Leadership And The Environment

We jumped in to talking about her Spodek Method commitment. She lives in a suburban area. There's a place near her that borders on bush, which I guess is Australian for undeveloped land. This spot with a bench designed for experiencing nature has been a short walk away from her for a long time, yet until now she never experienced it. Even this time, she put off acting on the commitment.Then she went. You'll hear what it did for her. I had to compare her description to what many people derive from big vacations to Hawaii or Bali, but she spent nothing, didn't have to plan, and didn't pollute or deplete.Her sharing about her experience recreating a wonderful past experience led to her sharing many unique challenges of living without money. Jo will lead you to think differently about your world and relationships to your loved ones and nature.Jo's home page, including her post on catatrophism we talked about Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam teaches leadership at Columbia Business School, where I learned there were classes in leadership, which changed the direction of my life. Regular listeners know I consider leadership the most important missing element in sustainability. To change the environmental effects we're barreling into, we have to change the causes, which are our behavior, which result from culture.Changing culture requires leadership, not just management. Effective leadership inspires. Adam's latest book is Inspire.You can imagine my enthusiasm to talk with a star professor at one of the world's top institutions (to which I'm deeply connected) teaching leadership on the topic of how to inspire and become an inspirational person and leader.We begin by talking about his background, how he began working in psychology, then moved to teaching at a business school, and the rewards he found there. Of all the departments and schools in a university, I believe business schools' leadership departments provide the most useful and effec

When people talk about helping men, a lot of people think any and maybe every man might just have latent misogyny, so helping him risks augmenting misogyny. Richard Reeves has researched the situation extensively and for whatever advantages they (we) once had in some areas, still have in some of them, society has been kicking us down, especially in education, income, medicine, and law.A big part of his job is handling preconceptions and objections. In this regard, his work overlaps a lot with sustainability leadership: people's preconceptions override seeing what's happening right in front of them. Listen to him on any other podcast and you hear he has to bend over backward and repeat himself on simple points that I would think should be obvious to clarify that helping men doesn't mean hurting women. His success shows me that we who work on leadership in sustainability can learn a lot from him.His book Of Boys and Men takes him into challenging territory, but to do important work, sadly difficult. Many of the

Sound pollution is pollution. You know it's been growing for your whole life with little sign of decreasing.I wish I lived in a world with less sound pollution, but given that I do, I'd rather be aware and conscious of it than not know. Ignorance of how much sound was affecting me wasn't blissful. Noise still affected me. Awareness enables me to act.But it's not what you think. More decibels doesn't necessarily mean more annoying. Lower decibels doesn't necessarily mean less. Just think of a whiny drone that sounds like a mosquito. I can hear an electric leaf blower as I'm typing these words and while it may be quieter than a two-stroke engine, it's freaking annoying and I can't tune it out.Chris's book Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back describes more about sound, noise, how they affect us, how our understanding of them change, and new industries developing on sound design. I start by sharing how just the first chapter of his book illuminated elements of sound I hadn't thought

Can you imagine living without money? Humans lived without money for 250,000 years, so it's not necessary for life. Money seems like an invention on par with the big ones, like fire, the wheel, writing, and language.Right off the bat, Jo shares how her life before choosing to live without money was stressful, with less freedom or free time. If you thought having more money would give you more freedom, more free time, and less stress, her experiencing the opposite may prompt you to consider the basics of human interaction. What does it mean about our lifestyles, values, and beliefs that having zero of our culture promotes having more of actually giving us what we want?In earning a doctorate in experimental science, maybe the most fundamental thing I learned is that no matter what I expect or want, nature is always right. If my theory predicts one thing but nature does something different, nature is right and my theory is wrong. Jo's experience suggests something wrong at the heart of economic theory.Anyway, yo

Ryan shares his experience approaching people to share in his joy. The task is not easy anywhere, least of all the Bronx, where he doesn't live but was visiting.Do people in the big city want to hear why some guy is walking around looking at trees and the sky? They wouldn't know he was bird watching until he told them. Do you think they'd welcome him or consider some guy with big binoculars too odd?I don't think I'll spoil anything by giving away that the several conversations he initiated went well because the issue is how they went well and how it led him to feel and act the next day and after.Aren't we all looking for ways to talk about the environment and sustainability that bring joy, affect people, and result in them expressing gratitude?Ryan's home page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob starts by sharing his experience from leadership coaching in the context of a hospital with people in intensive care as well as their families. Situations are often emotionally intense. Treating just facts doesn't work, or can work against you. It can be "terribly ineffective" (not unique to medicine).He recounts learning to lead through emotional awareness, using social and emotional skills he developed through practice in our coaching. He connects with people meaningfully: patients, their families, the other members of his team, everyone.He talks about not telling people what to do but to listen and act with empathy and compassion, that he's developing through deliberate practice.Maybe the most heartfelt part of our conversation comes at the end where he speaks about his longtime vision and dreams for being a doctor. As much as he wanted to care for patients and their families, now he sees how much the skills of leadership enable him to help far more people by leading others to care more effectively. Ho

