
This question bubbled up last week when on safari in lush southern Africa at the end of the rainy season. Sure, the impressive landscapes, skyscapes (with violent thunderstorms during the evening but also star studded night skies with the southern cross and many planets clearly visible) and stunning wildlife made a big impression on me but what really got my attention was a masterclass in heightened perception by all living beings.
What can we learn from wildlife about the power of sensing?
Consider the elephant bulls I watched as they grazed together. Every so often, they let out deep, rumbling sounds—not through their mouths, but through their bellies. These rumbles travel as vibrations through the ground, picked up by the feet of other elephants miles away. Their connection isn’t just based on sight or sound as we know it—it’s sensory at a level we can hardly fathom.
Or take the eagle, whose eyesight is eight times sharper than ours. What is a speck to us is a clearly visible prey animal to them. The natural world is full of this kind of the amazing sensory capacity.
I watched our safari guide move through the bush, attuned to details I would have otherwise missed entirely. He would spot the smallest creatures well before I did, but also could tell the difference between a male and female lion simply from the subtlety of their footprints, distinguish between bird calls, and even recognize when those calls changed to signal a predator nearby. A leopard mother, I learned, doesn’t follow her growing cubs by sight but by the scent trail they leave behind.
Everywhere I looked, I saw a world alive with sensing and I was equally and painfully aware of my lack thereof.
What have we lost?
In contrast, modern business and leadership rely almost exclusively on rational decision-making, spreadsheets, forecasts, risk assessments. We value logic, but we’ve dulled our ability to sense. We miss the non-verbal cues in meetings, ignore the instinctive gut feelings, and underestimate how interconnected everything is.
Why?
One reason may lie in the over-dominance of masculine energy in society. Masculine energy (in both men and women) is traditionally structured, goal-oriented, analytical, and focused on control. Nothing wrong with this per se as it drives efficiency, strategy, and order. However, when taken too far, they suppress intuitive, receptive, and interconnected ways of knowing. Feminine energy, on the other hand, is about sensing, feeling, flowing, and perceiving connections. It is the ability to read the room, to attune to what is unspoken, to feel what is emerging before it fully manifests.
For centuries, we’ve glorified the rational, linear, and structured over the intuitive, cyclical, and relational. But nature, like sustainable leadership, requires balance.
Imagine if we re-awakened our senses in business:
- What if we listened to shifts in the market the way birds listen for distant predators?
- What if we tuned into the subtle undercurrents of organizational culture the way elephants sense vibrations in the earth?
- What if we recognized patterns and interconnected systems the way a guide reads the wild?
Would we make better decisions?
Sensing and Sustainability: Seeing Beyond the Obvious
Nowhere is this shift more urgent than in sustainability. The way we approach environmental and social and governance issues in business is often too narrow, too rational, too financial performance and spreadsheet-driven. We measure carbon emissions, calculate ROI on green investments, and push for (or are at the receiving end of) fickle policy changes—all crucial, but often lacking a felt connection to the underlying systems at play.
What if businesses didn’t just track quarterly results but sensed the pulse of the communities they serve? What if they didn’t just react to climate risks but anticipated them like animals do with changing weather?
And what about technological progress: is AI a threat or a sensory awakening?
At first glance, AI seems to pose a threat to sensory intelligence. The more we automate, the less we rely on our instincts. The risk is that we surrender even further into an abstract, data-driven existence, disconnecting from both our natural instincts and the earth itself. But could AI actually help us recover our sensory capacity instead of diminishing it?
Like with other technological developments, I guess the answer depends on how we use it.
- AI as an amplifier of perception: Just as eagles see beyond human capacity, AI can help us detect patterns that are imperceptible to us—whether in climate shifts, financial trends, or human behavior. It could become an extension of our sensing abilities rather than a replacement.
- AI as a mirror: AI-driven insights might also force us to question our biases and blind spots, much like nature does. By reflecting the interconnectedness of systems (climate, economy, social structures), AI could awaken us to relationships we’ve ignored.
- AI as a tool for rebalancing: If AI is coded with both masculine (logic, data, order) and feminine (pattern recognition, intuition, fluidity) principles, it could help guide more holistic decision-making. Instead of only optimizing for profit, what if AI helped us sense the long-term well-being of people and planet?
Sensory Leadership
And that is the key insight from my trip; where I deeply feel we need more value-based leadership – one emphasising ethical decision-making grounded in values, respect for all living beings and future generations, I realise now that this would be even stronger when accompanied by a heightened perception and attunement to subtle signals. Sensory leadership enhances value-based leadership by ensuring that leaders are not just intellectually committed to values but are also deeply attuned to their context, people, and the world around them.
That means:
- Feeling the emotional and cultural currents within their organizations, not just reading engagement surveys.
- Sensing shifts in markets and global trends before they fully materialize.
- Seeing sustainability not as a compliance issue but as a fundamental, interconnected reality that requires intuition, awareness, and deep perception.
A sensory CEO isn’t just an analyst of data; they are attuned to human energy, natural cycles, and the unseen forces shaping the future.
We are not separate from nature—we are part of it. The question is, have we dulled our own instincts in the pursuit of progress? If we reawakened our senses, might we lead differently, invest differently, and create a more sustainable world? The answers are out there, waiting for those who are willing to listen, see, and sense.
In the next blog, I will try and expand on the deep interconnection between value-based leadership and sensory leadership and how they reinforce each other.
We can offer you support with both the inner and the outer work through the HeartWork Inner Knowing Journey, the Purpose Driven Impact Journey and deep experience with complex business transformations.
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