When you analyse many corporate or business school leadership development programmes there is a marked focus on modular knowledge packages of horizontal learning. A maelstrom of desired behaviours, leadership models and psychological frameworks. All great stuff but often delivered in a way that separates their linkage to the delivery of tangible outcomes on business growth by that individual. Given that the costs of the leadership programme now tie nicely back into direct organisational financial returns, it a surprise that more HR department is not demonstrating their internal value and purpose by thinking this way.
Taking the linkage between corporate development coaching or training further, I would like to expand on how it underpins my own practice in sustainability leadership at Leading Green.
I am lucky, I operate within a niche market slot that is very different from many competitors. It is a new and expanding field and the training demands are very different from many other courses out there. I am not just selling leadership personal development, but as an experienced sustainability expert who has worked previously in environmental consultancy, industry and government building up corporate active environmental sustainability and ESG teams, I understand the purpose of what I am creating. My purpose and value offer is to create new leaders with sustainability in business mindset who understand the linkages between business performance, growth, corporate sustainability and responsible leadership.
As an example, a recent project involved working closely with a team of construction and engineering managers seeking to build the first nuclear power station in their country. Wow, a big task, especially as none of them had also undertaken training in or had led any form of environmental or social leadership before. For clarity, the coaching and training objectives were clearly to train them in environmental impact assessment, and to coach their development within sustainability leadership in a manner that helped them deliver the project efficiently, in a manner that integrated social and environmental considerations within their decision-making. It was a challenging project working with the team as I sought to change their worldview of the external environment, the social disruption likely to be caused by the project, what they could control in terms of risk, and the leadership positions they would have to adopt. It worked and they have been able to apply their new leadership skills directly within the project’s environmentally inclusive design, its scope for development construction and help raise the county’s chances if delivering an ambitious nationally critical infrastructure project within an optimum time framework.
The fact that I helped coach the engineers to change their leadership behaviours? Was that job done? Or was success they were focussed as leaders on delivering the biggest investment they had yet undertaken in a manner that demonstrated a more sustainable framework behind its decisions. Our work should be driven by the delivery of tangible business results, as well as the personal development needs of clients. Success is a mixture of the two. The first needs careful consideration to how it is achieved, the second is pointless unless it has a proven outcome on the business. We work hard to not only win over hearts and minds within tomorrow’s leaders, to a new way of working. A way of operating that demands a more flexible mindset than many traditional forms of leadership and a commitment to transformational practices.
So, I look for HR partners who are actively seeking to change the organisational cultures towards a more sustainable business model, who understand the role that leadership accountability plays in shaping corporate culture, and who are willing to let me help key staff focus on sustainability and environmental sustainability leadership as they actively work on projects with a clear link to unblocking a barrier to growth, or in developing a more innovative approach to an existing arm of the business. This involves new change management skills that challenge existing ways of working, slaughtering the odd corporately sacred cow, challenging existing teams and their leaders to align their efforts, throwing away sone traditional mantras within their leadership development, and implementing a stronger focus on long-term business growth strategies, transformational leadership skills, innovation as well as encouraging the desire to keep learning by performing future forecasts on emerging risks and trends.
It all must fit into a package that emphasises that your leadership practice is not confined to an enterprises organogram, but operates across divisional silos. It also extends externally within society and their environments, and takes into consideration ethical and altruistic business decisions affecting people you will often never meet (in supply chains, etc) or generations unborn!
Now try filling in your standard feedback form!
I come across a wide spectrum of HR training and development team members: some are great, some are frankly just following a restrictive corporate approach and some are…..I’ll stop there. 00
Leading Green, my training and coaching leadership development practice was founded on the principle that organisational leaders at all levels, now have to:
Thus our coaching and training session centred on the work individuals do, their action priorities and what exactly they are delivering for the organisation. It demands a much greater focus on active vertical learning rather than rote. The objective is that a leader is more likely to adopt a pro-sustainability stance if he is actively involved in its application. Set this beside a pro-sustainability training module that focuses on changing behaviours via logic and case studies. The former is a more powerful internal organisational model and helps promote a more positive re-evaluation of their leadership potential amongst their peers that uplift in their personal behaviours.
Mediocre performance is not necessarily changed through the adoption of a new suite of leadership clothes, rather the demonstration of new ability and focus on delivering against a business’s key development and growth objectives!
Within sustainability leadership and its important role within the business, we want effective emotionally intelligent leaders who also can literally transform the world.
This requires us to tailor and flex training programmes to match the business performance of an individual leader, company or team to achieve results. There is no one size fits all, but on evaluation, it is worthless for a poor leader to have an organisation invest in their EQ and leadership development if there is no subsequent benefit to the bottom line.
A strange statement from a sustainability professional, but we are trying to develop greener business leaders!
Organisations come in different sizes, mindsets and with a large amount of organisational cultural trailing in their wakes. They also have a wide variety of real, hidden and yet to be discovered issues for the corporate coach as he builds up partnerships with respective individuals. Finding these hidden nuggets of poor corporate performance or risk can dramatically change the dynamics of the coaching as you work with the existing (and suggested) skills of the leader to resolve and remove an existing barrier to business growth, their accountabilities and the overall organisational culture surrounding the concept of environmental sustainability at all levels.
Again, a difficult metric to score if the question is ’Were the original objectives of the programme met?’
No! but the leader successfully applied new skills to address a business priority that threatened the organisation. In the process, they developed new confidence, aligned their leadership skills with the organisations core purpose, and developed a better working relationship with two colleagues whilst acting in a transformative leadership position! I’m happy with that!