“How much influence did my leadership performance ultimately have on Environmental Impact Assessments outcomes by the project’s end?”
This is an important question for all senior Impact Assessment (IA) professionals to reflect on as they consider the final social and environmental outcomes of a project. The IA may have been regulatory compliant, technically competent and conform to the required EIS and consenting standard – but did it change anything?
Did the Impact Assessment help the project team make more sustainable decisions? Were stakeholder concerns about the project addressed? Did the IA give due weight and consideration to possible alternatives? Too often, the answer seems to be ‘extraordinarily little’, and the context for this is explored in greater depth below.
People, not process, ultimately make a greater difference in an IA’s residual outcome. In discussions with senior IA professionals, there is a strong feeling that they are not content for themselves (or the IA) to play a minor part in the project, appearing too late in the project cycle to influence its outcomes.
Instead, they are determined to play a leading role in the scope, design, and culture of the project, and ensure that the IA team and process are leading, or at least visible cast players, in the project’s management and decision-making! One experienced professional even stated that it was the role of an IA leader to exhibit role model behaviours for the rest of the project team to follow.
Adopting a leading role made it easier to project vision, inspiration & cues about the ‘right’ behaviours and attitudes for the key project team members during executive-level project meetings.
The transition towards a leadership mindset in IA is influential in determining how IA professionals think about and interpret situations, use emotional intelligence, and react to events. It affects the decisions that are needed and the actions that need to be initiated to deliver outcome-focused IA.
If you or your organisation require assistance in developing an outcome-focused mindset, please talk to us about our coaching and training services.