Leading a business is a different skill set from leading sustainability. One is strategy; the other is transformation. By Briony Pete, The Circular Life.
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Did you raise your hand for sustainability? Or maybe it landed on your desk because you’re the CEO, the Ops Director or the Head of Licensing, and it was the ‘best fit’?
Either way, there’s a new level of uncertainty here that you’re just not used to. Maybe you have a sustainability lead, or a small champion team, but ultimately, you’re the one making the call on things you don’t fully understand.
EPR? Digital product passports? Scope 3? What licensors expect versus what your retailers will pay for? And with the long chain of command, progress slows at every handover.
And like most leaders in your position, you’re making sustainability decisions without the nuance that comes with years in the field. This is one of the biggest struggles I hear from from those who have the accountability hat for sustainability:
‘It’s tough making decisions in this uncertainty’.
Everything else that’s on your plate, you’ve done a hundred times before, and done it well. Range launches, licensor approvals, retailer negotiations – but with sustainability, you’re often making those decisions into the unknown. Theres a dozen priorities, all asking for your attention, budget and sign-off. Range deadlines. Minimum guarantees to hit. Material costs climbing. A retailer keen on green optics, but not willing to pay more for them.
So implementation gets filed as ‘important, but less urgent’. The right thing to do, but not commercial enough to fully prioritise, yet. But perhaps you’ve noticed that phrase ‘important, but less urgent’ getting a little repetitive lately. A narrative stuck on a loop that doesn’t quite belong anymore.
…Maybe it’s starting to sound like an excuse?
For many leaders, its easy to say ‘not yet’ because getting serious about sustainability can feel like a big leap into the unknown. But it doesn’t need to be a huge, sudden move. With a shift in mindset, a little consistency and a few additions to your leadership repertoire, sustainability can strengthen your culture, protect your licences and reputation, and drive commercial results.
Here are four simple leadership practices that make a real difference to HOW you do this.
1. Learn to lead without all the answers
Leading change doesn’t need the strongest argument in the room before you act. And you don’t need all the answers. What’s important, however, is how you handle not having them. The more real and honest you can be, the quicker you build trust, and its trust that moves people from wary to willing.
Research backs this up too. Culture change and change management are both rooted in this kind of emotional intelligence and psychological safety: meet people where they are, ask curious questions, share that you don’t know all the answers, but ask people to build solutions with you. Let people feel seen and heard. When people know it’s safe to try – and safe to fail – they act more readily.
Picture a licensing manager put on the spot about sustainability for next season’s range. The likely answer? ‘The licensor hasn’t asked for it, and the retailer won’t pay for it, so lets move it down the line’. But instead ask them ‘how can we design this in, or to help draft the solution’, and they get the chance to pause and get curious about the opportunity to change.
2. The cost of inaction
Hands down, this is the biggest problem I see in sustainability budget conversations. They all start with: what is this going to cost us?
It’s not a bad question. But when it’s the only question, it poses a real risk to the long-term profit line. It needs at least a second question alongside it: what does it cost us to stand still?
Or, how much effort does it take to keep treading water?
Or, where will we end up if we just drift with the tide?
This is the cost of inaction.
And it’s easy to miss at first, because inaction feels safe, especially when nothing is visibly wrong. But leave it too long, and you start to notice missed opportunities, slower growth, and new regulation that suddenly needs (expensive) all-hands-on-deck action.
If inaction feels like the safe option, try exploring these questions first:
- 👉 What are we missing out on? What new business, could a well-resourced sustainability plan open up?
- 👉 What might we lose if we don’t act? Which partnerships depend on sustainability commitments we’re not resourcing?
- 👉 What are we not measuring? Which materials or suppliers are exposed to price rises, shortages or new rules?
- 👉 How far behind are we? What are our competitors doing in this space? Do we compare, or are we on the back foot?
3. Align your priorities
Sustainability often gets stuck in its own lane because it sits outside the targets the rest of the business runs by, such as margins or speed to market. It still has to compete for the same sign-off as everything else, but it isn’t fully connected to what leadership gets measured on. So it loses out every time.
When your team has to choose between their bonus-related priorities and a sustainability add-on, they’ll choose the former, and shoehorn sustainability in when they have ‘spare time’. (And we all know how much spare time there is in a seasonal product calendar.)
If you’re noticing this misalignment, there’s a simple place to start. Map what’s already there. Sit down with your business goals, your KPIs and who owns them. Map where sustainability fits and where it meets resistance.
This doesn’t need to take hours. Keep it quick and dirty. Look for the overlap and the quick wins. Spot where the same goals are being described in different language. And surface the friction and frustration: that gives you clear problems to troubleshoot, rather than a vague sense that something isn’t working.
Want to follow a framework? You can download an alignment practice here: circular-life.ck.page/2097a6fade
4. Reframe the narrative
It’s easy to get stuck telling yourself the same sustainability story: the budget’s tight, the timing’s wrong, now’s not the moment.
And sometimes that’s true. But more often, you’re stuck in a narrative and in need of a reframe.
One of the most common ones I see is: ‘we’ll commit when the commercial case is clear.’ But that opportunity rarely drops into your lap. It becomes visible once sustainability is properly understood across the business.
Take this request: ‘We need to budget for training our product teams on sustainability.’ It’s easy to say: sorry, no budget right now. But no budget for what? Sustainability? Or no budget to protect a licence renewal? Or to strengthen our pitch to new licensors? To stop approvals bouncing back late in the range?
When we ask better questions, we give more informed requests:
‘We need to invest in training for our product team. Our biggest licensor has added sustainability requirements to its brand guidelines. If we do it now we avoid the expensive backlog later in the year, and our designers have time to build them in from the first sketch – rather than fix them at approval stage. It protects the renewal, keeps the calendar on track, and gives us a stronger story when we pitch for new business.’
Same spend. Different conversation.
Stuck narratives are easy to spot. They feel incongruent. You’re saying the words, but you don’t quite believe them anymore. It’s the same with the overused words we reach for when we tell others we’re busy or tired.
So ask yourself: which sustainability narratives are starting to sound like a stuck record? And what might be the truth if you look a little deeper?
Ready to lead with a little more conviction?
None of these practices needs a sustainability qualification. They need the same thing as any other leadership skill: thought, practice, reflection and evolution. The brands and licensees leading on sustainability don’t have every answer. What they do have is the willingness to say: here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t, and here’s what we’re doing next, regardless.
If you’re waiting to feel ready before you speak up, I’ll challenge you:
→ What does ‘ready’ look like, and how will you know when you’re there?
A supported approach
If you’d like support leading this in your business, I’m offering Products of Change members 50% off all three of my coaching and strategy packages, booked by 30 November 2026. Places are limited. Explore the offer and book a discovery call here.
About the author
Briony Pete is a certified leadership coach, culture specialist and founder of The Circular Life. She supports sustainability leads, board members and impact businesses to embed sustainability leadership across their organisations. With 15+ years in sustainability and ESG consulting, she now focuses on closing the gap between delivering technical strategy and leading business transformation.
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