Confidently choose how to use your energy and your talents, increase your impact, and future-proof your role.

Standard leadership training wasn't designed for environmental professionals. You face unique challenges that require specialised approaches - from navigating complex stakeholder dynamics to driving systems change while managing scientific uncertainty.

Environmental leadership demands more than technical expertise. You need resilience, the ability to perceive and respond to interconnected factors, and skills to hold organisations accountable while safeguarding the wellbeing of species and ecosystems. These outward-focussed capabilities are rarely addressed in conventional leadership training.

This program fills that gap. Rather than learning generic leadership theory, you'll develop tools specifically designed for environmental professionals working in complex, high-stakes contexts.

Why this matters?

As you know working in the environment is not what people imagine it to be. It is not all koalas, and rainforests and reefs!

Working in environmental fields presents challenges that outsiders rarely understand. It's not the romanticised version people imagine - it requires navigating political realities, competing interests, and urgent timelines while maintaining scientific integrity.

Those who master their operating model, understand systems change, and know how to unlock measurable impact gain a clear competitive advantage. This workshop builds these capabilities in real time using your actual work context, not hypothetical case studies. You'll leave with immediately applicable tools and frameworks.

Participants will work in small groups using role plays and multiple specialised toolkits designed for environmental leadership contexts.

Please note this workshop will run in Australian Eastern Standard Time for two weeks on Tuesday's and Thursday's for 2.5 hours on the following days:
Tuesday 22 July, Thursday 24 July, Tuesday 29 July and Thursday 31 July at 1:00pm - 3:30pm (AEST)

Session Overviews

Session 1 | Tools they don't teach

• Overview of leadership of self, leadership of team and system leadership
• Explore what good looks like - share what success looks like with others and re-cast your own version
• Identify your Ikigai - what is your driving purpose?
• Develop clarity around your aspiration - how can you close the gap between what you really want and where you are now?
• Shift from unconscious incompetence to intentionality in your self leadership

Session 2 | Tailoring your narrative and leading yourself

• Learn to frame your compelling narrative for yourself and for others. Move beyond basic role based identification to deeper insight
• Explore the key elements of your operating model.
• Understand how thoughtful use of your energy and your time, alongside clear perspectives on your roles can help you genuinely have more impact
• Identify how you can use simple leadership experiments to make small changes building in 1% better every day thinking
• Build simple, reusable tools that assist you to stay on track

Session 3 | Getting others on board

• Evolve your narrative so it has broader application. Build a version you can use repeatedly
• Explore your leadership shadow, surfacing your unintended impacts and how to flip them
• Learn to give and receive feedback that is strengths based and builds learning. Move to reduce the cognitive load of good teamwork for organisation-wide application
• Build an ownership mindset for your team, with a cadence of accountability that moves you closer together around your shared mission

Session 4 | Future-Proofing Your System Leadership

• Understand how systems change. Anticipate where focussing your effort is likely to have the most impact and what it means for your expertise and influence
• Shift from system player to system orchestrator. Learn to think across multiple horizons to identify where best to intervene
• Introduction to system transformation tools for organisations and for CEOs
• Refine your pathway for your own system impact, including how you will hold yourself accountable

Dr Kimberley Swords

Kimberley specialises in the development of the people who will change our world. Kimberley has coached, trained and taught hundreds of people in the environment field how to be more persuasive and impactful. She is an Executive Coach and Board Member and has designed and delivers leadership programs with Stanford/ McKinsey & Company, and the University of Queensland/Oxford Saïd Business School where she is Program Director in Transformative Project Leadership.

The consistent theme of Kimberley’s work is impact at scale to the benefit the environment. She now returns to take members deeper into practical, applied personal leadership for impact.

This workshop will be evidence based and highly interactive, providing you the opportunity to learn and practice new skills in a fun and engaging format.

Not an EIANZ member?

Consider joining as a student, associate or full member today! To receive the member rate to the symposium make sure you apply for membership prior to registering for the event! Join here →

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