How can a recruitment agency make a better impact? That was what drove Rob McKay and his team to repurpose Sherrington Associates, an executive search firm based in Chester. During the quest to redefine the business, Sherrington commissioned extensive research and created the 4A Model of Sustainable Leadership. The 4A Model has become the framework for everything they do including recruiting leaders, benchmarking existing leadership teams and providing executive coaching. The business is now a certified B Corp.

Besides the inspiring story of company transformation, Rob also shared insights from his 20 years of experience in recruiting, such as ‘to build a successful career in this business of people, you need to have interest in people, integrity and empathy’. It’s also in people where Rob finds strength to fend off climate anxiety.

For books on sustainability, Rob recommends Regenesis by Gergoe Monbiot. It’s about soil. By learning the importance of soil, we can create a healthier planet and food systems. He also finds Regenerative Leadership a profound read as an entry into sustainable leadership. This book by Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm encourages us to reconnect with nature and go beyond traditional sustainability.

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below.

Yongsi: First of all, can you tell us more about Sherrington Associates?

Rob: Sure! Sherrington are 10 years old this year. We set the business up in 2014. My background has always been in leadership recruitment. The desire was to create a business that was recruiting senior leaders that could make an impact on sustainability. It didn't happen straight away. But over the 10 years, we've grown our proposition and created a model of sustainable leadership, which I'm sure we'll talk about in more detail.

Yongsi: Yes, definitely. And for now, take us to the beginning. How did you start Sherrington Associates?

Rob: When we set the business up 10 years ago, we had this ambition that we just wanted to work with some really cool clients, preferably in our local area. I'd spent a long time before that, recruiting for clients all over the world - actually with a previous search firm, a big international headhunting business. So we wanted to keep it local and diverse in terms of the sectors that we were recruiting for. For the first five years, we did exactly that. We worked with charities, financial services clients, and a couple of engineering clients. It was quite small, quite boutique, we weren't really making an impact though. Then when we had this moment of clarity, we repurposed ourselves to influencing sustainable leadership. That is the bedrock of everything we do now, whether we're recruiting leaders, benchmarking existing leadership teams or providing executive coaching. It's all with a view to develop their abilities to deliver sustainability.

Yongsi: Tell us more about this moment of clarity. How did you make the transition happen?

Rob: Just before COVID hit, we were having this epiphany. We were realising, well, okay, we might be making some good money and working with some cool clients. But if we get to the end of the journey and we retire and that's all we've done, given the context of climate change and some of the world's biggest problems, is that really enough? For us, it wasn't.

We went down this route of trying to work out what we could do to make more of an impact? To start with, we considered whether we just focused on working with charities, because actually these guys create the biggest impact. Or go down the B Corp route and just recruit for B Corps. Then we had this realisation that if we could recruit leaders with the right qualities to deliver sustainability, it could be applied to any industry. It's not just about sustainability roles. To achieve sustainability, it's about getting the whole business on board and absolutely the culture needs to be right. Who drives the culture? It's the whole leadership team.

But the first question was, what are those qualities? What makes a leader a sustainable leader? What's the difference between traditional leadership and sustainability leadership?  There's lots of models of sustainability leadership out there. At first, we tried to use various other models that existed, but they were quite similar to each other when we started to look at them. So we commissioned a piece of research with a research team that came out of Derby University. We said to them, look, there's lots of models of sustainable leadership out there. What we'd like to know is what they all agree on. Forget the things that they can't agree on. Tell us what the consensus points are. They carried out a deep literature review that lasted about six to nine months. They came back and said these are the qualities from all of the most credible sources of contemporary literature on the subject of sustainability leadership. That was the basis of our 4A Model of Sustainable Leadership, which we created in 2021. It was a long journey, but essentially that has been a step change in the business.

Yongsi: I love the fact that you had the question and then you commanded proper research in order to answer this question. Recently you got certified for B Corp. Why did you choose to go down this route?

Rob: The first part of us transitioning into this sustainability leadership space was making sure that we walk the walk when it comes to our own footprint and our own impact. B Corp was perfect for us. It was just starting to get going in the UK at that point. There were a lot of FMCG consumer goods brands. There weren't many recruitment companies or professional services companies. It wasn't very diverse sectorally. But now, four years on since we first started investigating that process, it is actually a lot more diverse. You've got blue-collar businesses coming out of the woodwork, professional services companies and financial services companies. It's quite encouraging. Last year there were 500 B Corps in the UK. Now there's about 2,500. You can see how quickly that whole movement's growing. We actually started the process officially two years ago. We found out on Christmas Day just gone that we got the good news. We became a B Corp on Christmas Day.

