Create a Movement and Drive Transformation

Abstract

There are only positive outcomes to effective leadership—companies headed by the right people attract and maintain talent; they futureproof themselves and their companies against sustainability-related legislation; they are more favorable options for investors; and finally, mindful customers prefer to do business with them. All gain, no pain.

FormalPara Written by our Guest Author, Michaela Bürger (Supported by Nicole Ludwig)

Michaela Bürger is the owner of Michaela Bürger Consulting and an expert in vision, strategy, structure, and leadership issues in a digital world. She is also a speaker and author. When she published her first book “Champions League for Managers” in 2014, Joe Kaeser commented “I consider Michaela Bürger to be one of the most internationally experienced and competent experts on the use of potential and team diversity.” She openly and courageously tackles current leadership topics with a clear eye for the essence. With her team, she supports both corporate groups and medium-sized companies.

1 The Future of Leadership: Context, Challenges, and Necessary Skills

1.1 The Challenge of Transformation

The transformation to a sustainable way of doing business is the running theme of this book but making this kind of change is far easier said than done. To be able to initiate change, there has to be the desire to do so and then it is a process that has to start from the top of an organization. The leadership and management of a transformation always take place in the light of collaboration among people. The way executives use their skills, talents, and personalities has significant influence on the development of the company’s value and on the outcomes of the transformation.

In addition, it is vital to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for the change. Essentials are an open environment and decision-makers who embrace change. Once the desire is there, moving successfully from A to B means having an action-guiding vision, setting strategic goals, and having the courage to try new things.

This brings to mind an experiment in Arizona in the 1990s. Four women and men, together with 3800 animal and plant species, were locked in a huge glass building, Biosphere 2, designed to be a miniature version of our planet. Owned by the University of Arizona, the building was constructed for scientists to study how Earth’s living systems work (Fisher Smith, 2010).

The experiment aimed to find out whether it was possible to recreate Earth-like conditions on other planets that could ultimately be inhabited by humans. It turned out that the experiment was not successful for various reasons. It was interesting, for example, that the trees simply fell over after reaching a certain height. The reason for this was difficult for the scientists to detect. After a while, they found out that the problem was the lack of wind. The dynamics and power of the wind ensure that trees become strong and resilient. Only when the wind shakes from all sides the tree can grow roots deep in the ground. If this does not happen, the tree has no stability and falls over.

Without the forces of change acting on them many people surrender to their natural inclination to find a place in the slipstream. This saves energy. Why torture yourself unnecessarily? The reality is that there cannot be transformation without change.

Paradoxically, it is precisely uncomfortable, new experiences that allow us to achieve the goals of the future. Everything we can do, all our strengthened abilities, we owe to borderline situations. It is the winds of change and the problems that blow our way that really challenge us, make us grow, and give us new perspectives and abilities. Neuro-scientifically, no brain really wants to change. Every change forces us to leave a behavioral highway and to follow a new path that is not very well paved, unknown, and much more laborious than the old, proven one.

So, we spend a lot of energy trying to remain in a tried and tested comfort zone, hoping that the storms of life will steer clear of us, even if we constantly talk about the importance of “fresh wind” and changes that a transition to a sustainable business model will bring. However, without the winds of change all is calm and at a standstill, a state that some may welcome, but, on the other hand, much in us remains undiscovered and a transformation takes place only in words, not deeds.

Everyone has the choice of either building protective walls when the winds of change blow, or harnessing the energy they bring to transform and move from A to B.

In the business world right now, sustainability is the wind of change and moving in response to this dynamic force will make companies stronger in the long run. The roots that give companies this strength comes from their customers, investors, and employees and any company that fails to respond to this wind of change is risking the loss of these roots and perhaps collapse.

1.2 Aspects that Call for Leadership Change

Why should people take on the hardships that every change brings? Why not just carry on with business as usual? The short answer as far as sustainability is concerned is that the growing amount of legislation is forcing companies to have at least a minimum level of compliance, but as has already been stressed throughout this book, a sustainability transformation involves so much more than ticking boxes, it is about much more, it is about the “real thing.”

Almost all companies have given themselves mission statements in an attempt (that so often fails) to develop their own philosophy and to put it into words. These statements are usually developed in workshops with the executives and the supervisory bodies, accompanied by consultants.

However, there is great value to be gained from exchanging values together. Being enthusiastic or not, can inspire or not and that is what makes the difference. And employees quickly feel this. Values concerning the environment and human welfare are inherent in the definition of sustainability, and that is why leadership must factor them into the transformation process.

