It Comes Out in the Laundry

By Daniel Goleman

Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day.

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Eileen Fisher is passionate about reducing the ecological footprint of a major contributor to climate deterioration—the clothing industry. As its CEO, Fisher made the women’s-apparel firm that bears her name into a leader in reducing its negative environmental impacts.

Eileen Fisher clothes use mainly natural materials, like wool, silk, and linen, which—unlike polyester or other petroleum-based fabrics—are recyclable. What’s more, their production involves a smaller amount of chemicals, water, and wastewater. The company is also taking steps to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in its supply chain. And a take-back program means that clothes bought at Eileen Fisher stores can be returned after they’ve been used, to be cleaned and resold or repurposed.

Fisher wanted to be sure that these values continue to drive company decisions, so before stepping down after 38 years as CEO, she recruited a successor who also advocates sustainability: Lisa Williams, whose career had been at Patagonia, another clothing company that shares much of Fisher’s vision.

But do consumers care whether or not a company has a sense of purpose? In surveys, more than 80 percent of consumers say they would prefer to buy from a company that practices sustainability—suggesting that this may be a winning company purpose. But when it comes to what exactly “sustainability” means, things get murky.

The market advantage seems to go to companies that have what you might call “honest purpose.”

For instance, some companies claim their products are recyclable, when in fact few customers—if any—have access to the optimal recycling processes for them. What might be true about recycling does not mean it is true in reality. The Federal Trade Commission says no product should be called recyclable unless 60 percent or more of its buyers can recycle it. In the apparel industry, this means that the bulk of clothes bought—especially those made of polyester, a petroleum product—end up in landfills.

It turns out that this gap between claim and reality matters for customer satisfaction. A study of more than 200 publicly traded companies found that companies perceived to be “greenwashing”—making misleading claims about their sustainability activities—saw a 1.34 percent drop in their American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) score. While that may sound like a minor shift, it reflects a marked change in ROI and earnings.

In this regard, the market advantage seems to go to companies, like Eileen Fisher, that have what you might call an “honest purpose”—in other words, their corporate behavior reflects their public face.

There’s another reason for leaders to embrace a meaningful mission, a reason that has less to do with optics and more to do with the dynamics of leadership itself. Consider the results from Korn Ferry’s research group, which analyzed the leadership styles of close to 4,000 leaders, then asked their direct reports in confidence to say what kind of climate each leader created.

The most positive climate was created by visionary leaders—those who, like Fisher, were able to articulate a mission that was heartfelt for them personally and for those they led. In contrast, the worst climate was created by “command and control” leaders, who simply ordered subordinates to act, without motivating them.

The visionary style of leadership has several benefits. For one, people are most likely to give their very best effort when they feel they are in the service of a larger purpose, rather than just checking off what their job expects of them. For another, having a shared mission means a leader can give specific on-the-spot feedback (the best kind) to an employee in meaningful terms: When you did X, it didn’t help our Mission Y—so better to do Z instead. In addition, this heart-to-heart connection creates trust, motivation, and a shared sense of mission on a leader’s team.

Photo Credits: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library/Getty Images