Why is sustainability important in business recovery?

What defines a good leader? Look for these six qualities

WHAT DEFINES A GOOD LEADER? LOOK FOR THESE SIX QUALITIES

Modern business challenges can require new approaches. Leadership will need to evolve in order to continue to guide organisations in tomorrow's world of work. But what are the characteristics of a good modern leader in the workplace - and how can organisations develop them?

Many studies draw parallels between effective leadership and solid organisational performance. But whether they’re a junior manager or a senior executive, the qualities that leaders need are changing.

Nearly 1,500 HR professionals ranked leadership development as the number one priority for 2025, with managers feeling 'overwhelemed' by the expansion of their responsibilities. In today’s unpredictable world, you must combine traditional leadership skills with new abilities. So, what does an effective modern leader look like?

1. Remember what makes a good leader

Before looking at the new skills future leaders may need, it is worth reflecting on what a leader actually is.

What are the qualities of a good leader? It’s not what you may think.

Being in charge of colleagues does not necessarily make you a ‘leader’. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explains: “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that good leadership is: “Not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it. Especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.”

There may be varying opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of leaders. But overall, most people believe that great leaders motivate their team members to perform their best and achieve common goals.

What traits do you need to achieve this in the modern workplace?

2. Use blended leadership styles for a VUCA world

Stacey Philpot from Deloitte Consulting maintains that the core skills needed historically in leadership roles have remained unchanged.

“These skills allow someone to become a leader faster than their peers. This is even true in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment,” she says.

The core skills for leading in a VUCA environment include:

Pattern recognition
Motivation
Agility
Emotional intelligence
Ability to understand, control and express emotions

This represents psychological assessments of 23,000 senior leaders globally over the past 25 years.

Consider introducing servant leadership:

Leaders need new styles of leadership to deal with changing cultures. Being comfortable with not having the answer and owning failure can create an environment of trust and openness.

Collectively, these behaviours form ‘servant leadership’. The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) defines servant leadership as emphasising behaviours and values such as:

Active listening
Empathy
Leading by example

These are instead of opting for a more authoritative, ‘command-and-control’ leadership style. Leaders create the conditions for team members to excel by displaying vulnerability. But given the stigma around servant leadership, how can organisations encourage it?

How to combat stigma surrounding servant leadership:

Alsu Polyakova, HR Leader for GE Healthcare, says reducing stigma around servant leadership will take a specific strategy. Most importantly frequent performance appraisals for leaders.

“We give leaders lots of opportunities for self-reflection, so they understand how they behave,” she says. GE Healthcare’s most successful leaders help to encourage behavioural change, Polyakova says. The company measures success by how well employees rate leaders on achieving GE Healthcare’s ‘cultural pillars’. These pillars include inspiring trust and empowering employees.

3. Create a culture of trust in the workplace

Gaining workers’ trust is more important than ever. One way to build trust is for leaders to take action on issues such as climate change. 71 percent of employees consider their CEOs’ social awareness as critically important, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Social awareness may yield rich rewards. The Edelman poll shows that workers who trust their employers are far more engaged and remain more loyal than their more sceptical peers.

Leadership styles are clearly changing. The most effective leaders will need to tailor their styles to suit different scenarios, says Professor Sattar Bawany. “Leaders need a broad repertoire of management styles and the wisdom to know when each style should be used,” he says. “In crisis scenarios like cybersecurity breaches, for example, leadership should be authoritarian because the scenario is unstructured.”

4. Adapt your leadership style for different generations

Managers must also balance leadership styles to suit different generations. Modern workplaces will soon house up to five generations under one roof. Therefore, there will be many people with differing preferences on leadership style.

As of 2023, millennials are the biggest group in the UK workforce, at 35 percent. Modern leaders must mix old and new leadership styles that meet the needs of younger generations. Doing so will future proof organisations. However, new leadership approaches cannot come at the expense of alienating older workers.

5. Commit to lifelong learning

With the workplace evolving so rapidly, leaders cannot rely on past experience alone to get by. Ben Farmer, Head of HR at Amazon UK agrees: “Experience is not always synonymous with wisdom and judgement. And naivety doesn’t always engender novel thinking and openness to change.”

Organisations should look for leaders who understand the future as well as those with experience. “Success comes from the ability to combine understanding of exciting, new trends with the experience required to put that knowledge into action,” says Farmer.

But what is the right balance? There is no one-size-fits-all approach when balancing experience with adaptability. Achieving the right balance will mostly depend on the organisation and the sector it operates in.

6. Be conscious of culture

Organisational culture is an important factor. Risk-averse firms may prefer experience over novel thinking. Leaders may be fearful of a backlash from stakeholders should novel thinking fail. To lower risk, companies should seek leaders who use both scientific evidence and intuition when making decisions.

Ultimately, there’s no single blueprint for an effective modern leader. Each organisation must tailor their approach to leadership development. There must be a focus on organisational culture, industry nuances and employee mix.

But above all, leaders should recognise that today’s reality may be old news tomorrow.