So, one of the main reasons to take on these hardships now is because they will lead to many companies rediscovering or creating a genuine purpose, one where they will be part of a better future. But this is going to need a new kind of inspiring, progressive leadership.

The attitude to life of an entire generation is currently changing dramatically and these people want so much more than a salary from the companies they work for—they want meaning and purpose; they want to create a better society and to live in an intact environment. They are looking for quality of life in a job with a purpose: I know why I am doing something; I understand the meaning that I can identify myself with; I feel connected in the long term; I know and live my personal values; the combination of “purpose” and values I strive for are the anchors of success. These are the types of sentiments that more and more people are looking for.

Sustainability in Action

I don’t deny that building a new industry is not a nine-to-five job. It’s tough, but we are working transparently when it comes to challenges and wins alike. We also do a lot to build a strong culture. Leadership, organizational culture, what defines us, these all play huge roles, and you have to spend time on it.

From day one we took the decision to make every employee a shareholder. It’s a way of letting people know that they’re genuinely appreciated. That way, their competence is valued as much as capital, which seems to be a general trend. There’s a lot of capital if you know where to look, but competence is much scarcer.

People want to be part of creating something new and creating impact. For younger engineers specifically, the paycheck alone was not sufficient motivation but seeing the impact they could have made them join.

Peter Carlsson, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Northvolt

Northvolt is striving to produce the greenest battery in the world with a minimal carbon footprint and the highest ambitions for recycling to enable the European transition to renewable energy.

This has far-reaching consequences for the economy. If a company wants to survive in the future, its decision-making matrix will have to expand. It will have to formulate answers to the question of the meaning of the company and, derived from it, the meaning of the individual workplace.

1.3 The Economic Value of Leadership and What Drives us

The value of executive behavior in companies correlates with the development of corporate value and is therefore of significant importance. The requirements for the skills of leaders in a digital world can be defined and measured.

There is a difference between talent and what someone knows and is capable of doing in their specific subject matter versus personality, or the way someone goes about doing something and manages business and people throughout the daily operations—otherwise known as their behavior. The two combined, knowledge AND behavior, reflect the value of leadership performance and ultimately in company value.

1.4 Personal Value System as a Compass for Leadership Behavior

Our behavior is determined by our values, attitudes, and principles. They are not visible, but they influence our perception and judgments. They can be used to understand personal goals, attitudes, and principles (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1

Mechanism of action of values on behavior

In the outmoded linear economy, one often encounters executives who describe the effectiveness of behavior, and thus its relevance, in the evaluation of executives as unnecessary, even esoteric, and consequently attach little value to it. This attitude is usually expressed with the following blanket statement: “It ultimately depends on the achievement of the goals and not how this is done.” This is factually right, but wrong for the long run.

Prof. Dr. Christina Hoon from Bielefeld University investigated the connection between the misuse of leadership in everyday management and the achievement of company results. The conclusion of the investigation suggested that it does matter whether there is a bad leader in a company and that poor leadership results in the overall leadership climate becoming toxic. The study also found that poor leadership filters down into other levels of management and does, in fact, cost companies money (Bormann et al., 2020).

1.5 What Skills Do Leaders Need to Successfully Drive Change in a Volatile World?

In addition to a good constitution for everyday management, leaders need efficiency to achieve goals quickly and sustainably as a team. Equally indispensable is an interaction dynamic that encourages and spurs on others. In addition, a high level of self-responsibility is needed to manage oneself. More than ever, it is the behavior of leaders that provides orientation for their companies, their inner compass, combined with a personal authority that radiates far beyond professional authority.

All these competencies are expressed, among other things, in the behavior of leaders, which is based on their values, attitudes, and principles. Values are the “general guide” that steer our thoughts and actions. They are the real drivers of change. They are deeply rooted, strongly socialized beliefs of what is right and important. They are not visible, but unconsciously influence our perception and judgments. They can be used to understand personal goals, attitudes, and principles. Values are relatively stable and rarely change.

Our values and attitudes are part of our personal identity. They control our actions and our assessment competence. They give direction to leaders and help them to make good and well-founded decisions.

The creative power of people should be put to good use by focusing on the essentials:

• deep human relationships give security and at the same time courage;

• professional and personal competence secure our skills;

• independent thinking and empowerment drive the guiding vision of change.

