Leadership And The Environment

This episode is two thoughtful, intelligent people sharing environmental thoughts. I think the thoughts we share are what a lot of people think but don't share enough.We cover action, leadership, motivation, caring, beliefs, integrity, and Adam's challenge on "imperfect" (which I put in quotes since I prefer non-supermarket apples) apples.I suspect you'll hear things you've thought about but maybe haven't shared, not just environmental, though we mostly hover around there.Most conversations I hear devolve into abstract, academic, analysis and blame, things like government should do X, corporations should do Y, or this law should pass---anything but acting themselves. Yet acting raises awareness more than awareness leads to acting. And the fastest, most effective way to influence companies, government, and other institutions is to live by your values, which will make you a leader. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Between insects, kelp, vertical farming, lab-grown meat, and other clever options, why didn't we think of them before?Because we had better options!Few meat eaters choose crickets over steaks and hamburgers, but we've squandered what was once plenty with overpopulation. We've become more efficient, but we've lost abundance.With a lower population we could keep abundance. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Here are the notes I work from for this episode:From climate marchWent 3 times:Before lunch to participate in organizing group, went to Foley Square. Seemed like tens of thousands, maybe six figures.On my way to a meeting, walking on lower BroadwayAfter my meeting, just endingDidn't hear speakers. In fact, I shared with my sister the impressions you're about to hear and she said the speakers said the opposite, which I'm glad to hear.I'm going on the hundreds I could see immediately around me, the tens of thousands I could generally see, and the few I heard speaking.Ostensibly about children, but when I hear adults saying it's kids, I hear them excusing themselves, not taking responsibility. Why only kids?No secret that country politically divided and adversarial.Fell into political divide calling conservatives and oil people enemy. Easy but won't influence. The people they call enemies aren't trying to pollute and they aren't so clean.I heard Greta is avoiding U.S. politicians. I predict she'll say stop demon

Not often do I hear something in a podcast conversation that's a new habit I'm going to try. This conversation with Michelle led to two. I recommend them both and I'll try to find a way to report back how they go.Plus she shares how her book, the Connector's Advantage, keeps growing, now internationally.We talk environmental leadership. She shares her experience with plastic bags, something a lot of people tell me they want to do, but keep putting off. Note how she says when you commit to something it becomes a habit. It can be that straightforward. Habitualizing something makes it effortless. Michelle speaks with experience.I always think of diapers since I know so many parents. People say avoiding plastic bags or packaged food is hard, but from my perspective, changing diapers seems like it takes a lot more effort, attention, and patience than bringing bags to stores, yet first-time parents go from zero to 100% changing overnight.When people commit, they act like leaders and stewards. Fears about other peop

I share thoughts in today's episode I didn't have the heart to share with family on their way to vacationing in France.In my lifetime I've seen the world change and our understanding of it change from we can't really raise sea levels to knowing with certainty that it's underway and we're causing it.People younger than m used to think and hope that we'd slide by, missing out on the worst, hoping future generations would figure something out.If you're younger than about 80, I believe you know enough that you no longer live in a world where you can honestly believe others are doing it, not me, or plausible deniability.Future generations have figured something out: reducing consumption, reducing how many children to have, enjoying what you have. I've embraced this solution and found that it is fundamentally about community, compassion, empathy, love, stewardship, and what everyone I know values more than willful ignorance or even clinging to those values applied to a world that no longer exists.That discovery of

A friend told me the other day that while I could reduce flying, business people couldn't. It's not so easy for them, actually impossible.Did he forget that I have an MBA? That I started a business with an 8-digit valuation, that operated on four continents? That nearly everyone I know flies as a matter of course? Did he not imagine the work I turned down?More likely he didn't think about it. This morning I woke up before the alarm and though about his perspective.The overwhelming response to my suggesting that people can reduce their pollution---a statement of empowerment---is claims of helplessness. Also claims of some solidarity with other helpless people.Today's episode both savagely and, I believe, with empathy and compassion, attacks these false excuses.The trees burning in the picture are in the Amazon, the results of a system our money drives. More details in the episode.The bottom line: more than anything else, I'm talking about empowerment. The results of acting are community, joy, discovery, person

