Sustainable Leadership:

What does it take? 

December 29th - Edition #16

Experience has taught me that key leadership practices are around values, vision, innovation, trust and leading from the heart. Declaring your values commits you to live by them, vision aligns a team and a purpose, innovation can be expressed as "your license to operate" in the future, trust is what makes people wholeheartedly  follow you, leading from the heart is essentially understanding that we lead the "whole human being".

If you look at those practices through a Sustainability lens, they gain an entire new light, and one will be saying: "Values? More than ever!" "Vision? more than ever!" and so on. In my view ,the trigger to show an outstanding sustainability leadership is simply the "motivation to prioritise Sustainability". As it happened in the first stages of growing Safety awareness, the first leaders to give a step forward were those truly concerned with the harm caused to so many colleagues and families. They prioritise Safety, create standards and followers happen.

Fortunately, many Sustainable leadership examples in the corporate world (Paul Polman, Emmanuel Faber, Rose Macario, Jesper Brodin, to quote a few) are becoming references for us all and followers are happening. There is an underlying trait in them all – courage to take the lead.

This is the last message of 2019. If you want to have a look at every message from this year, here is the link.

Wish you all a fantastic and sustainable 2020 and… have a great and impactful week!

Nuno Moreira da Cruz

Executive Director
Center for Responsible Business and Leadership
Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics

The Center for Responsible Business & Leadership has the main purpose of contributing for Sustainability and Responsible Leadership to become part of the “way we do things in our planet”. Find out more here.

"Have a Great and Impactful Week!" is the weekly newsletter from CATÓLICA-LISBON's Center for Responsible Business & Leadership. You can subscribe to "Have a Great and Impactful Week!" here. 

"Have a Great and Impactful Week!" is sent out every Sunday at 5PM, bringing new insights on the world of corporate responsibility, sustainability and responsible leadership. It is often signed by the Center's Executive Director, Nuno Moreira da Cruz.