Caroline Hargreaves, founder of Norwegian Sage, shares her reflections about the future of work with The Nature Location / Emergence School of Leadership! Project Managers Marjana Bøstrand and Øyunn Iversen are researching nature-based workplaces. Read more about the project here.
Can you tell us about your initiative?
Norwegian Sage is a platform offering wholeness therapy, guidance and inspiration for individuals and groups who are ready to lead themselves and others on nature’s premises. Throughout my education and professional life, a constant theme for me has been the search for peace - whether that of a human being, a community or a nation state. I also have a background working with global peace processes and humanitarian crises in diplomatic channels. Very early in this work I realised that peace can never be achieved if the people leading these processes do not have a deep cellular experience of inner peace, and the rituals needed to create and maintain the equilibrium in our inner and outer ecology.
Norwegian Sage is a voice and a space for this wholeness - a feeling we know before we enter this life and return to when we transition to the other side. For me, it is also an experience in deep ecology and quality of life - and to what extent it is possible to make space for deep nature connection and creative expression in all phases of a business - from vision to implementation, personal life and craft. In today’s society it is easy to get lost in the dark woods of impressions and choices, and lose touch with our inner compass. Norwegian Sage is one humble voice in the collective efforts towards adjusting the compass of planetary equilibrium.
Today I work with people who feel a deep inner calling to take their power back and begin living from a more balanced centre-point. I offer forest therapy, transition rituals, meditation/yoga, treatments, and facilitate sharing circles and medicine walks for individuals and groups longing to know their inner essence or celebrating important life events. For me to be able to offer this balance, I need to live a life where I can follow nature’s own cycles and rhythm - as this is where I harvest inspiration, clarity and life force. This is a deeply personal choice, and easier to integrate the smaller the organisation, but requires each person to take responsibility for their own self-development and self-illumination.
We live in a time where more and more people experience ‘waking up’ to a more profound meaning with life, and it is therefore important that we begin creating the spaces and solutions for taking the most advantage of this energy. Each human being in a workforce needs to be seen for their innermost qualities, and be given the right tools to bring this medicine to the outside so it can be of best use for society as a whole.
How do you experience the work culture and workload in Norway today?
I experience that many organisations operate with goals that are not sustainable for the planet in the long-run, and that they often forget to connect to the ‘higher self’ and core intentions of their impact. Where are we heading? How can we create thriving and healthy alliances that encourage co-creation over competition, across silos and departments? Because we never take time to breathe, both physically and strategically, we have a tendency to end up in a constricted position, where we make choices that are not beneficial for the employees or the organisation as a whole.
I also experience that a lot of today’s systems have become so worn out and outdated to appreciate the younger workforce and prioritise learning from the fresh knowledge and wisdom that enters the organisation - causing many idealistic youth to lose their passion and drive on the way. This said, no one is to blame - today’s work culture is a result of neoliberal economic policies over time, where money is prioritised over the planet’s welfare. This is changing now, as more people will feel an inner need for meaning, growth and blossoming. It will become important to design our lives so we have the excess energy to take care of what we love, and to be able to know our needs and boundaries so we can make the daily adjustments that enable us to make choices from a more holistic perspective.
Because we never take time to breathe, both physically and strategically, we have a tendency to end up in a constricted position, where we make choices that are not beneficial for the employees or the organisation as a whole.
How does the future workplace look like to you?
I believe we are heading towards a more ‘living’ work culture, with more room for unfolding of the human potential. Nature will take more space in decision-making processes because the people behind these decisions stand firmly in their core values and the direction establish for the very existence of the workplace. I believe that more female leaders will dare to rise and that this will lead to the emergence of more feminine leadership qualities such as intuition, silence, empathy and introspection. In these times, we need leaders who are trained to recognise and hold space for the inner resources of their employees, who practice deep listening and have the courage to change direction when the higher sense of justice is evoked. This necessitates a certain flexibility when faced with change and an inner mastery of the balance between feminine and masculine leadership qualities.
