Leadership And The Environment

A lot of people say, "Josh, easy for you to act on the environment. You don't have kids."First, I could point to former guest Bea Johnson, who with her husband and 2 sons, produce less than a mason jar of trash per year, whom I see as role models to aspire to.I could point out former guest Jim Harshaw, who involved his four children and wife in his personal challenge. They loved the process and he used it to bring them together.Now I can point out Colonel Mark Read, whom you're about to hear talking joy, fun, bringing family together and not in small ways. Acting on their environmental values connects them across generations, which he then brings to West Point cadets.The point is not to copy what we do, but to find what matters to you and act on it. One by one, other things will follow. I make things work for my life. They make their things work in their lives. If I lived your life, I'd make it work. You can too.Family is only one aspect I could focus on with Col. Read's results. Once you find emotional rewar

Srini has run his podcast over 10 years, written several books, hundreds of articles, interviewing hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, me, and more.His business is helping people develop themselves -- to dream, to play, to create, to go on adventures, to find your path.In this conversation we talk about his development and how he got to help others. It's more on the leadership development end of the Leadership and the Environment spectrumIf you aspire to more in your life, I recommend listening. He shares himself. We talk about surfing, writing, flow states, and daily practice, things that help you develop. Many people have gone through changes in their lives. Srini learned to share such changes with others so you can emulate them.About this episodeThis was an early conversation, from over a year ago, but only made it through the editing pipeline now. I was still developing how to talk to guests acting on their values, so I sound clumsy. I find it reveals the development of this podcast.Listening

As a professor of leadership, host of this podcast, and constant student of acting by my environmental values, I live and work in the intersection of leadership, education, and the environment.Ken Robinson does too, but with a big difference: he's been here for decades longer, actively practicing in each. This episode approaches each of education, leadership, and the environment from several perspectives.I can't say anything better than his voice carries the wisdom and vitality of someone who has worked here for longer and with greater passion than maybe anyone I've met and I'm in this world.I'll keep this writing brief. Let's listen to Ken Robinson.One last caveat: our schedules meant recording by phone, meaning the audio quality isn't like being in a studio, but I believe you'll find Ken's message transcends the medium and hope you listen for what he says, not the equipment. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Business, based growth, loves the ideas of a circular economy and recycling because both promotes more, but may keep us on track to unsustainability, global warming, plastic, etc.I don't know the answer, but the city of Charlotte contacted me about their Envision Charlotte programI told them I'm cautiously optimistic and am not sure what they're doing is in the long run helpful. I'm not saying it isn't but since few people get the difference between efficiency and total waste, few people are working on reducing total waste.They put me in touch with Amy Aussieker, their Executive Director, and we had a great first conversation where I said the above and she was game for a conversation. I admire her putting herself out there. I put myself out there too, not sure the balance I wanted between promoting someone acting on something important and challenging her forYou'll hear my first time challenging someone on these issues. I'm not sure where it will go, but I appreciate her openness and thoughtfulness. I hope I

With some guests I have a hard time finding a quote to start the episode with. With Anand, I had the opposite -- at least half of what he said wowed me.When I first saw him speak and saw the title of his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, I wondered if someone at the elite event I attended would really challenge a community he was in. He did. You'll hear Anand in the first few minutes describe the starting point of the book.His book shows how our society is leading people who believe they are helping. Though trying to decrease the inequities toward classes of people who, through no fault or lack of their own, lose out on society, they end up sustaining and increasing that inequity. That's just the book's starting point.I highly recommend his book, especially if you're interested in helping others and want to make sure your efforts create the results you want. Intent alone is no guarantee. You might be caught by the same systemic effects they are.It's more subtle than we can captu

I met Colonel Read through Colonel Everett Spain, who has also been a guest of the podcast.Two myths about the military have unraveled in me as a result of seeing West Point from the inside and talking to 4-star Generals and department heads. One is that the military practices command-and-control and that someone of any rank can just order people to do things and get compliance. On the contrary, you'll hear Mark share how people lead with compassion and understanding, at least most of the time outside of combat.The second is that the military wouldn't care about the environment or their effect on it. Again, I don't think anyone could hear Mark as faking caring.So far, the military seems to be fixing what it's broken, but I think it's looking toward sustainability, at least in training areas. The military reacts to the nation's values -- that comes from you and me -- and influences us back.They're ahead of many of us in some ways, especially corporate leaders, who could stand to learn from West Point -- one of

Anna is down to earth for anyone, let alone a gold medalist and Crossfit champion.Watch her videos to see the contrast with what she does, her abilities, and how she doesn't have to be humble. She does something hard, that most can't do, like a clean and jerk or climbing a rope, then does as many as she can in a cycle with other hard things, to past exhaustion. She shows us what people are capable of, mentally and physically.I hear from her that she wants people to develop for themselves what she does for herself, community being a big part of it. She talks about the value of coaching -- the intimacy and vulnerability in it.Number one means reaching your potential. If you're interested in reaching your potential, putting people like Anna in your peer group, not as abstract heroes, I think helps you reach your final goal.If the environment matters to you, your goal is likely far off with no guarantee we'll reach it. Anna shares how to survive such challenges and emerge a champion.As an aside, some guests inspi

