Hosted by Henley Business School.
Leading Sustainably in Stormy Weather
Why a festival? In the tradition of a ‘fe-stə-vəl’, the Leadership Impact Festival by the Henley Centre for Leadership (LIFT@HCL) is about celebrating together as a growing community and hearing diverse voices of resourceful and eye-opening insights from practitioners, alumni, business leaders and their own research at the Henley Centre for Leadership. With this they help shape sustainable positive relationships in our community. This leadership festival is also about deeply deliberating and co-creating tangible insights and outputs for leadership and leadership development practice in business and society.
Why ‘leading sustainably in stormy weather’? Our work at the Henley Centre for Leadership and the debates in our last Festival surfaced tensions faced in daily leadership experiences and strategic decision-making when delivering services, products and social and ecological contributions. On one hand organisations aspire to be human-centric and purpose-rich, which allows people, businesses, and society to sustainably thrive and perform, whilst on the other hand organisations face permanently accelerated demands and performance pressure, eroding resource bases and extreme events or other shocks.
This year’s festival therefore focuses on not if, but how we can bring these two realities together. To address what we coin as ‘leading sustainably in stormy weather’, we bring together topics too often addressed in separation and left in silos. Instead, we think and practice leadership as a multifaceted and integrative capability to address the big questions.
Why impact? The Henley Centre for Leadership are convinced that we do not have the luxury anymore to run gatherings like these without leaving a strong footprint. When they say ‘leading sustainably for good’, this must also apply to the Festival.
Sustainability in a foundational understanding means ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (1987, United Nations Brundtland Commission). Hence, this gathering should not use add further risks for the future regarding technology, equity, inequalities or climate. The Festival will be generative and create more than they invested for a range of aspects, which they thus pay forward to the future of leadership. Impact is the route to that ambition.