Part 4: From Transaction to Entanglement

So far in this series, I’ve explored why leadership-as-usual is no longer enough, what a meta-relational paradigm invites, and how stewardship offers us another path.

Today, I want to highlight one of the core shifts this entails: from transaction to entanglement.

In modern business and leadership, we’re taught to think in transactions:
– What am I getting?
– What am I losing?
– Is it fair, efficient, profitable?

This transactional logic can be useful for some exchanges. But when it becomes the default lens for ALL relationships—human and more than human—it reduces complexity into commodities, relationships into deals, and life itself into assets to extract or manage at will.

In contrast, an entanglement perspective sees things differently. It recognises that we are already deeply interconnected, and that our choices ripple through relationships—human, ecological, and more than human. There is no real “away” where we can send the costs or waste of our actions. The consequences always come back in some form.

By honouring our entanglement we can move into questions and practices that foster stewardship:
– What becomes possible when I intentionally develop my awareness of these entanglements, rather than pretending they don’t exist?

– How is my participation in interwoven systems also affecting them?
– What responsibilities arise for me and my fellow humans from such connections?

I can say first hand that this isn’t easy. We’re so conditioned to get ahead and win that shortcuts and over-simplifications have become normalised in our everyday affairs. Often, we don’t notice the harm it causes. And when we do, it can feel overwhelming, or we fear how others will perceive us if we speak up.

Transitioning leadership towards stewardship allows us to see reality more clearly: that every transaction rests within webs of entanglement, shaping its true costs and possibilities.

In my next post, I’ll explore how this shift invites us to compost habits of control into practices of co-responsibility within strategy work, decision-making, and leadership.

I’d love to hear from you. What questions and reflections come to mind?