“Inside-out Sustainability”: Awakening Leaders' Inner Worlds for Environmental Change

There's no need to argue leadership's vital role in tackling our environmental crisis—history proves it. Consider Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist who, at 15, skipped school to protest outside parliament in 2018, sparking global Fridays for Future strikes that mobilized millions and pressured world leaders at COP summits. Picture Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's first female president and an environmental engineer, who as Mexico City mayor, restored 34 million trees, reduced over 2 million tons of CO₂ emissions, and banned single-use plastics. 

But few of us have Sheinbaum's expertise or Thunberg's courage. Unless we live in regions routinely battered by heat waves or floods, many of us remain largely oblivious to the personal impact of environmental change — let alone feeling any sense of agency to do something about it. In the US, for example, 52% of respondents to an 2023 Pew Research Center survey said they believe large businesses and corporations can do "a lot" to reduce the effects of climate change, and 55% said the same of the energy industry. Just 27% responded that individual Americans had the same power. 

A 2023 Deloitte survey found that amongst the 69% of employed adults who want their companies to cut carbon, shift to renewables, and reduce waste, 18-34-year-olds demonstrated a stronger interest in sustainability actions than those from older counterparts (35-54 and 55+).  

With senior leaders skewing older, how do we navigate the tension between employees looking to them for influence and action, while those same leaders demonstrate less personal investment — or perhaps simply don't recognize the power they hold to spark meaningful change within their organizations?

The choices we make as ordinary organizational citizens do matter. From significant decisions — sustainable products, branding, procurement, and culture that shape entire industries — to smaller ones, like reducing the volume of branded merchandise at company events (how many of us really need another t-shirt or water bottle?). Research shows that employees mirror their leaders' behaviors: they are far more likely to adopt eco-friendly practices when those at the top model them rather than merely advocate for them (Mandal et al., 2025).

Amid relentless organizational transformation, pressure to grow while cutting costs, and the daily challenge of caring for their teams without neglecting themselves, leaders often experience sustainability as yet another item on an already overwhelming agenda — particularly when it hasn't yet been embedded in organizational strategy.

Given all this, how do leaders find the time and mental bandwidth to weave sustainability into the fabric of their daily work? In organizations where sustainability hasn't yet taken root, how do those who own the agenda — such as Chief Sustainability Officers — bring their colleagues along and drive meaningful change? Making the business or moral case for sustainability is often insufficient. How do leaders engage their colleagues' hearts, not just their minds? How do we cultivate more environmentally conscious leaders?

The answer may lie in taking an “inside-out” approach through leadership development.

Enter "Inside-Out Sustainability" via Leadership Development.

While there is broad consensus in leadership development on the importance of self-awareness to effective leadership, the same cannot be said for the field of sustainability. Scholars Christopher D. Ives and colleagues (2020) observe that sustainability research, education, and practice have tended to focus on the external world — structural factors such as ecosystems, socio-economic systems, technology, policy, and governance — while largely overlooking what they call people's "inner worlds": their emotions, thoughts, identities, and beliefs, which are the true engine of transformational change. This is why they advocate for "inside-out sustainability" — a call for sustainability science to incorporate the inner dimensions of individuals.

I would argue that any organization seeking to embed sustainability more deeply into its culture must begin by elevating leaders' environmental consciousness through an examination of their inner lives.

What Are These Inner Dimensions, and Why Do They Matter?

Most of us understand that, although we don't always live in alignment with our deepest values and desires, when we do achieve that alignment it can become a powerful force for transformative change. Research by environmental psychologist, Linda Steg (2016), indicates that intrinsic motivation forms a reliable foundation for consistent pro-environmental behavior. People's innate drive to protect the environment is frequently underestimated, in part because policymakers tend to assume that self-interest dominates human decision-making. Therefore, creating the conditions that activate and sustain people's intrinsic motivation is essential. 

How to Awaken Leaders’ Intrinsic Motivation for Sustainable Actions?

Empathy has been considered a key factor behind the psychology that explains pro-environmental behaviour. Researchers Katrina Brown and colleagues (2019) proposed through their “empathy-sustainability hypothesis” that empathy can be “a route to human action”. They argue that building people’s cognitive and emotional empathy with nature through different kinds of storytelling mechanisms (e.g. theatre, personifying nature) can bridge the human-nature divide and motivate pro-environmental actions. 

A meta-analysis of 20 empathy-training studies (Luo et al., 2025) further supports this hypothesis by finding that cultivating empathy can lead to significant positive effects on pro-environmental behaviour (PEB), with perspective-taking exercises and immersive nature experiences being the most effective.

In the context of organizational leadership development, there are different ways to increase leaders’ empathy for the environment: cultivating nature-connectedness, mindfulness, shaping their green identity are all ways to build empathy and potentially activate their dormant intrinsic motivation to protect the environment. I will explore details on these approaches in my next article.

Intrinsic Motivation and Empathy: Necessary, But Not Sufficient

Yet even the most empathically engaged leader faces real headwinds. Steg's (2016) research reminds us that people with strong environmental values are not exempt from self-interest — they still weigh personal comfort, cost, and convenience. 

The full picture of what drives sustainable behaviour is complex, and a single blog post cannot do it justice. Structural enablers, organizational incentives, peer norms, and leadership accountability all play a role. But inner work is where lasting change tends to begin — because without it, even the best-designed systems struggle to take root.

This is why leadership development is such a critical, and under-utilized lever. As Ives and colleagues (2020) put it, understanding people's inner lives is critical to developing effective strategies for change. When leaders are invited to reflect on their core values, sense of purpose, and what makes their work meaningful, they become better equipped to bridge the gap between immediate business pressures and broader environmental responsibilities — not out of obligation, but out of genuine conviction.

Developing more environmentally conscious leaders isn't a detour from developing better leaders. It's the same journey.