Protecting and Promoting Individual, Social and Planetary Health with People-centered and Sustainable Leadership Styles

Abstract

Individual health, social health and planetary health are under attack and not effectively protected and promoted and the root causes are socially construed realities, narratives and cultures that still use and teach new generations obsolete mechanistic reductionist perspectives. That makes people and institutions blind even if they are well intentioned and are not bent to exploit people and the environment, and thus end up ignoring the impact of their actions; still they do not see the obvious, that we live in an interconnected world in which any single variable has influence on the whole and vice versa. We need urgent implementation of ecological system thinking in practice and must consider all dimensions of life: physical, biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual. Health is created, promoted or destroyed each day in the way people, leaders, institutions and governments see and measure realities, therefore how we see and create realities, set goals and the tools we use to promote change matter. Effective leaders for the XXI century need to be well aware of these issues and have the knowledge, know-how to apply such knowledge and have the attitudes and ethical values to pursue their mission. In order to be effective leaders that are part of the solutions and not of the problems they need to be people-centred generative and transformational leaders, fostering the emergence of new leaders instead of being bent of getting more followers.

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