I also believe that the future workplace will be guided by the principles of ‘regenerative leadership’, which prioritises the health and wholeness of the organisation, and where the production follows the natural rhythm of the year. Technology will become a tool subject to humans, and not a subconscious force of control as it is for many people today. The need for non-violent communications and tools for emotional release is also apparent. Our work hours will become shorter as we will design more ‘energy-elegant’ solutions, and we will have more time to observe nature and design new models to contribute to its relative health. I hope that we will experience a shift where we, instead of prioritising short-term needs, can be of service to the very life force itself - and can weave nature’s intelligence into all the choices that are made so that we create organisational soil and plant resilient seeds for the life basis of coming generations.
Today, I work from home, from the forest, various retreat centres around Norway, and now and then I visit the offices where I am engaged as a consultant. When you have the luxury of coming from the outside, it is also easier to diagnose both the energy leaks and latent possibilities in the organisation and the people who create its culture.
How do you think the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the way we relate to work?
I hope that people will have experienced this time as full of potential, and have opened to recalibrate their inner compass and take a stronger responsibility for their inner and outer households. Any global crisis will be saturated with shadows and murky waters before we can see the golden lights of Shambala on the horizon, but I can already see the signs of change in my immediate environment. I have experienced a growing number of people interested in forest therapy, an outdoor mindfulness practice enabling a deeper connection to nature and the integration that follows (read more here). My mission is to inspire the use of eco-therapy as a natural component of the work week, opening more space for the ‘sacred pauses’ that are necessary to reflect on the individual and collective choices that will help shape our world and workplaces to the better. I also hope that we will be able to establish systems for Universal Basic Income so that more people will feel supported to contribute with the theory and practice needed to design the new models. In Norway we have both the freedom and resources to make these changes, but it necessitates that we dare to tread new paths and challenge established truths about how our country should be managed and led into the new age of expanded awareness.
What are the most important trends in work culture right now?
Rather than looking to the trends, I believe we we will reap more from looking at the the wisdom already anchored in and on the Earth. I let myself inspire from indigenous wisdom traditions and their ways of building wholeness and community - cultures that already exists and have deep roots, but are in danger of evaporating if we don’t start integrating their essence into our modern designs. Everything we need to make regenerative choices is already inside us. I am very inspired by the contributions of Arne Næss, Ailo Gaup, Per Fugelli and Joanna Macy - people who not only share their wisdom with the world, but have also ‘walked the path’ and integrated the wisdom in their day-to-day reality.
In terms of value foundations and life design, there is also a lot to harvest from deep ecology, deep psychology and the yoga sciences. The quantum leaps being made in the fields of biomimicry and living systems theory these days are also worth diving into. I am currently enrolled in a 10-week journey with Regenerators, ‘a community of professionals dedicated to working together to re-design a world where purpose, planet and profit collectively thrive’ - anything coming out of this source is also of great value! On this note, I can recommend the books ‘Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings by John Seed et al. and Regenerative Leadership by Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm.
This said, the most important aspect of the journey to me is the inner contemplation, opening to perceive the different layers of existence - from body to soul, relations, household, business and organisation - as ecosystems of their own, in need for conscious leaders to re-establish wholeness, harmony and balance - qualities that naturally arise from honouring and maintaining an inner practice of self-illumination.
Caroline Hargreaves works as a guide, wholeness therapist and speaker. She has many years experience from the fields of international development, human rights, global peace processes and diplomacy. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from University of St. Andrews, a Master of Science in Humanitarian Emergencies from London School of Economics (LSE) and has completed the Diplomatic Training Programme with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The last few years she has journeyed on the path of the heart - completed an education as a healer at the Gilalai Institute for Energy and Consciousness, become a forest therapy guide with Association for Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) og and taken a deep dive into the the multidimensional universe of yoga sciences. She is currently engaged as a consultant for the Open Air Retreat at Oslo University Hospital. Read more on www.norwegiansage.com
