Building Sustainable Leadership: Why It Matters More Than Ever

More than a decade ago, I co-authored a paper exploring an idea that, at the time, felt important—but perhaps a bit ahead of its moment: sustainable leadership. Looking at today’s EHS, sustainability, and operational risk landscape, it’s clear that the core premise has not only held up—it has become essential.

Organizations are operating in environments defined by complexity, speed, and interdependence. Traditional leadership models that emphasize short-term performance, individual heroics, or rigid control structures simply cannot keep pace. What’s needed instead is a leadership system that can perform today and renew itself for tomorrow.

That is the essence of sustainable leadership.

From Transactional to Transformational—and Beyond

Leadership theory has evolved significantly over the last century. Early models focused on innate traits (“Great Man” theories), then shifted toward observable behaviors, situational fit, and contingency approaches. These frameworks helped explain how leaders operate—but they often stopped short of addressing long-term organizational viability.

The emergence of transformational leadership marked an important shift. Transformational leaders elevate purpose, values, and motivation, inspiring others to contribute at their highest level. Compared to transactional leadership—which trades rewards for compliance—transformational leadership focuses on meaning, ethics, and long-term impact.

Yet even transformational leadership, by itself, is no longer sufficient.

Today’s organizations require leadership that is:

Agile, adapting rapidly to changing conditions
Distributed, rather than concentrated at the top
Ethical and values-driven, under constant stakeholder scrutiny
Resilient, capable of regenerating leadership capacity over time

This is where sustainable leadership comes in.

What Do We Mean by Sustainable Leadership?

The concept of sustainability is often associated with environmental stewardship, but its original definition is broader:

Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Applied to leadership, this means building systems that:

Deliver strong business performance today
Develop leaders continuously—not episodically
Protect people, culture, and organizational knowledge
Balance short-term results with long-term capability

In practical terms, sustainable leadership ensures that leadership excellence is not dependent on a single individual, but embedded into the organization itself.

The Seven Tenets of Sustainable Leadership

Borrowing and adapting concepts from educational leadership research, sustainable leadership can be understood through seven reinforcing tenets (Hargreaves, A. & Fink D. 2006). Together, they provide a practical framework for EHS and business leaders alike.

1. Depth

Sustainable leadership promotes success that is deep and shared, not achieved at the expense of others. Performance gains should benefit employees, customers, communities, and the environment—not just one stakeholder group.

2. Length

Leadership must endure across generations. This means developing leaders who can carry forward core values while adapting strategies to new realities. Jim Collins described this as clock-building, not time-telling—creating systems that work repeatedly, not just once.

3. Breadth

In complex organizations, leadership cannot be centralized. Sustainable leadership is distributed leadership, empowering people closest to the work to make informed decisions and lead change.

4. Justice

Perceived fairness matters. Transparent decision-making, ethical conduct, and inclusive processes build trust—without which leadership credibility erodes quickly. Sustainable leadership is socially just, not self-serving.

5. Diversity

Diverse teams bring broader perspectives and greater resilience. Just as biological ecosystems thrive on diversity, organizations perform better when they value differences in background, thinking, and experience.

6. Resourcefulness

Sustainable leaders develop people and systems rather than depleting them. This includes managing pace—avoiding burnout, excessive turnover, and the erosion of institutional knowledge.

7. Conservation

Respect the past while building the future. Sustainable leadership preserves the organization’s core ideology while allowing practices, structures, and tools to evolve. The goal is continuity with renewal.

Why This Matters for EHS and Sustainability Leaders

EHS professionals sit at a unique intersection of people, operations, and risk. The challenges we face—process safety, human performance, climate risk, regulatory complexity, workforce transition—cannot be solved through compliance alone.

They require leaders who:

Think systemically
Build trust across functions
Develop successors intentionally
Align safety, sustainability, and business performance

Sustainable leadership provides a framework for doing exactly that.

It also addresses a growing reality: many organizations are facing leadership gaps created by retirements, downsizing, and years of underinvestment in development. Succession planning without leadership development is not enough. Sustainable leadership integrates both.

A Call to Action

Leadership today is less about control and more about creating conditions for others to succeed. That requires humility, discipline, and a long-term mindset.

For EHS and sustainability leaders, the opportunity is clear:

Embed leadership development into everyday work
Model ethical, values-driven decision-making
Distribute authority while maintaining accountability
Build systems that outlast individual roles

Sustainable leadership is not a program. It is a way of thinking about leadership as a renewable resource—one that must be intentionally cultivated.

The organizations that get this right won’t just perform better. They’ll endure.

A Historical Foundation — and a Still‑Relevant Framework

This work began as a response to the leadership realities of the early 2010s, but it was never intended to be time‑bound. When this framework was presented at the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) 2012 Management Systems Symposium, most organizations were still grounded in compliance‑centric management systems, lagging indicators, and leader‑centric decision authority.