For more expert advice, take a look at the following articles:

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null Why is sustainability important in business recovery?

Why is sustainability important in business recovery?

With the end of the COVID-19 lockdown came a new wave of economic uncertainty for businesses. As we battle inflation and staff shortages, how can we ensure organisational sustainability maintains its place on the corporate agenda?

What is organisational sustainability?

Against a backdrop of economic instability, businesses have focused on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments. Attracting and retaining both customers and employees goes hand-in-hand with ESG. Organisational sustainability focuses on reporting our business impacts on the environment.

Why is sustainability in business important?

Organisational sustainability has been proven to attract both customers and talent:

An IBM study found that 71 per cent of consumers said traceability of products is important
The same customers surveyed would pay a premium for brands that provide it.
HSBC’s Made for the Future report found that 24 per cent of organisations said sustainability improves recruitment and retention.

Recent experiences of organisational sustainability

Patxi Zabala is the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Spanish industrial and tech company Velatia. She says that many companies’ sustainability operations have taken a hit due to “survival mode”.

“We have had to make decisions that, economically, are sometimes not entirely sustainable.”

However as Ryan Swenson, Head of Sustainable Development at Australia’s Officeworks, points out: sustainability reduction in some areas does not have to result in an overall reduction in performance.

“Sustainability practices have to be compromised,” he says. In October 2020, Officeworks launched its Positive Difference Plan 2025. The five-year sustainability strategy has continued to progress towards its net zero goals.

How can we build organisational sustainability into economic recovery?

Velatia’s Zabala believes it is important that businesses don’t revert to bad habits as we recover from any crisis. Whether we’re responding to political shifts or economic change, we must learn from the past.

Responding to COVID-19, Zabala claimed: “In some areas, the crisis had a positive impact on more sustainable management. Businesses should consider maintaining these changes well into the future. They should identify their sustainable purpose and its associated profitability.”

He adds: “Public awareness of organisational sustainability will make it easier. We can return to some sustainable practices and develop many others.”

Looking further ahead, what can leaders do to ensure organisational sustainability?

1. Take the chance to change behaviours

Professor Dr Laura Marie Edinger-Schons, Chair of Sustainable Business at Germany’s University of Mannheim, believes that post-pandemic sustainable practices will remain the norm. “Research on sustainable behaviours has shown it is very hard to change habitual behaviours and routines.”

Companies can also look at ways to make commuting more inclusive and sustainable. Organisations should subsidise commute costs and provide alternatives to company cars, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Company vehicles have been shown to increase household vehicle use by 25 per cent. Alternatives like cycling schemes will keep these costs down whilst reducing the company’s carbon footprint.

2. Challenge suppliers to be more sustainable

Businesses can also take the opportunity to revisit supply chains. Reviewing business operations at large can make companies more climate resilient in the long run. What’s more, you can focus on creating a supply chain that is fairer to society and individuals.

IKEA’s supplier code of conduct, for example, requires that suppliers meet their standards in areas including:

Working hours
Employee benefits and wages
Business ethics
The environment
Child labour
Discrimination

These initiatives are making businesses all over the world more transparent. In turn, these changes will lead to more companies needing to identify their own supply chain risks. The Sustainability Consortium is helping us to achieve this. Its commodities mapping tool assesses the risks and how they can be addressed.

3. Encourage sustainable behaviour at all levels

Within business, it’s not only the C-suite who are responsible for encouraging change. “It’s everybody’s responsibility to question the status quo. We must rebuild and shape our economy for the future. And for those privileged few of us who are not facing existential threats, I would say that our responsibility is even higher,” says Edinger-Schons of the University of Mannheim.

But the responsibility to rebuild sustainably does not lie with businesses alone. Governments have a role to play here too – something that we’re already seeing in Spain. The country has received €140 billion from NextGenerationEU, the European Union’s recovery plan. This has gone towards Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

4. Make sustainability initiatives part of your purpose

It’s easy to see how investing in green industries creates more jobs. But what about the businesses whose existence was never based around these goals?

For example, investment banks and wealth managers are creating sustainability-focused portfolios. What about those who have little need for interaction with sustainable business practices?

“Prospective employees want the company they work for to be purpose-driven and to feel their sustainability values align with the values of the company,” explains Megan Kashner, Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Social Impact at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

“As a result, we’re seeing an increase in jobs that are about sustainable supply chains. Organisations are no longer paying lip service. They’re investing in clean energy, diversity, equity and inclusion, and sustainable finance.”

5. Include sustainable hiring policies in your organisation

It’s also fair to expect companies to proactively change their hiring policies. “The last few years have highlighted the need for sustainable models, providing rapid responses to the most critical situations. In fact, many companies have demonstrated exemplary behaviour. They've responded to the community's productive, health, economic, material and social needs.”

Whether it’s roles in fighting climate change or sustainability-forward businesses, more jobs are coming. Zabala concludes that intelligent organisations understand this opportunity.

“They are reorienting their business models, investing millions to create new news and make a positive impact on their entire value chain.” Gain competitive advantage in your business by reducing waste and committing to sustainable business practices.