By focusing on these essentials, companies can grow healthily, consistently, and sustainably. It is time to think more about leadership in transformation projects, otherwise cold-hearted power games and excessive self-importance will divide us and create dissatisfaction—even though we humans could do much better.

Leadership behavior is the most effective and efficient lever of a company’s value development. The sum of the behavior of all leaders can be described as the leadership culture. People behavior and existing structures and rituals and networks build the corporate culture. If the corporate culture is to be changed, for example, to react to changed market conditions or new technological opportunities, managers must change their behavior to engage people and adjust structures to ultimately secure further development of the company’s value (Fig. 6.2).

Fig. 6.2

The most efficient lever for corporate development

Consequently, if leaders have the most important impact on corporate development, a proper talent acquisition and development process needs to be put in place to acknowledge, define, and secure the key skills of current and potential leaders.

1.6 7 Steps to Meet your Goals

The important question now is how can I as a manager, CEO, company owner, or supervisory board member promote value-enhancing leadership in the company and initiate a suitable change process in the organization?

After years of experience as a leader and the insights gained from many consulting projects with satisfied customers, I created a 7-step-approach. This has proven to be a successful and lasting method to change the leadership culture and one where each individual manager benefits.

• 1. Value creation and leadership understanding.

Develop the 10 to 12 most important values with each of the relevant decision-makers (owners, C-level managers, supervisory board members), those that characterize their personal identity. Then each of the decision-makers selects the four to six values that are considered indispensable for their personal leadership style, specifically those that characterize their leadership behavior.

Each value, which is mentioned several times by all decision-makers involved, is discussed. Three to four behavioral descriptions are created to show how this value is lived by the decision-makers. This process is repeated for the most important four to six values, the ones which the leaders consider to be indispensable in their decision-making. In the end an understanding of leadership arises according to which the decision-makers select, evaluate, scrutinize, and praise.

If there is already a leadership model in the organization, the question is how it was originally developed, and importantly, whether the leaders truly live by this model. If it was not created via the collaborative process described above, it is usually not authentic. Values may well have been written down and liked just because they sounded good or because they were state of the art in current leadership theory. The HR department then interpreted them in their rather isolated way and defined them as the company’s core values. The result is guiding principles on glossy paper with little credibility and limited application in everyday life.

It is also highly recommended to explain the “why” and discuss with all the leaders the vision of the company from an inclusive and action-oriented perspective. In this way, you build on the foundation of every decision-maker and can credibly set changes in motion—both individually and collectively.

• 2. Involvement of management team.

It is important to inspire leaders to engage in the more detailed objectives, the planned procedures, and to use the following steps in the change program. In transformation processes, early involvement, open and regular information, awareness through guided reflection, exchange, and discussion really matter.

Communication and Transformation Checklist

• Objective of the project: why do we do this?

• Context explanations: values, leadership understanding, lived leadership behavior, influence on the corporate culture.

• Voices and input in the project: what is expected?

• Presentation of the procedure: how, what, and when do we implement?

• Awareness and reflection of one’s own understanding of leadership through targeted questions and group discussions.

• Exchange within the group of participants.

• Presentation of the values that are indispensable for leadership on the part of top management.

• Discussion of the leadership model and the desired leadership behavior.

• How do we live up to and measure the lived behavior of leaders?

• 3. Individual analysis of leadership behavior (target/actual).

Only if the managers can and want to implement change will the desired change process in the company succeed. From our point of view, the core element of the approach is therefore a biographical interview with two external consultants, which reflects the behavior of the manager with regard to the requirements for sustainable leadership in the future.

A biographical interview ensures the most reliable conclusions about personality traits through structure and questioning technique and is also the most effective form of questioning in which people are the focus and not just the object of analysis.

In addition, the interview promotes the beginning of a reflection of one’s own work and leadership behavior.

• 4. Survey about leadership culture.

Get an idea of the leadership culture in your company. Use an online culture monitor to ask your employees (and thus also your managers across all levels) how they perceive the existing cultures of cooperation, creativity, ambition, and control in the company and which culture they would like to see in order to achieve the best performance in a motivated and successful manner.

Here, the understanding of leadership described in point 1 is decisive for the desired direction of the development of the leadership culture.

• 5. Individual and collective leadership development.

As a result of the individual analysis of leadership behavior and the survey about leadership culture, in addition to the personal assessment of each individual manager, you will also receive a collective assessment of leadership behavior and can specifically develop your executives and leadership behavior in the company both individually and collectively.

