A critical perspective on leadership requires us to examine what is, to uncover hidden biases and tired explanations, so that we can work toward what can be. Accordingly, a critical perspective is not one bound by critique alone, but with an eye toward change. This approach is perhaps best described by the philosopher Michel Foucault, who stated, “I don’t construct my analyses in order to say, ‘This is the way things are, you are trapped.’ I say these things only insofar as I believe it enables us to transform them. Everything I do is done with the conviction that it may be of use” (Foucault, 2002, pp. 294–295). In a time of existential crisis in the natural world, critical analysis – analysis that seeks to upend ineffectual dogma and liberate us from orthodox thinking – is not only useful, but required. To that end, our work here centered on gathering leadership thinkers and leadership doers from a variety of perspectives to critically examine existing leadership theories and practices, offer hopeful innovations, and inspire future work.

What have we learned from this diverse examination of innovations in environmental leadership?

First, we understand that mainstream approaches to thinking about leadership, which consider leadership position equal to leadership behavior and celebrate the individual leader’s charisma while ignoring cultural context, are unhelpful (Bendell, Little, & Sutherland, Chapter 1). This critique is especially insightful as we face the shared dilemmas of sustainability including, but not limited to, climate change. A critical perspective on environmental leadership asks us to unlearn old ways of thinking that identify problems and challenges to be conquered by hierarchical leaders. Outmoded understandings and practices of leadership both reflect and perpetuate the unsustainable world-system that has emerged in the past few centuries and as such can be seen as part of the problem. Instead we must reconfigure our understanding of leadership in a way that embraces the vibrant ecosystem in which environmental leadership operates, and learn to accept and celebrate our connectedness.

Fortified with a critique of conventional leadership theories, we understand that to make progress we must build a new set of theories and practices. Our exploration here offers a number of paths forward. We explore the use of a critical constructivist lens (Satterwhite, Chapter 2) on leadership for sustainability, which implores us to knit together contexts of biosphere, systems, and justice. Linking these universal and shared contexts offers opportunities to discover leadership that connects humans and nature, emphasizes positive change in the world, and seeks to eliminate oppression. Use of such a lens acknowledges that we are both embodied (physical) and moral (spiritual) beings who are part of larger natural and social systems that we did not create, which indeed created us. For too long leadership scholars have bought into the notion that leaders are free agents operating without constraints – outside of, rather than embedded within, the natural and social systems that organize the world. One of the great strengths of an ecological perspective on leadership is that it decenters positional leadership and helps us to see it as an important but partial representation of ways in which leadership may be enacted. We are all embedded in larger contexts that condition and shape our behavior and thinking.

So, too, we ponder the eco-leadership paradox (Western, Chapter 3). Eco-leadership is motivated by a need to incorporate ethical concepts and notions of connectivity into our understanding of leadership. A paradox arises when we are driven to employ increasingly outdated leadership discourses to bring eco-leadership into being. Western suggests eco-leadership is a meta-discourse that prods us to move beyond individualized and organization-bound conceptions of leadership and make connections between society, technology, and nature. It is not so much a matter of “solving” the paradox as of engaging it in a productive manner, which can mean not simply rejecting outdated forms of leadership entirely, but rather employing those elements in limited ways as needed moving forward. Such an approach recognizes that we are situated in time and that lasting change usually happens slowly and incrementally.

We also understand that to truly make progress we must locate considerations of purpose and place (Evans, Chapter 4) in our leadership theories going forward. If we forget that sustainability is a normative concept that rejects hegemony, is tightly linked to social justice, and depends on collaboration and equal access to opportunities to serve, we will have missed an opportunity to address key environmental and socio-ethical challenges.

A critical examination of innovative approaches to environmental leadership must also consider how theory is anchored in the natural world and how descriptions of exemplary leadership practice can amplify lessons initiated through critique. We’ve shown that leadership is a complex system and therefore concepts from complexity science such as open systems, feedback loops, and interdependence can be applied to increase our understanding of how organizations effectively implement principles of eco-leadership to confront environmental challenges (Cletzer & Kaufman, Chapter 5). Armed with this knowledge, we set out into the field with an indigenous mentor to learn how the natural world can be incorporated as the sixth component of a widely held leadership model to make that model more synthetic and integrative (McManus, Chapter 6). This new understanding helps us to posit that leadership both functions within the natural world and is regulated by it – a critical perspective far outside of traditional theories that are anchored in charisma and power. We see how innovative, collaborative, and non-positional environmental leadership operates in often overlooked majority world settings, such as the tropical biosphere (Kosempel, Olson, & Penados, Chapter 7), where the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are close at hand.

