27 July 2024
By Simone Anzboeck
Jamie walks into the kitchen and turns on the radio. She takes a blue mug out of the cupboard, places it under the espresso machine, puts fresh coffee in the grinder and starts the machine. The grinding sound fills the kitchen.
She leans against the cupboard, turns the radio up a notch to listen to the morning news.
A wildfire in the US burned 1,000 ha of forest. A landslide was reported in Germany following days of torrential rain. It’s not even 7.30 am and she’s already feeling distressed. For a moment, again, she feels despair and helplessness about humanity’s future.
She shakes her head as if trying to shake of the news, turns of the radio, puts the mug in the kitchen sink and heads to the door. She picks up her keys and her lanyard with her employment badge. The letters on the badge read “National environmental agency”.
"Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been." - António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, 2023
The 2023 UN progress report found that half the SDG targets had “moderate or severe deviations” from the intended trajectory since 2015 and 30% had had no progress or had regressed (UN Sustainable Development Goals Report, 2023).
So how do we close the gap? And what does this have to do with Jamie’s story?
The founders of the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) believe that personal development is necessary for societal change. Their thesis: We need to support the development of abilities, skills and other inner qualities for people and organizations to work more symbiotically if we want to achieve the SDGs.
Recent research supports this thesis. It highlights that developing inner skills and team dynamics shows promise for better outcomes compared to traditional learning interventions. But this is not necessarily a new insight.
This month's spotlight discusses whether organisations need to focus more on the inner capabilities of teams and organisations to drive outer change. This blog post will discuss why individual contributors, like Jamie, and managers and leaders should pay more attention to their personal development. It will also give you concrete steps to practically start today.
What are the Inner Development Goals (IDG)?
IDG is a global non-profit and open-source initiative that researches and promotes the ‘inner’ skills needed to accelerate sustainable development and human flourishing. The IDG community believes that the cognitive and emotional skills and other qualities we need to achieve large-scale transformation go beyond what most people normally learn in schools and higher education.
Their goal with the IDG framework is to empower individuals and organisations develop the inner capacities and co-create a more sustainable world.
Based on research and expert input, the organisation has identified a range of 23 skills grouped into 5 pillars that form part of the inner development goals:
1. Being – Relationship to Self
Cultivating our inner life and developing and deepening our relationship to our thoughts, feelings, and body help us be present, intentional and non-reactive when we face complexity.
2. Thinking – Cognitive Skills
Developing our cognitive skills by taking different perspectives, evaluating information and making sense of the world as an interconnected whole is essential for wise decision-making.
3. Relating – Caring for others and the World
Appreciating, caring for and feeling connected to others, such as neighbours, future generations or the biosphere, helps us create more just and sustainable systems and societies for everyone.
4. Collaborating – Social Skills
To make progress on shared concerns, we need to develop our abilities to include, hold space and communicate with stakeholders with different values, skills and competencies.
5. Acting – Enabling Change
Qualities such as courage and optimism help us acquire true agency, break old patterns, generate original ideas and act with persistence in uncertain times.
What is the evidence for investing in inner skills for the SDGs?
Can the climate anxiety Jamie experiences while listening to the morning news, really affect her work performance?
Studies into climate anxiety confirm that there are increased mental health concerns to individuals, but not much research has been done into the performance effect of such anxiety. Recent research by the University of Plymouth, UK, using the IDG framework as a basis, shows results that point in the direction that there is an effect.
“[research highlights] the significance of nurturing personal development and emotional connection as integral elements in motivating individuals and teams to engage in climate action.” - J. Rhodes et al., "Inner Development Goals and the Meaning, Awareness and Purpose (MAP) Model for Climate Coaching", 2023
Specifically, researchers undertook a comparative analysis of a new climate coaching programme that connects theories on intrinsic motivations (inner drivers), personal meaning, self- and situational awareness with specific strategies and actions. The coaching process progressed from discussing individual meaning through to personal action, then on to team meaning and team action. This programme was then compared with the results of a second group undergoing a live carbon literacy training programme. The carbon literacy training was delivered using a mix of formats, including discussion, reflection, fact finding and application modules.
The first group showed better improvements in motivation and teamwork for climate action compared to the carbon literacy training group. Although limited in scope, this research highlights the significance of nurturing personal development and emotional connection as integral elements in motivating individuals and teams to engage in climate action.
"Effective goal pursuit requires personal and team resilience, coupled with inner skills and qualities. Developing inner skills and team dynamics can show promise for better outcomes compared to traditional training or approaches." - J. Rhodes et al., "Inner Development Goals and the Meaning, Awareness and Purpose (MAP) Model for Climate Coaching", 2023
While research into the IDGs as a framework linking inner development to achievement of the SDGs is new and needs to be further tested, the idea that an individuals’ personal behaviours and attitudes links to how they interact with the environment is not. It is one of the fundamental characteristics of the UN leadership framework, which highlights the importance of ‘self-application’ of the framework by UN leaders.
