What do sustainability champions most want right now to help make better emotional impact upon their audiences with the possibilities they’re explaining? A special episode and video mini series of Unsee The Future.
This is big. When you think about it. All our fears and beliefs are based on something narrative about who we are, who’s good, who’s bad, what is worth what and why. And we spend and live and love and hate based on our personal brand bibles.
So, as you’ll know well if you’ve waded through the curriculum of Unsee The Future up until now, I think slightly strongly we have one ultimate imperative in the face of the climate crisis and all the bio-diversial, social, racial, waste, poverty, democracy and mental health emergencies on planet Earth all at once right now:
We have to write new stories of us. And get over our brittle cynicisms about getting stuck into this. Like our web of life depends on it.
Because the stories we thought we were in are failing us. The bigger collective stories that enough of us have felt part of in the past to shape the world we know today, as well as the worlds of belief within us. And I think, inside, most of us in the modern world are feeling it like lostness. Like a dreadful growing ache of grief. And in the west, we don’t really know how to look grief in the eye, or make narrative sense of death.
The green revolution, is a genuinely new story of us. One supremely tied to the principles of life, and how it works – and how it could emerge from the modern world and where we find ourselves now. It’s a rich, connected story that has its believers passionate about its possibilities.
But those believers are still far from a band big enough to tip the balance of bad behaviours at global scale, never mind at effective enough speed for the catastrophes we’re now facing.
So what do they think will influence how people feel about the possibilities of doing things differently? The frankly exciting possibilities of sustainability that they are desperately trying to champion in the middle of global destructive habits? And what might these front line planet workers need to help them inspire culture change?
If most of our revolutions in the past have failed, how do changemakers imagine enough people might own the green one as their own?
I spoke to five people working on different sustainability challenges around the world. Some are running businesses themselves, some are working in organisations as portfolio holders for planet issues, but whether they’re partnering with colleagues or clients preoccupied with other responsibilities, each of my guests has to face how to show people a different perspective on the world that they will begin to feel, to instigate new ways of doing whatever it is they are doing.
So what do each of them most want right now to help make better emotional impact?
Jesse Rittenhouse, Vice President of Strategy at Spinnaker Group in Florida, had an immediate answer:
“Good storytelling…”
But personal motivation has to be turned into a strategy to make a difference. Eller Everett, based in Barcelona, from digital social impact business Both Of Us, suggests that a truly effective sustainability plan might sound quite complex to consider, but it’s the very connected scope of it that can inspire an emotional response. And there are ways into helping people see it.
“Win win win win…”
The principles of permaculture are from the ground up in every sense, but to make transition happen there does seem to be an inevitable need to help key people currently hierarchically “at the top” feel the emotional reality of their influential decisions.
Iain Groark has worked in some of the hardest places to implement sustainability, heading to sectors like the aviation industry precisely because he saw them as the most impactful places to make change. He thinks the language of sustainability is much more everyday in business than it ever was, but transformative emotional impact isn’t generated by general corporate declarations.
“Senior business leaders’ personal commitment to making it happen…”
It IS happening now, and gradually, more of us are seeing it. One of the biggest implications for business leaders involves staff: How do you significantly reposition an organisation of different people all preoccupied with different things?
Anna Frizzell, sustainability manager of the RNLI, suggests that developing some more unifying emotional ownership of sustainability is about tapping into the stories found at the real human impact level of your work. Which is also where you’ll find some practical insights into how to apply your grand social impact strategies. She thinks:
“It’s about listening to the voices of our people… ..it’s not one size fits all.”
It’s not one size fits all. And this is one of the fundamental practical challenges of sustainability. And fundamental strengths – it’s the path to real resilience, rooted in a deeper shared ownership emotionally. That’s why it’s transformative for business – working through its processes is likely to get an organisation’s people caring about what it does at a whole new level.
But I don’t want to sound too hopey-changey. Squaring up to this, especially at the beginning, is hard work. Mathy Stanislaus knows a thing or two about helping people confront realities. Now working for a particular project with the WEF, he spent all eight years as a senior changemaking advisor to the Obama Administration. So what does he think we need, to get to better emotional impact?