Climate change, perhaps the supreme existential challenge of environmental leadership, plays a significant role in helping us to connect our critical exploration of environmental leadership with the materiality of living in the Anthropocene. Examining environmental leadership innovation at the level of global politics (Gallagher, Chapter 8), we see how an international governance system can serve as a platform for collaborative leadership, which untethers members from organization-bound entitlements to form leadership collectives for the common good. We find that climate change increasingly calls people to act not as heroic, positional leaders, but to acknowledge leadership’s connecting role in our societal ecosystem. Climate change leaders are more likely to find success in catalyzing followers’ action through exposure to inspiration and hope rather than frightening scenarios (Redekop & Thomas, Chapter 9). Here, as in other settings, we see that bottom-up leadership at the grassroots is a promising way forward. Calling attention to local impacts of climate change, attending to local concerns and interests, and involving local communities in discussion and action on climate change are approaches being used by grassroots climate leaders worldwide. Engaging others via personal narrative and storytelling, and the establishment of emotional connection and vulnerability are also prevalent behaviors exhibited by second-generation climate leaders.

Followers’ responses to climate change are thus impacted by a variety of contextual factors, and those wishing to show leadership on this issue must be aware of and respond to them (Brown & McManus, Chapter 10). We find again and again that leaders must be locally grounded and understand that economic and social conditions offer unique challenges. Such conditions create both barriers and opportunities for enacting environmental leadership even in the face of visible, urgent impacts of climate change, as we see in our study of Ethiopian environmental leadership (Mengistu, Shimelis, & Miller, Chapter 11).

In many such contexts (including in the “first world”), reliance on top-down governmental leadership can be disempowering and the solutions proposed inappropriate to local conditions. One of the many paradoxes of leadership on climate change is the apparent need for coordinated global action – due to the severity and urgency of the problem – in the face of the well-documented human tendency to think and act locally. Given such paradoxes, traditional mainstream approaches to leadership provide at best a partial answer and at worst (as argued in Chapters 1 and 4) exacerbate the problem. Perhaps Western’s treatment of the “eco-leadership paradox” is helpful here: eco-leadership functions as a “meta-discourse” that deploys traditional leadership behaviors in a provisional and productive manner as we move into a new era of global connection and change.

Lastly, our examination of innovation in environmental leadership leads us to acknowledge that environmental leadership is in the end a personal endeavor. Personal environmental leadership practice calls on leaders to turn from charisma and heroism to rely on openness and introspection, and to apply long-term thinking, rather than a focus on short-term victories (Allen, Chapter 13). We know that we can improve environmental leadership practice – with its related social-justice dimensions – by learning important lessons from indigenous leaders who have long fostered connections to followers through storytelling (Andrews, Chapter 12).

Innovative environmental leadership practice at its best offers leaders and followers opportunities to mount a noble cause and in so doing seek restoration, both of the earth and of themselves (Steffen, Chapter 14). Here, we are again reminded of the connection-building role of leadership. Seen from this vantage point, environmental leaders are more like “connectors” than directors (whether of orchestras or organizations or the body politic). Indeed, one of the guiding themes of this book has been the importance of connection.

Foucault noted that critique “should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is” (1991, p. 84). The existential challenges of environmental leadership detailed in this volume call on us to critically revise theory and update our practice. We must move away from leadership theory and practice that operate in myopic ignorance of the larger natural and social systems of which we are a part; that disrupt communities, celebrate position over impact, and serve harmful power dynamics by generating limited narratives of heroism and charisma. Instead, we must commit to developing critical, reflective, and connective practices with one another. The theories that guide us should be grounded in empiricism and intuition, in pragmatism and justice, in lived and inherited wisdom. As responsible inhabitants of the biosphere, we must relentlessly pursue connectedness, collaboration, and justice; in doing so we will develop leadership practices that better serve people and the planet.

The Editors

References

Foucault, M. (1991). Questions of Method. In G. Burchellet al. (Eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in governmentality with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault (pp. 73–86). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (2002). Interview with Michel Foucault. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Power, essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (pp. 239–297). London: Penguin Books.