Leadership for Sustainability
" I absolutely love it. Out of all of the different sustainability podcasts I listen to I’d recommend it to anyone working in sustainability." Libby Kerman, Sustainability Manager, Lincolnshire Housing Partnership. Want to get more colleagues supporting sustainability – and not just paying lip service to the idea but getting actively involved in making change happen? Most sustainability leaders focus on trying to build more persuasive arguments, instead of building more effective relationships. And that’s a problem. Even though they may not talk about it, four out of five people are concerned about the climate and nature crises, and do want to take action – if only they felt able to. But stronger arguments don’t make people feel more able to act. More effective relationships do. When you connect with colleagues over what really matters to them, you grow your network of active allies and work together better – and that’s exactly what you need to make change happen. In the Leadership for Sustainability podcast, we help you develop active allies and work together better so that you can make change happen: 🌍 Experience from 20+ years of leading on sustainability ourselves and advising others. 👥 Insights from psychology that shape our approach to sustainability leadership. 🗺️ Models and approaches we have developed and adapted, that you can apply in your work. Listen every month for rich insights and practical advice from our experienced team and our special guests – along with recorded highlights from our events for sustainability leaders.
Episodes
How do you actually make change happen? What’s the right balance between collaboration and competition? How important is it to convince people about the importance of sustainability?
Last year we (Osbert, Morag and Rich, co-founders of Realise Earth) headed for the hills of Westmoreland to camp, walk and talk – to see if we could pool our varied experiences of sustainability leadership to identify, and overcome, the fundamental chal...
Discover how Leadership for Sustainability can help you make change happen.
Daniella Vega is Senior Vice President of Health and Sustainability with Ahold Delhaize, a Dutch-Belgian multinational retail and wholesale holding company.
Daniella talks with Osbert about this unusual role and the synergies between reducing emissions and improving health. She also talks about leading on Project Ocean, getting rid of single use plastic, as Group Director of Sustainability at the UK retailer Selfridge.
Listen for in...
“It’s no longer sufficient to think about sustainability through the climate lens. The challenge and the exciting thing now is really grappling with the interconnectedness of the biodiversity crisis and the opportunity and necessity of the circular economy.”
In this episode I interview Sam Gardner, Head of Climate Change & Sustainability with Scottish Power, and formerly Head of Policy at WWF Scotland. In both these roles Sam ha...
How do you get started as a brand new sustainability manager? Libby Kerman stepped into the newly created role of sustainability manager with Lincolnshire Housing Partnership just a year after university. Now, two years on, she reflects on what she’s achieved and learned.
Libby talks about:
- the achievements she’s most proud of
- who and what helped her succeed
- tackling her next big task: sustainability reporting
Listen for i...
Courage is identified by the Inner Development Goals as one the key skills needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
It takes courage to go against the flow. It takes courage to say things others don't want to hear. It takes courage to innovate and do things differently.
That’s why, if you’re leading on sustainability, you need courage to make genuine progress.
We recently brought together a number of sustainability l...
At Realise Earth we’ve always been focused on helping sustainability leaders build support for, and catalyse action on, sustainability across their organisation. A challenge is how to do this at scale.
That’s why we’ve now partnered with the Most Sustainable Workplace Index which can help you do just that.
I recently sat down with Jaime Blakeley-Glover, creator of the Index, to hear his story. Listen to learn:
- Why Jaime beli...
Climate is only one of the planetary boundaries we need to work on. And we also need to tackle a whole range of social issues.
That's why item four and our sustainability leadership manifesto is: "develop and deliver initiatives that offer multiple benefits for people and nature".
In this Roundtable event, our guests, sustainability leaders across a variety of sectors, reflect on their experience of trying to move the agenda beyond ...
In this Roundtable event, our guests are:
- Sandrine Ricard, Deputy Director Sustainability & Responsibility with Pernod Ricard in the UK
- Michael Solomon, Founder of Responsible 100
- Sarah-Jane Littleford, Head of Responsible Business: Global Delivery with Fujitsu
These sustainability leaders reflect on their experience of collaboration:
- in their organisations
- across their industry
- and when bringing businesses and NGOs ...
Collaboration is essential to making greater progress on sustainability – within organisations and supply chains, across sectors – and across society globally.
This is recognised by the UN Sustainable Development Goal 17 ‘Partnership for the Goals’, and Collaboration is one of the five dimensions identified by the Inner Development Goals as essential to achieving the SDGs.
And the fifth call to action in our sustainability lead...
What kind of approach to sustainability leadership do we need in 2024?
In this Roundtable event, our guests reflect on their experience as sustainability leaders and give feedback on the draft sustainability leadership manifesto that Osbert talked about in the last episode.
The topics discussed include:
- Deeply listening to understand people's needs
- Embedding care in the sustainability agenda
- Building a culture of sustainability lead...
In the last year or so we’ve seen a slew of reports about the state of the environment showing that we’re close to, or perhaps have already gone beyond, the point of no return with climate change and several other planetary boundaries.
It’s genuinely scary stuff, and it sometimes floors me.
And yet, other reports show real progress and suggest that we’re in with a chance of tackling the climate and nature crises. We have the te...
"How do we transition to net zero and build up the renewables we need in a way that respects our planetary boundaries and the natural world?"
"How do you create a circular economy and break the link between business growth and resource use?"
Kate Wallace Lockhart is head of sustainability with SSE Renewables, and in this episode she talks about working with businesses across the sector to create a circular economy for the entire...
"You also need a theory of change. If you haven't understood what the big thing is you're trying to achieve, and you haven't understood how you are going to achieve that thing, then you have no theory of change and you're not going to achieve it."
Bob Gordon told me that when he started out as Head of Sustainability with Nando’s in the UK he didn’t really have a theory of change.
Bob’s now Director of Zero Carbon Forum, and has...
Discover how Dee made the case for a global sustainability strategy, created Deluxe's first global sustainability role, and then developed and delivered their first sustainability strategy.
Deluxe Media & Entertainment is a leading media services company with over 4,500 people across the world.
Dee talks with Leadership for Sustainability host, Osbert Lancaster, about:
- Moving from localised CSR to a global sustainability strat...
Run a workshop that encourages colleagues and stakeholders to be actively involved in your sustainability initiative.
- How to plan and facilitate a workshop that builds collaboration
- What are good activities? How to get people engaged?
- Some top tips inspired by our workshop for the Coalition for Wind Industry Circularity
We recently facilitated a workshop for the Coalition for Wind Industry Circularity. Afterwards a number...
Adam Liddle, Head of Sustainability, RoslinCT, on creating a sustainability strategy in an industry, life sciences, that is completely new to him.
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Full show notes at http...
Relating sustainability to people's interests and concerns, and to organisational values and culture, is crucial for engagement. Here's why it's so important, with case stories from our experience, and practical guidance on how to put this into practice in your organisation.
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This is part 2 of our interview with Alan Hendry, Sustainability Director at Mott MacDonald
Osbert and Morag discuss what we heard to pull out important insights and offer 10 practical opportunities for action inspired by the interview – with a particular focus on collaboration.
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Don't miss new episodes or your invitation to our Leadership for Sustainability roundtables – inc...
Alan Hendry, Sustainability Director, Mott MacDonald, a global technical services firm, on supporting colleagues make their services more sustainable.
👉 Get the Leadership for Sustainability newsletter
Don't miss new episodes or your invitation to our Leadership for Sustainability roundtables – including, only for email subscribers, our team's rich insights and carefully curated resources. Subscribe now…
Full show notes at ...
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