Evolving Leadership for Collective Wellbeing

Lessons for Implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Shanah Trevenna, Shana Rappaport, Seana Lowe Steffen, Jamie Rezmovits, Seana Lowe Steffen, Jamie Rezmovits

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787439986
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

History was made when the United Nations published Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and world leaders stepped up to pledge unifying commitments to secure a sustainable future where all life can thrive." Now, we the people—the world's individuals, organizations, and communities that have been championing the shared vision of a sustainable future—need access to the best leadership guidance available to build on the successes of past efforts and advance breakthrough progress.

Evolving Leadership for Collective Wellbeing: Lessons for Implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals provides that guidance. This collection is a go-to resource for individuals wishing to heighten leadership effectiveness through access to vanguard theory and practice. It highlights stories and insights from leadership practitioners and scholars around the world, in the process offering invaluable insights into diverse lessons, models, and practices, and it offers case and place-based chapters that bridge theory and practice to empower diverse actors around the world.

As the Agenda acknowledges, The future of humanity and of our planet lies in our hands.... It will be for all of us to ensure that the journey is successful and its gains irreversible. Evolving Leadership for Collective Wellbeing is essential reading not only for leaders and leadership scholars, but also for anyone eager to face the Agenda 's challenge head on.

PART I

EVOLVED LEADERSHIP FOR A
SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

1

THE EMERGENCE OF RESTORATIVE LEADERSHIP

Seana Lowe Steffen

The consensus agreement of all 193 member countries of the United Nations to adopt the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development on September 25, 2015, was historic. A plan for universal action, it is a stirring pledge that inspires belief in the best of all possibilities for humanity and the planet that we call home. Composed of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets, the Agenda charts a global path toward a balanced future where all life thrives. The unprecedented agreement is the outcome of countless acts of restorative leadership, from grassroots to government, and reflects a global awakening to our universality: “The future of humanity and of our planet lies in our hands” (United Nations, 2015).

At the same time as world leaders gathered in New York City to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), on the other side of the Atlantic, the B Corp movement was launching its official expansion to the United Kingdom. B Corps, which number in the thousands, are businesses emboldened by the mission of the not-for-profit B Lab to certify as standard bearers of the movement to redefine business as a force for good. Unilever CEO Paul Polman, who was in New York as a member of the UN Global Compact, took time out of UN activities to broadcast a YouTube message. Sharing his hopes and sentiments, Polman described the B Corp movement as “an important part of the shift toward a more inclusive purpose-driven economy which is unquestionably needed” (B Corp UK, 2015).

Leaders like Paul Polman and leadership teams like that of B Lab reflect an emergent trend in leadership as individuals, organizations, and communities answer a uniquely twenty-first century call from sustainability metrics and social movements worldwide. Together, they represent an awakened and aware leadership responding to what has become a pivotal question for all sectors and all societies: How do we bring out the best of our diverse humanity to ensure a sustainable future? It is the central question that informs restorative leadership and guides each aspect of its impact on the world. This chapter introduces the research-based guiding framework of restorative leadership and illustrates several principles in practice across government, business, and not-for-profit settings that include B Lab and certified B Corps like Biomimicry 3.8, the UN 2030 Agenda process, and the NGO World Pulse.

RESTORATIVE LEADERSHIP

Bringing out the best of our diverse humanity to ensure a sustainable future is the leadership challenge and opportunity at this time in the evolutionary story of humanity. It is the design question and the leadership imperative yet to be realized. Thankfully, there are emerging leadership distinctions that reveal what is possible for locally to globally resonant impact. For example, it is distinct to lead communities and organizations trust themselves and each other enough to examine and consciously abandon centuries-old social norms that have become incongruent with universal values; it is distinct to lead such that individuals and communities and organizations are inspired to engage in tens of millions of small acts that collectively transform livelihoods and bio-regions; and it is distinct to lead for unprecedented inclusivity and collaboration such that universally relevant risk is transformed to hopeful possibility.

At once ancient and modern, restorative leadership is an emergent framework that captures the nature of these emerging distinctions in order to guide us to fulfill our evolutionary potential. Restorative leadership has been discerned through a grounded theory process analyzing data from individual interviews, participant observation, and primary source media. Over 40 individual, organizational, and community case studies were chosen purposively for their record of positive outcomes on global sustainability and collective wellbeing. Some have been clients. Through years of watching, listening, and reading, the emergent phenomenon of restorative leadership can best be described as a holistic approach to leadership that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life and acts for the highest benefit to all. Striving to do no harm and to heal the earth, our communities, and ourselves, restorative leadership cultivates the best and most balanced expression of universal values and natural laws.

PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE

Restorative leadership is visionary, courageous, and infinitely creative in generating yet unfulfilled possibilities. Because it reflects a holistic perspective on leading and living, empowered action is accessible to anyone anywhere, starting wherever we are and with whatever we face. It is an approach to leadership that compels a level of positive impact unimaginable at earlier times, made possible by scaling across networks of connectivity with unwavering commitment and heart-centered resolve.

As an engaged way of being and doing that restores balance, restorative leadership embodies a sensibility of significance beyond oneself, one’s community, and one’s organization. There is a quality of remembering what has been forgotten and fulfilling on life’s ultimate purpose. The effort to fulfill the highest potential for the highest good, while doing no harm and healing, reveals that there are several underlying principles reflected by restorative leadership in action.

The World is an Interdependent Web

As the world is an integrated whole, each action and inaction impacts. Each choice that we make as humans with our unavoidable influence on the web of life impacts the present and future. That capacity for influence reflects the innate leadership potential of restorative leadership. Each of us is uniquely positioned and endowed to have a positive impact that no one else can have.

Genius and Goodness Abound

Restorative leadership demonstrates a fundamental belief in human potential and faith in basic goodness. Humanity is replete with good hearts that care deeply and want to make the world a better place. Collective intelligence, innate knowledge, and universal wisdom are readily available with the guidance integral for a thriving balance.

Everything is Possible

In this world of infinite potential, wondrous outcomes are available with sustained vision and creativity. Restorative leadership orients toward a vast horizon of possibility and consistently evolves life’s highest unfolding.

While these principles undergird restorative leadership generally, the data suggest that each gives rise to particular aligned practices for demonstrating restorative leadership in action. For example, because the world is an interdependent web of life, restorative leadership strives to:

• take the long view;
• be highly intentional with life’s impact; and
• leverage the interconnection for cascading benefit.

From a belief that genius and goodness abound, practicing restorative leadership means to:

• ask and listen, align, and co-create;
• scale across shared values; and
• go net generous.

And with a foundation that everything is possible, restorative leadership works to:

• create eddies of possibility by example;
• transform circumstances to aligned momentum; and
• live and learn the guiding questions.

This chapter will focus on three of the practices that are highly illustrative of restorative leadership principles in action.

THE WORLD IS AN INTERDEPENDENT WEB: TAKE THE LONG VIEW

For most, restorative leadership originates with an awakening to or a foundational understanding of the age-old insight and scientific fact that the world is an interdependent web of life and that the life cycle on Earth extends into deep time: both past and future. The past that we have to learn from is what Janine Benyus, founder of the certified B Corp Biomimicry 3.8, describes as, “3.8 billion years of brilliant, time-tested solutions” through life’s evolution (J. Benyus, personal communication, July 23, 2010). The future that we have to consider is best illustrated by the cultural practice of the Haudenosaunee Confederation, or Iroquois, who “consider the impact on the seventh generation” when making decisions (Haudenosaunee, 2017).

Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, who was chair of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development that first introduced the idea of sustainable development in 1987, describes the perspective of leadership needed at this time:

Leadership always means taking the long view, inspired by our common needs and a clear sense of shared responsibility for taking the necessary action. In our time, it means thinking even further ahead than leaders had to do one or two generations ago. Now we have the evidence to show us that our human activities, the footsteps of our own time, will affect negatively the lives and choices we leave to future generations in a potentially disastrous way, due to our own overstepping of planetary boundaries. We face a moral challenge to act and to act in time to protect the planet Earth and the livelihood for new generations. (G. Brundtland, personal communication, April 25, 2012).

That moral challenge that Brundtland describes is what compels the moral courage to engage in restorative leadership, whether demonstrated by the transnational leadership that launched the SDGs or the cross-sector leadership that is transforming business. The foundational principle of interdependence and the practice of taking the long view is embedded in the B Corp movement. As B Lab co-founder Andrew Kassoy states, “Having people behave and having leaders behave ethically in the recognition that their decisions and their actions have consequences because we are all interdependent, with an eye towards not themselves but the betterment of the whole society, is what we need now” (A. Kassoy, personal communication, May 17, 2013).

