Proven personal and corporate leadership development performance is a priority in many organizations, yet many organisations fail to apply this to their environment and sustainability managers who often act as critical ‘change managers’ within their enterprise risk culture?
If environmental sustainability is to be regarded as a valued and nece4ssary attribute within modern business development models, its leaders and managers require the same degree of corporate leadership development attributed to employees within traditional professions. Many Environmental Sustainability Managers (inc. HSE and QHSE managers) fall into this ‘outside the mainstream category. Tasked with developing the organization’s environmental management systems (EMS) or Environment & Social corporate governance (ESG) policies; their lack of leadership development causes them to fall back on management-level activities that fail to prove a positive impact on overall organisational growth or development.
Too often I have had to coach and work closely with environmental, sustainability and QHSE managers whose focus has been primarily on the excessive collection of data, rather than the strategic interpretation of that data, its transformants into organisational priorities, and the leadership mindset to resolve the issues identified.
Yes, they have developed fantastic data reporting systems, but these systems are often without reference to what the data is revealing and how it should be transferred into growth, resilience, foresight or strategic outcomes. In some organisations, their performance has become focussed on specific environmental projects of interest or perceived threat, without consideration, costing or a long-term perspective on its eventual value to the business, to the extent to which ovral organisational culture must adapt to change. These managers are often ethical, hard working and loyal to their organisations, but through a lack of corporate investment in thier leadership and management skills specific to their role, they are adding little to the organization’s core values, purpose or bottom line. The focus on environmental compliance is valuable but the environmental and sustainability professions are developing into significantly more dynamic corporate tools than just subscribing to legislative norms.
For organizations and individuals that want to do more and lead their sectors, a rethink in corporate leadership development is required.
Supportive coaching and action-led feedback can greatly environmental and sustainability managers to step back, review their current targets & approaches, before applying new leadership skills – to overhaul organizational performance – and take it to the next level.
Organization starts to run into difficulties when they remove their attention away from individuals who change organizations quietly to focus on those perceived as high performing, a high-value individual who operates in traditional operational silos such as finance, planning or marketing. They may be visible as ‘leaders’ but often their true operational impact across the organization and culture is neutral to adverse disruptive! The former managers, often including environmental managers, may fail to be noticed and advanced. The other group is noticed but can fail when advanced into an organizational leadership role – both need specific leadership training with a specific developmental focus to bring out the best organizational results.
Many environmental managers are standing still in their leadership and professional development journeys because their organizations are not preparing them to be leaders in organizational change and strategic foresight. Placed in static roles overseeing compliance, reporting or environmental management systems they are stagnating as corporate sustainability leaders.
Environmental leadership mentoring and coaching can greatly assist them to build up from their management capabilities but direct them into a new leadership mindset for organizational improvement and performance. Sustainability leadership development can also assist in their insight and capabilities to undertake new sustainability foresight and risk management skills they increasingly require to tackle current themes and future issues that are significantly influencing corporate ESG, branding and organisational value propositions.
As with any leadership development consulting program, and success is tied into the first days in the job. The initial six months in the role, as any CEO will tell you, is key in setting out the direction and issues that you must first tackle to bring through a step-change in performance. So, it is with new environmental managers that they can carry on their predecessor’s work or immediately focus on leadership change when starting from scratch. To be successful in their role, they need organizational buy-in and support from the start. Early mentoring and active coaching from Day 1 builds discussions that must be held and action plans that lay out the future. These discussions are typically more successful and received more favourably by environmental managers when held with an experienced environmental leadership coach than with an organizational line manager who often under-estimates the complexity of the role and the personal skills required, especially when working across silos and in a matrix framework.
Few Environmental Managers, receive systematic corporate management or leadership development training specific to thier organisational roles and job demands. Fewer still, corporate leadership developments address the important organisational leadership understanding demanded in addressing sustainability issues for all its potential leaders. The world is changing rapidly, new skills and understanding of previously non-core issues have emerged and todays executive needs to be as comfortable in addressing climate change risks as in reading a balance sheet!
