Some Good News for Earth Day: Progress on Sustainable Leadership

Transitioning an organization toward a new future is complex and messy—and the much-needed pivot to sustainable business is no exception. It involves bold decision-making, difficult trade-offs, and uncomfortable conversations. And while talk is easy, true change doesn’t happen overnight.

The good news is that there are now glimmers of hope that companies are committing to taking the first step forward in this complicated journey.

Every year we help place thousands of leaders into C-suite and board positions, and this gives us front-row seats into what organizations are looking for in their next executive. Our latest research shows that organizations around the world are increasingly looking for CEOs, CxOs, and other senior leaders who have what it takes to move the dial on sustainability.

In 2015, just 9% of the role specifications we developed for our global clients included sustainability experience or skills as a key leadership requirement. Today, it stands at 53%—a testament to the global awakening that corporations around the world have had around the link between sustainability and long-term success.

How to Find Sustainable Leaders

As a top global leadership advisory firm, RRA has seen first-hand the difference that having the right leader—or leaders—at the helm can make when it comes to sustainability.

Effective sustainable leadership turns lofty aspirations into tangible achievements. With great leadership, the whole organization coalesces around a new vision and purpose, and is given the tools and resources they need to deliver against sustainability targets. Without it, good intentions become meaningless words—or worse, “greenwashing.”

Infusing sustainability across your leadership teams isn’t just a question of finding a Chief Sustainability Officer (although this, of course, helps). The bottom line is that every person on your executive team must help progress the agenda by infusing sustainability across their functions.

So, how can you find the executives you need to progress sustainability? What exactly should you be looking for? And how can you attract the right people to help accelerate your journey?

Based on our experience, we share four key ideas.

1. Understand the mindsets and skill sets to seek. Sustainability must be incorporated into the role description of every senior executive position. Through our work with the United Nations Global Compact, we were able to set out the specific traits leaders need to deliver tangible sustainability results. You can find out more about them here. But in short, it all starts with having the right mindset. And then it’s about having a long-term vision, the ability to cut through complexity, the courage to disrupt business models, and the passion to bring everyone else along on the journey.?
2. Assess candidates against the ‘what,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why.’ Your focus on sustainability should flow through all your interview, assessment, and selection processes. In our experience, there are three key factors to consider when reviewing candidates: their track record (what have they accomplished?); their competencies (how have they accomplished this?); and their mindset (why were they driven to accomplish this?) Naturally, you’ll want to go beyond a candidate’s own self-assessment here to also include carefully selected references and psychometric testing.
3. Be honest about your sustainability journey. Finding the right candidate starts with being honest about the organization’s hiring needs. To attract the right people at the right time, be clear about where your organization is on its sustainability journey—whether it is nascent, evolving, or already well integrated—and how sustainability is embedded into the objectives of the company?as a whole and each business unit or function. Be clear about how the successful candidate will contribute to achieving these?objectives, and?how they will be expected to embed sustainability KPIs into their daily work.
4. Prime your internal pipelines. Don’t overlook the need to build your bench of next-generation sustainable leaders—those sitting a few rungs below the C-suite who will one day build upon and accelerate the progress you’ve made today. When identifying your internal pipelines, it’s important to not get overly hung-up on sustainability experience. It’s more important to find people who have the right level of passion and commitment, and then invest in their growth and development, exposing them to the crucible experiences that will allow them to develop their sustainability muscles.

Earth Day provides an important moment for us to not only celebrate how far we’ve come but also to understand how much further we have to go. Updating your hiring processes, as well as your promotion and succession strategies, is a critical first step in your sustainability journey. As we often know, the first step can be the hardest, but the most important if we want to deliver real change.

So, how will you rethink your approach to leadership in the year ahead? Will you help us increase the proportion of role specifications mentioning sustainability so that one day soon it is a standard requirement of every executive position?