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In this paper we consider the paradigm shift required in our conceptualisation of leadership if business were to reinvent itself in response to our current ecological crisis. Before turning to leadership, we discuss the emergence of a challenging new paradigm within business namely,‘New Corporate Environmentalism’(NCE), which was arguably triggered by Paul Hawken’s now classic work entitled, The Ecology of Commerce (1993). Hawken and NCE emphasise the importance of looking at business in a systematic fashion (ie business is viewed as embedded in larger social, natural, and political systems). Given this understanding, the error of viewing either the organisation, or the individuals within it, in atomistic terms, becomes apparent. As will be demonstrated, this atomistic understanding is prevalent in traditional models of leadership such as transactional and transformational leadership. In light of the present environmental crisis, we argue that what is needed is a complete overhaul of the industrial view of business and its concomitant leadership theories, which continue to cast individuals in ‘monstrous’ roles vis-à-vis nature and other people. We argue that leadership should be reconceived as a phenomenon embedded within (and understood from the vantage point of) interlocking complex systems. This means that business leaders working in the more traditional transactional and transformational modes will have to take on the highly creative and challenging task of re-inscribing their own self-understanding. We conclude the analysis with an investigation of the emerging field of eco-leadership, which, we argue, supports the new …