The sustainability leadership mindset demands that individuals take on a worldview that operates both within and externally to the organisation, with a view to drive organizational accountability and individual responsibility for EMS or ESG issues that threaten organisational resilience. Through leadership coaching and in working with both new and experienced environmental managers, a more strategic mindset has developed. A leadership mendet that encourages them to take ownership of long-term sustainability risks and work in greater tandem with other teams to address issues.
I view successful outcomes when they start to drive more business-focused leadership agenda instead of a management control approach to eliminate perceived barriers to growth. Environmental Leadership consulting can help sharpen their tactical and strategic focus and give support in internal influencing and negotiation strategies to achieve organizational goals.
In any organization, there are must-do and could-do leadership decisions to be made. Too often I perceive environmental managers working on what they believe is important or ‘can do’ activities, separate from true organizational core business priorities.
Leadership development training and coaching can make a key difference her as the coach trainer works closely with a team or individual, helping them shift thier mindset onto those priorities and targets within business sustainabilitty that provide the greatest organizational benefit, resolve future issues, and open a more sustainable business model. Environmental sustainability managers and leaders are not except from the requirement on all managers to contribute to the organisational bottom line, especially in this case when it is a triple bottom line that includes, economic activity, social and environemntal performance.
A common issue I encounter within many organisations is the lack of dialogue and understanding of roles between environmental sustainability teams and the wider senior management group. This holds both parties back from wider performance and risk management, and places barriers to information flow within an an organisation.
One of the critical desired outcomes from environmental sustainability leadership development programmes is a visible improvement in an environmental sustainability managers internal (as well as external) leadership communication skills and ability to support senior leadership needs within organisations. This starts with re-aligning EMS, QHSE and even ESG systems with wider corporate priorities and growth opportunities, before expanding in strengthening corporate culture, brand and purpose.
Being seen and heard is a key component of environmental leadership and change management, and the skills need to be embedded from the start.
Many environmental sustainability managers, as well as senior management teams, still doubt thier ability to implement sustainability management practives within thier organisational deciddion-making cultures. This leads many to down grade or ignore tangible and intenagible sustainability issues as non-relevany. Howeever there is increasing evidence and verification that this is that many such sustainability issues are business critical and poor perfoermance can have a marked impact on corporate viability.
Taking those first step towards business sustainability can be daunting, and they all start in the Boardroom! Environmental sustainability management skills as well as overall biusiness leadership abilities are required to lead both established systems and senior management practices towards the implementation of a sustainability business model that both supports and upholds an existing rtoganisational culture. It is pointless adopting Unilevers’s successful sustainability model f its focus and direction of travel has no alignment with your own market sectior pressures. Sustainability systems need to be bespoke to an enterprises culture and mindset to operate most effeciently.
Environmental Leadership coaching and training can help an environmental manager or executive work through the most applicable issues facing that organisation, its future growth, culture, and enterprise risk management. The objective is to help teams and individuals build action plans that align and support organizational goals, measurable steps forward, development of pan-organizational environmental leadership skills.
Given hos business critical such steps are in all organisations, there needs to be a clear leadership development program to support these programs, to maintain motivation, and ensure influencing skills are developed and applied.
Returning to our original point concerning the fact that environmental managers are employed to improve overall organizational (people) and business (£) performance, there must be proof of performance. Environmental Leadership consultants can help you lay down a more creditable KPI set that links directly into organizational change and performance, helping identify the environmental management contribution within the business, and the leadership success of its individuals, and the changes they are making.
To many organisations are mistakenly overlooking the importance of sustainability leadership training within thier leadership development programmes. It is a critcal element in modern day business management and the issues associated with it will only grow in importance. There is suffiencient training and leadrning knowledge now in place to emphasise that its worldview and individual mindset demands have both synergies and significant differences from traditional leadership development training approaches. In a similar mananer, many new environmental and sustainability management positions have yet to be incorporated into the leadership training and self development programmes within thye larger organisations or supporting professional institutes. This leaves many environemntalk sustainability managers struggling to define thier development needs, as well as organisations struggling to define thier value towards business growth and resilience.
It is time to bring both problems together through leadership development of environmental and sustainability managers.
Ross Marshall is CEO of Leading Green, an international environmental and sustainability leadership development business. He is passionate about creating a new generation of transformational leaders. To connect with Ross, follow his blogs on our website or on on LinkedIn.