Climate Leadership

Leadership matters because leadership is the process by which groups align around the achievement of meaningful and sustainable  goals. However to be effective both for the organisation and the environmental context, leadership has to be purposeful and systemic in its integration and promotion of the sustainable operating space for the organisation. Many contemporary models of leadership remain decontextualized and disconnected from their impact on the broader natural environment. The systemic  recognition of double materiality is therefore essential for the effective climate change leader

Governance matters because boards have a critical role in determining how organisations respond to climate change, biodiversity loss and wider ecological risk. Governance translates environmental purpose into strategy, accountability and organisational action through the oversight of climate and nature-related risks, double materiality, credible targets and transition plans. Effective Climate Change Leadership requires boards to move beyond compliance and short-term shareholder interests towards responsible stewardship, recognising the organisation’s impacts and dependencies on nature and its obligations to communities, future generations and the natural systems on which long-term organisational prosperity depends.

Nature matters because organisations are not separate from the natural environment but embedded within, and fundamentally dependent upon, functioning ecological systems. Climate change and biodiversity loss are interconnected dimensions of a wider sustainability crisis that cannot be addressed through carbon reduction alone. Climate Change Leadership therefore requires an understanding of planetary boundaries, ecological interdependence and the intrinsic as well as instrumental value of nature and the moral obligations of stewardship. This means moving beyond weak sustainability and the mitigation of environmental harm towards strong sustainability, restoration, regeneration and ultimately organisational contribution to planetary flourishing.

Psychology matters because despite the incontestable and overwhelming evidence of our impending climate catastrophe, we filter that information to the point of denial and inaction. Our biases and intuitions are the missing link between a rational appraisal of the data and meaningful action on mitigation and adaptation. Without the active management of our cognitive biases and moral intuitions we will continue to sleepwalk into the climate crisis. Understanding the need for efficacy-based messaging and polarity management comes from a deep immersion indecision-making and bias management.

Business Matters because corporations produce a significant amount of the carbon that fuels anthropogenic global warming and are accountable for this. Corporations are institutions with whom we all engage as employees, customers, consumers and communities and which increasingly need to reflect and support the social and ecological context in which they operate.

Science Matters because it is humanity’s most successful epistemological endeavour that allows us to explain the present and predict the future with an unprecedented accuracy. It is also an activity whose communal and conjectural nature  ensure that many of the biases that mediate inaction at the individual level, are exposed and eliminated.

Coaching Matters because it provides the means and mechanism to fast-track the development of leaders to acquire the skills necessary to influence others towards the collective goal of sustainable and ecologically grounded worldviews. Coaching has the capacity to rapidly build responsible and sustainable leadership capability within individuals and teams to help organisations address the climate crisis.

Learning Matters because insight alone is insufficient for behavioural change. Learning mediates adult development which allows the development of broader and more empathic and inclusive perspectives necessary for the moral development of our species and the resolution of the wicked problems that our ancestral minds have created.

Research Matters because it’s only by using an evidence-based approach that is grounded in theoretical modelling and practice-based research that we can fast track the insights from organisations that are exemplars in climate change leadership to those that are beginning the journey of adaptation. To that end we are currently researching the qualities and capabilities of climate change leaders in organisations that have been independently certified (eg. CDP rating of A/B) as having made significant progress in managing their carbon emissions. Get in touch at info@csaconsulting.biz if you would like to participate.