Summary

For the last section of lectures, we explored the concept and practice of leadership for sustainability. Much of the academic and professionally orientated work on leadership seems to have its roots in either the experience of business, the military, and to a lesser extent politics and government.

This is reflected in the ideas and the writers discussed here, but it also accounts for a tendency for some sustainability practitioners to eschew the concept of leadership altogether or to interpret leadership very powerfully as an extension of facilitation, guidance and spiritual learning.

Sustainability leadership and learning may look for role models outside the world of politics, business and government, and see the most significant teacher and leader to be the natural environment itself or those indigenous peoples who have over time co-evolved in respectful sympathy with the natural rhythms, affordances and gifts that nature frequently bestows.

Leadership may need to be positively deviant or basically accommodative. It may also need to be inspiring, but good sustainability leadership requires an ecological intelligence, a respect for non-human others and an understanding of sustainable development that we have yet to fully achieve.

Homework: 

Review Chapter 1-9 and prepare for the final tasks.