Self-leadership for Sustainability

If you are still interested in future events of this nature, please email [email protected]. 

Paul Murray, Associate Professor in Sustainability and  Sustainable Construction at Plymouth University, is working with EAUC to offer you the opportunity to experience a fresh approach to engaging with sustainability that will demonstrate that embedding sustainability thinking into our work and personal lives can reap ‘Triple P’ benefits (personal, professional, planetary).

The aim is, through activity-led training, to help individuals cultivate self-leadership attributes in a sustainability context.

The training activities aim to provide you with an opportunity to think differently about what sustainability means and your potential as individuals and professionals to contribute actively to the development of a positive future.

Event outline

This training is an activity-led six hour session during in which participants will:

• Deepen their sense of engagement with sustainability in personal, professional and departmental contexts
• Examine self-leadership in the context of promoting pro-sustainability behaviour
• Use imagery to explore the complexity of ‘sustainability’ issues
• Undertake activities designed to deepen understanding of the self in a sustainability context:
     Motivation and values: Exploration of the relationship between personal core values (what motivates us/makes us tick), university values, and sustainability values and how these influence our potential to deliver positive change
     Attitudes: Using NLP techniques - to observe our tendency to make snap judgements about the people and situations we encounter and to experience how we can employ positive leadership approaches based on empathetic understanding
     Empowerment: This use of belief ‘reframing’ techniques to unlock our potential to translate intention into clear positive actions that will promote sustainability (within and outside our department)
     Practice: Using the outcomes of the day to identify personal and professional actions and practices that can meaningfully progress pro-sustainability developments.
• The session will end with a review of how the training can be built upon using the supplementary book (The Sustainable Self) and other means of personal and professional development departmental/personal action plans

We hope that the event itself will act as a case study for you to take concepts and activities that you can then look to use in your own institutions to cultivate self-leadership.

You will find a more detailed agenda, including timings, below.

Who is the event for?

This event is designed for professionals at all levels including students to promote their leadership skills.

To date, this training has been successfully undertaken by 1,350 people including the following audiences:
• Estates managers/sustainability staff
• HR managers/staff
• Support staff (p.a.s, cleaners, technicians, etc.)
• Higher and further eduction academics from built environment, arts, hard and applied sciences, engineering, education, business, law, medicine and environmental disciplines
• Students Union officers
• Postgrad, undergrad and FD students of design, built environment, engineering and the sciences
• Marketing managers
• Library managers

Participants have found their experience enjoyable, thought–provoking and empowering.

About Paul Murray

Paul is Associate Professor in Sustainability and Sustainable Construction at Plymouth University. Paul conceived the UK's first sustainability-themed undergraduate degrees in building in the 1990s and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) in 2004 by the UK Higher Education Academy for his contribution to teaching excellence. Using this award, Paul developed new values-led sustainability training techniques, which, to-date, he has delivered to over 1350 students and professionals.

In 2011, Paul published his interactive book, The Sustainable Self (Earthscan, 2011) which supplements the training. Paul publishes widely on sustainability and positive change, won a national Green Gown Award in 2007 for his university as well as a 2013 RICS Global Showcase Award for Best Practice in Sustainable Development in Surveying Higher Education.