• 6. Individual clarification of values.

Our values determine our behavior. As we grow and develop, we are shaped by our environment and learn what is right and what is wrong. Each of us, and thus every leader, has unconsciously developed values that we strive for, and these are manifested in attitudes, principles, and daily behavior. They provide guidance and thus serve as a compass for life.

To enable change, it is therefore important that your leaders know which values are behind their behaviors so that they are able to reflect on and deal with themselves, with other people and with challenging situations more easily, effectively, and with less conflict. This is the basis for the realignment in a change process, which is necessary for all managers.

Only if we know where we came from can we set off bravely in new directions, and head into the unknown, without becoming unfaithful to ourselves.

• 7. Building and integrating leadership development.

Anchor the understanding of leadership in the company through the annual evaluation of professional skills and leadership behavior in the context of the employee appraisal process. This allows you to identify progress, standstill, or regression. It is also interesting to note to what extent goals were achieved. What does it mean if there has been above-average achievement of goals and moderate leadership behavior? The effects on employees can very often only be observed years later when entire teams collapse. Then management will be caught by surprise because everyone is under the impression that achieving business goals must go along with great leadership and well-being.

But that is not the case. Pay careful and clear attention to the correlations and then put your teams together. It is often better to get rid of managers who do not have the right leadership skills or put them into positions where they can be their best expert in their field.

This is the only way to build up consistent succession planning in the company that is sustainable and offers perspective and choice.

This is the only way to keep very good managers in the company and have the guarantee that everyone has the ambition to become better and further develop every day.

This is the only way to attract talent that supports driving change and wants to learn and develop.

This is the only way to always have the right leaders, at the right time, in the right place and thus steadily increase the value of the company.

From human value to company value. That is the way. Have fun! (Fig. 6.3).

Fig. 6.3

Seven steps to meet your goals

So finally, we would like to encourage you to follow this path, because for us it is quite clear that leadership value, employee satisfaction, and company value have a clear correlation. A good example on how to become successful by following this approach is the Berger Fahrzeugtechnik GmbH in Austria.

Under the BERGERecotrail® brand, we manufacture semi-trailers and chassis structures in lightweight steel construction. The minimized dead weight increases the payload and brings the ecological and economic requirements in road transport down to a common denominator.

Due to its continuous growth process and the ramp up of the new production facility in 2019 the company was facing a needed change. In order to conduct this, a leadership team with a versatile and diversified skillset was required. On the one hand the team needed to share the vision and strategy of the company and on the other hand the defined cultural values. Therefore, the leadership team had been empowered in a way to take care of a high goal-efficiency, good interaction skills, a clear attitude by knowing their values and principles and a distinctive self-responsibility. The analysis by a biographical 6D-Leader process helped to ensure that the team members were able to reflect the current behavior compared to the necessary capabilities to be successful when making decisions and driving innovation.

We believe that an innovative organization needs to have leaders at every level, not just at the top, in order to stay competitive. However, the leadership team, as well as the company, is subject to a learning curve and constant development process. We have enormous growth potential, which we can only realize if we have the best leaders who keep our purpose and the achievement of goals in mind in their daily actions and who steer and develop employees and customers in such a way that we become better every day. Leadership behavior is just as important as professional competence and experience. We have made a tremendous push and are on a clear, strategically well-thought-out path into the future.

As a team, we have achieved a significant increase in performance over the last two years. Not only do we feel comfortable (or more comfortable than before), but we are also performing better.

Bastian Litterscheid, Managing Director, Berger Fahrzeugtechnik

End of guest author’s contribution

2 Engage and Empower Leaders

2.1 How to Become an Inspiring Leader and a Role Model

Leadership behavior has a significant influence on the achievement of goals and the development of the company’s purpose. Leaving aside the obvious ability to steer their companies to profitability, leaders need a constitution that carries them through their day-to-day management, but on top of that they need to be able to give clear, unambiguous guidance to the people they work with, especially in a complex and volatile environment. In order to achieve goals quickly, good leaders should be able to motivate the people around them and spur them on towards their individual and collective targets.

There are certain traits that good leaders have in common, characteristics that will make the difference and conjure something magical in the companies and people they lead. Good leaders:

• empower teams and give them the mandate and responsibility to take decisions,

• bring clarity into the business and prioritize tasks when teams are in doubt,

• create a learning organization in which teams feel safe to dare and learn from failure,

• give constructive feedback to people for them to understand, reflect, and be able to change,

• are empathetic to the needs, feelings, and thoughts of others and are able to orchestrate diverse people from different backgrounds and working units,

• persist in taking care of people and do not let daily operational issues drag them away from it,

• develop and nurture new competencies in the teams, such as embracing change, building relationships, orchestrating supply chains, and challenging the status quo,

• recruit the right people with a can-do-mentality.