What made the concept of sustainable leadership distinctive then—and enduring now—is that it was designed as a leadership system, not a personality model or a program of the month. The intent was to describe how leadership must function over time, across generations of leaders, amid changing technologies, workforce expectations, and risk profiles.

More than a decade later, the pressures have intensified rather than diminished: accelerated digitalization, AI‑enabled decision support, geopolitical volatility, climate risk, demographic shifts, and growing scrutiny of corporate ethics. These forces have not invalidated the framework; they have validated it.

Sustainable leadership remains relevant precisely because it addresses how organizations renew leadership capacity while maintaining performance, rather than optimizing one at the expense of the other.

This work was originally developed and presented at the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) 2012 Management Systems Symposium, at a time when many organizations were still heavily oriented toward compliance-driven safety management systems and short-term financial performance. Even then, it was clear that these approaches were insufficient to address emerging risks, workforce transitions, globalization, and the growing integration of safety, health, environmental, and business performance.

As part of that presentation, we introduced not only the conceptual model of sustainable leadership, but also a Sustainable Leadership Readiness Checklist—a practical tool designed to help leaders assess how well their behaviors, systems, and culture aligned with long-term organizational resilience.

In today’s context—defined by digital transformation, AI-enabled decision support, supply chain volatility, climate risk, and heightened expectations for ethical leadership—the relevance of this framework has only increased.

The Sustainable Leadership Readiness Checklist — Modernized

One of the original goals of this work was to avoid leaving leaders with theory alone. The Sustainable Leadership Readiness Checklist, introduced alongside the 2012 presentation, was designed as a practical diagnostic to translate leadership intent into observable behaviors and systems.

The checklist has stood the test of time because it focuses on conditions rather than tools. While technologies, organizational structures, and management fads change, the underlying leadership conditions required for long‑term performance remain remarkably stable.

How the Checklist Works

The tool uses a 1–5 scoring scale, where:

5 = Consistently demonstrated and embedded into formal and informal systems
4 = Regularly demonstrated, with minor gaps
3 = Inconsistently applied or highly leader‑dependent
2 = Sporadically demonstrated
1 = Rarely demonstrated or absent

An average score of 3.5 or higher suggests a leadership system reasonably prepared to sustain performance across leadership transitions.

What has changed since 2012 is not the scoring logic, but the context in which leaders must demonstrate these behaviors. Below, each tenet is reframed through a modern EHS, sustainability, and operational‑risk lens.

Depth – Building Meaningful, Shared Success

Depth reflects whether leadership practices create durable value for people and the organization as a whole.

Key indicators include:

Promoting cross-functional and team-based success, rather than siloed optimization
Actively advocating learning for all levels of the organization
Embedding continuous improvement and learning into daily work—not just after incidents

In EHS terms, depth shows up when learning from near-misses is valued as much as lagging metrics, and when improvement efforts strengthen both operational performance and workforce capability.

Length (Endurance) – Leadership That Outlasts Individuals

Length focuses on leadership continuity and resilience.

Indicators include:

Demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity
Intentional succession planning and talent development
Building professional cultures anchored in shared values
Establishing high-trust environments where issues surface early
Consistently developing high-performing teams, not just high-performing individuals

Organizations that score poorly here often experience performance swings tied directly to leadership turnover.

Breadth – Distributed and Connected Leadership

Breadth assesses whether leadership capacity is spread across the organization.

Indicators include:

Practicing distributed leadership, especially at the point of risk
Building and maintaining strong internal and external relationships
Actively sharing knowledge and resources across boundaries
Developing others through coaching, mentoring, and stretch assignments

In high-risk operations, breadth is evident when frontline leaders feel authorized—and expected—to act on safety and operational concerns without waiting for permission.

Justice – Fairness, Ethics, and Accountability

Justice evaluates the ethical foundation of leadership.

Indicators include:

Transparency in decision-making and communications
Consistent alignment with ethics and stated values
Personal and organizational integrity under pressure
Clear accountability, applied fairly and predictably

Perceived injustice erodes trust faster than almost any other leadership failure—and no amount of technical excellence can compensate for it.

Resourcefulness – Developing, Not Depleting, Capacity

Resourcefulness reflects how leaders use—and renew—organizational resources.

Indicators include:

Open, adaptive communication that invites modification and challenge
Strong emphasis on teamwork over individual heroics
Encouragement of collective action, new ideas, and diverse perspectives

For EHS leaders, this often means resisting the temptation to solve every problem personally and instead building problem-solving capability throughout the system.

Diversity – Resilience Through Difference

Diversity goes beyond representation; it addresses cognitive and experiential variety.

