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There is a growing body of evidence across environmental psychology and public health indicating that contact with natural environments correlates with improved health and wellbeing, and supports processes relevant to executive functioning—particularly attentional restoration and recovery from stress.
That raises an essential executive question:
What happens when the environments leaders inhabit most of the time continuously demand attention, yet provide little opportunity for its restoration?
In a nationally representative study of 19,806 adults in England, spending at least 120 minutes per week in nature was associated with a significantly greater likelihood of reporting good health and high wellbeing. The association peaked at approximately 200–300 minutes per week (White et al., 2019). Because this evidence is observational, it does not prescribe a direct “nature improves executive performance” rule. But alongside research on attention and stress recovery, it points to a leadership-development oversight:
Performance has an environment.
Consider the geography of a typical executive week: meetings, screens, offices, airports, hotels, boardrooms. Leaders are expected to sustain attention, move repeatedly between complex decisions, regulate themselves under pressure, and maintain perspective—primarily inside environments designed for work, not restoration.
The reason this matters is straightforward: attention is not unlimited. When directed attention is repeatedly depleted, leaders become less able to integrate information, hold perspective, and respond flexibly under uncertainty.
Attention Restoration Theory proposes that prolonged directed attention can fatigue, while certain environments—particularly natural ones—support recovery through “soft fascination” (Kaplan, 1995): engagement that draws attention with less deliberate effort. A systematic review later found qualified support for aspects of the theory, with effects varying across cognitive measures and studies (Ohly et al., 2016). The implication is precise rather than generic:
the environments that consume attention and the environments that restore it may be different.
Stress-recovery research provides a second line of evidence. In experimental work, Ulrich et al. (1991) exposed participants to natural or urban settings after a stressor. Recovery across affective and physiological measures was faster and more complete following exposure to natural environments.
Beyond attention and stress, nature experiences can also shift perspective. Research on awe—elicited by encounters with perceived vastness—shows associations with reduced emphasis on the individual self and increased prosocial behaviour (Piff et al., 2015). Related work links discrete positive emotions, including awe, to lower levels of inflammatory markers (Stellar et al., 2015).
None of this proves that nature reliably produces “better decisions” in a simple, causal way. It does suggest something more useful for leaders:
attention, stress recovery, perspective, and social behaviour are responsive to environmental conditions.
For leadership roles that depend on all four, the environment cannot be treated as incidental.
At Homebridge® Alliance, we approach Nature with respect and awe—as teacher and co-facilitator, alongside our practitioners and peer group. Setting is therefore not backdrop. It is structural.
We change the conditions in which participants are asked honest questions—so they can pay attention, reflect, and engage with one another in ways that are difficult to sustain in ordinary working environments. These conditions create enough restorative capacity to support deeper processing, while also reducing the pull of familiar routines and stimuli.
Importantly, the purpose is not escape from the real world. It is to create enough distance from it to see differently—and to return with that changed capacity intact.
The boardroom and the mountain ask different things of human attention. That difference matters.
And ultimately, the value is not what becomes possible while away. It is what returns with the leader.
Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), 169–182. DOI
Ohly, H., White, M. P., Wheeler, B. W., Bethel, A., Ukoumunne, O. C., Nikolaou, V., & Garside, R. (2016). Attention Restoration Theory: A systematic review of the attention restoration potential of exposure to natural environments. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 19(7), 305–343. DOI
Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899. DOI
Stellar, J. E., John-Henderson, N., Anderson, C. L., Gordon, A. M., McNeil, G. D., & Keltner, D. (2015). Positive affect and markers of inflammation: Discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. Emotion, 15(2), 129–133. DOI
Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A., & Zelson, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11(3), 201–230. DOI
White, M. P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J., Wheeler, B. W., Hartig, T., Warber, S. L., Bone, A., Depledge, M. H., & Fleming, L. E. (2019). Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Scientific Reports, 9, Article 7730. DOI