Leading a High-Stress Team: Former Police Constable Discusses Merits of Meditation

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The tech industry painted a stereotype of a play-filled office with air hockey and ping pong or calming communal workspaces with sleep pods and yoga mats. For most of us, that remains a dream. For police and other first responders, it can’t even be a fleeting thought: from “Karens” to crooks, it’s a high-stress day every day.

Rob Elkington, Assistant Professor, Trent University, and Les Sylven, a Leadership Studies PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. His doctoral research project explores police leadership with senior Canadian police officers who regularly practice meditation and mindfulness. Les was a police officer in Canada for over 30 years, on the ILI podcast Law & Order…& Leadership.   This episode was produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association as part of their 25th Annual Global Conference held in October 2023. Dan Mushalko, ILI Executive Producer, shared this article as a companion to a podcast. 

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Let’s face it: high-stress jobs aren’t disappearing anytime soon.

In reality, plenty of jobs still put people under high pressure. As their leader, you may not be the one putting the pressure on them, but you can provide a little relief – and lead them more effectively. Our latest podcast guests – researcher Rob Elkington and retired police chief Les Sylven – have five tips to improve stress under police leadership…tips that you can adapt to your work environment, too!

1) Embrace Servant Leadership (and other new leadership approaches)

A leader’s job boils down to one critical element: providing the resources and guidance for the team to succeed. That’s really the crux of servant leadership. This principle obviously applies to any sector, but there’s an added irony for police leaders. Officers swear an oath “to serve and protect.” That oath doesn’t disappear when they’re promoted into leadership positions! From sergeant to chief, the job now is to serve the officers under their command. Add to that the copycat concept: just like kids watch their parents and imitate their behavior, so do teams watch their bosses. “Do as I say, and not as I do” doesn’t cut it anymore. Your team does as you do. In police leadership, if you want your officers to truly serve the community, model it by truly serving them.

2) Lean Into Emotional Intelligence

Simply put, lead with compassion. Heaping stress on top of someone who’s already stressed out clearly doesn’t help. Quite the opposite: it eventually leads to breakdown and failure. More than ever, people across industries are coming to work with stress and trauma on their shoulders. Realize that, show a little empathy, and you’ll figure out the best practices to motivate each individual to attain success. For first responders, in particular, the job means facing life-threatening trauma every time they clock in. As a leader, are you helping…or pushing your team closer to the edge?

3) Practice Mindfulness

Mental health issues have been rising at work across sectors. Is that really a surprise in high-stress environments? Mindfulness practices can significantly reduce the impact of stress on both mind and body. In fact, former chief Sylven is currently doing research on the benefits of mindfulness for law enforcement as part of his PhD studies, and the results are pretty clear. It enhances present-moment focus, self-awareness, and mental resilience in the face of trauma. From simple deep breathing to full-on meditation, mindfulness helps you and your team.

4) Mentor and Coach

This is another step that applies to leaders in any sector; ironically, old-school policing understood this: that’s why cop shows have the stereotype of the new rookie being assigned to the seasoned old veteran on the force! Whether it’s a mentor’s wisdom from experience or a coach’s objective perspective, getting guidance from others helps us better analyze ourselves – to build on our strengths and bridge our weaknesses. Stress creates a kind of tunnel vision, restricting your team’s view; solutions slip by unseen. Receiving that outside perspective helps broaden their view, encouraging reflection and, often, self-care. As a leader, you can be a mentor and coach yourself…but also look to other leaders, consultants, and professional programs who can resonate well as guides for your team’s members.

5) Make Debriefing Routine

As with the military, any major incident in policing is followed by a full debriefing – an analysis of what happened, why it happened, and what can be learned from it. It’s a wise route to take in any business sector, yet surprisingly few leaders take the time to do this. Without it, though, no wisdom is gained. To maximize wisdom, make debriefing routine: on a regular basis, meet with each person on your team to go over the events of the week, month, or quarter (Annual reviews, frankly, are nowhere near frequent enough to be of any real use in improving performance). You may be surprised at the gains you’ll see in both performance and morale over time!

Each of these steps is more about practice than price. They won’t require huge budget boosts – the big change rests in how you see your role as a leader. It takes personal effort, but the benefits begin to show rapidly, and their effects can last a lifetime.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

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The Truth About Well-being in Remote and Hybrid Work

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Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, shares this article as a companion to his podcast Remote Work and Mental Well-Being.

 

They say remote and hybrid work is bad for employee mental well-being and leads to a sense of social isolation, meaninglessness, and lack of work/life boundaries. We should just all go back to office-centric work – or so claim many traditionalist business leaders and gurus. For example, Malcolm Gladwell said that there is a “core psychological truth, which is we want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary… I know it’s a hassle to come into the office, but if you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live?”

These office-centric traditionalists reference a number of prominent articles about the dangers of remote work for mental well-being. For example, an article in The Atlantic claimed that “aggravation from commuting is no match for the misery of loneliness, which can lead to depression, substance abuse, sedentary behavior, and relationship damage, among other ills.” An article in Forbes reported that over two-third of employees who work from home at least part of the time had trouble getting away from work at the end of the day. And Fast Company has a piece about how remote work can “exacerbate existing mental health issues” like depression and anxiety.

The trouble with such articles – and claims by traditionalist business leaders and gurus – stems from a sneaky misdirection. They decry the negative impact of remote and hybrid work for wellbeing. Yet they gloss over the damage to wellbeing caused by the alternative, namely office-centric work.

Remote Work Wellbeing According to Remote Workers

It’s like comparing remote and hybrid work to a state of leisure. Sure, people would feel less isolated if they could hang out and have a beer with their friends instead of working. They could take care of their existing mental health issues if they could visit a therapist. But that’s not in the cards. What’s in the cards is office-centric work. That means the frustration of a long commute to the office, sitting at your desk in an often-uncomfortable and oppressive open office for 8 hours, having a sad desk lunch and unhealthy snacks, and then even more frustration commuting back home.

So what happens when we compare apples to apples? That’s when we need to hear from the horse’s mouth: namely, surveys of employees themselves, who experienced both in-office work before the pandemic, and hybrid and remote work after COVID struck.

