Looking back on Bridging the Years 2024

Leadership Experience Exchange

Already upon registration the participants were assigned randomly to five groups for the Leadership Experience Exchange. The symbols selected for each group matched some of the core needs of our community reflected in the mission and thought leadership topics of the WU Executive Academy: our Brainiac for Quality Business Education, a puzzle piece for Career Advancement, a seedling for Sustainability, a caterpillar for Self-Development and an outline of a woman for our dedication to support Female Leaders.

After a brief introduction by the Community Engagement Team we asked our groups to discuss the following points in 10 minutes each:

1. Introduce yourself and your expertise
2. Which challenges do you have in common implementing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) in your companies?
3. Leadership mistakes: which one did you learn most from?

Quite a challenge as these are all topics in which our community could dive in easily! But we grow with our challenges so the community dove in with motivation and enthusiasm.

In each group a moderator, note taker and presenter were selected and we employed the help of the collaborative app Padlet to be able to summarize discussion outcomes and connect group members after the event.

Sharing discussion outcomes

After 40 minutes or intensive group discussion each group was given the chance to present their outcomes.

Group ‘Supporting Female Leaders’ focused on the comparative novelty of ESG, the need to prove its value and request from clients as main challenge in their companies next to a variety of other factors (e.g. new criteria, compliance, capacity…). Their main leadership lessons were: never underestimate people, avoid micromanaging, use proper communication and trust your gut!

Group ‘Quality Business Education’ identified the cost of compliance and administration as well as the risk to be affected by green washing as main challenges for implementing ESG in their companies. As for their learnings from leadership mistakes the main point this group shared was that ‘it is all about people’. They concluded that speed of decision making was as important as quality and communication was key!

Group ‘Self Development’ identified as main challenges of ESG implementation in their companies the necessity to monitoring costs vs benefits, implementation of huge changes across different departments, a lack of financial incentives to drive change and emphasized that coaching and education helps to improve social constraints. Looking closer as their biggest learnings from leadership mistakes the group emphasized that micro management could be a motivation killer and that sometimes coaching can really be bullying. A lack of authenticity and not taking time off to protect oneself was also mentioned in the group sharing session.

Group ‘Career Advancement’ shared that the differences between companies, countries and industries, additional need for compliance and resistance against changes are major challenges for implementing ESG in their companies. Mistakes leaders can make are related to trust issues, cultural context, leadership styles, agility in processes and not minding to be respectful to team members at all levels.

Group ‘Sustainability’ also discussed the challenges regarding the implementation of ESG in their respective companies highlighting issues like non-compliance of customers, high energy prices, the variety of rating systems but also how individual regions approach this issue with different levels of seriousness. The leadership mistakes this group learned most from were not knowing one’s own business, not acting fast enough regarding incompetent team members and cross-cultural differences regarding motivation and feedback for team members.

Forging new connections

After all groups shared their discussion outcomes with the plenum the evening ended with deepening conversations and making new connection in our customary relaxed networking atmosphere. It was a pleasure to see the animated conversations and development of new links in our WU Executive Club community.

Thanks to all participants of this event, especially those taking over group roles! Thanks to the representatives of our International Advisory Board and WU EA Female Leaders Network! This evening would not have been such a great success without the tireless efforts of our fantastic Events team so a shout out to them as well!

Find more pictures in this photo album on WU EA Connect.

And join us for one of our next events! All details about what is coming up on our Event Board on WU EA Connect.

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