**2.2 The concept of sustainable leadership**

Leadership and sustainable leadership are concepts that lack definitional consensus. However, De Vries [13] has highlighted that the concept of lead, leader and leadership is traceable to the word *laed* in the Anglo-Saxon etymology*.* The word *laed* means a path or road. A leader is a pathfinder who shows fellow travellers the way by walking ahead, creating the desired future state and inspiring people to collaborate to make it happen. The leader responds to whatever changes and challenges arise along the way. Bulmer et al. [14] agree that leadership enables the creation of a vision, leads to the setting up of a high-performance team, keeps the team motivated, maintains a good rapport and ensures that team members are aware of the information needed, helps maintain the satisfaction of followers and uses the social influence of followers to achieve shared goals.

Hargreaves and Fink [15] construe sustainable leadership as a shared responsibility, which does not excessively exhaust resources but also maintains and avoids damaging the environment. An overview of extant definitions of sustainable leadership helps concisely illustrate the vital conceptual insights. **Table 1** below provides an overview of randomly selected definitions from literature to illuminate some of the critical themes and nature of sustainable leadership.

The table below illustrates that sustainable leadership integrates intra and interpersonal processes. It is also about the impetus to balance economic, social and environmental needs while interconnecting current and future sustainable performance [16]. A synthesis of conceptual definitions by Ref. [23] surmises nine aspects of what sustainable leadership entails:



*The Nature of Sustainable Leadership: Pitfalls, Insights and New Model DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108833*

*Source: Own.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Selected definitions of sustainable leadership.*

Kantabutra and Avery [24] agree that ethical behaviour, social and environmental responsibility, innovation and long-term perspective are among the six core sustainable leadership practices. However, Kantabutra and Avery [24] add organisational culture and staff development as critical aspects of sustainable leadership. Lastly, sustainable leadership is not role-based but action-based, where leadership is a complex social process and practices amongst a group rather than the action of an individual. Sustainable leaders pursue conscious actions, individually or collectively, to achieve outcomes that nurture, support and sustain economic, environmental and social systems integratively. With the conceptual clarity of sustainable leadership in mind, it is pivotal to understand how sustainability, on the one hand, and the ontology of leadership, on the other, undermine or complement each other.