Consider a 2022 survey by Cisco of 28,000 full-time employees around the globe. 78% of respondents say that remote and hybrid work improved their overall well-being: that applies to 83% of Millennials, 82% of Gen Z, 76% of Gen Z, and 66.3% of Baby Boomers. And 79% of respondents felt that working remotely improved their work-life balance, most keenly felt by Millennials (83%) followed by Gen Zers (80.3%), Gen X (77.4%), and Baby Boomers (69.5%). Of the small number who report their work-life balance has not improved or even worsened, the number one reason, cited by over two-thirds, is due to the difficulty of disconnecting from work.

Much of that improvement stemmed from saving time due to not needing to commute and having a more flexible schedule: 64% saved at least four hours per week and 26% saved eight or more hours. What did they do with that extra time? The top choice of 44% was spending more time with family, friends and pets, which certainly helped address the problem of isolation from the workplace, while for 20%, the top choice for investing that extra time was in self-care. Indeed, 74% report that working from home improved their family relationships, and 51% strengthened their friendships. 82% report the ability to work from anywhere has made them happier, and 55% report that such work decreased their stress levels.

Other surveys back up Cisco’s findings. For example, a 2022 Future Forum survey compared knowledge workers who worked full-time in the office, in a hybrid modality, and fully remotely. It found that full-time in-office workers felt least satisfied with work-life balance, hybrid workers were in the middle, and fully remote workers felt most satisfied. The same distribution applied to questions about stress and/or anxiety. A mental health website called Tracking Happiness found in a 2022 survey of over 12,000 workers that fully remote employees report a happiness level about 20% greater than office-centric ones.

A CNBC survey from June 2022 found that 52% of fully remote workers say they are very satisfied with their jobs, compared with 47% of workers working fully from the office. And according to a late 2022 Gallup survey, 71% of respondents said that, compared to in-office work, hybrid work improves work-life balance and 58% report less burnout. When asked about burnout among workers who could work fully remotely, those who were fully office-centric had rates of burnout at 35% and engagement at 30%. By contrast, 37% of hybrid workers were engaged and 30% burnt out, while for remote workers, the percentage for engagement was 37% and burnout at 27%, further belying the myth about remote work burnout.

Academic peer-reviewed research provides further support. Consider a 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health of bank workers who worked on the same tasks of advising customers either remotely or in-person. It found that fully remote workers experienced higher meaningfulness, self-actualization, happiness, and commitment than in-person workers. Another study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, reported that hybrid workers, compared to office-centric ones, experienced higher satisfaction with work and had 35% better retention.

Burnout and Remote Work Wellbeing

What about the supposed burnout crisis associated with remote work? Indeed, burnout is a concern. A survey by Deloitte finds that 77% of workers experienced burnout at their current job. Gallup came up with a slightly lower number of 67% in its survey. Clearly, it’s a problem, but guess what? Both of those surveys are from 2018, long before the era of widespread remote work.

By contrast, an April 2021 McKinsey survey found that 54% of those in the US, and 49% of those globally, reported feeling burnout. A September 2021 survey by The Hartford reported 61% burnout. Given that we had much more fully remote or hybrid work in the pandemic, arguably full or part-time remote opportunities decreased burnout, not increased it. Indeed, that finding aligns with the earlier surveys and peer-reviewed research suggesting remote and hybrid work improves wellbeing.

Still, burnout is a real problem for hybrid and remote workers, as it is for in-office workers. Employers need to offer mental health benefits with online options to help employees address these challenges.

Setting Boundaries and Expectations to Improve Remote Work Wellbeing

While overall being better for wellbeing, remote and hybrid work does have specific disadvantages around work-life separation. To address work-life issues, I advise my clients who I helped make the transition to hybrid and remote work to establish norms and policies focused on clear expectations and setting boundaries.

Some people expect their Slack or Microsoft Teams messages to be answered within an hour, while others check Slack once a day. Some believe email requires a response within three hours, and others feel three days is fine.

As a result of such uncertainty and lack of clarity about what’s appropriate, too many people feel uncomfortable disconnecting and not replying to messages or doing work tasks after hours. That might stem from a fear of not meeting their boss’s expectations or not wanting to let their colleagues down.

To solve this problem, companies need to establish and incentivize clear expectations and boundaries. Develop policies and norms around response times for different channels of communication and clarify the work/life boundaries for your employees.

Let me clarify: by work/life boundaries, I’m not necessarily saying employees should never work outside of the regular work hours established for that employee. But you might create an expectation that it happens no more often than once a week, barring an emergency. Thus, if such work after hours systematically happens more often outside of emergency situations, there’s a problem that you will need to address.

Moreover, for working at home and collaborating with others, there’s an unhealthy expectation that once you start your workday in your home office chair, and that you’ll work continuously while sitting there (except for your lunch break). That’s not how things work in the office, which has physical and mental breaks built in throughout the day. You took 5-10 minutes to walk from one meeting to another, or you went to get your copies from the printer and chatted with a coworker on the way.

Those and similar physical and mental breaks, research shows, decrease burnout, improve productivity, and reduce mistakes. That’s why companies should strongly encourage employees to take at least a 10-minute break every hour during remote work. At least half of those breaks should involve physical activity, such as stretching or walking around, to counteract the dangerous effects of prolonged sitting. Other breaks should be restorative mental activities, such as meditation, brief naps, or whatever else feels restorative to you.

To facilitate such breaks, my clients such as the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute shortened hour-long meetings to 50 minutes and half-hour meetings to 25 minutes, to give everyone a mental and physical break and transition time.

You can get the vast majority of what you usually do in an hour-long meeting done in 50 minutes, just remember to start wrapping up at the 40-minute mark, and at the 20-minute mark for meetings that last 25 minutes. Very few people will be reluctant to have shorter meetings.

After that works out, move to other aspects of setting boundaries and expectations that facilitate work/life balance. Doing so will require help team members get on the same page and reduce conflicts and tensions. After that, once your group feels the benefits of such changes, you can implement activities that have more of a ramp-up.

Conclusion

By setting clear expectations and boundaries, you’ll address the biggest challenge for wellbeing for remote and hybrid work: work/life boundaries. As for other issues, the research clearly shows that overall remote and hybrid workers have better wellbeing and lower burnout than in-office workers working in the same roles.

Key Take-Away

Traditionalist leaders and business gurus claim that remote work negatively affects mental well-being, but actual research on remote workers shows that remote work improved their overall well-being.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky helps leaders use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the best-selling author of 7 books, including Never Go With Your Gut and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams. His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles in prominent venues such as Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and Forbes. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox and over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill and Ohio State. A proud Ukrainian American, Dr. Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio.

