Inspire and engage your board, senior managers and other colleagues

In previous Leadership for Sustainability episodes I discussed how one-to-one conversations can be really helpful to engage colleagues with sustainability: in How to talk about sustainability with colleagues the focus was on practical tips to have informal conversations with any colleague – the aim there was to simply create the opportunity and to normalise talking about climate and sustainability at work.

Then in How to build support among directors and senior managers for sustainability we got into how you can have intentional conversations to get leaders interested and engaged so you can then follow up in ways that maximise the chance that they will actively support your work on sustainability.

In this episode we shift from one-to-one conversations to group conversations. Specifically how to run a workshop to inspire and involve colleagues with sustainability. You could run this with any group at any level – for example, it would work with the board of directors, with all members of a team or department or with a green team.

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A Sustainable Development Goals workshop

The primary purpose of the workshop is to generate interest and involvement, but as a bonus it also starts identifying sustainability issues the organisations could address. It also generates ideas for action.

The workshop is based around the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development – often called the SDGs, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

There are many definitions and models of sustainability – for example the Doughnut economics model. We run similar workshops using the doughnut, but I’ll take you through the SDG workshop because the SDGs are well known and need less explanation. 

I’ll give you a quick overview of the structure of the workshop, and then I’ll go through it in detail. I’ll also share a workshop schedule template you can download and adapt. I’ll assume this is an in-person workshop, but you could adapt it for online or hybrid.

Here’s the overview:

• Welcomes and introductions
• Introduce the Sustainable Development Goals
• Participants choose three SDGs particularly relevant to your organisation
• They discuss with how your organisation could contribute to achieving those goals
• Participants reflect on what they’ve got from the event and what they might do next

How to facilitate the SDG workshop

Let’s get into the detail of how to facilitate the workshop. I’ll take you through each stage and I’ll explain some of the reasons why we do things in a particular way.

Welcome and introduction

You want to start the workshop by putting it in context and building connection.

By context, I mean helping people understand why the workshop is relevant to them and the organisation.

And by building connection I mean building connections between the participants that go deeper that their job roles, and touch on the issues they care about as people.

You’ll want to craft the welcome and introductions so they feel right for your organisation. But here are my suggestions to get you started:

• Welcome everyone and introduce yourself
• Then explain why you’ve organised this workshop, something like:

We all know that climate change is happening and it’s having a devastating effect on people and on nature. Businesses across the world are taking action to tackle climate change and help nature recover. We’ve organised this workshop to start working out what we can do, how our organisation can be a force for good in the world.

• And then you can move on to the introductions, something like:

We’ll get cracking in a moment, but first let’s introduce ourselves. Instead of the usual name, title and department, let’s try something a bit different today.

Take a moment to think about something that your, your team or the organisation does for people or for nature that you’re proud of. 

Then we’ll go round the room in turn, and you can tell us your name, and very briefly, in just one sentence, what it is that you’re proud of.

I’ll start us off: “I’m Osbert Lancaster, and I’m proud that we volunteer to clear up the local nature reserve”

That’s how I suggest you get started. Go around the room inviting everyone to contribute. You’re not looking for discussion at this point, and if anyone starts replying to someone’s introduction or talks for too long, politely ask them to hold onto that for now, letting them know there’ll be plenty of opportunity for discussion in the rest of the workshop.

There are two reasons I suggest doing introductions like this.

The first is that it gets people thinking and speaking right at the start of the session.

• It signals there’s something different about this workshop and encourages them to pay close attention.
• Also, speaking right at the start means people are much more confident to speak in the rest of the workshop.

I suspect you might be feeling a bit uncomfortable about asking what people are proud of. If you know that the organisation is already doing stuff that’s relevant, and you know people are pretty of aware of it – I really encourage you to ask that question!

But if you really believe people will struggle to find things they are proud of, then here’s an alternative question for the introductions. Instead, ask people to think about people or organisations that they admire that are doing good for nature, and to share an example.

Not sure? Before the workshop you could test your assumptions by asking people about what they are proud off – you could do this when talking about sustainability with colleagues.

What are the SDGs?

At this point you’ve introduced the workshop, and everyone has introduced themselves. Now it’s time to introduce the Sustainable Development Goals and start working with them.

There’s a 3 minute video which does a great job of introducing the SDGs, it’s called ‘We The People’ for The Global Goals | Global Goals. I’ll put a link in the workshop notes.

I suggest just giving a brief introduction yourself and then letting this great three minute video speak for itself:

At this point you could say something like:

“When you introduced yourselves you talked about lots of different ways we make a difference for people and nature. In this workshop we’ll be working with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

“The SDGs are 17 goals were agreed by 191 countries in 2015 – to tackle global environmental, social and economic challenges facing the entire world, rich and poor countries alike.”

“Let’s watch this short video for an introduction to the 17 goals.”

You should adapt this for your situation, but I really do encourage you show the video, rather than jump straight to the next section. That’s because it helps make these rather abstract goals a bit more human, and that makes it easier for people to connect with them – emotionally and not just rationally.

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Which Sustainable Development Goals are relevant to your organisation?

Now we move on to the next stage of the workshop. Here participants choose goals relevant to your organisation that they will work on in the rest of the workshop.

Basically the way it works is you hopefully already have people sitting at tables with 3 to 5 people at each table:

• First, each table chooses three goals.
• Each table tells the whole workshop which three goals they have chosen.
• From all the goals chosen, the whole workshop collectively agree three goals that everyone will work with for the rest of workshop.

I’ll not go through each stage of the process in detail here – you’ll find that in the workshop template.

What are the connections between SDGs and your organisation?

At this point the participants have chosen three SDGs they believe are most relevant to your organisation. The next stage is for each group of 3-5 to work with one of the chosen SDGs and come up with connections between the SDG and the organisation. 

