Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is an innovative training programmes in corporate leadership for sustainability. Much is being said about how business can become more sustainable but without a profound change in today’s leaders understanding, attitudes and engagement sustainability will remain just another fade concept. What is required is a leadership programme that challenges participants’ understanding of what sustainable business really means, encourages them to learn from real world cases and raises their leadership skills and capabilities in ways that change can effectively happen in the organization. Beyond Leadership takes business leaders out of their comfort zone and encourages them to think innovative about new models, new technologies and unexpected solutions that will raise the corporations’ sustainability game.

The Programme

Beyond Leadership’s main objective is to promote sustainability into business practices by equipping leaders with the knowledge and insights about key sustainable develop issues and enhance the personal leadership skills required to promote organizational change towards sustainability. The learning process is built in a way that participants are encouraged to reframe social and environmental issues not just as risks but also as sizeable opportunities. LEAD has delivered two sessions of this programme in partnership with LEAD Brazil and LEAD India and partner organisation Future Considerations.The programme is a fine balance between leadership development and sustainability and is structured around a three phase leadership journey

Phase 1 Preparation

Preparation and setting up teams

Phase 1 seeks to promote participant’s personal leadership development and sustainability knowledge enhancement. Through a combination of practical assignments and online tools, participants start to gain self-awareness of their leadership style and their experience in the workplace. Through inputs from experts in this field they also increase their knowledge about sustainability and how it relate to their business.

Sustainability Field Challenge

Participants work to overcome a real sustainable development challenge in an emerging economy such as Brazil, India, China or any other country where LEAD has a presence. During one week participants have a total immersion experience in a field project and work with a LEAD Fellow applying their business and financial expertise to identify and overcome obstacles and improve project’s performance. All field projects relate to sustainable development (e.g. climate change, renewable energy, bottom of pyramid, ecosystems services) and allow participants to think creatively about new business models, innovation, risks and opportunities. By working together in multicultural teams, in a challenging environment and with tight deadlines, participants not only have a chance to develop their leadership skills but also see the ‘real-world’ from which new markets, suppliers, threats and opportunities might come from. With guidance from the learning facilitator, participants practice leadership and project management roles, and test the new methodologies and tools they will use during the Business Project.

Phase 2 Sustainable Business Project

Back in the workplace, participants put the acquired knowledge and skills into practice on their own work environment by carrying out a specific business project. The business projects are chosen by a senior business leader and reflect opportunities identified by the organisation to innovate in the area of sustainability. With the support of this senior business leader, the group is responsible to develop, implement and deliver a real-life project (e.g. a new product or service). Participants alternate roles and each one is given the opportunity to lead the project for 3-4 weeks and experience driving a diverse, mulit-location team.

Phase 3

Closing Conference

The final phase of the programme focuses on presenting the outcomes and results of the business and field projects to senior leaders within the organisation. Furthermore it allows the participants to reflect and complete their learning process, recognise what commitments they have to the organisation given their experience on the programme and to identify next steps for their future.

Post programme

Support provided to participants to integrate the experience into their day to day work through final coaching calls. This phase also provide participants with final evaluation and feedback on their performance post programme