Green Leadership and the Future of Assessment Centers: Insights from PASSTI’s National Initiative – Justi Ariesthiawati

Global sustainability challenges, climate risks, and ecological pressures are reshaping expectations for future leaders. As organizations increasingly pursue strategies grounded in environmental responsibility, the question for Assessment Center (AC) practitioners becomes urgent: How should AC methodology evolve to identify leaders capable of driving sustainability and ecological stewardship? This paper presents insights derived from the Perkumpulan Assessment Center Indonesia or Indonesian Assessment Center Association (PASSTI) national webinar, “Green Leadership: Trend atau Tuntutan?”, (Green Leadership: Trend or Demand?) held on 26 April 2025. With 201 participants across hybrid formats—including PASSTI members, AC providers, university students, state owned enterprise employees and public practitioners—the event explored how Green Leadership can be conceptualized, observed, and assessed within the AC framework.

Objective / Problem Statement:
Although sustainability has emerged as a core leadership expectation globally, Green Leadership remains underrepresented in competency models and AC practices across many organizations. Most AC methodologies still emphasize traditional performance, strategic, organizational or business orientation and interpersonal competencies, leaving a gap in evaluating leaders’ ecological consciousness, long-term stewardship, and ethical resource decisions. The session aims to articulate this gap and offer a pathway for integrating sustainability-related indicators into leadership assessment.

Theoretical Foundation:
The webinar featured three diverse experts—a government policymaker in micro-enterprise sustainability, a community psychology scholar, and a corporate human capital leader from the biotech sector. Their combined perspectives position Green Leadership as a multidimensional construct encompassing ecological awareness, systems thinking, environmental ethics, stakeholder sensitivity, and the behavioural capacity to champion sustainable innovation. These dimensions align with contemporary leadership theories while expanding the behavioural indicators traditionally used in ACs.

Application / Methodology:
Through presentations, panel dialogue, and active Q&A, the webinar examined how Green Leadership behaviours manifest in organizational contexts. Participants discussed (1) the readiness of Indonesian leaders to internalize sustainability values, (2) the role of youth in accelerating ecological consciousness, (3) risks such as corruption that undermine environmental governance, and (4) the practical demands placed on leaders operating in sustainability-sensitive industries. PASSTI synthesized these insights into initial behavioural clusters—such as responsible decision-making, resource-conscious problem solving,   community impact orientation, ethical environmental judgement, and risk management, which can be translated into observable cues within AC exercises.

Results, Implications, and Conclusion:
The webinar confirmed broad practitioner support for incorporating sustainability-related competencies into AC designs. Three implications emerged:
1. Definition and Standardization: Clear, operational behavioural indicators of Green Leadership are needed to ensure consistent assessment practices.
2. Simulation Adaptation: AC exercises should increasingly represent sustainability dilemmas, such as multi-stakeholder trade-offs, environmental risk scenarios, or ethical resource conflicts, to elicit relevant behaviours.
3. Collaborative Action: PASSTI is encouraged to partner with government bodies and industry to advance sustainability-focused competency standards and strengthen the strategic role of ACs in shaping environmentally responsible leadership pipelines.

The session positions Green Leadership not as a trend, but as a foundational leadership requirement. For AC practitioners, these insights offer a practical roadmap for evolving competency frameworks, simulation designs, and assessor training to meet emerging global expectations. Delegates will gain conceptual clarity, applied guidance, and a starter framework to begin embedding sustainability competencies into their assessment practices.