 

RESOURCES:

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Reimagining Leadership Together Globally

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Maureen Metcalf initially published this article on the Forbes Coaches Council. It is a companion to a podcast that Cynthia Cherry, President and CEO, and Mike Hardy, Board Chair of the International Leadership Association, recorded with Maureen, ILA, as the Living Model for Reimagining Leadership Together. It is part of the International Leadership Association’s interview series.

As we continue to experience unprecedented change and anticipate the rate of change will continue to accelerate, I believe we as leaders, thought leaders and academics need to rethink what it means to be a highly effective leader and how to develop these leaders. I have been a Fellow with the International Leadership Association since 2019. As part of this Fellowship, I “work at the intersection of leadership research and practice” and “value rigor and relevance at the nexus of leadership theory and effective practices resulting in thoughtful action-based work.”

This year, I attended the 23rd Annual Global Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, focusing on Reimagining Leadership Together. Geneva is a worldwide center for diplomacy because of the number of international organizations, including the headquarters of many agencies of the United Nations, The Geneva Center for Security Policy and the Red Cross. Geneva hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world.

Geneva’s standing as a center for diplomacy and dialogue made it a productive location to host a conversation about reimagining leadership together. The conference was sponsored by The Geneva Center for Security Policy and Arizona State University. Both focused on developing leaders and leadership.

This year, I attended and participated in three presentations, one focusing on the future of work.

Several things stood out to me about the conference for leaders, coaches and scholars. First, the following speakers offered global insights that each of us can shift to ask how we reimagine our work as leaders across our sphere of influence.

1. One of my favorite conversations was with Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada. She talked about the responsibilities of leaders to act from the perspective of being a good ancestor. As a former head of state, she took a global view of trends she sees now and what she anticipates emerging during her life and beyond. She meets with the Council of Women World Leaders, giving her a unique perspective on the type of leadership required to navigate our global challenges, such as climate change and escalated tensions geopolitically. The question I took away from our conversation was: What do I need to do now to be considered a good ancestor to future generations? Will I contribute to solving or exacerbating the challenges we face?  (Here is the link to Kim’s interview: Reimagining Our Leadership to be a Good Ancestor.)

2. John, Lord Alderdice asked who we are loyal to when making decisions. This conversation struck me as crucial for leaders seeking a path forward that diverges from the past. We often make choices that pit our loyalty to those who went before us against our commitment to future generations. For example, if we stay true to our legacy views on diversity, we will perpetuate bias. On the other hand, if I stay true to my sincere commitment to treating everyone fairly, I need to look within myself and identify areas where I act with bias. Lord Alderdice talked specifically about populations that continue to advocate for positions that lock them in violent conflict — not resolved if they continue to fight for their history. These conflicts have waged for generations and won’t be easily solved by a short article, but we can each ask, “Where do my biases and loyalties reduce my ability to create the future I want to see?” (Here is the link to John’s interview: Finding Peace When in Conflict.)

3. Christopher Washington, Provost of Franklin University, facilitated a panel looking at the volume of change we will continue to see during our careers. His panel discussed the ethical questions about how we train our workforce and our leaders to ensure our communities and citizens have work that allows them to fulfill their purpose and support their families. How do universities, businesses, NGOs and government organizations come together to build bridges that enable people to navigate society-wide transitions? (Here is the link to Christopher’s interview: Post-Pandemic Approaches to Developing Future Fit Employees.)

4. Ambassador Thomas Greminger, Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, talked about the importance of leaders expanding how they define and carry out their leadership roles. During an era where we see a shift toward fundamentalism and polarization across the globe, we need to build the capacity to handle the current global challenges head-on through dialogue and soft power. To navigate the volume of change, it is essential that leaders learn, unlearn and relearn to keep up with the changes in our world. What views are you letting go of as a leader? Do you have a process to examine your opinions regularly? (Here is the link to Thomas’s interview: Facing a Global Leadership Crisis–Insights from GCSP.)

Each of these speakers, in their way, highlighted the importance of reexamining how we lead and how we make sense of what we see, reflecting on what we are learning, and unlearning. Then, we need to use that process of sense-making, reflection, unlearning and updating our thinking to shape our actions as leaders.

These annual conferences leave me feeling inspired by the brilliant people worldwide leading the changes we see. But they also remind me of the magnitude of the gap we have to fill to create a truly peaceful and prosperous world for all. So, as a reader of this article, what action is uniquely yours to do to build the world you want future generations to inherit?

 

About the Author

Maureen Metcalf, the CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, is dedicated to elevating the quality of leaders globally.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

The Heart and Soul of Leadership

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Jonathan Reams, Director at the Center for Transformative Leadership and the European Center for Leadership Practice, shared this article as a companion to his podcast Getting Lost in the Language of Leadership from the International Leadership Association Series.  These interviews feature guests from the 2021 Annual Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

Leadership is a phenomenon well studied, yet in short supply. There is a gap between knowing and doing.

While there are many good ideas about what leadership is, how to develop and practice it, the gap remains. To close this gap, I want to look beyond ideas, to the heart and soul of leadership.

To get there, I frame the topic in terms of two conceptualizations of leadership, then look at the heart and its role in these concepts. Finally, I offer a fundamental reframing to get to the soul of leadership.

In my Ph.D., I conceptualized leadership as opening space. Opening space brings images of creating something more, making room to maneuver, taking time to think things through. All of these can be leadership. They help us make progress on challenges and achieve goals.

Another conceptualization comes from a friend who defined leadership as self-deployed in circumstance. How we show up and act in each situation shapes the possibilities for making progress or reaching a goal. It is how we open space.

One powerful lens for understanding the self comes from research on adult development.  This research shows how more mature structures and expressions of self can enable more effective leadership.

This self-development shows in how we deploy ourselves, which is essentially an act of communication. What we say makes an impact. Yet we are also aware that the content of our words is only 7% of what we are communicating. A famous study showed that 38% of what we communicate is in how we communicate, in our tone of voice, pointing to the importance of attitude, emotion and the underlying energy we speak from.

The study went even further, saying that 55% of what we communicate is through our body language. We are giving off signals all the time, powerful clues to others on what we expect. These expectations shape the space we create. If what we are communicating at this fundamental embodied level is closing the space, then we are not leading, but widening the gap between knowing and doing.

Let’s take a step back to explore further.