Indicators include:

Awareness of global and cultural dynamics
Alignment of policies and procedures with inclusive values
Processes that promote interaction of differing ideas and viewpoints
Leadership behaviors that are flexible and adaptable, not rigid

Diverse leadership systems are better equipped to anticipate emerging risks and adapt to unfamiliar challenges.

Conservation – Preserving What Matters While Evolving

Conservation evaluates how well leaders balance continuity and change.

Indicators include:

Building learning and innovation networks inside and outside the organization
Thinking and acting in systems-oriented ways
Demonstrating skill in constructive conflict resolution

This tenet ensures that transformation does not come at the cost of identity, values, or hard-earned institutional knowledge.

How I Would Score Most Organizations Today

Based on three decades of experience across manufacturing, process industries, and global operations, and observing how organizations have responded to recent disruptions, here is a candid assessment:

Depth: Moderate (3–3.5) — Many organizations promote teamwork and continuous improvement rhetorically, but still reward individual performance and short‑term results disproportionately.
Length (Endurance): Weak to Moderate (2.5–3) — Succession planning exists on paper, but leadership continuity often depends on a few individuals rather than robust systems.
Breadth: Uneven (3) — Distributed leadership is encouraged during crises, but decision authority frequently recentralizes once conditions stabilize.
Justice: Variable (3–4) — Ethics and transparency are widely stated values, yet consistency under pressure remains a differentiator between organizations.
Resourcefulness: Moderate (3–3.5) — Many leaders talk about developing people, but workload, pace, and constant reorganization quietly deplete human capacity.
Diversity: Improving but fragile (3–3.5) — Progress has been made, but inclusion of diverse perspectives in decision‑making still lags representation.
Conservation: Underdeveloped (2.5–3) — Organizations are good at change initiatives, less skilled at preserving institutional knowledge and core identity through change.

The overall pattern is clear: most organizations hover just below true sustainability, capable of performing today but vulnerable to leadership transitions, burnout, or strategic whiplash.

Using the Checklist as a Leadership Development Tool

The readiness checklist was never intended as a scorecard alone. Its real value lies in the conversations it enables:

Where are we strong—and why?
Where are we vulnerable if key leaders leave?
Which tenets are under the most strain in today’s operating environment?

Used periodically, the tool helps leaders track progress, identify systemic gaps, and align leadership development efforts with long-term business and EHS objectives.

What Sustainable Leadership Must Add in the Age of AI

Since this framework was first introduced, leadership has entered a new era. Artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, digital twins, and automation now shape how decisions are made, risks are identified, and work is performed. These tools are powerful—but they are not neutral.

Sustainable leadership must now explicitly include human guardrails for AI-enabled systems:

Judgment over automation: AI can inform decisions, but leaders remain accountable for outcomes.
Ethical design and use: Values must be embedded into how digital tools are trained, deployed, and governed.
Human performance integration: Technology should augment cognitive capacity, not replace critical thinking.
Transparency and explainability: Leaders must understand—and be able to explain—how recommendations are generated.

In this sense, sustainable leadership becomes the operating system that ensures advanced tools strengthen rather than erode trust, safety, and organizational resilience.

Executive Snapshot: The Sustainable Leadership Readiness Diagnostic

For senior leaders and boards, the checklist can be simplified into a high-level diagnostic:

Depth – Are we building success for people, performance, and stakeholders simultaneously?
Length – Would leadership continuity survive an unexpected transition?
Breadth – Where does real decision authority live during normal operations?
Justice – Do people trust our processes when outcomes are unpopular?
Resourcefulness – Are we developing capacity or consuming it?
Diversity – Are different perspectives shaping decisions, or just present in the room?
Conservation – What would we lose if our most experienced leaders left tomorrow?

If these questions create discomfort, the diagnostic is doing its job.

A Real-World EHS Example: Sustaining Safety in a High-Hazard Operation

Dow Chemical provides a well-recognized example of how sustainable leadership can support long-term safety performance in a high-hazard industry. Operating globally across petrochemicals, specialty chemicals, and advanced materials, Dow manages inherently dangerous processes—reactive chemistry, high-pressure systems, flammable and toxic substances, and complex contractor interfaces—at enormous scale.

Over multiple decades, Dow has maintained a reputation for strong process safety performance while navigating mergers, divestitures, economic cycles, regulatory change, and continuous leadership turnover. This consistency has not come from the absence of risk, but from the presence of a durable leadership system aligned with the seven tenets of sustainable leadership.

Depth is evident in Dow’s long-standing integration of safety into operational excellence. Safety is treated as a core business value rather than a compliance obligation. Incident investigations emphasize learning and system improvement, and safety accountability is shared across operations, engineering, maintenance, and leadership—not isolated within the EHS function.

