I am currently sitting in Portland, Oregon, with the current Earth Lodge community (aka GeoJames) members scattered around various parts of the city, traipsing and exploring and finding dinner. This year’s SSIR is taking their trip just before the school year begins, which I believe is a great idea – it promotes community bonding so that the group is (hopefully) already on the road to being great friends and can then spend the entire year with that jump-start to community and friendship having already occurred.
As my last blog post in conjunction with my James River Park System summer internship under TLB’s mentorship, I am publishing one (well, two-in-one) more of my reflections, a response to a couple journal prompts I had created. I’ve been thinking a lot about environmental leadership this summer and wanted to try to parse out a bit of what I’ve thought through or learned.
In thinking about environmental leadership, what do you consider to be qualities/strengths of a good leader? What skills will put them on a path to greater success?
A good environmental leader should be passionate about their field and area of leadership. I feel like it goes without saying, but a good leader will be stable and grounded in a fairly or very comprehensive knowledge of their sphere – people can rally or persuade others all they want, but unless they are actually educated and an expert in their field, their leadership will not hold much water. An effective leader will be charismatic enough, and possess sufficient interpersonal skills, to work with people and help their cause spread through human networks. They ought to be energetic and enthusiastic; and a healthy dose of optimism sure helps them retain their motivation and momentum and keeps them from getting too discouraged. A good leader will possess excellent communication abilities and be skilled in conveying and listening to/understanding points and messages and information. It is crucial, for good leadership, to remain open to outcomes and to be flexible. Someone should be able to work with others on a team – teamwork is SO key to accomplishing goals, and a good leader will be strong in working within a team context and communicating with their co-workers to keep the same vision and utilize each others’ strengths to get things done. Skills they should possess to reach greater success: education, persuasion, enthusiasm, passion, flexibility, creativity, openness and receptiveness, clarity of thought and communication, and ability to think in terms of small and big scales – close and far/big pictures.
Define success, according to your opinion of it, in regards to environmental leadership.
Successfully leading in an environmental context looks like making steps towards achieving your goals, in a healthy and sustainable way that neither harms the environment nor causes everyone to get mad at you. It entails garnering support for your cause with a solid background of knowledge. Success would take all stakeholders into consideration and make the most informed and best decision possible for all involved parties. Successful leadership should protect biodiversity and natural environments while/through educating the broader public about issues and promoting good environmental stewardship and realizing any necessary mentality shifts.