Recent research in neuroscience shows us a new picture of how our brains work. It gives a more holistic conception, where we see that thinking and feeling are inseparable and further, hardwired into our body. Our nervous system is constantly anticipating, actively using our senses to probe for signals of danger (read change) to keep our body surviving.

Within this field, the more specialized study of neurocardiology focuses on the brain in our heart. This cluster of neurons has a powerful impact on the body and brain, or our psychophysiological system. The HeartMath Institute has been doing pioneering research in this field for decades. Central to this is their understanding of several distinct psychophysiological states related to different patterns of heart rate variability (HRV).

Their research shows that emotions such as frustration and anger create a state they characterize as incoherence. This state leads to a host of problematic symptoms, such as depletion of energy, lack of emotional regulation and lowered cognitive functioning. In contrast, emotions of love and appreciation create a state of coherence.

Coherence has far-reaching implications. It positively supports vagal nerve functioning, improves cognitive performance and enables heart-brain synchronization. The rising popularity of tracking HRV as a biofeedback measure is one way of cultivating coherence.

Yet this impressive list of the benefits of coherence is not, in my view, its most important aspect. Research has also shown that the heart generates electrical voltage 60 times stronger than the brain. The magnetic component of this is 5000 times stronger and can be measured several feet from the body. This electromagnetic field can help us understand how the 55% of communication coming from our body language is creating space. Our hearts are sensors for this field. We sense others’ fields and experience it as self-being deployed in circumstances.

This takes us upstream from our usual focus on language and behaviors. It gives us clues about closing the gap between knowing and doing, by shifting attention to the impact of our being.

Cultivating our quality of being has the highest leverage impact on our leadership.

I propose two simple ways to cultivate our quality of being.

The first is something we have easily in reach, a combination of behavioral and attitudinal interventions. Two things contribute the most to generating the psychophysiological state of coherence; holding an emotion of love or appreciation combined with deep breathing. So, remember to breathe – 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out, and hold a heart full of love and appreciation.

The second is to take a step back and reconceptualize being.

Being is commonly associated with the self. Yet our sense of a separate self is actually a mental construct of the psychophysiological system. This has inherent limitations and creates a blind spot in being. Reality is more than our minds conceive.

What we need is a space to regulate the self, our emotions, thoughts and actions; a balcony that is not part of the psychophysiological system.

For this, I propose a simple reconceptualization of being from self to soul. When we talk about heart and soul, we are implying an essence greater than mental constructs like self. In line with the phrase attributed to Teilhard de Chardin, we are spiritual beings having human experiences. We are soul, and have a mind, emotions and body.

What do I mean by soul? I describe it as a creative unit of pure awareness, where awareness is the experiential realization of the virtuality of self. What do I mean by the virtuality of self? We can still experience the self as real; we just don’t take that experience to be all there is. We keep it in context. We open a space to be more.

Closing the gap between what we know about leadership and what we do involves more than just ideas and words. It requires realizing the essence of our being as soul, to open space for how we deploy self in circumstances. We create coherence between soul and self-in-the-world, our conceptions, psychophysiological state and the space we create.

Leading with heart and soul, we close the gap between knowing and doing.

 

About the Author

Jonathan practices the cultivation of leadership through awareness-based consulting, coaching and action research on leadership development program design and delivery in a variety of settings. He has a position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), serves as Editor-in Chief of Integral Review, and is a co-founder of the Center for Transformative Leadership and of the European Center for Leadership Practice. He brings awareness-based leadership development practices to his work, focusing on how the inner workings of human nature can develop leadership capacities for today’s complex challenges.

Books to look out for: Maturing Leadership: How Adult Development Impacts Leadership

You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanreams.com

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Who is More Charismatic–Putin or Zelensky? Does It Matter?

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Maureen Metcalf wrote this article summarizing research from John Antonakis, Professor of Organizational Behavior and editor-in-chief of The Leadership Quarterly.  This article is a companion to the podcast The Importance of Studying Leadership Scientifically as part of the International Leadership Association’s interview series from the Annual ILA Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 2021.

 

Leadership researchers have debated the impact of charisma on leadership effectiveness. What leaders say and how they say it can have a strong motivational effect and help coordinate followers’ actions. It impacts their belief about what others will do, helping align people when taking on a costly and challenging set of activities, such as what we see as we watch the Ukrainians defend their country. Leadership is the social glue that helps pull and hold a group together as people strain to accomplish a challenging goal. Leaders also serve as role models. They signal what actions are appropriate. Additionally, leaders’ symbolic actions can serve as rallying cries for others – direct followers and stakeholders.

To illustrate charisma using, we look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and evaluate the impact the charisma of these world leaders is likely to have on the war.

Before analyzing Presidents Zelensky and Putin, we want to ground the conversation in some data,  according to a paper published in December 2021 in Management Science, “Just Words? Just Speeches?” In the Economic Value of Charismatic Leadership by John Antonakis, Giovanna d’Adda, Roberto A. Weber, and Christian Zehnder, “In the field experiment, we find that workers who are given a charismatic speech increase their output by about 17% relative to workers who listen to a standard speech. This effect is statistically significant and comparable in size to the positive effect of high-powered financial incentives. We then investigate the effect of charisma in a series of laboratory experiments in which subjects are exposed to motivational speeches before playing a repeated public goods game. Our results reveal that more charismatic elements in the speech can increase public good contributions by up to 19%. However, we also find that the effectiveness of charisma varies and appears to depend on the social context in which the speech is delivered.”

With this research as the foundation for our blog, we explore Professor John Antonakis’ evaluation of Presidents Zelensky and Putin. John evaluated both leaders’ charism by considering the words they used in recent speeches and their behavior and visual images during the speeches. President Zelensky scored as a significantly more charismatic leader when looking at the language he selected.

To evaluate charisma in further detail, John looked at the nine charismatic leadership tactics he uses to compare the two leaders. The chart below reflects the collective difference between the two leaders.

In Antonakis’ analysis, Zelensky scored higher in these seven categories: While Putin scored higher in these two categories:
  1. Collective sentiment
  2. Contrast
  3. Confidence in goals
  4. Lists/repetitiveness
  5. Metaphor
  6. Moral conviction
  7. Rhetorical question
  1. Ambitious goal
  2. Stories

This analysis tells us that President Zelensky will have more success motivating his troops and gaining support from International Leaders than will President Putin. To add to the analysis, Zelensky is also better at engaging in symbolic acts that close the status gap between himself, his soldiers, and his citizens. He dresses and acts like a regular soldier and eats with his troops. He isn’t using props and technology. We often see Putin distanced from his soldiers and people.

