We have now looked at the three competencies of Sustainable Leadership: the Sustainability Mindset, Systems Thinking, and Relationship Building. The question now is: how do you develop these qualities?

In order to answer this question; four elements in the background of sustainable CEOs turned out to be important for their sustainable leadership:

• Educational level: the higher the leader’s educational level, the greater the likelihood that s/he can cognitively process and contribute to the complex practices required to achieve sustainability.
• Functional background: candidates with breadth of functional career experience, particularly in areas that focus exclusively on dealing with different stakeholder groups, are better at sustainable leadership.
• International assignment experience: living and working in a foreign country clearly gives executives exposure to new cultures, systems, languages, institutional environments and often a greater breadth of responsibilities. International assignment experience of CEOs is positively correlated with sustainability outcomes of their business. Experience in both developed and developing markets makes a CEO even more desirable.
• Tenure (i.e: time in position): CEOs with short tenure may be motivated to prove themselves and build a reputation through meeting short-term goals. CEOs with longer tenure tend to have the mental capacity and confidence to think beyond the short term.