Turning Our Unconscious Competence into Conscious Competence

13th July 2017

The power and value of sustainability leaders ratcheted up yet another gear at this year’s EAUC Leadership Lab at Cambridge. 
Westminster College buzzed as a talented and experienced group of leaders grasped a new language of change and recognition of their pivotal role in driving it.

The capacity for change will be the difference between institutional thriving and surviving in these times of momentous change. The value sustainability brings is only starting to be recognised by senior management teams and this is firmly at the centre of the EAUC’s new mission.  The annual Leadership Lab at Cambridge is a critical opportunity to catalyse and advance the collective intelligence and experience of sustainability and institutional leaders to ensure our graduates can embrace the profound challenges and opportunities they will face as employees and citizens.

At the heart of the lab is a change model, which EAUC have refined with global partners including Harvard University. If sustainability leaders can turn our unconscious competence into conscious competence, our value and impact can be transformational. But this year’s lab also benefitted from even more diverse and innovative change leadership insight. This included Agility and Resilience from Professor Wendy Purcell. The 5 R’s of Responsibility - Regulation, Reducing costs, Reputation, Risk reduction and ‘right thing to do’ from Professor Janet Haddock-Fraser, aligning through shared purpose our institutions formal management system with the dynamism of staff and student social networks from Jane Davidson, and an exciting insight into how we might redefine and re-measure our institutions total value to society from Malcolm Preston of PwC the Lab sponsor.
 
The EAUC’s leadership alumni has grown by 25 and we have taken yet another significant step to reframing the value proposition of what our members do day in and day out to ensure our institutions become fit for the future, and ensure that sustainability becomes ‘just good business’.
 
Iain Patton, CEO, EAUC

The 2018 Leadership Lab will take place in early summer 2018.