Reading Mark's recent piece We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition in Manhattan Institute's City Journal prompted me to write my recent post, When they say “transition fuel,” they mean “more polluting and depleting,” not less pollution or depletion.Read them both and you'll see he inspired what I wrote and he wrote a lot more, with more research and editing. I recommend reading it and listening to his podcast episode there, but I'd start with this one. In our conversation, you'll hear more details and back story.The core idea of his piece: Every fuel we’ve ever used, we still use, and more than ever. If you think that by ramping up solar and wind that in any way that new energy availability will decrease our use of old energy, you’re dreaming. More likely you’re lying to yourself.That idea is hard for people to swallow if they think humanity's best hope for survival is what they call "clean," "green," or "renewable" energy and learn that those sources aren't clean, green, or renewable. It matter

This recording went far beyond my usual preference for recording with guests in person when I can.We met in Prospect Park on one of the peak birding days of the year. Tons of people were out with powerful binoculars and cameras. You'll hear lots of birds chirping in th background and even people who knew Ryan coming up to talk to him.Nature is everywhere. We can enjoy it where we are when we want.You'll pick up how much fun we were having, wonder we were experiencing, and community we were connecting with. Nature makes such experiences happen.Have fun listening to us in nature watching and listening to birds and birders. Keep in mind: the point is only superficially birds and birders, as important as they are. The point is that you can access nature and create moments. It doesn't hurt to have an expert who wrote the book on local wildlife, but it's not necessary. As I mention in the recording, if you plan to visit New York City and want to explore, I'd recommend Wild NYC over nearly any guidebook.Ryan's

Rob is one of my coaching clients. I asked him to be a guest here since many people perceive leadership and learning it as different than I mean. His work in medicine may not be at the center of sustainability, but I work in leadership, which I apply to sustainability. Listen to this episode to learn what changes to your life you can expect when you take my workshops. Listen to him for the full picture, but I think you'll hear profound and enduring personal growth, professional growth, improved relationships with spouse, children, and coworkers, promotion, security, connecting with your passions and realizing them, and more.It seems an overwhelming majority of people I talk to who haven't explicitly learned leadership associate leadership with the opposite of what I mean when I talk about leadership. They think of it as imposing authority, manipulating, convincing, telling people what to do, and the like.My definition of leadership is helping people do what they already want but haven't figured out how. Rob s

Are you thinking about acting more but concerned about feeling guilty or judged that you aren't doing enough? If so, you'll love this conversation. I feel honored to work with people with Andy's background and community, which you'll hear about in our conversation.Despite his working with prime ministers and across Europe and the world, and acting in many ways already in his life, he was also worried about feeling judged or guilty.As he learned more about the Workshop, especially listening to Lorna's episodes before and after she took the workshop, he went for it. The nerves he started with faded before the first session ended, as you'll hear.You'll also hear that instead, he ended up fun. Try to count how many times he says the word in the conversation. He shares about the rewards (also the work). One big benefit: He lives in a home he's rewilding, already surrounded by nature, but the workshop led him to appreciate more.As much as he appreciated nature more, it sounds like the people and community that

This last recording in the series brings together the opportunities. We can't fix all the world's problems or to go back in time and change history. We can't change that people are already dying by the tens of millions annually from environmental problems, a number projected to increase by factors of ten or more.But we can do the best we can. The best we can is all we ever could do. Even if our culture weren't creating all these environmental problems, conflict would always exist. Restoring lost value to our culture that would restore stewardship would keep us from having to hurt innocent people, contributing to this suffering, just to live.Doing the best we can replaces despair, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, and all the internal conflict resulting from giving up on our values with meaning, purpose, love, and passion. People say action is the antidote to those things, but not just any action. The action must be effective, as part of a plan that leads to meaningful results.This series shows what action

Look up "Greatest of All Time" on Wikipedia and you'll find Muhammad Ali. This lesson shares how he went from being just the heavyweight champion of the world to the greatest of all time, transcending sport to becoming a statesman.Business people say "culture eats strategy for breakfast," and our culture, while paying lip service to sustainability, promotes and rewards polluting, depleting behavior. Celebrities play a major role in setting culture. When I tell people, "Taylor Swift is probably in an airplane right now," they know what I mean. No one disputes because even if she isn't flying literally that moment, she flies plenty.Yet billions of people want leadership. They want to follow people living by their values.This lesson shares the potential legacy available to any celebrity in an area of global demand that can last centuries to millennia. Those doing performative, ineffective things won't reach it, but that constraint doesn't mean celebrities have to act perfect.They don't have to act perfect.T