“I think we need people prepared to do the hard work…”
Achieving a collective goal. It’s the only way to lead change, isn’t it? But Mathy does embody it there, knowing first hand what the vulnerability of living unsustainably actually feels like. It’s his personal story.
Good storytelling, as any screenwriter will tell you, carries an inherent vulnerability within it, and perhaps like any good actor, the sustainability champion has to embrace the personal cost of this, no matter how deep its implications, as Eller helped me consider:
“You have to feel the pain of society in order to make these choices…”
A roadmap of reaching the future. Starting with creating a yearning for something people didn’t know existed.
How much are leaders aware of it now, perhaps especially post pandemic disruptions? Iain sees the story starting to hit home a little harder:
“I think there’s a change happening in people’s realisation from it, I think there’s a change happening…”
The language of all this does seem a tricky dance to hit all the marks of emotionally. Sounds like tiptoeing through a minefield to me. Anna admits that bringing this story every day to people resisting it can be wearing but the right language between all groups involved can actually take the weight off leaders’ shoulders. So it’s worth keeping understanding ears to hand regularly as a sustainability champion
“That’s really important because it can become very disheartening and dispiriting…”
Momentum certainly is an energiser for passion, to feel part of a team that’s going somewhere. So I asked Jesse:
“Does it help to be part of a group…?”
Practically though, how does a sustainability champion break through into a flow that might lead to such momentum. I asked Eller:
“I’m interested to know Eller how you create that moment…”
It’s the question I put to Mathy also. But at the global leadership level, how does he get people around the table?
“It involves a lot of trust building…”
Iain has an interesting additional take on language, and something I’d been picturing in more recent years. Is a subtle part of the problem of global scale inertia the fact that different agency groups speak different languages? And that, actually, various different champions can feel very busy and engaged spending a lot of time talking to themselves?
“When we’ve had business-savvy NGOs…”
I wonder if this is what sustainability champions end up going to work for – to be there in a turning point moment with someone. When the light goes on. It must have some important emotional impact back on them. But what happens then?
I asked Jesse:
“Do you have a moment that stands out…”
That’s it, isn’t it – that moment of emotional connection – it’s the real impact of social impact. Where someone lets it in and feels the first ping of ownership. In the end, it’s the only way to trigger a cascade of new personal actions… and new relationships.
Changing the story you think you’re in is frightening. It’s actively traumatising when it happens to you in a split second, like being caught in an accident or conflict. Perhaps changemakers are midwives, trying to help people get through the pain of transformation as efficiently and healthily as possible, trying to help them dial down the drama and the fear of what’s coming. See past some of the emotion; feel a little more control. But storytelling isn’t purely transactional, it’s experiential. A sustainability champion has to be part mystic as well as mechanic.
It’s clear from everyone, I think, that there is significant emotional work to be done everywhere in the current courts of leadership. To help reconnect them to reality and to bring alive to them personally the opportunities in front of them. And the answers may lie significantly with people far away from them, at the human impact level of business and community. One of the biggest jobs ahead of us is developing the language and experiences that can bring these two worlds together in trust, to get at the gold of effective practical insights.
But I’d suggest there is also some blindspot culture change needed in all the different sectors already engaging with climate and social crises. NGOs, government bodies, investment groups, activists, business leaders, advertising agencies, artists, citizens – how much are we speaking shared language about sustainability?
Who are we really talking to with our work? And who are we listening to?
“Don’t let perfection become the enemy of good.”
When I asked each of my guests what they thought great change would look like to them, they each said: “that my role isn’t even needed in the future. Because every role in every organisation will be seen as a sustainability job. In fact, everyone will just deploy better environmental social governance without even thinking of the word.”
What do sustainability champions most want now to help make emotional impact with the possibilities of life beyond unsustainable crisis? I might sum it up with something Eller said to me.
“We need to help people fall in love with their world again.”
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