In recent times, organizations are increasingly expected to take responsibility for the ways their activities impact the environment, their customers and workers, and the wider society. Therefore, we have been seeing changes in the leadership that focuses more on sustainability. A sustainability-focused leadership is based on understanding how interconnected systems are, which include people, processes, objects, etc.
There are three key concepts in sustainability leadership- environmental, social, and economic. With the future generation in mind, good leadership focuses on what current and future impacts or consequences of the ongoing processes are. It also encompasses making every decision while acknowledging the fact that other countries, societies, oceans, animals, communities, waste, resources, etc. are affected by them.
Programs like plastic-free challenges, finding energy-efficient ways of operation, lessening the generation of waste, and overall being mindful about our daily activities in the environment are great ways to start thinking about incorporating sustainability in companies or places we work for. The big picture needs to be taken into account by the leadership of a company in order to transform businesses. Most importantly the goal of sustainability leadership is to develop a mindset to meet the triple bottom line, commonly known as PPP which stands for ‘People, Planet and Profit’.
This is often a long time commitment to change a pre-existing process (in a chemical company, for example), to source responsibly, to train for systems thinking as well as relationship building. The last and not least aspect of sustainability leadership is to be responsible for our actions and hold the organizations/companies we work for, accountable for their actions to protect and nurture those who are around us, and the natural environment we live in.
