How to design your sustainability career for impact
Mike has been a sustainability professional for a couple of decades, mostly working for large corporations. He now has a very clear vision of what he wants to achieve in his career: he wants to change 1,000 companies and help 1,000 people reach their potential, a very specific goal with specific KPIs.
Better still, Mike has identified which strengths and skills he needs to reach that goal, specifically:
- Calling upon his emotional intelligence
- Understanding the businesses he's working for very well
- Being able to join the dots
- Being able and willing to work with his competitors
- Adopting both a short-term and a long-term view
- Being resilient.
I was blown away by this amount of self-awareness and clarity which, admittedly, not everyone can have.
But if you want to follow in Mike's footsteps, you can:
- Set a goal that will stretch you but is not impossible to achieve OR if that's too difficult to define or feels artificial, set your mission and a direction (e.g. I decided that I want to support as many sustainability professionals as possible to make a difference; I don't have a numeric target)
- Identify which skills and strengths you'll need to achieve that goal and focus on honing them.
If you are struggling to define any of these, get in touch and we can have a chat to see how I can help you.
This article was originally written for the Green Gorilla weekly newsletter. If you liked it, subscribe to receive more articles like this and learn how to communicate sustainability better, how to be more productive without selling your soul to the work devil, and how to make an impact in the world. Here is the link: https://newsletter.thegreengorilla.co.uk/