A FRAMEWORK FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN AN ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE

AN URGENT NEED TO RETHINK LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

“Every job must be a climate job,” asserts Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions. A corollary: Every leader must be a climate leader.

The needs for courageous climate leadership are increasing and insistent. Yet how many leaders are ready for the challenge? Do leaders have the knowledge and skills to address the complex, interconnected, volatile demands that climate change will present?

For more than 25 years, I have prepared new and incumbent leaders in the corporate and nonprofit sectors to succeed in their roles—CEOs, C-level and business-unit leaders, frontline leaders, community leaders. Now, as I look at the fast-changing, unprecedented challenges of the climate crisis, I am concerned that leaders aren’t ready for what’s here and what’s next.

This draft framework is my contribution to prepare leaders to respond to the crisis—and the opportunity—that awaits us all.

Tom Lowery

A FRAMEWORK TO PROVOKE NEW THINKING

This framework makes the case that there are 12 crucial areas in which leaders must be developed so they can address the climate crisis—whatever their sector, whatever their role.

The framework describes each development area and shows how they connect to one another. Every area is presented through the lens of the climate crisis, so even familiar leadership-development topics look different in this context.

The framework is just that—a scaffolding that invites content and learning experiences to be designed and inserted into new or existing leadership-development solutions.

CONCERNED ABOUT CLIMATE LEADERSHIP? THIS FRAMEWORK IS FOR YOU

This framework is for anyone who seeks to shape and influence how leaders are prepared for the climate crisis:

• Chief Learning Officers
• CEOs
• Climate-change activists
• Organizational and community leaders
• Education leaders

The framework is an invitation—to think, to plan, to collaborate in building robust, rapid solutions to prepare our leaders.

CEOs

As you shift your organization to minimize its harm to the climate, to prepare for climate changes, and to become a contributor to climate-positive solutions, you need your leaders to rise to the challenge.

There’s a good chance they lack the knowledge and skills to succeed in addressing the complex demands that await them.

Invest in your leaders so they can become effective climate leaders, and so your organization can become a climate leader, too.

Chief Learning Officers

Your leadership-development portfolio is likely not optimized to build climate leaders within your organization.

In this unprecedented time, leaders need knowledge and skills to navigate, decide, and act amid a fast-evolving array of climate challenges.

Now is the time to rethink how to develop your leaders, and to equip them to succeed as climate leaders.

Climate Activists

To achieve the necessary changes that yield climate-positive solutions, we needed leaders who are skillful, knowledgeable, and confident to lead the way.

We must invest in our emergent climate leaders in every sector and role, and support them to become even more effective.

Educators

Students who seek to create and contribute to climate-positive solutions should be prepared to lead.

They’ll need a solid foundation of vital knowledge and practical skills. Educators should reevaluate their curricula and methods to develop a new generation of climate leaders, so they can guide us through the turbulent and consequential road ahead.