Week 6 – Final Week
During the final week of my internship, I thought a lot about how my supervisor used charismatic leadership to make sustainability a pillar of Sephora’s values.
Currently, Sephora has a huge focus on D&I. We focus our main initiatives around this value, and there is various programming and philanthropic opportunities associated with this value. My supervisor’s goal is to make sustainability another pillar of Sephora, and she uses charismatic leadership in her day-to-day in order to work towards achieving this goal. Charismatic leadership tries to link identity of followers to collective identity of the organization. Sustainability has become a value that more employees, especially at Sephora, have been pushing towards as an important issue to address. My supervisor seeks to link this desire (which even exists at the store level with our Beauty Advisors!), with the identity of Sephora.
Similar to how D&I at Sephora is not extrinsically rewarded by the organization, my supervisor is pushing for more individuals to get involved and identify with their desire to create a sustainable value at Sephora. She works with our Green Team, which is made of individuals across the entire company who do not have job descriptions relating to sustainability, but who would like to integrate it in their departments. At the highest level, my supervisor shows charismatic leadership in her newest pitch to JAR (our CEO), where she envisions all stakeholders becoming interested in sustainability. In her presentation, she envisions a customer who uses reusable tote bags, purchases only Clean beauty, uses our future take back program, and suggests ways for us to become more sustainable with feedback given at our store. Our employees bike to work, recycle and compost, and know all about the different sustainability initiatives that my supervisor and her team have been coming up with, and encourage their work into their own departments.
These are extremely high expectations for all stakeholders, but my supervisor is caring and optimistic about the potential that we can all achieve if everyone who is involved with Sephora works towards this goal confidently. While it will take a lot of effort, she does a great job of sharing the benefits of being a more sustainable company to our stakeholders, and I know that she will continue working towards this initiative at full-force, with a charismatic leadership style.