2.2 Even the Best Leaders cannot Do it Alone

While leaders play a key role, no transformation of any kind will be successful if there are only leaders, no matter how inspiring and visionary they are. All successful transformations start from the top, but the entire workforce has to clearly understand why it is necessary and what they have to do. In a sustainability transformation, there has to be a change of mindset on top of the requirements for sustainable products or services, support for a more circular economy, more focus on a sustainable supply chain, emissions reductions, as well as equality, inclusivity, and diverse teams internally and among suppliers. That is a lot to change, but all of these will have a positive effect on attracting new talent and like-minded people who actively want to work for companies that have a strong background of sustainability. And in turn, those employees who do not agree with the new vision will sooner or later leave the company.

The magic happens when a forward-looking, modern leader meets and works with people in an organization who are open to sustainability. That is when leaders can truly make a difference by winning the hearts and minds of a willing workforce so that they can start to tackle sustainability-related issues together.

3 Excursion: Inner Development Goals Offer a New Approach to Old Problems

How is it that, despite all the experience, power, technology, money, and knowledge that humankind has accumulated, we still seem unable to defeat the biggest challenges facing us today? Climate change, pollution, mass migration, overpopulation, corruption, disease and pandemics, extremism, slavery, war, terrorism, drug trafficking, hunger, weapons proliferation, species and habitat loss, prejudice and racism, unemployment, water scarcity, antibiotic resistance, human rights abuses, poverty, illiteracy, infant mortality, and inequality.

Simon Anholt, Chair of the Steering Group, Inner Development Goals Initiative

3.1 Are we Able to Defeat the Biggest Challenges Facing us Today?

The Sustainable Development Goals that are referenced throughout this book were created in 2015 as a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. The 17 goals cover a wide range of issues that involve people with different needs, values, and convictions. There is a vision of what needs to happen, but progress has so far been disappointing. An important part of the reason for this is that we lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. In essence, we cannot solve the problems we face with the same mindset that created them in the first place. It was this thinking, backed by extensive research, that led to the creation of the Inner Development Goals (IDG), an initiative that provides a blueprint of the capabilities, qualities, and skills we need in order to achieve the 17 SDGs.

In these interview extracts, Simon Anholt, Chair of the Steering Group, Inner Development Goals Initiative, and Jan Artem Henriksson, the initiative’s Chief Executive Officer, share their thoughts and ideas on how we can effect a change of mindset by developing the inner abilities we now all need to tackle the issues we face. The IDGs are a way to educate, inspire, and empower people to be a positive force for change in society and as such they are directly relevant to company leaders who are seeking to sustainably transform their businesses.

3.2 Collaboration Can Build a Better World

The problem is the fundamental culture of governance: the idea that leaders are only responsible for their own people and their own slice of territory. Today it’s clear that they are responsible for every man, woman, child and animal on the planet; for every inch of the earth’s surface, the atmosphere above it, and the ground beneath their feet. And if they don’t like the sound of that, they shouldn’t be leading anything. In short, all of us—not just leaders—need minds that telescope, not minds that microscope.

Every challenge facing humanity today is caused by human behavior, so if we want to change the world, we have to change ourselves. Yet we still educate people in ways that only made sense before humanity became interdependent, and its problems interconnected. We still encourage and reward behavior that produces local benefits and extraneous harm. We still put competition ahead of collaboration and cooperation, even though the three mix beautifully. We all want to help, but we have so much to learn before our help can be truly productive before we can exercise real agency.

Simon Anholt

3.3 We Need an Updated Human Operating System

What skills do we need to develop to implement the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals more effectively and more quickly? And how can this be achieved at the individual as well as the organizational level? This question is at the core of the Inner Development Goals Initiative.

I don’t believe that the same people that we are today will be able to reach the 17 United Nations SDGs. We need an update on our human operating system to get there. We will not be the same people when we truly collaborate on these goals. There is a blind spot in the SDGs because we’re not looking on the individual and collective inside of our personal skills and the culture that we are creating. That’s why we truly need to use the most effective interventions for human development to help us grow, so we can reach the SDGs within the time frame that we have.

