Themes for sustainability workshops

  • Personal resilience as a sustainability leader

Possible conversation topics:  When do you need to be resilient?  What helps?  How can you become more resilient?

 

  • Where next with my sustainability strategy?

Possible conversation topics: Do the Sustainable Development Goals help me set strategy?  What about COP21?  How do Brexit and the US elections impact our work?  Do I need to look internally to find the strategic challenges?

 

  • Hosting, leading, convening a collaboration, alliance or partnership

Possible conversation topics: What does it mean to lead, when decisions are shared?  How can you advocate an agenda or add your expertise, when you need to play a neutral, brokering role?  How can my organisation accommodate the uncertainty inherent in collaboration?

 

  • Leading a sustainability champions network

Possible conversation topics: Are champions appointed or do they volunteer?  Who sets the agenda?  How are they recognised and rewarded?  What can you do to reinvigorate a network, or rein it in?

 

  • Engaging stakeholders strategically instead of fire-fighting

Possible conversation topics: How can you plan your stakeholder engagement so that it supports the organisation in understanding its priorities and delivering meaningful action?  What if stakeholders tell you things about your priorities or performance or policies that you don’t want to hear? 

 

  • Making sustainability normal

Possible conversation topics: Is sustainability special? Is it helpful or not to have a self-identified sustainability community? How can we let go of our expertise and ambition, to help spread ownership of sustainability? Should we?

 

  • Working with organisations that are very different from mine

Possible conversation topics: Difference can come from business models, core mission, pace of decision-making or just "how we do things round here".  If you've decided to explore collaborating, how can you spot the differences which might get in the way, and manage them positively?

 

  • Being a change agent - empowering others on sustainability

Possible conversation topics: How can I engage and educate others in a way that doesn't put them off?  How can I enable people to own their action plans without them making "wrong" choices?  What are the kinds of things that need to change, for people to be empowered? How can I be the expert on some things and the novice on others?

 

  • What do the Sustainable Development Goals mean for my work?

Possible conversation topics: How are we each responding to the Sustainable Development Goals?  What are the strategic approaches? What if we want to focus on one or two priorities?  Can the SDGs help us communicate and motivate?

 

If you have found this page, perhaps you are interested in still conversations? If so, find out more here.