Length (Endurance) is reflected in Dow’s disciplined leadership development and succession practices. Core safety principles—such as rigorous management of change, process hazard analysis, and respect for operating discipline—have remained stable across generations of leaders, even as technologies and organizational structures have evolved.

Breadth appears in the way safety leadership is distributed throughout the organization. Operators are empowered to stop work, engineers retain lifecycle accountability for hazard controls, and leaders at all levels are expected to challenge unsafe conditions. Decision authority does not bottleneck at the top; it resides close to the hazard.

Justice underpins trust within Dow’s operating culture. Transparency following incidents, consistent ethical expectations, and fair accountability enable weak signals to surface early. Employees and contractors understand that raising concerns is not only permitted but expected.

Resourcefulness shows up in Dow’s attention to capability and pace. Investments in training, competence assurance, and leadership development are treated as risk controls. Fatigue, skill degradation, and organizational churn are recognized as contributors to serious incidents and managed accordingly.

Diversity strengthens Dow’s approach to risk. Cross-functional, cross-cultural, and cross-generational teams are routinely engaged in hazard reviews and operational decision-making, broadening perspectives and improving resilience in a global operating environment.

Conservation ensures that institutional knowledge is preserved. Hard-earned lessons from incidents, near misses, and industry learning are embedded into standards, engineering practices, and training systems. Change initiatives modernize operations without discarding the principles that historically kept people and communities safe.

The result is not a reliance on heroic individuals or perfect rules, but a leadership system capable of sustaining safety performance over decades—even as leaders, markets, and technologies change.

A note on Dow’s current challenge to maintain Sustainable Leadership : While Dow has long been held up as an example of sustained safety and operational discipline, resulting from sustainable leadership in action, recent developments present a real–time test. In early 2026 the company announced a major restructuring plan under its “Transform to Outperform” initiative, including the elimination of approximately 4,500 jobs globally—about 13 % of its workforce—as it pivots toward automation, AI, and cost efficiency amid weak demand and profitability pressures.

These strategic shifts, driven by structural market conditions rather than safety failures, create a leadership endurance challenge: calibrating short-term organizational transformation with the long-term commitments to justice, resourcefulness, and conservation of safety culture that have defined its historical performance.

A Call to Action for EHS Leaders

If you lead EHS, process safety, or sustainability in a high-risk organization, here is the uncomfortable but necessary question:

Would your safety performance remain strong if your top three leaders left tomorrow?

If the honest answer is “it depends,” then leadership—not technology, not procedures—is your most critical risk exposure.

Sustainable leadership demands intentional design. It requires moving beyond individual capability toward leadership systems that:

Develop successors before they are needed
Distribute authority to the point of risk
Preserve institutional knowledge while embracing innovation
Protect people from chronic overload and decision fatigue

The organizations that sustain safety over decades do not wait for disruption to test their leadership systems. They test them deliberately—through development, transparency, and disciplined succession—long before failure makes the test unavoidable.

Final Thoughts

If leadership is a critical risk control, is it being tested and audited with the same rigor as your highest‑hazard processes?

Sustainable leadership is not a nostalgic concept from an earlier era of management systems. It is a forward-looking framework designed to help organizations operate effectively at the edge of complexity.

For EHS and sustainability leaders, the challenge is not adopting new tools or frameworks—it is ensuring leadership itself remains a renewable resource.

The seven tenets—Depth, Length, Breadth, Justice, Resourcefulness, Diversity, and Conservation—provide a durable compass. When embedded intentionally, they allow organizations to perform today while remaining capable tomorrow.

That is the real measure of leadership sustainability.

One-Page Executive Diagnostic: Sustainable Leadership at a Glance

For executive teams and boards, sustainable leadership can be assessed quickly using this high-level diagnostic. It is not a compliance checklist—it is a leadership risk scan.

Depth
Do safety, operational excellence, and people development reinforce each other—or compete for attention?

Length
Is leadership continuity designed into the system, or dependent on individual tenure and goodwill?

Breadth
Where does real decision authority live during normal operations—not just during incidents?

Justice
Do people trust leadership processes when decisions are difficult, unpopular, or costly?

Resourcefulness
Are leaders building capacity over time, or consuming it through pace, churn, and constant reprioritization?

Diversity
Are diverse perspectives actively shaping risk decisions, or merely represented in meetings?

Conservation
What critical knowledge, standards, or values would be lost if experienced leaders exited suddenly?

A leadership system that scores weak in multiple areas may still perform today—but it is unlikely to perform reliably tomorrow.

If leadership is a critical risk control, is it being tested and audited with the same rigor as your highest‑hazard processes?

This article is adapted and expanded from a paper and presentation delivered at the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) 2012 Management Systems Symposium, updated to reflect current organizational, technological, and workforce realities.

References:

Hargreaves, A. & Fink D., Sustainable Leadership, Jossey-Bass 2006