Sustainability has become a polarized partisan political issue, despite everyone wanting clean air, land, water, and food. In the US, neither the Democrats nor Republicans have a vision of or plan to sustainability. Both rely on purported solutions that exacerbate and accelerate our current results. Since we reach the general through the specific, I focus on US political opportunities. I believe those outside the US will see clearly how to apply the spirit of this video to their homes.They're like two tired boxers who get stuck toward the end of a fight in an embrace, holding each other up, acting like they're punching but not. On the contrary, they've evolved into a mutually supportive dance, pandering to their bases, pointing at each other, not taking responsibility.Yet there are political paths toward sustainability, which is why I work in sustainability leadership, as opposed to sustainability itself. We need leadership, not performances designed to look like leadership but are the opposite.This video sho

The solution in video 3---the Spodek Method---creates a new, more effective situation than anything I know of in sustainability.People act on their own motivation that they felt before I met them. Instead of me motivating them, it was more like I unleashed and inspired them. That's the difference in acting on intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic.Every other sustainability effort I'd ever come across convinced, cajoled, coerced, lectured, manipulated. It might get compliance, but squashed motivation.When someone wants to do something but doesn't know how to achieve it, and you know they'll thank you for helping them do it, that's a business opportunity.This video explores the potential to revolutionize leading people and cultures, even global, toward acting more sustainable. It covers just leading yourself to live more by your values, to working with our team, to starting a project or venture yourself, up to creating a culture-changing project creating a legacy to last centuries and beyond.I'm not saying

Now that we understand our environmental problems as cultural, proposals based in technology, market incentives, and legislation don't address the problem. They generally won't achieve the desired outcome and will often achieve the opposite.I share my path toward discovering a solution that works, now called the Spodek Method. Changing culture requires many things, and leadership is one. The Spodek Method is an experiential leadership technique that prompts people to share and act on their values---that is, based on intrinsic motivations. I describe how it works and what it achieves, in yourself and others.So you don't have to take my word for it, I share the experiences of people who have learned the technique, some renowned. Some took my Workshop, others were guests on the podcast. Once you get the Spodek Method and a sense of how it prompts you to transform, I share the vision, mission, and strategies it enables in my mission of changing global culture through a path that is intrinsically rewarding for eve

Do you think our environmental problems are rooted in greenhouse gas levels or emissions? Or biodiversity loss? Or any of what makes the headlines?They are symptoms. They all result from our behavior, which results from our beliefs, stories, role models, images, and what makes up our culture.If we magically fixed all of the environmental conditions making the headlines, but didn't change our culture, we would recreate them.Every time you say, "individual action doesn't matter," blame someone else or BP, or anything that keeps you polluting, depleting, living unsustainably, you contribute to that culture, even if you really wish you weren't. You fund the lobbyists creating the political forces accelerating more polluting and depleting.Only by understanding the actual problem can we avoid distractions and solve it.The video goes into more depth and detail. It sets up all the later videos.You'll never see the world the same again. To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Worksh

Many people see whatever part of what I do, think that's everything, and conclude I'm just doing some personal action or other form of spitting into the wind.I don't like wasting my time any more than anyone else does, nor do I want to see people continuing toLower earth's ability to sustain lifeDestroy others' life, liberty, or property without the consentDeplete from nature to where there is not enough as good in common for othersI'm partly insulted that they think I'm wasting my time or that I haven't developed a comprehensive plan that stops all those things that works at every stage, mainly by working on people's existing motivations. It's based on the Spodek Method and other effective leadership techniques.I posted a series of videos I call A Short Course in Sustainability Leadership that outlines the plan. I designed it for people who want to act and lead, not abdicate and capitulate like nearly everyone else. I recommend watching the videos, which are on this page, but I'm posting the audio here.To fo

Our third conversation matches the first two in intrigue and quality. We talk about the things that came up for Dr. Bob that got in the way of his commitment. These issues come up for nearly everyone (implying they aren't personal, but cultural beliefs): politics (including reacting to Trump), family, and race.This conversation was one of my first engaging on race unscripted. It's tempting to see some issues as immediate and conclude we have to address them first. This view misses that unsustainability causes them, including racism, tyranny, and corruption. I'm not saying sustainability alone will solve them, but as long as we live unsustainably, we keep causing them.You'll hear a lot more in the conversation. This conversation exemplifies what our culture needs more of. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tina is one of the central characters in that group that everyone knows (another is Kevin Fucillo, also a podcast guest). We go back a few years. She was born in the south in 1933, so you can do the math, but you'd never guess. She's at times a firecracker, full of life, ready to handle anyone. She's friendly to all, but ready to police anyone overstepping bounds. She's always caring about the community as a whole and each person in it. She goes out of her way to help people beyond just delivering food. The community wouldn't be the same without her.We talk about volunteering, homelessness, slavery, Africa, the South, and more. She worked at the Lone Star Cafe, which was a famous club in the 1970s and 80s, so shared some big names of people she hung out with, like Willie Nelson, James Brown, Courtney Cox (we couldn't remember her name), Bruce Springsteen, and more.We recorded in the lobby of her building, so you can hear people coming through and some sound issues. She spoke more softly than her usual self wh