Adam studies brilliant people and leadership. There are many leadership coaches and researchers. If you like me and my way of doing things, which is geeky, you might be geeky yourself. You probably like leadership too.We get to his research results about halfway through the conversation. He focuses on helping people like you and me understand and improve leadership. In this conversation we focus on blind spots, among other topics, but his in particular. But Adam's focus and specialty on brilliance emerges. He's vulnerable and open.I recorded this conversation almost a year and a half ago, so you can hear I hadn't developed a voice yet. Still, some meaningful nuggets from both of us, in fact some points I haven't shared in a while, like, regarding blind spots, nature not losing track of any molecules.Back then I hadn't yet learned to see when people talk about people as their environment, they're playing it safe. We all know acting on the environment starts hard. So I was glad he moved to bruised apples that w

We start talking about how to learn---you have to practice. This is one of the most important things to get, not just in learning but in life. Too many people read and analyze, expecting to learn. If you don't change your behavior, you aren't learning, which I took a long time to learn.If you read and analyze, you behave impersonally---that is, you don't learn social and emotional skills.Then we talk about his smiling challenge. For what I said last time about it ducking acting environmentally, it showed how experiential exercises work. Reading and traditional learning alone don't get behavioral results like these.Also, he started acting more on wrappers, which I didn't talk about. If I had chastised him last time on doing too little, I think that imposing my values on him that way would have inhibited him to doing more. I tried to react with nonjudgmental support for where he was, not counting what I said in the post-conversation audio, which he didn't hear.Not sure if you heard how the conversation was abou

When was the last time you went without a cell phone for more than a few hours? Jeremy went longer than he expected, but as chance favors the prepared mind, he was ready to take advantage of an opportunity.It sounds to me like he enjoyed using less power, however modest the reduction, he did it and discovered fun and improved relationships. Once we created machines to save labor. Now I see we create machines to create craving, which makes us miserable. Or at least the absence seems to enrich our lives.I'm thinking about taking more digital vacations. Everyone says they're hard but rewarding---like Jeremy or Vincent Stanley, Director at Patagonia, in an earlier episode---a pattern I find signals experiments I like.His experience leads me to wonder what lower limit I could get to in using my cell phone.The big picture is that I hear little things lead to big, important things.What can you start with? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bugs will infest a plant until they kill it, then when it dies, they die. It's happening to the fig tree and cherry tomato plants in my windowsill garden. If they could keep their population low enough to avoid killing the plant, they could live longer.We seem to be doing the same with Earth's non-renewable resources. From a species perspective, what benefit do we get from fast cars and cell phones if we can't stop ourselves from overshooting the planet's resources and causing our population to collapse. As a species we would not likely go extinct from a collapse, but our global society might not recover.Plenty of human civilizations have collapsed, their ruins covered by sand and jungle, with barely a sign they existed. Do we want such an outcome on a global scale?Avoiding that outcome means controlling our population differently than bugs---seeing non-renewable parts of nature like oil and choosing not to use them, or renewable resources and choosing not to use them to where they become non-renewable, like

I don't like my world being full of junk "food," litter, and pollution, but if it is, I'd rather see it for what it is and feel a disgust that motivates me to change it than to keep myself in denial and passively, complacently accept it.Yesterday's stop at a highway rest stop reminded me how we dump garbage onto the world and into ourselves. Today's picking up litter reinforced it, though I do it daily.So today I discuss disgust, which I hope you all feel, not because I think you'll enjoy the feeling, but, if the world is a way you consider disgusting, I think disgust will motivate you to act.When enough people feel that disgust and act on it by, say, picking up other people's litter until no one litters any more or not buying what Burger King and Starbucks sell until they sell more wholesome food, we'll feel joy and elation at the beautiful world we restore.My game is joy, personal growth, discovery, meaning, purpose, and such through action.Pictures of my CSA farm See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-o

What's the difference between burning rain forests for someone's livelihood and family in the Amazon and paying for people to drill oil that we squander in the rest of the world?I'm not asking to accuse. I see some differences, but not big ones.If you're easily offended I recommend not listening to this episode.Letter from Birmingham Jail excerptJoshua Becker's book The More of Less See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Not everyone gets his or her dream job. Michael Werner did, on sustainable product design at Google and Apple. Since our conversation he's become Google's lead on circular economy. Whatever your thoughts on these companies, he is in a position to help lead them in areas of great importance.How did he get those positions? By working up the ladder? On the contrary, by leading from the start, before people were following.A major goal of this podcast is to show that if you want to lead, especially on the environment, a successful path is to start leading now with what you can. Waiting for a position to open doesn't work as well. Acting creates opportunities and Michael is an example.I'm glad to hear people within big companies with major inertia are working on sustainability, but they have challenges ahead. It's also rare to find people who get what I described as reusing and recycling, or efficiency in general, is tactical. Reduction is strategic, as I spoke on in episode 183: Reusing and recycling are tactical.

