What are some effective ways to create a team focused on sustainability?

I agree, leaders whom adapt their visions are creating focus team to achieve the precise goals that the team is aiming for. Individuals contributors tend to support their leader with clear vision and full understanding of it and why do we need it as well as how to achieve it.

Certified Carbon Literacy training is key to enable a newly forming team to start work with a mutual level of understanding of the climate crisis and how to take positive action.

Establishing a sustainability-focused team begins with clarifying its purpose in alignment with the organization's mission and values. Communicate the significance of sustainability, its benefits, challenges, and the expectations for each team member consistently. Defining the purpose enables your team to grasp the big picture and understand the impactful role they play in the organization's mission.

Sustainability is about using our resources in ways that do not compromise those of others. The purpose of a team before those of the organization could begin by knowing the transition of a group of people towards the formation of a high-performance team. In the last stage and understood by all team members, it is easier to orient yourself towards sustainability. According to Dr. Truckman, there are four phases to becoming a high-performance team, although now we could add sustainability after performance. The phases are forming, storming, norming, performing and susteining. It includes doing it well over time without compromising future resources from other teams.

Clearly defining the purpose of your sustainability team lays the foundation for success. Communicating the importance of sustainability, its benefits, challenges, and team expectations fosters a shared understanding, empowering each member to contribute meaningfully toward the organization's mission and values.

By having a clear vision and while leaders identified earlier the recourses to achieve it, they know the capability needed to achieve it whereby they can assess the gaps within their team to develop it to achieve full team capability. Moreover, leaders tends to focus after that on creating a culture within the team that supports sense of proactiveness in getting to know the best practices and propose it to the leader.

a learning organization is agile and is able meet the needs to adapt to a rapidly evolving ecosystem and also be able to have a clear picture of what they are trying to achieve

Creating a team with diverse members with varying skills and perspectives to fully challenge and implement strategy is an important step. Then you can assess their learning needs and develop appropriately.

All phases, whether in models other than Truckman, require the leader or runner to accompany the group to learn to become a sustainable team. The main thing is that they observe what they do and what they learn to do better and be able to convert them into lessons learned and then, build best practices. According to positive psychology, we all have strengths and one of them is the love of learning. The leader must be able to transmit and evoke it.

Creating a team focused on sustainability begins with fostering a culture of learning and innovation. Encouraging the team to continually adapt and improve by engaging with best practices, research, and feedback is crucial. Providing the necessary resources and support further empowers them to develop their skills and knowledge in sustainability, leading to growth and innovation in this dynamic field.

Definitely, this where leaders shine. Leaders must know their team true capabilities which leads to knowing what to fully delegate and what to delegate with minimal supervision and what to delegate with full support. In current competitive talent market we have nowadays, empowerment and engagement is a pillar of talents retention also leaders shall create a succession planning and development. This goes to benefits business by having sustainability and continuity, for leaders to have capable team also for individuals who become empowered and engaged which led to retaining working environment to talents.

Empower no. It's no longer about empowerment, it's about working together as a team. The leader is a process facilitator, he is not a boss. Now with the incorporation of agile thinking we have learned to work together to add value to the client in a short time. I don't think empower is a current word. However, commitment is necessary in team building, but not as an opinion but as an authentic belief. It is not the leader who requests that they commit, but rather appears in that shared relationship between team members. Commitment is also a personal, unique experience. The commitment is not requested, it is observed in the other

I agree. It is very frustrating for talents to not have proper communication with their leaders or lack of transparency. As mentioned earlier, leaders must have a clear vision and it is transparent specially with the team and they are aware of the progress of the milestones they are achieving and the updates that happen from time to time. Confidence can be built by knowledge and communication, and building confident team leads to trust in their leader and trust from stakeholders.

Communication must also be sustainable. It is necessary to advance, especially in the storming and performing phases of sustainability. The leader must have skills in effective communication and sometimes, we prepare ourselves as ontological coaches. This is based on Rafael Echeverría's ontology of language, which indicates how the modalities of communication include bodily language, language and silence. Regarding language and its modalities, we observe the propositional and the investigative ones. The same words indicate leadership styles. The purposeful leader shows the way, the investigative leader talks about it. You can make a difference just by listening and being empathetic.

Very true. Once the leader creates a team that believes in their leader, leading by example comes in place for leaders to further enhance the team capabilities and culture. This will also increase the trust in the leader significantly specially in tough moments which will be very inspiring. I also agree that leaders have to be honest, accountable, admit the mistakes and demonstrating to the team how to fix their mistakes by fixing the mistakes that the leader made, positivity and motivation is a pillar too.

Lead by example. Preach is a complex verb. It's not about that. The example is not preached, it is spread. It is important that the team members recognize us as images but I think it is based on what was discussed before; in empathy, trust, competence, active listening, and recognition. It is not the function of a leader to preach. When preaching, the listener recognizes that he is determined for that, in the other case he earns it.

1. Clearly define the purpose and goals of the sustainability team. 2. Select team members with diverse skills and backgrounds. 3. Foster open communication and collaboration among team members. 4. Provide relevant training and education on sustainability practices. 5. Recognize and reward team members for their contributions to sustainability initiatives.

The first critical step is to handpick experts passionate about sustainability—think green warriors, data wizards, and eco-strategists. Strengthen the mission and vision of the sustainability team with data-driven targets such as carbon footprints, waste reduction, or energy savings. Communication is the ket, engage allies—employees, stakeholders, and customers—with compelling green narratives. Celebrate eco-victories! Rally the troops with shoutouts, badges, and eco-awards for their tireless efforts. Finally lead by example - get involved, this is as important as another profit generating initiative.

Leading by example, easy to say and hard to do. As a leader, you can lead by example in promoting sustainability by integrating practices into your own work routine, openly communicating about the importance of sustainability, and actively participating in initiatives. Encourage open discussions, provide resources for learning, and recognize and reward sustainable efforts within your team to foster a culture of commitment and alignment with the sustainability vision.

Unhinged support from company management is key to the success of sustainability efforts and team. This will ensure continued support and investments. Doing sustainability programs for the right reason is also important.