Dr Matthew Gitsham ∙ Professor of Business and Sustainability at Hult International Business School
Faculty Column ∙ April 16, 2026
Firsthand experience of when an ESG issue blows up is pivotal for better leadership
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In recent times, you’ve probably noticed a trend of companies ‘greenhushing’ their activities in some regions, speaking about them less publicly and using different language. This reflects growing scrutiny and shifting political and commercial pressures around sustainability agendas amid geopolitical disruptions. But it does not mean the agenda has gone away. If anything, it makes it more important for senior leaders to be able to understand, navigate, and lead in this complex and fast-moving context.
At the same time, the focus on long-term value creation has continued to grow globally. This has strengthened the role of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) frameworks in helping organizations understand how they respond to sustainability challenges, define their purpose, and create value for multiple stakeholders as a route to resilience and growth.
These pressures are becoming more acute as climate and nature risks intensify, including chronic changes such as rising sea levels, and extreme weather events including storms, floods, and heatwaves. Transition risks and opportunities are also increasing, driven by new regulatory interventions, such as CSRD and CSDDD in the EU, disruptive technological innovations like China’s cleantech breakthroughs, and shifting customer preferences. Meanwhile, proactively managing human rights risks across value chains continues to yield benefits through strengthening supply chain resilience and managing reputational risk.
What does this mean for senior leaders and executive teams?
In our work with senior leaders at the Hult Sustainability Impact Lab, we have heard over and over again sentiments along the lines of:
“I reached a certain level of seniority in my career, and I suddenly found myself having to engage in all this ESG work, navigate the business’s role in global challenges, and engage and partner with many different kinds of stakeholders in society. Nothing in my prior experience or management education had prepared me. I had to make it up as I went along.”
Our research has explored how leaders and leadership teams have found themselves needing to lead differently to the generation that went before them, and also what experiences have helped them learn and develop.
Core to this has been a move to prioritizing long-term value creation, and seeing the purpose of business as creating value for multiple stakeholders over time, not just shareholders. There has been a recognition that healthy and resilient businesses need healthy and resilient societies. While past business leaders could assume challenges faced at the societal level were someone else’s responsibility, now, knowing how and when their businesses should engage for the benefit of all is not a distraction, but core to creating and protecting value.
This shift in mindset has been accompanied by a shift in the activities senior leaders undertake. The need, for example, to create time and space for reflection and strategy, to shift cultural norms so ESG goals can be prioritized, to engage a wide range of stakeholder groups to create long-term value, and to contribute to public debate and policymaking – all while managing a potential growing risk of anti-ESG criticism.
What experiences help senior leaders learn?
The senior leaders we spoke with in our research cited a range of experiences across their careers and lives that shaped their ability to lead differently. Central themes for many often revolved around firsthand experiences and relationships, for example:
Firsthand experiences of ESG and sustainability challenges (like climate challenges, water stress, human rights abuses, and oppression), and relationships with the people suffering the effects of these.
Firsthand experiences of what it actually feels like as a business leader when an ESG issue blows up, people are hurt, reputation is severely damaged, and value is destroyed.
Experiences of successful ESG initiatives that deliver impact, growth, and stronger stakeholder relationships.
Relationships with people who challenge you about what’s the right way to respond, such as political figures, campaigners, journalists, peer CEOs, non-exec directors, investors, family members, and teachers.
Participation in peer networks, and career experience in organizations where prioritizing ESG is embedded in the culture.
How can we proactively bring this into leadership development?
Firsthand experience of ESG issues is pivotal, and we can become more choiceful in looking for and valuing this in recruitment and succession planning. We can also experiment with how it can be proactively brought into leadership development experiences.
At Hult Ashridge Executive Education, we have used these insights to develop new elements in our work with leaders and organizations, exploring the implications of global ESG challenges for strategy, future operating models, and leadership, alongside strategic projects focused on developing practical business solutions.
Experiential learning plays a critical role, exposing leaders first-hand to ESG challenges and successful innovation interventions that address them. It can also give them sense of what it feels like when stakeholders (including family members, journalists, NGOs, employees, and investors) react badly to revelations of ESG poor practice.
Equally important is creating space for leaders to practice navigating these situations together. This includes having conversations about the pros and cons of approaches to different ESG challenges, how to engage in public debate to help build consensus around collective solutions, how to engage well with investors on ESG topics, and how to advocate upwards.
To lead differently from the previous generation, leaders today need experiences that prepare them for an increasingly complex and contested world. Experiential learning provides a space to confront difficult ESG challenges and navigate the reactions of diverse stakeholders in a controlled environment – allowing leaders to learn from mistakes safely, rather than risking the real-world consequences of getting it wrong.
What can you do? Questions to reflect on:
How mature is our approach to embedding ESG considerations, a stakeholder orientation, and long-term value creation into our board and senior executive team conversations?
How well equipped are our leaders to participate in these conversations, and does our organizational culture support this?
Are we proactively seeking to support our current senior leaders, and the next generation, to understand, navigate, and lead in this complex and fast-moving context?
How far can we support them to seek out appropriate career and life experiences? To participate, for example, in networks that bring leaders together to learn and share on these topics?
How can we bring these considerations into the leadership development interventions we develop for our senior leaders?
Meet the expert
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Dr Matthew Gitsham
Professor of Business and Sustainability at Hult International Business School
Matt is Director of the Sustainability Impact Lab at Hult International Business School. He specializes in sustainable development, human rights and organizational change. Matt has led numerous research projects on business and sustainable development for over a decade at Ashridge.
Matt is a frequent contributor to Hult Ashridge L&D solutions for executive education clients and has led many courses on Business and Global Society, Sustainable Development and Human Rights themes across Hult’s postgraduate and undergraduate programs.
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