Zelensky is a better role model and a symbol of emulation – giving an edge to the Ukrainians when looking through the lens of leadership and charisma. Leadership works not only in motivating followers. It also helps motivate stakeholders to take action that will help bring a collective together, such as the European Union, to reach a collective goal of winning the war against Russia. Both of these leaders are role models that set the tone for others.

Because Zelensky is such a charismatic leader, his skills will help steel the hearts of the Ukrainians. They have a cause to fight for, their country and homes, and a collective identity to defend. While the Ukrainians have more to lose in this war, the leadership of President Zelensky provides additional motivation and collective identity, and President Putin provides the Russian troops and other countries he is trying to unite around his cause.

 

About the Author

Maureen Metcalf, the CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, is dedicated to elevating the quality of leaders globally.

Books to look out for: The Nature Of Leadership

 

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

Building a Culture of Brain Health, Growth, and Effectiveness

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This week’s article is provided by Dr. JJ Walcutt, scientist, innovator and author, and Jason Armendariz as a companion to JJ’s podcast Building a Culture of Brain Health, Growth, and Effectiveness.

Here is a short clip from Maureen and JJ’s interview:

 

SEEKING PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT

Recent years have passed without the typical fanfare of annual celebrations of reflecting upon the sunsetting year and looking forward to the new year with goals, resolutions, and a vision of what a person wants to achieve in the new year.  Each new year enters with a renewed focus on challenges and building a road map to accomplish them.  For instance, if the goal is a new body weight, learning a new sport, or even setting the goal of running a marathon, one might expend resources on a training plan, gym membership, or a trainer to strengthen their bodies in preparation for their goal.  As common as these are, unfortunately, a lot of these lose steam, gym memberships go unutilized, and visions go unrealized.  And no one bats an eye.  It is a societal acceptable failure.

According to  US News report, Americans have spent more than $60B on trying to achieve this goal of losing weight.  Tom Van Riper points out in this 2012 article that the cost to train Olympic athletes can cost a range of $13K-$25K per year, monies that do not see a tangible financial return on investment.  Corporations, less focused on Olympic athletes, are focusing on the health and wellness of their employees paying for gym memberships or installing smaller health clubs in their offices.

Have you found yourself or your company seeking, similarly, how to gain the next competitive advantage? Like many, searching for an edge when it comes to reaching their physical goals hiring experts or coaches, has your business sought a workshop to hone and sharpen skills?  Have you found a gap in your knowledge or desired to gain momentum in an area that may not be your strength?  If so, you’re not alone.  However, there is an angle that most do not know about nor consider when it comes to self-improvement or improving individual performance. Training the entirety of the person – mind, body, and brain.

The skills that tomorrow’s workforce needs to thrive in uncertain, changing, and chaotic situations will not be met by the installation of a health club, but by a deliberate focus on training the most important organ in the body – the brain.

Meet the Accelerate program which combines the latest and emerging trends in cognitive psychological research, developed by Dr. JJ Walcutt.  Dr. Walcutt combines her experience from academia, industry, and the US Government to concentrate training for businesses, teams, and individuals to gain the most out of personalized training and accomplish a higher level of performance.

TRAINING

The foundation of this elite-level training centers around the findings of cognitive psychology.  Educating participants on the cognitive processes and how the brain system works to process information and understanding choices can drive toward optimal performance.  Working to understand resilience can enhance your ability to recover from stressful moment’s compartmentalize, and function with clarity. This can help productivity as well as work towards innovative solutions by enhancing your ability to clearly analyze the problems at hand. The current workforce faces challenges and deadlines which often force personnel to juggle multiple tasks.  Accelerate discusses agility and leads participants to improve their ability to switch efficiently and effectively between tasks.  These focal areas of training are unprecedented in today’s corporate training but will be key for those corporations, teams, and individuals who want to be ahead of the curve of tomorrow’s challenges.  In his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink points out the importance of developing skills and the mind for skills in which the future will require a human in the loop.

Preparing an individual to be this human in the loop leverages the training that Dr. Walcutt has developed for the accelerate program.  Like the algorithms that suggest the next song on your chosen music platform, personalized learning will help corporations, teams, and individuals achieve greater success through optimized training.

INFORMATION MATTERS

Accelerate spends time honing the understanding of information processing as individuals and across teams.  As a foremost expert in cognitive load theory and unmatched experience in team dynamics from her time doing DoD research, Dr. Walcutt transfers the understanding of working memory to participants.  This allows program participants to learn how to harness the information, increase their ability to hold it, and be able to enhance the speed and accuracy of applying that information.  Having pertinent information at hand may then translate to the ability to process information more rapidly and allow teams to exponentially collaborate on issues.

Part of any corporate success is the ability to get ahead of competitors.  The same may be true of individuals looking for that promotion, edge, or gain that will put them in the driver’s seat for their career.  Getting ahead means being able to make sense of information, connect the dots, and ultimately make decisions that will be impactful for the future.  Dr. Walcutt’s design of Accelerate will allow participants to learn how to best anticipate, assess, and then act to make key decisions efficiently to achieve desired outcomes.

WHY ACCELERATE?

Most organizations, whether corporate, military, private, or even academia have goals that translate across domains.  Accelerate is the one program that delivers elite-level training that deliberately addresses these.  80% of leaders feel they are “time poor” and wanting more hours in the day to accomplish duties and tasks.  Accelerate will demonstrate methods that will allow a reduction in time to do tasks, improving efficiency.  Once time is mastered, the next logical step is to then master the ability to work through multiple tasks and learn specifically how to switch more effectively between skills and settings.  Finally, quality is the concern across all domains.  Through Accelerate, increase your quality of output, learning to accomplish more tasks at a higher level.  Increase the number of good decisions of your corporations, teams, and individuals.

Many Americans spend countless hours exercising the body.  Accelerate wants to know – do you exercise your mind?

 

About the Authors

Dr. J.J. Walcutt is a scientist, innovator, and learning engineer that specializes in strategic development and reform across education, military, and government. Her current work focuses on optimizing human cognition and performance across a wide spectrum of learning programs that promote optimization. Dr. Walcutt has served in the U.S. Government as a Director of Innovation for distributed learning optimization and as a Human Innovation Fellow. In her role at the Pentagon, she also served as a U.S. Delegate to NATO, Partnership for Peace, and as a national and international keynote speaker. Dr. Walcutt has over 20 years of experience in research and development for training, education, and human optimization.

