ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that we desperately need transformational leadership in order to advance the frontier of sustainability. It revisits the muddy swamps of calamitous leadership—of catastrophic, cancerous, disastrous, pestilential, cataclysmic leadership. This was a crisis ushered in while leading companies around the world—and their celebrated CEOs—all seemed to be happily chanting "greed is good" in unison. That mantra, of course, belongs to the fictional Wall Street character, Gordon Gekko, but apparently truth is stranger than fiction. As business and the financial services industry begins to respond to the rising tide of international scrutiny, the word "corporate governance" is on everybody's lips. The high priests of business—the board of directors—are perceived as just another example of a group of privileged people driven by unreasonable greed and feathering their own nests. Another barrier to sustainable change is the trust gap. Trust comes from investing in long-term relationships, rather than attempting to buy positive opinions through one-off sponsorships and charitable activities.