The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) speak about a big ‘us’ perspective, it’s all of us, not just the politicians or the leaders. We all need to embrace a developmental perspective. But the leaders we choose often do not have the best skills and capabilities to collaborate with other people on complex issues. Sometimes we choose people who are very confident or explain things in very black and white terms. That can give us some comfort and a sense of false security. But that will not get us closer to the SDGs. So, we need to choose those leaders or politicians who have more of the qualities that we need globally to succeed.

From the research that I have seen, only a minority of the leaders do that today. It is a huge challenge, but we need wiser, more compassionate, holistic leaders. The good news here is that these skills can be developed. It’s something that we can grow throughout our entire lives with a lifelong learning and growth.

Jan Artem Henriksson

3.4 An Urgent Shift of Perspective from the Private Sector

We’re convinced that building skills and competencies is an essential part of making this crucial shift happen. The overwhelming response to our initiative suggests that we’re on the right track: although the IDGs were only founded just over a year ago, Costa Rica has already become the first country to commit publicly and officially to organizing its public sector around the framework we identified in the first phase of the initiative. We are now talking to several other countries interested in following Costa Rica’s example.

But this isn’t only about countries: we believe that a shift of perspective is urgently needed in the private sector too. In particular, we see opportunities in education and business to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by focusing on inner development. From board members to employees, inner growth must become a top priority for companies. It’s an approach that helps leaders to appreciate a wider range of human perspectives, to understand and benefit from cultural differences, and to perceive people’s true needs in order to build resilient partnerships for cooperation and collaboration. We all need to get fit for the race ahead.

Simon Anholt

3.5 Structural Changes Are Long Overdue

Our aim, via the IDGs, is to create ecosystems that break down barriers between sectors and between people from different backgrounds. We believe that the time for important cultural and structural changes in companies is long overdue, and that they need to start asking the questions, ‘What is the true purpose of companies in an age of global crisis? How can we rethink financial flows in a way that accelerates instead of obstructing our progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals? Where can we recruit the talents, we need to meet the challenges ahead, and how can these talents be best developed?’

Jan Artem Henriksson

3.6 Relate to each Other, and the World

We’re at a moment in history when the future of humanity is in the balance. Our only hope is to focus more on the values and behaviors that bring us together, and less on those that are tearing us apart.

Simon Anholt

4 Leadership and Learning to Make a Difference

There are many shining examples of purpose-driven companies that have understood how they can play a role in actively tackling some of the most pressing issues of the world by pushing for the cultural and structural changes that are necessary. In a sense the timing could not be better in that all players in the ecosystem are pushing in the right direction: consumers, by thinking more carefully about what they buy and who they buy from, are forcing the business world to act more responsibly; widespread and growing concerns about the environment and human rights abuses have resulted in mounting regulations around CO₂ and workers’ rights along supply chains; entire countries and companies have signed up to net-zero scenarios; investors are challenging businesses to focus on long-term and sustainable ambitions when selecting where to allocate their vast financial resources; and young professionals expect their employers to have a clear purpose that ingrains sustainability in everything they do.

These are powerful and compelling forces and good leaders will need to quickly learn how they can be harnessed and put to good use in all areas of business. The “right” leaders can be strong influencers and play prominent roles in the transformation process. However, as well as being technically competent in their fields, good leaders need to learn continuously and be open minded if they are to instigate the transformations that will take their companies into a future focused on sustainability.

The progressive leadership that has been discussed here has influence beyond its immediate surroundings. The beauty of it is that it stretches beyond the boundaries of the company into all kinds of business scenarios, be it with current and potential suppliers, other partners, or the entire ecosystem beyond the four walls of the company. This type of progressive, open-minded, and forward-thinking leadership is precisely what is needed to bring a sense of clarity and urgency to the most pressing issues facing the world. It is the type of leadership that will undoubtedly be found heading each of the more than 2000 businesses and financial institutions that are working with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reduce their emissions in line with climate science (SBT, 2021). The leadership of the many partners and collaborators that make up the We Mean Business Coalition (WMBC, 2022) is also characterized by an outlook that extends beyond their own immediate surroundings, as are the top managers from the hundreds of companies that are making use of the best-in-class climate action initiatives offered by WMBC.

There are only positive outcomes to this type of leadership—companies headed by these people attract and maintain the right talent; they futureproof themselves against sustainability-related legislation; they are more favorable options for investors; and finally, mindful customers prefer to do business with them. All gain, no pain.