Yongsi: That's awesome. Congratulations! How did your clients respond to the repurposing of Sherrington?

Rob: Great question. Most of them responded really well. There were some clients who didn't get it. They didn't really care. But we realised very quickly that actually those probably aren't the clients we want to work with long term anyway. If they're not really valuing it, they don't really value sustainability. That's not the type of client we work with. In fact, now being a B Corp, we have to prove on a consistent basis that the clients we're working with genuinely take this seriously. We've had to scrutinise our supply chain to make sure that we're working with ethical suppliers. It's exactly the same with customers. We need to demonstrate we're working with ethical customers, so very quickly we've weeded out a lot of those clients that didn't really get it and didn't really value it. I'm really pleased that the clients we work with today do.

Yongsi: What kind of clients do you work with nowadays?

Rob: From a sector perspective, it's still really broad. I'd probably say third sector or not-for-profit is probably about 40% of our work. Within that, it could be charities. We recruit for large charities like the RNLI, Chester Zoo, the Land Trust. But we also recruit for really small NGOs or social enterprises that people wouldn't have heard of. The other 60% is a whole host of different sectors from white collar, blue collar, and everything in between. We're not sector specialists. We're pretty agnostic in that sense, but it keeps it interesting. Actually by being more versatile in sectors, you're able to help your clients advise on cross sector matches, which maybe the sector specialist recruiters aren't quite as good at.

Yongsi: After 10 years in business, what's your work routine like?

Rob: It's a really difficult one, because it's such a reactive role. Genuinely no two days are the same. A typical week is probably the easy way to describe. It could consist of anything from carrying out a really in depth briefing with a new client that wants to recruit a senior leader. We're doing a lot of CFOs and finance directors at the moment, strangely. But  typically, it could be anything. It could be a sales director. It could be a CEO. We've just done a big board recruitment campaign for a financial services client. It could be any number of senior leadership roles, be it on the executive or on the board.

On a Monday, typically we might be taking a brief, which would involve going out and meeting the client, normally at their premises. Sometimes if it's a really confidential search, we have to meet them offsite, but it's important to try and get under the skin of the role. We spend a lot of time upfront with the client, getting them to understand what type of leader they need, getting into grips with the technical skills but also the culture. That's the hardest part.

To try and understand the culture better, we use a number of different methods. Part of it is listening and asking lots of probing challenging questions from the client. Sometimes it can be quite difficult for them if they haven't thought about this kind of stuff before. A lot of the time they have, but it takes a lot of questioning to get an accurate picture. We also use assessments. We work with a company called Barrett. We became accredited users of Barrett a couple of years ago. Richard Barrett was a psychologist in the 90s who was passionate about creating a values-led society. He created a number of these assessment tools that we now use to help diagnose the culture ahead of us starting an executive search campaign. So it could be working with the client to diagnose the culture. It could be sitting down and going through the nuts and bolts of the brief for a particular search.

We obviously then have to go out and carry out the research. I don't actually do any of that these days, but we have a research team who do a really good job of mapping out the market and identifying talent that you might not find through advertising or through traditional recruitment. So it's working with those researchers to make sure that they're tuned into the brief and looking for the right types of candidates.

Then we interview the candidates. The interviews are really in-depth. We do a lot of CV interviewing around their life story - a bit like you're asking me now. Then we get into a lot of the details around the culture fit, such as competency-based questions, culture-based questions. We do assessments. We do role plays.

When we're not interviewing and taking briefs, I'm out and about a lot, talking on sustainability and sustainable leadership on the event circuit. In fact, I was at three last week talking to various different groups. There's a lot of prep required for those sorts of things. And generally networking in that whole sustainability space, because it's a rapidly evolving ecosystem. I'm lucky that we've got a lot more companies who are taking it seriously these days, which is obviously a good thing for a business like Sherrington.

Yongsi: Wow, that's a lot to juggle with. What did you study? Is it related to what you're doing right now?

Rob: I did sociology at Liverpool back in the late 90s, early 2000s. I've always been interested in people and human behaviour, I suppose. It has been the thing that's fascinated me. I was never a natural academic. I didn't really like exams and being given lots of homework. I made a conscious decision not to take any more education when I graduated.

