You do not often see this combination of people assembled in one space: It includes individuals who work for universities and non-for-profit organizations, for mining companies and hospitals, for governments and small businesses. If you were to imagine it, you might expect this to be an uneasy assembly; starkly different backgrounds and interests can make it hard to find things to talk about.

But when this group convened in Ottawa around big round tables on a sunny Tuesday morning in May, there was nothing uncomfortable about it: Everyone was here to talk about the same thing.

Sustainability for Leaders is a unique training course and dialogue forum. It draws together sustainability champions who are working within their fields to enable bold and strategic steps toward a sustainable future. It gives participants a confident command of The Natural Step's model and tools for sustainability thinking, strategy, and results. And it creates a dynamic space for creative conversations to happen.

Of course, the innovative step here is not to offer a great training course, nor is it to create a safe and constructive forum for dialogue. What makes the course unique is its deliberate breadth of participation. Rather than drawing exclusively from, say, the NGO sector or small businesses--that is to say, drawing from within established networks--TNS casts a wide net and brings in participants from networks that do not often interact.

What this leads to are scenes like this one: An ecology activist, an oil company representative, a university administrator, and a doctor sit around a large table meticulously working through a set of strategic sustainability goals they are crafting for an imaginary mountain resort. It's part of an exercise. The diversity of their backgrounds becomes clear as they work through questions like: How can the resort most effectively move toward energy efficiency? How will we get buy-in from the managers? What would we include in a green-purchasing policy? The conversation is lively and not without difference in opinion, but the participants are clearly energized, perhaps even forgetting for brief moments that they do not actually work for "Paradise Mountain Resort."

As the group works through these exercises there is no doubt that they are honing skills and deepening understanding. But many also express a shift in attitude, and perhaps this is the most interesting thing: for many, the opportunity to engage in this kind of dialogue sparks new interest in cross-sector collaboration. The simple act of conversation among unlikely collaborators seems to open up new doors and seed new ideas.

A microcosm of cross-sector dialogue, a forum like Sustainability for Leaders offers a hopeful image of what a sustainable future could look like. And with the help of a growing community of global sustainability champions, we might even get there.

Alex Neuman

• Click here for pictures from the event