Sustainable leadership is about ourselves first

by Janus Boye

Sustainable leadership, like everything else, is part of a system, if one part of that system isn’t performing, or is missing a piece it performs sub-optimally. 

With this in mind, how do we develop sustainable leadership qualities in ourselves, in others, and in our organisations?

In our recent member conference call, we were joined by Berlin-based innovation consultant Stephanie Barnes who shared her thoughts and experiences on the topic. She also explored the overlap between how artists work and how we might learn from that in the business world to be more sustainable.

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We need to put ourselves first

One of the key points that really resonated with me, was her message on putting ourselves first. In other words, if you want to practice sustainable leadership, you need first to focus on improving our own sustainability through developing our own creativity before we can bring it to peers and the rest of the organisation.

It’s also about your personal attitude and practice. Here she again made the connection to how artists approach their work.

Stephanie further expanded on focusing on yourself, by also making the point for getting more sleep and in a wider context for organizations to provide both role models and a creative safe space, where we can practice creativity.

Take a longer term view

Most businesses whether they like it or not, are driven by quarterly targets, budgets and regular goals that needs to be met. This can easily lead to sub-optimisation, where you are trying hard to make a goal, but at the expense of good leadership.

Stephanie brought up the triple bottom line (social, environmental, and financial performance) and to help you approach sustainable leadership and take a longer term view, she shared 3 components to sustainable leadership:

  • Mindset - a sense of purpose

  • Systems thinking - with intellectual flexibility to see the big picture

  • Relationship building - building productive long-term relationships

Learn more about sustainable leadership

Stephanie has contributed to Knowledge Management Matters, which is a collection of works to help you and your organization succeed in the knowledge environment.

And if you speak German, she also recommended Creative Company by Dirk Dobiey and Thomas Köplin. This book in particular explores how we can work more artistically to improve our organizations.  (An English version is due to be published by March 31, 2020, details will be available from the Age of Artists website.

Finally, you can view the entire deck (PDF) or enjoy the 29-minute recording below.