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

to yield sustainability. Managing interdependencies and trade-offs in interfaces and across levels within an organisation and external collaboration (e.g. suppliers, customers and even competitors) is key to enabling sustainable performance. A multi-level and layer-informed view of sustainable leadership forms a basis of a collective or shared understanding of the patterns, enablers and impediments in nested arrangements.

Davies [20] posit that strategic timing and abandonment drive decision-making and execution of strategic priorities involving various stakeholders and shared benefits. The challenge for sustainable leadership is choosing when and what strategic change to make. Strategic timing and strategic abandonment manifest in knowing what, knowing how and when and knowing what not to do [20]. Knowing what to give up or abandon to create the capacity to undertake the new sustainable activity is critical when actions and decisions take place to balance the triple bottom line and pursue a long-term perspective.

Multi-level, relationship and pattern-based sustainable leadership help deal with complexity, which relates to sustainability. Patterns of order and unity at different levels transcend differences amongst the elements at the meso and macro levels, which are part of the triple bottom line.