Jason Armendariz is a cognitive scientist with a lifelong learner attitude and a true passion for training, education, and leadership.  Jason started his path in learning as a high school educator prior to joining the military.  During his time in the military, he rose to serve as a trainer in tactics, communications, and leadership.  He has experience in research and development efforts to improve cognitive skills, learning, team dynamics and human performance. Jason has studied cognitive science, human systems interaction, and adult education and strives to build the capability of others to succeed by integrating research into programs and plans to improve learning.

Photo by Fakurian Design on Unsplash

Do We Need New Competencies in the Boardroom and C-Suite? Part 2

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This article is an excerpt from the Future Boardroom Competencies 2020 Report compiled by Competent Boards and provided by Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO and Founder.  This is the second part of a 2 part series and is a companion to her podcast Future Boardroom Competencies.  If you want to read the entire report, it can be downloaded here.

Today’s board members and business executives are traveling across a business landscape vastly different than ever seen before. The acceleration of globalization, proliferation of technology, and elevated urgency surrounding a changing climate and biodiversity loss has produced increasingly treacherous terrain for companies with rigid business models. Now in 2020, board members and other business leaders are forced to address these challenges against the backdrop of the global crisis that is the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the board of directors navigate a setting so unfamiliar, pressure mounts as all stakeholder groups are intently observing boardroom decisions with a growing list of expectations in-hand. Undoubtedly, the adverse impacts generated by these complex phenomena indicate that a great-reset in corporate governance is not only necessary but required – and business leaders must be prepared.

Our research uses qualitative analysis to evaluate survey responses from our international faculty members and reveal the quintessential competencies, qualities, and traits that are comprised within a future-ready board member.

We hope that the results of this report can be used as a road map for both current or aspiring board members to reflect and act on what it is that they need to cultivate in order to effectively lead companies through future storms, and emerge on top with a refined sense of purpose. Many are calling the unprecedented challenges a tsunami – either leaders learn to surf, or they and the companies they serve will sink.

Today, we are in a world of despair where transgressing planetary boundaries continue to create new risks for businesses such as increased resource limitations, and supply chain disruptions.

We are not only transgressing the planetary boundaries, but also social and cultural ones. Technology has provided an opportunity for people to be more connected than ever. But many are feeling left out or struggling with cyberbullying, fake news, and constant bombardment of new information and expectations that put a strain on mental health.

Human rights are under tremendous pressure as modern slavery and economic exploitation of human life, as well as nature, is on the rise. This makes the role of directors and executives even harder to navigate, as stakeholders can use their phones to ruin a company’s reputation within a few seconds. With so many moving pieces, companies and their directors may struggle to ensure that all operations can stand up to the scrutiny of stakeholders and uphold the integrity they expect.

We need to move towards a net positive impact on nature, humans, and the economy. And to do so the actions of board of directors and executives must extend beyond a nicely written report. ESG (environmental, social, and governance) integration requires leadership and an ESG transformation mindset. Therefore, board members and executives must ensure that this mindset is embedded across all levels of the organization.

With more attention being cast to the board of directors in addressing various environmental, social, and economic challenges, new initiatives will continue to alter the regulatory landscape. The European Commission recently announced a proposed intervention in the area of corporate law and governance with the general objective of establishing more robust accountability measures to improve a company’s integration of sustainability into long-term decision making.² This initiative, among other mounting pressures, underscores the responsibility of the board of directors and its power in creating meaningful action.

The board of directors is obliged to not only deliver returns to shareholders but also to clearly define the role of the company in society. A society that in return expects that elected board members bring exceptional capabilities to the boardroom.

For example, board members should have an understanding of how company resources are being utilized and be clear on how these actions impact nature and stakeholders. Furthermore, the board of directors must understand how the current and future states of nature and society will impact the company and its ability to thrive in the long-term. A task that has been considered “one of the most demanding, complex and taxing activities in the world of public life”.³ With increased public discussion on the role of corporations in times of crisis such as COVID-19, there is increasing stakeholder pressure for board members to perform on ESG-related issues.

A recent survey from Edelman found that 71% of 12,000 respondents would lose trust in a company if they perceived that the company was placing profit over people.⁴

Leading companies have certainly responded to these pressures. It was recently reported that 63 of the 100 largest public companies now have a board committee overseeing sustainability matters.⁵ However, the same study identified that only 17% of those serving on these committees had relevant training or experience when it comes to ESG and sustainability. ⁶

This dichotomy emphasizes how critical it is that board members work towards building and applying the necessary competencies in addressing ESG-related issues and adopt an approach to leadership that facilitates ongoing dialogue with shareholders and other stakeholders.

We are now in a period of awakening, where major transformations are taking place in all corners of the globe, altering the traditional context for boardroom decision making and heightening the expectations of corporate leaders and board of directors. We believe that reformulating the pre-existing definition of corporate stewardship in the 21st century will catalyze a pivot in social outlooks from one of despair to one of hope.

 

This report explores the foundational requirements board members need in order to navigate the dynamic nature of a world evolving faster than ever before.

(2) Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance (European Commission, 2020) – https://op.europa.eu/en/publicationdetail/-/ publication/e47928a2-d20b-11ea-adf7-01aa75ed71a1/language-en (3) How to Play the Board Game (The Economist, 2020) – https://www.economist.com/business/2020/11/21/how-to-play-the-board-game?src=gft (4) Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust and the Coronavirus Pandemic (Edelman 2020) – https://www.edelman.com/research/covid-19-brand-trust-report (5) The Sustainability Board Report 2020 – https://www.boardreport.org/reports-research (6) Ibid

 

Do you know of top ESG Competent Boards and Board Members?  You can nominate those you believe should be highlighted in the Competent Boards list here.

About the Author

Helle Bank Jorgensen is the CEO of Competent Boards, which offers the global online ESG Competent Boards Certificate Program with a faculty of over 95 renowned international board members; executives and experts.

A business lawyer and state-authorized public accountant by training, Helle helps global companies and investors turn sustainability into strong financial results. She was the creator of the world’s first Green Account based on lifecycle assessment, as well as the world’s first Integrated Report and the first holistic responsible supply chain program.

Helle has written numerous thought leader pieces, is a keynote speaker, and is interviewed by global media outlets.

