Sustainability Leadership

THE POSITIVE DEVIANT: SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP in a PERVERSE WORLD by SARA PARKIN EARTHSCAN 2010

This is a review I wrote for the Institution of Environmental Sciences in 2010-It has even more relevance to our current existential predicament now. So much of what we do is unsustainable and there seems to be a paucity of sustainability literate leadership in just about every field of human endeavour.

The ability to lead in building a more sustainable society requires far more than knowledge about sustainability it requires a facility for bringing about change which deals with complexity, uncertainty, multiple stakeholders, competing values, lack of end points and ambiguous terminology. In other words, leadership which can handle “wicked problems!”
The search for charismatic or “super leaders” to bring about this change has exercised the minds of many in the environmental movement, including many in the environmental professions. Some of the debate has inevitably been targeted at the paucity of political leadership – nationally and internationally, as exemplified by the limited outcomes at the world summit in Johannesburg, and more recently in Copenhagen and probably in Cancun, Mexico.
Sustainability is a big issue, probably the biggest there is. It is about whether there are birds singing in the trees, about climate change, about poverty alleviation, diminishing natural resources and about global security. It matters. Whilst it has caught the attention of some big companies such as Shell, BT, BP, Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Barclays, so far it has not caused CEOs and leaders of organisations to wake up in the middle of the night!
Perhaps the reason why sustainability only keeps a few people awake at night is that it is complex and often confusing and hence difficult to decide what to do about it. Most CEOs and other leaders are primarily trying to keep their institutions financially viable and like most of us, they have ‘a too big switch off’ mentality.
Sarah Parkin’s book is an impressive attempt to address the leadership gulf that currently exists in addressing this global issue. It describes and analyses how leadership is a complex cultural and behavioural process which influences the thoughts and behaviour of others. And it asserts that it is as much about followers and “sustainable followership” as it is about “sustainability leadership”. It is about getting people to move in the right direction, gaining their commitment and motivating them to achieve their goals because leaders need to achieve the task in hand and at the same time maintain effective relationships with individuals and groups of individuals.
The commitment of staff at all levels is vital if sustainability is to become part of the language and culture of an organisation. Strong leadership is crucial in creating opportunities for action and innovation at other levels. This process has been termed ‘vacuum management’ just as a cyclist creates a vacuum into which other racers can slip stream forward, so a leader, taking an organisation in a radical new direction creates a vacuum for others to fill with fresh ideas. Sir John Browne, now Lord Browne formerly CEO of BP, provides an example of such leadership. He took a stand against the prevailing views of the oil industry in May 1997 by publicly acknowledging the reality of climate change and withdrew BP Amoco from the Global Climate Coalition. He then wrote to the 350 senior managers in BP asking how the company might reduce its CO2 emissions. The response was overwhelmingly positive. “… no one could fail to miss the extraordinary level of support, the sheer excitement, within the company. For me, it is a matter of pride to report that BP employees do not leave their values at the door when they come to work.”

Whilst it is not the purpose of this book to explore in detail current leadership theory and practice it does emphasise the importance of transformational leadership in facilitating the integration of sustainable development into an organisational change process. According to the Leadership College, transformational leadership is characterised by a process that goes beyond an employee’s own self-interest and helps them contribute towards the resolution of societal issues within the purpose and mission of their organisation (like Lord Browne’s stance on climate change within the oil industry). An essential element of transformational leadership is having a clear collective vision and being able to communicate it effectively to all employees. And as role models, transformational leaders should inspire employees to put the good of the organisation (its sustainability in economic, social and environmental terms) above self-interest. They also stimulate employees to be more innovative, and they themselves take risks and are not afraid to use unconventional, but always ethical, means to achieve a collective vision. This form of leadership goes beyond traditional forms of ‘transactional leadership’, which emphasises corrective actions, mutual exchanges and rewards only when performance expectations are met. This form of leadership also relies mainly on centralised control through instructing each person what, when and how to carry out each task. Transformational leadership involves more trust and responsibility in employees and hence is more developmental and constructive. Much of the “cult of leadership” is centred on the charismatic characteristics which are deemed to be required. But as Parkin emphasises it is not just about charisma it is about the ability to persuade and transform followers to subordinate their individual wants to the wider needs of the organisation and society. The problem then is really as much about the poverty of followership as it is about the paucity of earth literate leadership. And yet the goal of most recruiters is to find charismatic leaders to resolve apparently irresolvable wicked problems. The most significant message for me in this book is that the most successful organisations are those where the errors of the leaders are compensated for by their followers – perhaps the title should have included the phrase: The Positive Deviant (and all of those crucial) “compensatory followers!” For anyone aspiring to be sustainability literate positive deviant this is a recommended read. It is full of good practical ideas, tools and techniques grounded in Parkin’s lifelong experience in the pursuit of sustainability.

“Sustainability leadership is like the abominable snowman whose footprints are everywhere but is nowhere to be seen.”