The battle for leadership

If sustainability is all about helping others (strengthening our bonds to those with whom we share the ecosystem), then what should leadership in sustainability look like? Is it about managing the internal politics of where we live and work or is it about rising above politics (i.e. the battle for power) and modeling sustainable behavior?

The best leaders I have seen exhibit a majority of the following 12 traits (what I refer to as V+):

• Vision and the ability to inspire a team to make that vision a reality
• Knowledge of the team (e.g. skills, passions and growth potential of members) and of the tools at the team’s disposal
• Authority to create conditions so that members of the team are empowered to utilize their skills and tools within limits upheld by the leader
• Access to resources to keep the team healthy and their most important needs satisfied (this keeps the team happy)
• Self-awareness of the leader’s own limitations
• Maturity to not let his/her limitations get in the way of team success
• Intelligence making it possible to accept varied input and understand how it all relates to the tasks at hand
• Curiosity making the leader actually want all that input
• Flexibility to change the teams’s approach when intelligence convinces you that you are no longer moving towards your goals
• Focus on important goals, creating an ability to be decisive and move forward even if it hurts less important goals
• Strength so that when faced with difficult obstacles you and your team have the energy and desire to move them, or at least go around them
• Accountability, a willingness to take responsibility for failure, and a desire to attribute success to the team members that contributed to it

The poorest leaders I have known, though, pooh-pooh this list as a Boy Scout fantasy. “Naive” I have heard them whisper. In their world, leadership and power are synonymous. And leaders who equate their position with power often exhibit a much shorter list of attributes (what I call SAS):

• Size, having more than others in terms of money, muscle, height, breasts, title and sometimes heft
• Attitude, being able to charm or dominate a conversation, act entitled to power, and when threatened belittle or destroy all who approach
• Sex-appeal which grows from size and attitude, and requires that you not be ugly (you don’t necessarily have to be beautiful, but you can’t be repulsive)

Leadership based on SAS is leadership constantly waging war. It is leadership won by those with the strongest and often most narcissistic egos. The goals of the SAS-leader’s war are to maintain power by increasing size, doubling-down on entitlement and secrecy, and perfecting sex-appeal. Thus the SAS-leader survives by using the resources of the organization to enrich and protect himself. Only after that does he push the team towards goals that may move the organization ahead.

In a SAS-led organization, battles of ego rage behind the walls. Those battles promote CYA (cover your ass)  and siloed behaviors. Usually employees without the SAS gene stop giving their best either because that would expose them to ego-battles they’d rather avoid, or because of resignation that their contributions will be stolen by egoists seeking to increase their perceived size and contribution. Constant defensive posturing makes it hard to reach out and create new relationships.

In terms of leading an organization to sustainability, SAS just doesn’t cut it. Sustainability is more about the importance of connections than it is the strengthening of any individual ego or wealth. If Ghandi’s admonition to “be the change you want to see in the world” has any validity, then a SAS-based leader cannot lead an organization to sustainability because that leader cannot model what sustainability looks like, not without a conversion to V+ leadership.

In a group led by V+ leaders, creating new connections and improving the efficiency of exchanges between those connections are instead rewarded. And in my definition, making such connections is the true key to sustainability (see The Seven C’s of Sustainability).

Conversion from SAS to V+ leadership may define the critical path to sustainability. V+ leaders do not have to be “nice,” but they do have to recognize that their strength comes from the entire team and that their role is to use their V+ attributes to enlighten, empower and invigorate that team to reach out and create new connections that actually stabilize the group.

V+ leaders will also always have a need for some staff with the SAS gene… they are particularly helpful in one-on-one battles such as in the court room or to fend off hostility, but the vision that doing better in the world means doing better for the world must come from something more than ego.