How many kids should you have?I've heard people justify how many kids they should have for various reasons.I think of how decisions happen. We tend to decide first, based on emotions---the wiring we were born with that helped our ancestors live---then rationalize it to make it feel right now that we've decided to do it. If our motivations don't match what we claim our reasons are, might we be acting on motivations that don't help us or even hurt us?In this episode I consider how we might be acting against our interests in deciding how many children to have if we have too many. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Laura and I explore the feelings and emotions around our environmental behavior, specifically that we don't like, like throwing away food. I predict you'll find her descriptions of how people feel familiar.In other episodes I've shared how I find that our emotions are causing our environmental problems, not CO2. The behavior of CO2 simply results from our behavior. That's why I feel what's missing is leadership: influencing people's emotions. Now people consider acting on the environment a chore, distraction. If we want people to like acting on their environmental values, it will help to help them connect rewarding emotions.Laura describes the emotional landscape of someone not acting on their values, and how to change them. This concept of saying people don't care inhibits people from acting. I find everyone cares. To say the don't makes them feel you don't understand them, which undermines your ability to influence them.I can't stand people making environmental behavior a moral issue. If you say to someone

Remember how enthusiastic Caspar sounded at the end of the first episode?He made doing his commitment sound so easy. Well, sometimes it is, but not always. He emailed me to postpone, saying he hadn't done as much as he expected. I asked him to consider sharing his actual experience, not a romanticized version of it. This podcast isn't supposed to say changing your beliefs and habits is easy, but to recount how it happens. I believe that when people act for personal reasons, even if it's hardChange can be hard even for people who speak and coach change. So I commend Caspar on sharing openly, even what likely made him feel vulnerable, but it was valuable to others. It's also what leaders do.What Caspar shared with his son, I found touching. His son had been sharing with him for longer than he knew. This experience opened him to connecting with his son.I hope listeners are seeing that people care deeply on the environment and are acting more all the time. People who act today become leaders because everyone who

People tell me they prefer personal stories and stories of humility, not just success.Well, this morning I messed up my fig tree. I'm still learning about gardening. I felt like a brute.Plus you can hear about my morning holocaust of bugs.The video I made about enjoying my window garden See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode is about doing what others don't, but want to.We recorded it nearly 2 years ago when I was still getting into my groove. We start talking what sounds like about oranges but we're talking about leadership -- doing what others want to but don't. It may sound weird at first, but turning one healthy food into two unhealthy foods looks pretty weird to me.Everyone I know says "You shouldn't care so much what other people think," usually in a condescending voice, but they succumb to social pressure too to keep doing what everyone else does. Leaders find ways to do what they value.Jeremy shares his journey of addressing what others think and learning to manage it. Look at the guests on his podcast as a measure of his leadership skills. We also laugh a bunch. It was a fun conversation. We talk about sales, athletics, podcasts, and more.Acting on your environmental values feels weird at first, sometimes, but we have to change our behavior if we expect to avert the greatest disasters that could happen.

The U.S. is ramping up its Presidential campaigns. The environment is an issue for many reasons. At first you'd think because of global warming, plastic, mercury in fish, extinctions, bees are mysteriously dying, and so on.But any candidate knows it's important because people care about it. Any leader knows that when people care, a leader can tap into that emotion and motivation. One of my definitions of leadership is helping people do things they wanted to but haven't figured out how.I'm going to help you, political candidate, help voters achieve what they want but haven't figured out how. Because an overwhelming majority of people can see the litter on their ground, probably on their property, to know our environmental problems are out of control but they don't want them that way. Everyone knows back-to-back 500 year storms are trouble.Nearly everyone treats environment as problem to resolve.At root they treat it as a burden or a chore. We don't want to do it but we have to.We really want to keep doing what

I've known Michelle longer than almost any guest. I met her in business school, which would mean 2005 or 6.She may be the friendliest guest of the show, partly from our being friends. But I've seen her in a room of unknown people where she attracts people. They like her. It happens from skills she learned through practice. She's devoted herself to teach and develop them in others.I know because she wasn't always that way, nor did becoming that way come naturally, as she shares. She approaches connecting to help you develop your skills and to enjoy your results. To make the work feel good and for you to feel good working.I have little patience for people whose idea of connecting and networking means exchanging business cards only. I don't know what happens in other fields, but after you write a few books, coach a few executives, and give a few talks, LinkedIn floods you with people claiming to help you find clients, market your books, and so on. They claim to be connectors and to help you connect. They claim.