The most successful businesses plan for long-term success. But the sustainable development agenda is changing the definition of long-term success, and leaders are beginning to realise that this places different demands on their leadership.
Sustainable development means taking into account the social, economic and environmental impact of business activities, not only for the present but also for future generations.
Although many leaders within business have already started to think about taking a more "green" approach, they are often failing to realise the significant social impact their business can have both in the UK and globally.
For example, employing local people or purchasing from local suppliers might make a substantial contribution to the community as well as reducing your carbon footprint. But it can adversely affect another community elsewhere in the world that have depended on those jobs for their very existence. It doesn't just stop at the doorstep; there is a knock-on effect through the global supply economy.
Taking sustainability seriously means leaders need to be responsive to the needs of a wide range of stakeholders and communities. This will involve managing competing interests between all stakeholders who have an interest in, or are affected by, the organisation and its actions.
An individual business cannot act alone in acting sustainably. It must collaborate with a number of other businesses, communities and stakeholders to achieve results. This collaborative style of leadership makes new and different demands on leader's skills, for which many are ill-equipped.
So what are the skills a leader needs in order to be collaborative and manage a business more sustainably?
- Leaders require the intellectual and strategic capacity to process many different perspectives simultaneously and consider them all when making decisions
- Leaders need the will, skill and consultation processes that enable them to genuinely include diverse perspectives in their decision-making
- Leaders must have a certain degree of emotional intelligence in order to be genuinely open to other views, not just their own
- Leaders need breadth of vision to think long-term and beyond their own immediate geographical and interest areas
For it to really work, sustainability thinking and practices have to be built into the way the business is managed, most strongly reflected in the way decisions are made. Longer-term sustainable development objectives should be backed up with short-term targets and action plans. Leaders need to think beyond the ‘five-year plan' and start looking at the impact their business will make 50 years down the line, and then translate that into policies and practices that filter all the way out through their organisations.
In order to change the overall leadership style of an organisation to increase its effectiveness in operating sustainably, it can be useful to bring in practical help from experts in collaborative leadership.
A specialist in this field can help to assess the behaviour that needs to be changed within the organisation, coach leaders as they develop more effective decision making processes, and help put in place the skills, processes and capability for engaging diverse groups of stakeholders.
Leadership profiling, top-team coaching and facilitation of stakeholder engagement processes can all help leaders learn to take into account the whole community when making decisions. This is what it takes to create sustainable enterprises that benefit both shareholders and the wider world for a long time to come.
Jenny Charteris is managing director of organisational and leadership development company CPCR. For more information visit www.cpcr.co.uk