Image by spokane1977 from Pixabay

The 100 Most Powerful Women in the World

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Agostina Chemello of Porch.com provides this article as a companion to the interview Research Findings on Women’s Access to Leadership Development.

From influential politicians to tech geniuses, Forbes’ 2017 ranking of the “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” runs the compass of everyone from Oprah Winfrey and Ivanka Trump to Angela Merkel and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg.

Ranging in age from 28 (Taylor Swift) to 92 (Queen Elizabeth II) it’s clear no woman is the same. There’s not one quality that helped these women climb to the absolute peak of power in their industries, it’s worth asking—what qualities do they share that’s helped set them apart?

To find out, we used IBM’s Watson™ Personality Insights API to examine speeches, interviews, and even social media commentary to decipher the more natural elements of their personalities. With only a few exceptions, every woman on Forbes’ list has been analyzed here. Read on for a more intimate look at these leading ladies.

Powerful Personalities

According to IBM’s Watson Personality Insights model, there are five core characteristics that help define how a person engages with the world. These include agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional range, and openness and are made up of personality facets that help individualize each person’s values and actions.

Across Forbes’ list of the 100 most powerful women in the world, openness was the most common personality trait. Described by IBM as “the extent to which a person is open to experiencing different activities,” openness includes a person’s imagination, artistic interests, and overall intellectual curiosity. Across all 100 women, two were particularly inclined toward this trait: Ranking at No. 72 Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief at The Economist; who has helped grow the publication’s reader base by 20 percent, and Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm at Disney.

Emotional range and conscientiousness were also the most prevailing “Big Five” traits, personified most clearly by women like Safra Catz (the co-CEO of Oracle) and Nikki Haley (the Indian American ambassador to the United Nations). And while agreeableness wasn’t the most prominent “Big Five” trait, Beyoncé, Anna Wintour, and Oprah Winfrey are still using compassion and cooperation to their advantage.

Industrious Individuals

Women’s day-to-day responsibilities may be different, but the skills required to make it into politics might not be so different from tech. Sympathy, intellect, and liberalism topped the list among women in politics including Germany’s Angela Merkel and the U.K.’s Theresa May. The same is true for media and entertainment where Oprah Winfrey, Anna Wintour, and Bonnie Hammer top the list of the most powerful women anywhere in the world.

A Cut Above the Rest

Of course, there’s more to what makes these women special than the “Big Five.” Other facets of their personalities have helped them stand out in, and in some ways disrupt, the industries they lead.

From the politically savvy to tech giants and entertainment superstars, the path to power for the top 100 women on Forbes’ list is unique. While what has helped them get to where they are today is different, the personality traits they sometimes share aren’t. From Oprah Winfrey to Theresa May, they sometimes share characteristics like intellect and liberalism (challenging the status quo) even if they execute them differently. Each of these women proves that even in male-dominated industries, breaking away from the norm can pay off in big ways.

Read the full article at Porch.com.

About the Author

Agostina Chemello is a guest writer from Porch.com.

Photo by:  Jude Beck on Unsplash

 

Do We Need New Competencies in the Boardroom and C-Suite?

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This article is an excerpt from the Future Boardroom Competencies 2020 Report compiled by Competent Boards and provided by Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO and Founder.  This is part 1 of a 2-part series and is a companion to her podcast Future Boardroom Competencies.  The entire report, Future Boardroom Competencies can be downloaded here.

FOREWARD

There is no telling what will define the business landscape post-pandemic. However, the trend remains clear. The foundation on which our global economic systems and governance practices have been built is nearing expiry.

With a heightened sense of urgency surrounding environmental, social, and humanitarian problems, there is an elevated sense of societal pressure on leading organizations and their board of directors to take action.

The future of good corporate governance has begun to outgrow the notion of transactional thinking with respect to decision making. Serving board of directors must apply a strategic approach to meeting the growing expectations of shareholders and all other stakeholders. An approach that requires deep reflection on purpose, analysis of strategy, and consideration of all perspectives in an effort to achieve short-term profitability and long-term sustainable value creation.

As the world enters a period of reset, board members should not only equip themselves with the necessary competencies to meet new expectations but should also be willing to adapt their own outlook through a strong willingness to learn.

The findings of this report suggest that in order for board members and other executives to be future-ready, they must stay curious with a strong willingness to expand their knowledge and adapt to new conceptual interpretations. Moreover, board members should be constructively critical in challenging the status quo with respect and integrity.

Future-ready board members are highly focused on cooperative decision-making and inclusiveness. They have a demonstrated ambition to tackle systemic inequalities through actions that increase board diversity and promote a more equitable decision-making process. They are ready to apply their wisdom in making sense of complex information to effectively balance the needs of all stakeholders and adapt the strategic approach accordingly.

Any leader must understand the interconnectedness across environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues and how it relates to business strategy. Obtaining the relevant ESG and sustainability competencies is imperative for business leaders in understanding how future scenarios may expose the company to emerging risks or present further business opportunities.

I hope that you will find value in this report and use it to reflect on and further develop your competencies.

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report provides an overview of the essential competencies, qualities, and traits the board of directors and other business professionals will need to navigate the dynamics of a global business landscape shaped by the greatest challenges of our time.

Organizations and the individuals that lead them hold the innate responsibility of delivering on a shared vision that drives long-term sustainable value creation while executing on short-term needs.

As global conditions come to normalize, we enter a period of great reset – for which the board of directors need to be prepared.

Using data collected via survey, this analysis evaluates insights from the Competent Boards global faculty and other business leaders in an effort to determine the elements comprised within a future-prepared board member.

The report uses the qualitative method to draw a comprehensive list which business leaders can use to reflect on their ability to effectively manage emergent risks and opportunities.

We asked four questions:

  • What does stewardship in the 21st century look like?
  • What does a future-prepared board member look like?
  • What new competencies are, or should be, demanded of board members?
  • What are the personal traits, qualities, and diverse perspectives needed in the boardroom?

The findings indicate that future-ready board members will need to apply a lens of curiosity that supports a culture of continual learning and strategy adaptation in order to meet growing expectations.

The survey determined that effective board leadership should be aligned with a distinct sense of purpose that is informed by a deeply-seated literacy of the material ESG challenges faced by the company.

Although an objective list of relevant skills and experience may apply to every qualified board member, the survey results indicate that the definition of a future-prepared leader may extend further.

