Sustainable leadership

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused a global health emergency but also a major crisis on an economic, financial, relational and psychological level. Therefore, the call for sustainable leadership is getting louder these days. One essential aspect of sustainability is seen in resilience, which is understood as the capacity of adapting to and coping with continuously changing situations and the uncertainty of future developments. This is true for organizations as well as for leaders on a personal level. On the background of the first and second wave of COVID-19 in Italy, this paper will discuss in how far effective and sustainable leadership needs to be based on virtues and how especially hope and patience play a fundamental role in creating resilience. Sustainability deals with short-term pressures in a long-term perspective. Hence, the so-called transcendent or theological virtue of hope is an essential element for resilience, as it looks beyond the present difficulties by holding on to a greater narrative. Thus, hope becomes an important ingredient of the so-called “psychological capital” and a vital part of the individual resources for each leader which protect him from burnout and enable him to regenerate his energies in the midst of difficulties. Furthermore it will be proposed that hope is directly related to the virtue of patience, understood not as passive toleration or resignation in face of difficult situations, but as steadfast, persevering endurance despite difficulties and in the absence of instant results, due to strong convictions based in hope.