How do you stand out as an organisational leader? What’s the strongest form of leadership when promoting an environmental, sustainability or ESG agenda? Can you find the skills and traits that can turn a set in its ways business into a sector leader that customers flock to?
Do you mentally stand on a soapbox pointing to a row of imaginary medals shouting, ‘Look at me, look at me!’, or do you believe people perform best when you double-check their work personally or do you have strong views involving a clear chain of command with you at the top, and a preference for a management system rewarding and punishing your team as motivation.
I doubt it. Authoritative and Transactional leadership models have a time and place, but they have limited roles in modern business leadership, and especially when leading an organisational culture towards greater environmental sustainability.
The ‘look at me’ personality cult leader does not inspire long-term loyalty; it can be only skin deep. And a charismatic leader is rarely who they say they are.
Being an authentic leader requires you to continually demonstrate who you are, what you are and importantly what you stand for – in short you believe in something attractive enough for others to follow you not only willingly, but strong enough to want to change their past behaviours, ways of working and interpersonal interactions. We hear a lot about leaders must now tell stories, don’t fill yours with trivia, use them to show people who you really are.
Emotional intelligence is one of the basic theories they teach you in leadership development training.
But I’m about to say something provocative, something that may alienate me amongst many leaderships’ development coaches and trainers everywhere. Here it is!
Emotional intelligence is worthless
It is worse than worthless unless you believe in the value of businesses becoming, more sustainable in culture business model and activity. This is an area of business in which you cannot pretend to your employees or the marketplace, you must be authentic, and your actions need to be visible to all. The ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others will not help you in the long journey organisations have to go through to achieve greater sustainability. It can naturally help but it might even be harmful to the business if relied on too strongly. Let me explain.
Business transformation is hard, acting as a positive agent of change within an organisation is even harder. Research indicates that less than a third of business transformation programmes are successful, the remaining two-thirds falling by the wayside because their leaders or managers are failing in some aspect of the transformation.
Why can some leaders achieve the successful transformation towards a new business model, and others fail?
In Business, demonstrating open values and beliefs reveal leadership character?
Business transformation towards greater sustainability is all about identifying tangible ESG risks, identifying techniques, technologies, and ways of working that can be efficiently utilised to allow the capacity for change. We are all busy people; we need sustainability initiatives to be seen as a complement to business practice not an additive task in the daily grind.
Transformational Leadership is a modern leadership style which I personally find one of the most successful when promoting a new sustainability agenda or business vision. Rather than empathising with employees, it demands that you work alongside them, treating them as partners. This gives them equal partnership rights in the sustainability change or investment you are seeking to deliver. You need them to help you identify the various subjective triggers that individually motivate people to change behaviour, their ideas that can transform vision into reality, and critically their support in executing the necessary internal changes required in various teams and across the organisation.
Transformation towards sustainability requires the whole organisations buy in – but especially amongst the key mover and shakers within the business – at whatever staff level!
So, to recap
Leaders become, in our minds, what we see them do. This is the strongest, most irresistible form of leadership
What do you as a leader do? Do you walk the floor? Do other colleagues understand your personal vision and beliefs for sustainability in business, and critically are you establishing a sustainability purpose for the business that others can buy into?
Sustainability leadership comes from, not where you obtained that sustainability certificate, or how nice a person you are, but what you say and do!
Best of all, when faced with new ESG trends and risks that threaten to derail the organisation’s growth, or crises that threaten the organisations brand or reputation, how you choose to respond?
Sustainability leaders must be decision-makers, it is not enough nowadays to be just an environmental manager or steward.
We follow leaders because they inspire us to do interesting things, we dismiss leaders who act like seagulls – squawking around the office, shiny white plumage but happy to dump problems of their own making in other people’s in-trays!
Don’t start your career by telling people how great you were in your last role; you start by rapidly finding out what the darker corners of the organisation hold.
Roaming across all tiers of the organisation, you build up their confidence to tell you where the sustainability bodies are buried, where greenwash is greatest, and where the worst organisational efficiencies lie.
If, instead, you lurk around the C-suite befriending the great and good, you will tend to fall in love with yourself as a sustainability leader prematurely before you have any leadership substance.
This is a real danger. How will you do the necessary work of leading change, acting as an advocate for better business values and influencing strategy if you empathize with many of those who see no need for change, challenge and demanding they take a stronger stance to improve sustainability! You need them as colleagues, allies and as supporters in facilitators for sustainability, but you also need to be in an advocacy position that may force them to make hard decisions for the betterment of the organisation’s future.
As you react, lead and influence for the business, wider social networks, and the natural environment – the business will see who and what you are as a leader.
To date, what have you done as a sustainability leader that now defines the business? Let me know by responding or sending in a comment. Be sure to leave feedback for sustainability colleagues out there, too!