ACTivity/ Testing Your Leadership

Manila, 22 September 2021 — Will you put your leadership to the test?

Story

It happened in 2015. After years of preparations and countless discussions, acrimonious at times, our world came together to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. A milestone achievement for humanity and the planet, marking the start of a good story of which the outcome is, alas, uncertain. The story of sustainability has since turned into a drama of epic proportions, a play on a scale not seen before. While positive goals and intentions are plenty, there is no assurance of a happy ending.

In recent years, the plot of the story has thickened and progress has remained slow. That has frustrated all of those who care about sustainability, and that means many or most of us around the world. Does that include you? From the goals, commitments, and actions you have seen at the global, country, and local levels, how successful do you think we are going to be? Come on, give yourself an honest answer. It’s not going as well as it should. Not at all! We’re way behind to achieve the SDGs and deliver on the Paris climate targets. 

Meanwhile, politicians keep looking at each other as they hesitate to do what is necessary, and find excuses for our collective unsatisfactory performance. Do you feel the nagging frustration that I feel inside myself about why we’re not seeing more positive change happen when we have the science, the solutions, and the money? Going beyond the media headlines, have you thought this through for yourself, why this challenge is much harder than we thought?

Challenge

Well, the answer is staring us in the face. If it’s not a lack of science, technology, and money, what is it then? Don’t we have enough people? No, not that either. We have plenty of people in the world who want a better outcome. So what is it then? This week’s headlines give us a clue of our unspoken problem. It’s about a lack of collaboration, and the deficit of trust that keeps us in our sorry status quo. 

“Now the trust is missing,” commented a member of the European Parliament after the announcement of the Aukus pact to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia. “It is a question of how serious and how reliable Australia is," he continued, referring to the breach of the existing contract with France. Trust seems in short supply these days, and the Aukus case just being one of many examples. Days later, UN Secretary-General António Guterres remarked on the sorry state of our world during the opening of the UN General Assembly. “To restore trust and inspire hope, we need cooperation,” he said.

I believe that Guterres put his finger on the real challenge that we face to bring the story of sustainability to a happy ending. From my own experience in working with people around the world on the water security crisis, I learned a valuable lesson. The water crisis is much less about water than it is about people. The real problem, I realized, is that people, even highly trained professionals, find it difficult to collaborate with others whom they don’t know and don’t trust. It takes leadership to overcome that deficit of trust. And we are desperately short of leaders, at all levels.

Question

For professionals, politicians, and activists, it’s easy to keep focusing their effort on being right, saying what needs to be done, and looking good in the process. Our world is full of that: conference after conference, and webinar after webinar. What’s hard to do is to make actual change happen. It’s hard because most people lack the skills to lead change, and are afraid to fail and look bad. So they are also prone to saying that they know what leadership is all about… when they actually don’t.

Now, you might ask, why am I still hopeful and optimistic when we’re surrounded by a pandemic and multiple crises in our world? The reason is simple. I believe that people can change, and that they can learn how to lead change, starting with themselves, then with others around them in their workplace, and then in our world that is full of crises and opportunities. My belief is based on what I have seen in the people I worked with in countries and organizations around the world. Change is possible. What it comes down to, however, are two challenges. First, if you are willing to learn to lead, and second, where to start. The first of these two is the hardest. After that, we can make progress.

Over the past couple of years, my friends and I have created a challenge to grow more leaders, starting by working with a small team of colleagues who are, like you, enthusiastic, curious, and open-minded about change and learning how to do it. We use a 21st-century approach to lead change by working together, building trust and collaboration as we go. Let me challenge you to put your leadership to the test. Show us that you will lead a positive change in your workplace, in 6 to 8 weeks’ time. Not by yourself, but by inviting 3 colleagues to make it happen with you. We call it the #Grow3Leaders Challenge, and joining is free of charge — not free of commitment. Are you up for the challenge? Then request to join. Let’s make change happen around us first, so that we can together create trust and hope that the global story of sustainability will also get a happy ending.