But inevitably that didn't happen and I've ended up doing all sorts of courses over the years. I've done coaching qualifications. I did a really good sustainability management course during the lockdowns actually with the University of Cambridge, which I couldn't recommend more highly. If anybody's bored or looking to try and understand: a - what a mess the world is in, but also b - how they can position themselves and their careers to make a difference, that's a really good foundational course just to get the basics. That was probably a bit of a game changer when I did that course. Actually it made me look at the world differently. It's definitely worth doing more post-grad education once you've done your degree.

Yongsi: What's the name of the course?

Rob: That was a Business Sustainability Management Certificate with the University of Cambridge.

Yongsi: Probably some of our listeners would be interested.

Rob: Yeah, really good course.

Yongsi: Since you're very experienced in recruitment and have worked in different pockets in the sector, what do you think is the most essential transferable skill?

Rob: Great question. I think anybody that works in recruitment at any level, whether it's leadership recruitment like ourselves or whether it's grassroots shop floor recruitment, it's really important to have an interest in people. It is the people business, the ultimate people business. People are great, but people also let you down. A high level of resilience and some thick skin is probably what you also need to be a successful recruiter.

It's quite a low barrier to entry. If you want to be an accountant, you probably need a finance degree or at least a financial qualification of some sort. You don't need any qualifications necessarily to be a recruiter. It helped that I was interested in people and that I'd studied sociology. It helped when we decided to make this transition into the world of sustainability that I'd done some of these courses. But it's not absolutely essential. The most important thing is that you like people and that you have strong ethics and values. If you get caught out, people will pick it up really quickly. Your reputation is everything in recruitment. For those recruiters out there who place a candidate in a company - one minute take the fee. Two months later they're on the phone, convincing them to go and work for a different client. It's completely unethical. It's something that really irritates us because it gives the whole industry a bad name. So you need to have strong ethics, strong integrity and be good with people, I would say.

Yongsi: Interest in people, strong ethics, strong integrity - these sound like different facets of empathy, right? That you genuinely want to help your clients and candidates to succeed instead of moving them around like chess pieces.

Rob: Yeah, because recruitment is a mature industry now. When I first started in recruitment 20-something years ago, it was still very much in its infancy. But it's very mature now. Gone are the days where you can afford to mistreat candidates. You'll be found out. So integrity and empathy with both your client and your candidate is really important.  Being able to view people as people. Rather than putting people into boxes and seeing somebody as a client and somebody else as a candidate. What happens is over time, these roles change. They blur and they blend because you place somebody who goes on to do really well. Eventually, if you've done a good job for them, that person comes back to you as a client. Or equally, your client who's been giving you lots of work over many years, all of a sudden, wants to change jobs and comes to you as a candidate. It's about building relationships with them. To do that, you need to be empathetic. We haven't talked about it yet, but actually empathy is one of the key components of the 4A Model. In fact, it's one of the attributes that we listed in the attributes section. It's one of the most highly correlated qualities to the overall picture of sustainable leadership when we did the research.

Yongsi: Wow, fascinating. I mean, there's a lot of dehumanising, demonising on social media, or when people fight. Do you think this is a sign of lack of empathy?

Rob: I think you're right. Without making it seem impossible to improve your empathy or your level as a leader - because you can actually - but at the same token we describe empathy as one of the four qualities within our attributes section of the 4A Model. So the 4A Model includes Awareness, which is about knowledge and understanding; Abilities, which is about learned skills. These things absolutely can be developed. Actions, which is about your visible leadership styles. These are more external, perhaps, but Attributes are very much internal qualities. They are inherent qualities that leaders have. I wouldn't say it's either a case that you've got them or you haven't because they can be developed. But it's a lot more difficult to develop them than, let's say, Abilities which can be learned. For Attributes, it's a bit like nature nurture.You’re born with them or not. Empathy is one of the Attributes. A perfect example is it'd be very difficult to get somebody like Donald Trump to become highly empathetic. But you can make incremental improvements, by working with coaches or various other leadership development interventions. Generally speaking, we see empathy as something that's deeply ingrained from early socialisation and onwards.

Yongsi: That's a very important message for youth education. I mean, in order to foster the next generations of sustainability leaders, we need to work on their empathy.