They then discuss these connections in their group and think about:

• How your organisation might be helping or hindering achievement of goal
• Potential opportunities and risks for your organisation related to the goal.

In this stage, your main aim is to get people talking and thinking about the SDGs, and seeing how they are relevant to your organisation and their own interests and concerns. 

To give people confidence to do this, when you introduce the task, explain that although most people in the room aren’t experts in the SDG topics, they are all know a lot about your organisation and they are experts in their particular professionals skills.

Reassure them that is about exploring possible connections that might well need further research – it’s not about finding definitive answers right now – especially in the short time available.

Do participants have the knowledge to find connections?

You may be a bit concerned that people don’t have enough knowledge of environmental and social issues to make the connections between your organisation and the SDGs.

Our experience is that, yes, people sometimes miss something you think is obvious, or they’ll make a connection you think is a bit tenuous, but generally they’ll come with plenty of relevant connections.

But to make this work it really helps to introduce this section in a way that reminds people about the entire organisation. Encourage them to think not just about your operations, but also your supply chain, your customers and how they use your products and services – and if, relevant, what happens to the product at the end of its useful life. You can also mention a few examples of connections between an activity and an SDG to spark people’s ideas.

Also, as groups work, you should circulate, listen in to the conversations, give encouragement on the stuff they’ve come up with, and if invited, suggest things that could spark new lines of enquiry for them.

You’ll find details in the workshop template to help you organise and lead this session.

Outputs from this stage

At the end of the session each group should have a sheet of flip chart paper with four columns:

• Column 1: a list of connections between the organisation and the SDG
• Column 2: “positive” aspects of each connection: how the organisation is helping the achievement of the goal, and opportunities to do more
• Column 3: “negative” aspects: how the organisation might be hindering achievement of the goal, and potential risks to the organisation
• Column 4: Next steps that could be taken to address each connection or explore it more rigorously.

And they will have highlighted the three connections in column 1 that they believe are most important.

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Sharing the findings

Now it’s time for each group to share their findings with the rest of the workshop.  Again, look at the workshop template for how you can structure this, but essentially you will be asking each group in turn to:

• Share the connections they believe are most important;
• Explain why, referring to the positive and negative aspects they’ve identified;
• Suggest possible next steps.

If you are running a 60 minute workshop, there’s only time for people to share what they’ve found, with little if any discussion. With a 90 minute workshop you can extend this stage and have more discussion.

But in either case the thing to remember is that this is about much more than identifying issues and next steps – most importantly it’s about:

• Affirming the work the groups have done, and the connections they’ve found without being experts in SDGs;
• Affirming the good stuff the organisation is already doing, and/or the potential that exists to do more;
• Building people’s interest in this agenda so that they are keen to lend their support and be involved.

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Laying the foundations for future involvement

And now we come to the final stage – here’s where you hope to build on interest and energy generated in the workshop, and get people involved in the next steps.

Exactly how you do this will depend on the situation – for example whether there’s an existing sustainability initiative you want to get people involved with, or whether this is a new agenda for the organisation.

You might also need to play it by ear, adapting what you say and do depending on the level of energy and interest you’ve noticed during the workshop. But even if the people are a bit quieter than you hoped, it could be that they may need time to reflect and process, before making any kind of commitment – this may be a very new topic for some people.

Here’s what I suggest as a starting point which you can adapt if needed:

• Briefly remind them of the purpose of the workshop, in particular that it’s exploratory and the start of a process.
• Thank everyone for their time and their contribution, and if it feels appropriate, for stepping out of their comfort zone to discuss these issues.
• Explain what you will be doing next, including how you will use the ideas they generated and how you will be following up with them – e.g. invitations to future events, or that this will be on agenda at a future board meeting or at team meetings.
• Finally, encourage everyone to think about what they are taking from the workshop, and to share it with the group.

A powerful way to close the workshop

We call this last bit, the ‘closing round’ and it can be really powerful. We use some variation of this at the end of almost every workshop we run, whatever the subject. Here’s how it works:

• Ask a specific, clear question
• Give people time to think
• Ask each in turn to share their answer with the whole group
• There’s no discussion discussion in this round, everyone else just listens.
• Then you simply say “thank and goodbye”!

The benefit of this closing round is that it allows everyone to hear from everyone else, and you get a really powerful insight into where everyone is at – which is very helpful when you plan your next steps.

To work well, you need to ask a specific, clear, open question, that gives people scope to reply from the heart, without forcing them to reveal more than they feel comfortable with.

Here’s an example of a question, in fact a double question, that would work well here:

“How are you feeling and what might you do next?”

This is how you could introduce the question:

“Take a few moments to think about how this discussion has made you feel, and what, if anything, you want to do as a result”

“Now, in turn, I invite you each to share with the group like this:

“I’m feeling ____ and I’m going to ____”

Although people may not be used to doing this, in our experience people are completely happy to do it. When we do this, we are always very careful to “invite” people to answer the question – see the suggested wording above. This gives people the freedom to choose not to if they wish. 

Generally the responses range from the cautious: e.g. “I’m feeling curious, and I’m going to think about it”, to the enthusiastic, e.g. “I’m feeling inspired, and I’m going to run this workshop with my team” – and everything in between.

Ready to engage your colleagues with a sustainability workshop?

There you have it. That’s how you can run a sustainability workshop with your colleagues. 

• Here’s a reminder of the structure I’ve just taken you through:
  • After welcomes and introductions, you give a brief introduction to the SDGs
  • People then look at the SDGs and choose goals that they think are most relevant to your organisation
  • The next step is that they discuss with each other how your organisation could contribute to achieving the goals they’ve chosen
  • The workshop finishes with everyone reflecting on what they’ve got from the event and what they might do next