"A United Nations leader is expected not just to preach United Nations principles and norms to others, but to live them." – UN System Leadership Framework, 2017
Separately, the Staff College, a UK-based organizations that provides professional development and leadership support for those working in the public sector, carried out an empirical study to show how a systems approach to leadership helps leaders navigate increasingly complex systems.
The integrated systems leadership model that emerged has three rings:
1. The Public Service Context: The circumstances in which you are working.
2. Systems Leadership: The qualities/actions needed by those leading complex organisations through change.
3. Systems Leader Qualities: The personal styles and behaviours needed of systems leaders.
(Deborah Ghate et al., "Systems Leadership: Exceptional leadership for exceptional times", 2013)
The dimensions of this third element are similar to the IDG framework and defined as: ways of feeling; ways of perceiving; ways of thinking; ways of relating, ways of doing, and ways of being.
"Self Mastery is important because a leader has to know himself better in order to relate with others and with the world. The concept is not new: relating with self, relating with others, and relating with the world. These three have to align to make positive change lasting and more meaningful.” - J.B. Manguera et al., "A Qualitative Study on Relating the Inner Development Goals to the Leadership Development Approach of a CSO in a Developing Country", 2022
While certainly more research needs to be done, individuals who have good emotional regulation, creative thinking, relationship skills, collaboration skills and implementation skills are what organisations need to tackle the complex problems on the way to reach the SDGs.
By turning inward, the individual can make their connections to the external world stronger and realise their potential in the service of others. While this will make sense to most readers, the bigger challenge is how to do that in practice.
How can you and your team develop your inner skills?
In my coaching of leaders, I repeatedly see that the way to tackle new, complex challenges is not by doing more of the same, but by reconnecting my clients to themselves, discovering new ways of working, managing stress effectively and harnessing their strengths and motivations to act.
Working individually with the IDG framework or with a coach, Jamie might start incorporating mindfulness practices to find ways to manage her emotions to stay in the present, seeking to reduce her fatalism thinking of the future. She might write or draw her vision for the future and how she contributes through her work. She might recognize that her collaboration skills are not sufficient to push through some of the policy changes she wants to see and actively seeks mentorship to established shared ownership across teams. The start for Jamie’s individual skill development journey is an understanding of the current baseline.
Jamie's daily routine highlights the psychological impact of global environmental crises. This reflects a broader challenge faced by individuals and organizations alike: how to bridge the gap between these global SDGs and their application within individual organizations, especially when employees may question the impact of their efforts on such lofty goals.
What IDG found is that organizations engaged with the framework through the initiative of one employee. A passionate colleague takes the initiative to learn more about the IDGs, and invites other colleagues into the conversation – and they soon find themselves presenting the case for the concept to an influential group of employees or the leaders.
Maybe this is you?
As an individual contributor, engage with the IDG skills area by doing a self-assessment. It can help you identify growth areas and implement practical action steps. Define specific upskilling, and training and work with a coach to integrate it into your work. Share your experience with colleagues or your supervisor to start a conversation about how inner skills can help you do your work better.
If you’re a manager or team leader, choose one main challenge your team/organization faces right now, and take the IDG as a lens to experiment with a new approach to solving this challenge.
Here is a three-step process to get you started:
1. List (individually or as a team) the top 3 strategic, performance or organizational challenges your team (or organization) is currently facing.
2. Choose one main challenge that is primarily adaptive in nature.
(An adaptive problem is defined by IDG as "A problem or challenge, often unknown or hard to identify, in which the solution is likewise unknown and requires collaboration across actors or parts of the organization (and often the broader ecosystem)").
3. Reflect on the degree to which inner development in general, and the practice of the twenty-three IDG qualities, abilities or skills, might help you address the adaptive challenge.
Using this baseline, you might then decide to vote/pick the three most relevant skills for your team now and engage your team in a brainstorming exercise on how you jointly can increase this skill. You might refer to the quiz results page to get ideas for skill development practices.
In essence, achieving the SDGs may well depend on our ability to look inward, develop our inner capacities, and connect more deeply with ourselves and others. By doing so, we can unlock our full potential and drive meaningful, sustainable change in the world.
About the author:
Simone Anzboeck is a certified professional coach on a mission to support leaders and teams to thrive despite the uncertain and fluid work environment. She coaches global leaders to cope with the demands of their role without burning out so they can proactively affect change. Strengthening her client’s inner skills is a big focus of her work, as she believes that external change starts from within.