Rob: If you're somebody who inherently empathises with people, or from an early age, you know that you're in tune with other people's situations and with other people's emotions, you're probably somebody who is going to be highly sought after in the world of sustainability. Like we said, it's one of those qualities that you've developed from an early age. It's a lot more difficult to build empathy, the older you get. If you're somebody with high levels of empathy and you're looking to build a career in sustainability, you absolutely should.

Yongsi: Well, I took you for a big detour. But let's finally dive into Sherrington's 4A Model. What are the traits or skills that people should work on if they want to become a leader in sustainability?

Rob: It's interesting that you use the word ‘traits’, which is a word that is used by Cambridge. They have a model of sustainable leadership. We use slightly different languages, but there are parallels. Don't forget when we carried out the research, we considered lots of different existing models. Cambridge was one of them. Harvard has a model. Even Cumbria University has a model. But we break it down into Awareness, Attributes, Abilities and Actions.

If you're looking to build a career in sustainability, I would say start by understanding the landscape better. That’s building your first A, your Awareness. That involves the wider context. So understanding the social, political, environmental and economic forces that influence sustainability. It's about understanding stakeholder beliefs. If you're in a business, for example, what do your colleagues think? What do your workers think? What do your customers think? What do your suppliers think? Building that rounded picture of stakeholder beliefs is really important. You have to understand the environmental and sustainability issues, such as how you measure your carbon footprint. If you are in an organisation, it's understanding the footprint of the whole sector, not just your own organisation, and how you can influence those things. And then it's the interconnections between all of them and how they interact.

Once you've built a level of awareness and knowledge, it's then about Attributes. These are the things we were talking about before. Empathy, which we've already spoken about. Systems thinking is another attribute. This is being able to navigate complexity. That’s somebody that intuitively recognises the big picture; somebody that totally understands that business isn't separate from its wider societal environmental context; and somebody that generally deals well with complexity by taking a systems approach. Another quality within Attributes is being courageous. The world absolutely needs courageous leaders right now. We need people who have the bravery to be able to challenge traditional approaches, who can cut through bureaucracy, who can drive innovation and withstand scrutiny as well as standing up to criticism. Last of all, we talk about being broad-minded and curious. Leaders that intuitively want to lift up the bonnet and have a rummage around and understand the issues because they're curious, right? If you've got all of those things, you have the right attributes to deliver sustainability.

Then it's about developing your skills. You used the word skills. We refer to skills as Abilities. The key skills and abilities we talk about, first and foremost, it's about communication. People think about communication as how they can talk. Well, it's not just about how they talk, it's about how they listen. It's about having an awareness of your own emotions and how to regulate your own emotions in dialogue. It’s about how to communicate a vision as a leader that would inspire others to get behind that vision and join you on this journey to deliver sustainability. The last ability to talk about is long-term thinking. In leadership terms, leaders have always looked at the next quarter as the immediate focus, but they've done that at the detriment of thinking about the next 12 months or the next five years or even the next 10 years. Having this long-term view and having a horizon of an understanding of the future implications of decisions that you make today is really important.

Last of all, it's about the Actions. If you have a basic level of awareness and understanding, some of the internal attributes, such as empathy, courage, systems thinking, broad-mindedness and curiosity, as well as the abilities in communication, long-term thinking, then genuinely you should see these things play out in your external leadership styles and actions, as we call them. Being inclusive and empowering is the first one. Being principled and rising above self-interest is the second one. Leading in an ethical manner and with a strong moral compass is the third thing. It's not that we expect leaders to have 10 out of 10 on all of these things, because that's just not realistic. But if you've got a leadership team with unique strengths in each of these areas, and they support each other and they complement each other's qualities, then actually that makes for really good sustainable leadership overall.

Yongsi: Have you worked with candidates that have zero experience in sustainability? How does that work?

Rob: We're doing that all the time. The development from creating the model of leadership was that we've now created an assessment platform, where leaders can go on and assess themselves against all these things. The idea is that when we're recruiting people we recruit them based on these qualities through the recruitment process. We ask them to complete a self-assessment. Six months after getting the job, once they've embedded themselves and completed their probation period or onboarding period, we have to complete a peer assessment, which is where 10, 15, 20 of their colleagues will complete the assessment about them. It's a bit like a 360 review, but you get to see the alignment between their own self-image and then what the colleagues think. These are things that we use on a daily basis now to try and support leaders to improve their sustainable leadership.

Yongsi: Have you gotten any feedback from them? Are they happier working in the sustainability space?

