A recent piece by Madeleine Aggeler in The Guardian discusses the fact that everyone has an impact on climate and looks at how you might start reducing your impact. This gets to the root of my #ClimateInfluence platform which may be the only place covering how the humans who happen to be leaders practice their own climate values. And, if/how they are visible about it as a way to signal their influence of industry/sector leadership peers.
This piece takes the consumer-facing angle, but hints at what I'm getting at. There's professional level leadership social norm-shifting to be done!
Quote:
“Everyone has an impact,” says Darby Hoover senior resource specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) . “Corporations are made up of individuals, states are made up of individuals. We need action at all levels.”
What are the most effective steps one can take to reduce one’s environmental footprint? And how does one influence others to take action? We asked experts.
EVERYONE has an impact. What leaders are doing, and especially what leaders are visible about doing, in their own lives can be so key.
HOW does one influence others to take action? A key piece climate communicators have been missing for so long is getting more strategic about the types of leaders/voices who could influence a hard-to-reach audience by shifting the social norm of leadership.
Quote:
While reducing one’s daily energy use is important, experts agree that far and away the most significant environmental action a person can take has nothing to do with their carbon footprint: it’s to use their voice.
“The majority of people in the US are alarmed about climate change,” says Harrington. “We don’t necessarily talk about it because we think it’s more taboo than it actually is.”
USING YOUR VOICE - especially if it's a voice that has an existing platform (!) - is the gold I speak of in my Climate Influence work. It takes intention and just a wee bit of coaching to get a leader more comfortable doing it, but then it self-perpetuates. As my advisees would say, they had no idea they could get louder in a way that didn't make them uncomfortable. But, they could.
IT'S NOT AS TABOO AS WE THINK IT IS! My suspicion, and it's been proven in many an anecdotal conversation with leaders in government or the corporate sector, is that a lot more folks with some level of influential platform HAVE changed a personal behavior due to climate values, but they just haven't been gently nudged to be public about it. Imagine we storytellers gave them more ways to drop breadcrumbs and casually share their personal values.
TO BE CLEAR, and per my recent post about the Marc Maron/Demi Moore conversation, and their very casual drop of both being vegan: this is not about neon signs and huge campaigns or initiatives! This is about finding ways to help more leaders get comfortable sharing even 2% more about how they, for example, eat plantbased or even do Meatless Mondays, or ride their kids to school on an ebike, or how they decided to fly less, etc.
This can be done. It is a powerful, fast-acting lever we have yet to pull as a movement.
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