With the increasing need to address Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues, organizations are faced with several options on how to proceed in developing their internal capabilities. Beyond their sustainability and CSR strategy, there are nuts-and-bolts issues to consider, such as who will lead the effort and how to build the team or department.
A common starting place is to tap the EHS department and their personnel. The logic behind this is solid, given how central EHS is to sustainability and CSR. While the EHS function and its personnel are a good starting point, sustainability/CSR quickly encompasses areas in the organization well beyond EHS.
The C-Suite must consider how it is going to identify and develop its people who lead and manage sustainability/CSR. In the case of EHS professionals, those competencies and skills go beyond their solid technical foundation.
Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, through the Center for Corporate Citizenship, has made a huge contribution through the development of a competency model that can be used for EHS, sustainability, and CSR personnel. In its report titled, “Corporate Citizenship in the 21st Century: A competency model for today’s leaders,” the Center provides a guide that companies can use to develop their sustainability/CSR departments with confidence. While the model is geared toward CSR (or as the Center calls it, “Corporate Citizenship”), it is equally applicable to sustainability and EHS professionals and their departments.
The report identifies a number of areas where sustainability/CSR leaders originate. Examples provided reveal that they come from both the corporate and operational functions. A common characteristic is that they have a “deep knowledge of the business and business culture.” According to Shelly Fust and Lisa Walker, “Companies with successful sustainability initiatives tend to select organizationally credible leaders who come from functions that align with the company’s most formidable sustainability issues.” (Executive Insight, 2007) In many companies, the EHS department is at the top of the list for candidates to staff the sustainability/CSR function, or to be the foundation for a new sustainability/CSR department.
The Center’s work was supported by the Hay Group, with research based on methodology pioneered by Dr. David McClelland, one of the early pioneers in the competency field.
Three main attributes in the Center’s competency model are identified: (1) Leadership Capabilities; (2) Social Traits; (3) Personal Enablers. For each attribute, there are several focal areas:
- Leadership Capabilities: Change Driver (initiative and drive to make change happen); Strategic Influencer (moves people to support CC agenda).
- Social Traits: Visionary Thinker (brings fresh, original, and broad insight to CC and business issues); Systems Perspective (sees CC business and society as an inter-related system and is able to “connect the dots”); Empathic Connector (builds and maintains empathic collaborative relationships with individuals and groups).
- Personal Enablers: Peripheral Vision (constant curiosity and eagerness to learn and be aware of many issues and trends in the world); Optimistic Passion (faith in and commitment to the idea that CC can make a positive difference for business, society, and the environment); Ego Maturity (ability to achieve satisfaction by empowering others).
These attributes and their focal points closely mirror distinctions and subject areas in the organizational learning and systems thinking fields. By identifying and strengthening skills in these areas, ESH/Sustainability/CSR professionals working with a sound strategy and solid structures/systems will be able to help their company meet sustainability and CSR goals.
© Redinger EHS, Inc. (2010)