Rob: We're constantly hoping when we place a new senior leader with a new job, that it's the right job and the right organisation. When we speak to them a month in, two months in, three months in, they give feedback that they're happy. I think generally speaking, developing your leadership skills is something that makes you feel good, right? You realise that learning is fun. That isn't any different if you're a leader or if you work on the shop floor. It's about making work purposeful. It's about giving yourself goals and objectives. I think if the employer is willing to support the leader to develop themselves, it's in everybody's interest.

Yongsi: What about you? Are you happier since the repurposing of Sherrington or do you find it more stressful?

Rob: I'm old enough and ugly enough to remember the days when it wasn't spoken about all the time. In fact, before Sherrington, before climate change was a thing, people used to talk about global warming as something that was in a faraway future that we'd never in a million years be touched by. We very quickly realised that wasn't the case and that we needed to pull our fingers out. Sadly, our global leaders and political leaders have been way too slow off the mark to actually make things happen quick enough. However, we've had a global event that has really shaped people's thinking in so much as COVID. We're still in extremely worrying times. It's not just climate change. Our geopolitical situation is extremely worrying - the rise in poverty in this country in particular is shocking. Our leaders are letting us down. The news feed that you receive now is just a barrage of depressing news stories, right? We all have to look after our mental health.

I think if you work in a profession that is doing something positive to contribute to these things in whatever way, whether you're working for a charity or business, that is a way to tackle some of these feelings. But let's face it, we all have days where this can get a bit depressing, right? I suppose when I get approached by people like you and listen to what you're doing and the types of people that you're engaging with, it gives me hope. That's what gives me hope. It gives me hope that actually it's not just me that's gone down this path. Every time we talk to a client that embraces what we do and gets the value of sustainable leadership, it gives me hope.

Yongsi: So you find faith in people, don't you?

Rob: That's true. Absolutely. I'm sure you're the same, right?

Yongsi: Yes. The feeling that you're not alone is really empowering.

Rob: Absolutely. I think it's that camaraderie that you get by knowing that you're in an ecosystem of people who care about the same things. Let's face it, if you're a human being, you should care about this stuff. If you have a family, you should care about this stuff. If you want your species to survive the next 50 years, 100 years, you should care about this stuff. I think the vast majority of us do. In fact, I think we all do to some degree. And it is changing. There is more of an emphasis on making a difference and leading more purposeful lives and purposeful careers these days. I think what you're doing is fantastic. Thank you for inspiring me and giving me some hope.

Yongsi: You too, Rob. I can't stress enough how much I've learned from our conversation. It's probably something I will revisit from time to time. I'm sure our listeners will agree.

Rob: I hope that it was useful. If even one person has listened to this and thought, I'm going to do something different to make a difference, then it's been worth it.

Yongsi: Totally. I'm sure there will be more than one. Before we wrap up, can you recommend any readings that inspire you on sustainability?

Rob: I have a library. Somebody actually emailed me today to ask whether they could borrow a particular book. I went to the library to see if it was there. Nobody ever gives books back. That's the problem. I don't mind if it means that they're gonna change their outlook or it inspires them to do something.

There's so many good sustainability books. I suppose my favourite… I was lucky enough to meet George Monbiot in person at the Kendal Mountain Festival two years ago. He just released his new book with Regenesis, which it's gonna sound really boring, but it's all about soil - how soil is actually a living system. If we can learn the importance of soil, we can create a far healthier planet with far healthier food systems. Actually there's so many parallels in terms of how nature is successful in recreating itself as its own survival systems. Biomimicry is a big theme in that book. So my first recommendation would be Regenesis by George Monbiot.

The second one had a really profound impact on me. I was away on business in the Netherlands a couple of years ago, and somebody had given me a copy of Regenerative Leadership by Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm. Again, for people who are just getting into sustainable leadership as a subject matter, it's a really easy-to-understand book. It's not too heavy. There's lots of cool page breaks, diagrams and images. It starts with the whole concept of how we've become disassociated and disconnected with nature; and how we see ourselves now humans see ourselves as separate to nature and almost as superior to nature; and that nature is there only to serve us. Actually what people don't realise is we're a part of nature and a really important part of nature. We should be the custodians of this planet. The theme of regenerative leadership is that in order to get back to our natural state of being connected with nature, we need to go beyond sustainability. Because if we just sustain our current practices, we don't actually make the difference at the scale or the pace at which it's required. The book talks about regenerative leadership, which goes one step beyond sustainable leadership and talks about regenerating at pace.