When it comes to responsible management, change is one of the only constants.

“What’s really interesting as I reflect on my career is how much the goalposts have moved over time,” said Mark Carpenter, Chief Growth Officer at Changemakers, a social impact consulting and marketing firm in Toronto. “It’s actually remarkable when you think about what becomes important and then what sort of peters out.”

Carpenter was one of four industry experts reflecting on responsible management the latest edition of Brock University’s Business Matters event, Business with purpose: Responsible management for a better future.

Hosted by Todd Green, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Goodman School of Business, Carpenter shared the panel with Dave Bouckenhooghe, Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, Rhonda Klosler (BBA ’93), Chief Operating Officer at RSM Canada LLP, and Christina Garnett, HubSpot’s Principal Marketing Manager of Offline Community and Advocacy.

Together, they unpacked how leaders can navigate emerging challenges and drive impact beyond the bottom line, starting with defining what it means to be a responsible manager.

Bouckenhooghe described responsible management as “navigating a wide web of interdependencies” including how a leader’s actions impact employees, shareholders, community suppliers, the environment and even future generations.

“A responsible leader is someone who understands the interconnectedness of systems and their own role within it,” Bouckenhooghe said. “They’re guided by ethics and values. They build on long-term relationships with a range of stakeholders and they drive positive change towards sustainable development.”

But what positive change and sustainable development look like is shifting and evolving, particularly in the current geopolitical and economic climate, Garnett said.

It’s very easy to have integrity in levels of abundance; it’s very hard to have integrity during scarcity, she said. She predicts concerns over recessions and a sense of scarcity could leave leaders more focused on survival than “being a good person.”

“As we move from an abundance mindset into a scarcity mindset, you’re going to see CEOs taking about how they’re trying to save their business, they’re trying to keep it afloat, they’re trying to keep it going when consumers maybe have lost trust and there’s not as much money in the economy to go around,” she said.

Enter business schools, like Goodman, and the role they play in training leaders to be responsible in an everchanging landscape.

More than technical prowess, leaders need emotional intelligence, also known as EQ, Klosler said.

“We spend a lot of time developing people’s technical skills. We turn them into what we believe are exceptional consultants and then we put them in leadership roles. But we haven’t got that baseline emotional intelligence,” she said. “That’s where a university or college could help. It’s a critical skill to be a successful leader today.”

But EQ is critical no matter what role someone plays in a business, including organizations that focus on profit over activism, Carpenter added.

“Having that high EQ and knowing how to be a great human and do your best within that context is really important,” he said. “You need to know what are your non-negotiables at work and what are the good things you’re willing to put into the world in your personal life to offset some of the things your company is doing or not. There’s not always going to be this wonderful triple bottom line at the company you’re employed at. So be a good a human first and a good employee second.”