Organisation / Hub: IDG Westösterreich Good Neighbours Network

Contact Person: Sonja Karbon

Link: https://goodneighbours.world/idghub/

Contact Email: sonja@goodneighbours.world

Description

As part of the TRIGOS Awards ceremony, which is the highest honour for companies and their commitment to sustainability in Austria, we were able to give a keynote speech on the topic of ‘Inner Development Goals as a compass for sustainable development’ to present the IDGs. Important representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Austrian Industries, the provincial government, politicians and CEOs were present. In terms of content, we emphasised the potential of the synergy between IDGs and SDGs, presented contemporary leadership approaches, presented the IDGs in a nutshell and concluded with an exercise on the topic of appreciating oneself and others.

Learnings

It was very important to the Chamber of Commerce as the client that we were not too ‘esoteric’ and there were a few concerns because some people were very conventional and traditional and couldn’t do anything with it – that was the assessment. We made the keynote speech humorous and light-hearted, which was very well received. We described the mindfulness exercise as an experiment and extended it as an invitation, including the option to leave the room if it was too much. Interestingly, we received a lot of positive feedback about our exercise and the keynote afterwards. Precisely from those people who were considered sceptical and they emphasised how important the IDG dimension of ‘being’ is. Looking back, two lessons learnt:
a. every suit contains a human being with all their needs, just like you and me.
b. have the courage to stay true to yourself and not be influenced by external concerns.