Sustainable Leaders’ Summit 2021: new leadership for new times

On 26 November, the first Sustainable Leaders’ Summit will gather stakeholders to discuss the role managers play in the sustainable transformation of the European economy. The unprecedented sustainability challenges call for a new type of leadership to create long-term value for people and planet. The event is organised by CEC European Managers in the context of its EU project on Sustainable Leadership.

The online Summit will provide a forum for new approaches to sustainability in leadership and at the workplace. While many sustainability initiatives do currently not deliver the expected results, the notion of Sustainable Leadership brings together individual responsibility with larger-scale impacts. For Maxime Legrand, President of CEC European Managers, it is clear that “managers will be key for putting into practice the Green Deal. They have to become designers of an economy that protects life, creates a new kind of growth and reconciliates personal aspirations with professional ones.”

With a diverse portfolio of speakers from business, academia and politics, the Summit aims at drawing a pathway for transitioning to sustainable business models and a sustainable economy. The one day event will provide scientific evidence, managerial best practices and leadership transition stories to help managers become Sustainable Leaders. At the same time, it will be an occasion to discuss how to transform workplaces and create new sustainable jobs. Next to market mechanisms and legislative instruments, there will also be room to explore new economic approaches, including the Regenerative Economy, through keynote speaker Carol Sanford.

The Summit is the conclusion of a two-year EU-funded project on Sustainable Leadership. Based on the study “Sustainable Leadership in Europe”, the project has modeled Sustainable Leadership and piloted a training programme for managers in Europe. Other side initiatives add to the project, to raise awareness and mobilise European managers further. a Sustainable Leaders Community has been launched to bring together ambitious change-makers. Sustainable Leaders Ambassadors will ensure that the topic will benefit from greater attention by policy-makers, training providers and businesses. Finally, a Sustainable Leaders Charter will be launched at the Summit to commit managers individually on making a sustainable impact within their stakeholder system.

Find more information and register here

CEC European Managers and its project partners together represent around 7 million managers through their national and sectoral member organisations. Sustainable Leaders has been created in 2020 in the framework of the “Sustainable Leadership for a Fair and Green Transition” Project led by CEC European Managers and co-funded by the European Commission.