According to the survey’s findings the personal attributes or traits within an individual’s internal value system may also play a role in defining a board member who is future-prepared.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shines a light on the many cracks within the foundations of our societal and governance structures, it becomes clear that the board of directors is expected to leverage their power and influence to take meaningful action.

The findings indicate that board members must reflect on their current outlook and set of competencies in order to identify areas for which they can develop their capacity to meet demands for extraordinary board-level stewardship in the 21st century.

Do you know of top ESG Competent Boards and Board Members?  You can nominate those you believe should be highlighted in the Competent Boards list here.

About the Author

Helle Bank Jorgensen is the CEO of Competent Boards, which offers the global online ESG Competent Boards Certificate Program with a faculty of over 95 renowned international board members; executives and experts.

A business lawyer and state-authorized public accountant by training, Helle helps global companies and investors turn sustainability into strong financial results. She was the creator of the world’s first Green Account based on lifecycle assessment, as well as the world’s first Integrated Report and the first holistic responsible supply chain program.

Helle has written numerous thought leader pieces, is a keynote speaker, and is interviewed by global media outlets.

 

Photo by Danielle Cerullo on Unsplash

Leading Sustainability: Look to the Future, Make Bold Choices and Don’t Go It Alone

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This blog is provided by Trista Bridges and Donald Eubank, co-founders of Read-the-Air and authors of a new book, “Leading Sustainability: The Path to Sustainable Business and How the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) Changed Everything,”  as a companion to their podcast Leading Sustainability: The Path to Sustainable Business and SDGs .This article shares practical steps from their book to advance your business efforts and put sustainability at your strategy’s core.

The business world is at a fundamental crossroads. The age of the stakeholder is rapidly superseding that of the shareholder. More than just a buzzword, the idea of the stakeholder recognizes that companies have always existed as an inseparable part of the communities and business networks in which they operate, however vast and physically distant.

Contrary to what the shareholder model often implied, good business decisions have never really been driven purely by profit motives. It is becoming increasingly obvious that what is good for society—and thus, by definition, for the environment—is good for business.  This new embrace of responsibility does not preclude the design of efficient, lucrative business models. In fact, when done properly, precisely the opposite is true: socially responsible and sustainable business decision-making opens up brand new, exciting, profitable—and, in all its meanings, sustainable—revenue streams.

Today’s reckoning is not purely an altruistic choice made by businesses; new demands from various civil society organizations and the consensus-driven initiatives of the United Nations have been shepherding along the changes required to make business operations sustainable for years. With the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the implementation of the Paris Agreement, these constituencies have outlined new expectations for not only how governments function, but also how businesses must function in a sustainable society.

The SDGs—more than 50 years in the making—provide a comprehensive framework for understanding all aspects of social, political, and business actions. They are powerful statements of human ambition for a fair, just and sustainable society. Many in the business and investing world today are calling them “A gift”, as the SDGs can provide us with a broader definition of sustainability and a framework to quickly and effectively guide businesses’ efforts to align their operations with the meaningful goals that society desires.

The successful businesses of tomorrow will be the ones that fully embrace sustainability today.

Almost two years ago, we set out to find and catalogue the practical steps that companies today must take to create the new sustainable business models they will need to survive in the year 2030. We interviewed more than 100 business leaders, investors, policy makers, NPOs, researchers and other changemakers, and researched a broad range of companies from across the world, of varying sizes and across multiple industries, that were taking practical steps to improve business practices and become more sustainable. Here’s some of the main takeaways that were collected for our new book “Leading Sustainably—The Path to Sustainable Business and How the SDGs Changed Everything.”

Our takeaways

  • Look to the future of your business—to achieve the best tomorrow, prepare today for the worst.
  • Make changes to your strategies based on the big picture, not on the small problems (unless they are warning you about dangers arising in the big picture).
  • The past created the world we live in today—its environmental crises and social unrest—but it also has been building the platform and the thinking that’s needed to move past these crises. That is, the SDGs, the Paris Agreement and a business world more focused on becoming sustainable for the long run.
  • The business case is already there—the whole business environment is pushing for more sustainable models, from consumers to investors, employees to competitors. Catch up, keep the pace, set the speed or get pushed out of the way.  And watch out, because a whole new generation of “mission-driven” companies have a head start already, having established themselves as fully aligned with society from the get-go. They are laser-focused on bringing fully sustainable innovations and business models to sectors that have struggled to do so on their own, and they are achieving remarkable societal and financial impact.
  • Don’t get confused by the Alphabet soup of methodologies for measuring and managing impact—choose what looks best for you, try them out, see if they fit, and whether do or don’t, adjust, retry, expand, until you figure out what works for your company. Get started today.
  • Capital managers, and even retail investors, believe that sustainability is the way forward, and they are going to talk to you about it. If you are aligned with them, they will provide you capital at a reasonable rate—if not, you will pay more or even be left empty-handed.
  • Be systematic. Understand the steps that you as a business have to proceed through to achieve a sustainable business model. Apply smart managerial and leadership strategies to move through these steps. Make bold decisions. Engage the whole organization. Communicate your directives and the reasons. Build an “A team”. Pursue a multi-stakeholder approach. Be flexible, make assessments and adjust. Work with your customers. Consider outside acquisitions. And leverage the SDGs.
  • You can’t do this alone. Bring your industry along for success and to ensure a fair playing field. Reach out to your industry associations, but also look to new partners, whether from civil society, international organizations, or cross industry. If a few key industries do this right—health and wellness, insurance, fashion, real estate, and tourism—we’ll all be in a better, more sustainable, place.

Before we close, two points bear repeating: For success leverage the SDGs— recognize their power to help and guide the organization and your teams; and be systematic to align your business planning and operations with sustainability principles.

Plus, remember this final, key piece to getting it done: You must bridge the knowledge gap—provide your teams with as many opportunities as possible to learn what they need to know to make sustainability-driven business decisions.

See more details about the important lessons from companies—in a range of industries—on how to achieve sustainability in our new book “Leading Sustainably”, available now from Routledge and Amazon.

 

About the Authors

Trista Bridges is a strategy and marketing expert with extensive experience across various geographies and sectors including consumer products, financial services, technology, and healthcare.

Donald Eubank is an experienced manager who has worked across the IT, finance, and media industries in Asia.

They advise businesses on sustainability and are co-founders of Read the Air, a coalition of strategy and operations professionals, and co-authors of “Leading Sustainably—The Path to Sustainable Business and How the SDGs Changed Everything” (Routledge).

 

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash