The world needs the kind of leadership love that comes from the truth of our interbeing and leads the way to greater flourishing of each and all. Credit: Kelly Bannister
By Ginny Whitelaw
Originally published on Forbes.com on November 2, 2026.
You might recall the Burt Bacharach and Hal David song from the 60’s and its syncopated refrain, “What the w-o-r-l-d needs now . . . is love . . . sweet love.” But given conditions today, I would end that phrase differently—more like love, strong love. Healing love. Transformative love. Not sentimentality, but powerful love that comes from a felt sense of interbeing and cares for the whole picture, not as a nice thing to do but as the most natural thing to do. We need the kind of leadership love that can embrace the mess we’re in and point the way toward demonstrably better social systems that support the flourishing of each and all.
We need it now because we’re coming to a dead end in the story Western civilization has been working from based on the appearance of separateness. We imagine ourselves separate from others and nature, where some selves are more privileged or powerful than others, setting up exploitation of others and the earth, greed, fear, competition, scarcity, rage, violence, war, and corruption. The difficult consequences of this delusion of separateness are now being felt not only by the downtrodden, but by the privileged and powerful who similarly face growing climate emergencies, species extinctions, social upheaval, collapse in the world order and devaluing of truth and law. Moreover, AI can now leverage our interconnectedness far faster than we humans can. Its exponential consequences are more likely to be catastrophic when used by people who put their separate self-interests first. Judging from the warnings of such tech insiders as Bill Gates, Dario Amodei, Geoffrey Hinton, and Emad Mostaque, if we were peddling toward the dead end to the story of separation before 2024, with AI we’re now racing toward it.
The outlook would be bleak, indeed, if this story of separation were true. From contemplative practices to the re-emergence of Indigenous wisdom traditions to the science of the last hundred years, the bigger, truer story of our interbeing is coming into collective focus. It’s fueling B-corporations, place-based cooperatives for sustainability and integrated health and social-leaning politics. While many organizations are living into and preparing leaders for this bigger story, Zen Leadership exemplifies the inside-out transformation that underlies leading from interbeing, leading with love.
Zen Leadership and Interbeing
Zen Leadership enables us to live and lead into the larger story of interbeing in several ways. First, the physical practice of Zen meditation cultivates samadhi—a flow state of no separation—so that we have no doubt about our selfless self-nature. It reveals our paradoxical nature as both a local self—a player on the board game of life—and a whole selfless self, encompassing the whole game, all players and even the divine stillness out of which all this commotion emerges. Zen reveals what contemporary philosopher, Roy Bhaskar, called the ground state of the human being: an inseparable manifestation of the universe, capable of love, freedom, creativity and awakening. What keeps us from enacting this radiant nature is the cloud cover of trauma, conditioning and social structures that reinforce and ensnare us in a game of winners and losers. Zen helps us see through both the cloud cover and the game.
Second, Zen Leadership cultivates power and breath from hara, which connects us with the ground of being, our umbilical to life, giving us the grounded support to open our hearts. When we feel the need to protect ourselves or face emotionally charged situations, it’s common to hold tension in our heart area or even fold our arms over our chest. Feelings of heartache or heartbreak can be overwhelming; no wonder we tense up or shut down. Yet grounding through hara gives a way for that energy to drop through us, down to the earth, so that we conduct energy more like a lightning rod rather than a circuit box of blown fuses. It is this capacity to ground suffering and fierce emotions that gives us the courage to keep our hearts open with compassion.
Finally, Zen Leadership teaches critical skills like decision-making and influencing from a place of interbeing and increases our perceptiveness and ability to manifest desired futures. With these embodied skills, a heart of compassion and recognizing the divine nature of all beings, leading from interbeing becomes the most natural thing to do.
What does leading from interbeing look like, and how is it not only different than separateness but better aligned with laws of nature? Here again, Bhaskar offers universal criteria for assessing better from worse social systems that also apply to acts of leadership, namely that they aim for the flourishing of each and all by minimizing avoidable harms and abolishing oppressive relationships. Here are a few scenarios and how they would be resolved from interbeing and Bhaskar’s criteria of flourishing.
Make bad behavior accountable, not tolerated
A high-producing rainmaker in an organization is credibly accused of humiliating colleagues. The leader protects complainants from retaliation, commissions a fair, independent review and applies consequences if the findings warrant them.
Leadership act: Make accountability stronger than status, revenue, or personal loyalty.
Flourishing of each: Those harmed receive protection and fair hearing; the accused receives due process rather than prejudgment.
Flourishing of all: The organization is not subject to one person’s unchecked behavior or power.
The flourishing of each does not mean accommodating every behavior. Restricting someone’s behavior can be necessary to protect others’ freedom, while preserving that person’s dignity and opportunity for change.
Balance organizational results without exporting harm
A supply chain review reveals that the cheapest suppliers depend on unsafe working conditions or serious environmental damage. The leader investigates alternatives and adopts a transition plan with purchasing standards and milestones—even when that requires higher prices or lower margins.
Leadership act: Expand accountability beyond the organization’s immediate boundary and financial statements.
Flourishing of each: Workers and affected communities count as people whose lives matter, not merely as external costs.
Flourishing of all: Organizational success is judged in the context of the wider social and ecological relationships that make it possible.
What benefits the organization, as measured by accounting rules set by the story of separation, is not beneficial in the wider sense if it depends on harms exported elsewhere. This wider lens addresses our relations with nature, people and social structures.
Make political power accountable, not self-dealing
A whistleblower flags major conflicts of interest in how public contracts are awarded. The leader reinstates conflict-of-interest rules, transparent public contracting, independent oversight, and protection for the whistleblower, applying the rules equally to allies as well as to opponents.
Leadership act: Publish major contracts and the merit-based reasons for awarding them; give an independent body authority to investigate irregularities.
Flourishing of each: People need not have personal connections to receive fair treatment.
Flourishing of all: Public institutions serve shared purposes rather than becoming instruments of self-dealing.
The internalization of interbeing prompts leaders to accept constraints on their own power, bringing integrity and fairness into processes and building trust and stability in public institutions.
Establish a floor beneath people, not systematized deprivation
A region notices a precipitous increase in the number of people lacking access to healthcare, adequate food or secure housing. The leader brings agencies together to establish measurable objectives around healthcare access, food insecurity and preventable homelessness, with clear responsibility, a public budget, and reporting on outcomes.
Leadership act: Discern, within a set of constraints, where harms are avoidable and establish accountable mechanisms to reduce them.
Flourishing of each: People gain the security needed to take care of themselves and others, work and participate in public life.
Flourishing of all: Shared prosperity is pursued without persistent deprivation being an acceptable price.
In a system of separation, one might focus on how many people receive assistance and whether that number should be larger or smaller. But from a place of interbeing, the bigger question is, “What social structures keep reproducing insecurity, and did we change them?” Bhaskar points toward these bigger questions in emphasizing the transformation of social constraints rather than just managing their symptoms. In an era where AI is radically changing the education and employment landscape, such bigger questions are likely to grow in significance across all sectors of society.
If these examples feel familiar, it’s because they speak to our better angels and many leaders are already enacting them. These are values we’ve embraced in democracies for some time, even when we don’t always live up to them or have enshrined their opposite in systems of social, economic or political reward (e.g., “To the victor go the spoils”). These scenarios are not hostile to enterprise but rather make the distinction between success through contribution and creating value versus success dependent on others’ structured powerlessness or exported harms. We might worry that love and fair play cannot win against the winner-take-all mindset of separation. Indeed, we don’t have to look far for examples where stealing, cheating, self-dealing, and dominating others amassed significant gains in the short term. But that’s not the same as a flourishing life or a laudable legacy. Moreover, as pointed out earlier, we’ve been at the short-term game of separation long enough that long-term consequences are now clear and present dangers for the powerful and powerless alike.
What the world needs now are leaders, Zen leaders, who can enact the larger truth of interbeing and bring flourishing for each and all into the world they touch and the futures they create. What the world needs now is love, triumphant love, so that we don’t go over the cliff we seem to be racing toward in the dead-ending story of separation.
Ginny Whitelaw is the Founder and CEO of the Institute for Zen Leadership.