Are These Qualities Critical for a Chief Sustainability Officer to Succeed?

A recent report identifies several core qualities that a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) needs to succeed. The report by Korn Ferry uses a proprietary KF4D model to create a success profile, offering a future-focused perspective on the CSO role, which now requires more of an 'enterprise leader' mindset rather than a narrow, functional expertise.

Four key areas for a Chief Sustainability Officer

To briefly summarise, the four areas are:

Competencies: including strategic thinking, resilience through a long 'arc of change,' and a global perspective with a customer-centric focus.

Experiences: Professional experience that makes the CSO a trusted, credible advisor, with business acumen and future-focused thought leadership. Experience in communicating in a way that inspires and drives change.

Traits: Embodying the belief that they can drive change and secure a more sustainable future. Key traits include relationship-building, authenticity, self-awareness, comfort with navigating ambiguity, and openness to other views.

Drivers: Mission driven, acting as the 'purveyor of purpose.' Sees sustainability as core to their identity and is energized by partnerships and overcoming significant challenges.

Qualities needed for sustainability success

Let us start by saying that the report and overview created by Korn Ferry are great. We are not disagreeing with their findings, nor necessarily their approach. Our summary of the report is exceedingly short, and we recommend everyone to read it in its entirety.

However – and this is an important distinction – our experience tells us that the success of a CSO is also heavily dependent on several other factors, including surroundings and mindsets.

Both relate to the unique qualities and challenges that define the CSO role in a given company or organisation. For example, the size of the company, how mature its sustainability setup is and not least the mindsets of different groups of employees and stakeholders.

As experienced sustainability leaders will testify to, these areas are pivotal to the success of any sustainability initiative.

How to unlock the potential of employees throughout an organisation to create fundamental mindset shifts is one of the core areas that we will address in the upcoming Sustainability Leadership Lab event series.