Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
A renewed search for authenticity has also accompanied this new spirit, which
has sometimes enticed researchers to seek examples of genuinely transformative and
inspiring leaders from the recent and sometimes quite distant past. In India, Mahatma
Gandhi is often cited as a leader whose moral integrity, critiques of industrialism
and colonialism, and advocacy of equality, decentralized power and small-scale local
economic development was summed up by the term 'sarvodaya' or 'welfare for all'
(Rath, 2010). There are earlier figures from India's history, particularly Kautilya,
author of
Arthasastra
and the
Edicts
of King Ashoka, who has received some attention
recently as an exemplar or guide for a sustainability leadership whether in business,
society or government that can be trusted and valued (Alexander and Buckingham,
2011; Narayanan, 2013). The 'common good' is central in their philosophy and
teachings but it often has to be cultivated and taught for it does not always come
naturally to people. From this, Alexander and Buckingham (2011) draw three
important leadership lessons especially relevant to contemporary business practice:
•
the need to cultivate inner qualities such as self-discipline through education;
•
the need to empathize and listen to people at all levels;
•
the need to reflect upon the consequences of decisions and actions and alter
them if necessary.
In addition to the above, authentic leaders will need to develop and articulate a
positive moral framework of values and processes by which these values can be
demonstrated and implemented. Thus, leading by example becomes an important
element of authentic leadership - 'walking the talk' - which will enable leaders to
nurture emotional, cognitive and moral development among others whose own growth
in self-awareness will render their 'followship' purposive, informed, knowing,
relational and transparent (Avolio and Gardner, 2005). Authentic leaders for
sustainability will also need to work by definition with complexity and uncertainties,
which for Metcalf and Benn (2013) will require them to acquire 'extraordinary
abilities'. They write:
These are likely to be leaders who can read and predict through complexity,
can think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive
organizational change and can manage emotion appropriately. In essence, leaders
and leadership is a key interpreter of how the complexity of the wider complex
adaptive systems environment of the organization 'links' internally to the
organization, and this link is a powerful mediator for successful implementation
of sustainability, or may even be an expression of it. Leaders that do this will
have to use the ability to navigate through complex environments, an element
of complex problem solving that we are still endeavouring to describe.
(2013: 381)
Leadership and the upside of down
The Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon (2002, 2006) argues, like
many others, that the world is currently facing a convergence of multiple stresses,
which is leading to changes that could quite possibly engulf us. It is in these threats
of catastrophe, however, that opportunities for change and renewal lie, if only we