The B Corp movement may be the most important movement of the twenty-first century given the widespread impacts of business on the planet and the vast potential for business to be a force for good. Jay Gilbert, the founding voice for B Lab, left his US$250 million company in pursuit of the vision of a shared and durable prosperity for all. “B” is for “benefit,” and together with B Lab’s co-founders Bart Houlahan and Andrew Kassoy, Jay is a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in recognition of the global benefits from B Lab’s efforts. A certified B Corporation is to business what USDA Organic certification is to food. To become a B Corp, a business submits itself to a rigorous third-party assessment comprising the highest standards for social and environmental performance.

Collectively, B Corps lead a growing global movement of people using business to solve social and environmental problems across 50 countries and 130 industries around the world. The collective impact of their systems approach includes driving impact investment to companies doing well by doing good and establishing laws protecting businesses that want to serve triple bottom line interests of people, planet, and profit.

Because the world is an integrated whole, business is powerfully positioned in the nested interdependencies of the environment, society, and economy to take the long view and act with both current and future generations in mind. The emergence of this leadership role for business reflects a return to what has been forgotten about the inherently purpose-driven roots of being a company: to come together in the life-affirming exchange of meeting needs and sharing bread. To be a certified B Corp like Biomimicry 3.8 or Unilever’s recent acquisition Seventh Generation is to institutionalize restorative leadership. If a business passes those highest standards to become a certified B Corp, the business signs the B Corp Declaration of Interdependence (B Corporation, n.d.) committing to strive for a global economy where business is a force for good and to operate from beliefs:

• That we must be the change we seek in the world.
• That all business ought to be conducted as if people and place mattered.
• That, through their products, practices, and profits, businesses should aspire to do no harm and benefit all.
• To do so requires that we act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations.

GENIUS AND GOODNESS ABOUND: ASK AND LISTEN, ALIGN, AND CO-CREATE

Embracing an ethic of community, restorative leadership strives to do no harm, to serve collective wellbeing, and to bring the highest benefit to all. It is leadership that is community-minded, engaging networks to forward and sustain hopeful possibilities. Inviting, listening for, and building from local and innate knowledge, both around and within, results in innovative and wondrous outcomes. The genius of collective intelligence is widespread and available with wise guidance when we trust in human and natural communities. In essence, as Meg Wheatley says, “Whatever the problem, community is the answer” (personal communication, May 17, 2011). As a fundamental practice of restorative leadership, the participatory approach to engage genius is astoundingly simple: ask and listen, align, and co-create.

The universal commitment of all the world’s nations to the SDGs was the result of unprecedented listening, aligning, and co-creating. To get to that moment when, “Never before have world leaders pledged common action and endeavor across such a broad and universal policy agenda” (UN, 2015) took patient and persevering restorative leadership emboldened by what is so evidently possible and so significantly at stake. It was a success made possible by standing on the shoulders of widespread community genius and decades of Millennium Development Goal progress. In service to the highest benefit to all, two years of intensive engagement with people around the world, and listening particularly to the voices of the most vulnerable, resulted in breakthrough ideas like “common but differentiated responsibilities” and reaching those “furthest behind first” (UN, 2015).

Globally, those furthest behind tend to be women. An innovator in the space of women’s empowerment is the World Pulse digital media network, which was founded by Jensine Larsen to empower every woman and girl to believe in the power of her voice and to use it to build a world where all life thrives. Believing that digital technology is the fastest route to uniting and empowering women, World Pulse is a growing network of 25,000 active members in over 190 countries that connect from internet cafes in conflict zones to cell phones in rural villages to boardrooms in Fortune 500 companies.

With its community-centered approach, World Pulse engages network members to forward and sustain hopeful possibilities locally to globally. Larsen and World Pulse demonstrate restorative leadership through their mission and methodology. “In our theory of change, step number one is ‘invite,’ and you have to ask the question. You have to specifically put a call out to women about whatever issue or topic because too often women don’t necessarily think it’s for them or that their opinion matters […] So you have to put out a special call saying, ‘We want to hear from women specifically on this’” (J. Larsen, personal communication, September 25, 2015). The World Pulse experience of feeling witnessed and valued inspires members to self-authorize for the benefit of their communities and the unmuting of women’s leadership potential everywhere. Jensine describes the World Pulse participatory practice as, “[…] crowdsourcing the feminine intelligence of the planet” (J. Larsen, personal communication, September 25, 2015). World Pulse channels those voices and solutions to influential forums and decision-makers globally to impact initiatives benefiting all women – and with that, the state of the world.

Neema Namadamu, a disability activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was empowered by her World Pulse experience and training to launch women-only Internet centers in the DRC and to build an online movement of hundreds of “Hero Women” (“Maman Shujaa” in Swahili) speaking out on World Pulse. In response...