Kevin and I have been friends since we both wrote for Inc, and before I appeared on his podcast, which always opens a conversation.It's two guys talking about leadership and love with examples of hardball football and basketball coaching and the like. That leadership view isn't the only perspective on leadership, but it recalls my blurb that I wrote for his book:If you want to lead so people love working with you, not just manage so they comply, and the usual instruction isn't helping, you probably need some shaking up. Kevin Kruse wrote his book to provoke you into changing and growing. It's filled with stories, research, and personal experiences that will make you think and point to how to change and grow. He specifies how each lesson applies, to work, home, family, military, and more, but most of all yourself, even when no one is looking.He also takes the environmental challenge seriously and shares views I hear a lot. Water bottles are a challenge for him so this episode features a recognized, experienced

I got an email that Bob Langert, McDonald's former head of Corporate Social Responsibility, wrote a book on his experience in over two decades at the corporation.From my view, seeking change, I see places like McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Exxon, and Monsanto, to name a few, as the places with the greatest potential.Many protest them, which I consider important, but I also believe they could use help. I don't know how many large organizations can change without outside help. Am I the one to do it? I'm not sure, but I can't ignore their potential for change.I read the book and scheduled a conversation with Bob. My goal is to understand the man and his experience to find opportunity for help, if desired.I took more notes on his book than any other, a lot critical or challenging. I opted to make my goal with the conversation meet the man, not debate or criticize. If you think I should have acted otherwise, let me know.My goals, as ever, are, regarding the environment: to lower our effects that threaten life and human s

Katie continues the line of world class sailing champions who have translated their athletic success to leadership in their sport, business, and beyond.What success? How about three America's Cups, including being the youngest member of the first ever all-female boat, two around the world races, as well the famed Sydney Hobart and Worrell 1000 Extreme Catamaran Races.She's also a lawyer and is president of the Rising Tide Leadership Institute.She just got back from Olympic racing in Miami, which followed placing second in the Sydney Hobart race, sponsored by Ocean Respect Racing, who promotes reducing pollution.We talk about seeing plastic in the remote ocean as well as in much greater density closer to shore, especially America's shores. Around the world sailors see parts of our planet farthest from human establishment. Sadly, I've found it's a standard response that they've all seen plastic human junk however remote they've traveled.She also describes waves towering over her boat's 81-foot mast---that is, h

This episode is about a simple experiment anyone can do. It costs nothing and takes no extra time or other resource besides carrying a mug with you.Everyone knows how much garbage we're dumping in the ocean. Everyone knows they can pollute less, including me. Probably including you.This episode shares Sean's experience cutting out coffee cups. I'd say you never have to use another coffee cup again, but you may hit challenges. Sean did. This episode shares his experience. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Do you feel gratitude toward people who have helped you?Do you express that gratitude more than enough, not enough, or about right?You're probably familiar with research that expressing gratitude and feeling it improve people's lives.I loved my exercise of writing ten gratitude messages a day for a week. Here is the Inc. piece I wrote on it: I Wrote 70 Gratitude Emails. Here Are My Awesome Results.Today's episode is Chris Schembra interviewing me as part of his project including Bill Gates, Simon Sinek, and other luminaries. He asks us:If you could credit or thank one person that you haven't enough, who is it?The conversation doesn't directly relate to the environment, but does to leadership. The leadership part of this podcast is about joy, passion, meaning, value, importance, purpose, growth, and so on.And what Vince Lombardi says about winning, that it's not a sometimes thing but on all the time thing, applies to leadership.Too many people say things like that coal miners in West Virginia simply have to ac

For context for today's guest, those who know I'm avoiding flying might also know I'm learning to sail to explore off North America. When considering acting on their values, most people focus on the part they like of what they're stopping. They don't seem to have trouble ignoring undesired side-effects, like the pollution flying causes.Sailing and the other things I've replaced flying with have given far more than I could have predicted at a fraction what I used to spend on flying. Among its many benefits is the sailing community.In that community, today's guest, Dee Caffari, is off the charts. Once a school teacher, she started sailing to world-athlete levels. Now the international sailing community calls her a legend. Watch her videos. They look like they're from movies but they're her life, which she describes in our conversation.She's gone around the world in both directions, won races, led teams, been named an MBE. She shares her experiences, since sailing spans calm sunsets to life-and-death struggles w

Tom Szaky has been working on waste since his undergrad days at Princeton in 2001. Then I suddenly heard about him from many sources in the past few months.His company, Terracycle, recycles waste others don't. The new initiative, Loop, got attention at Davos and support from many companieswhose business plans depend on producing waste, within an economic model that promotes growth. He also published a book, the Future of Packaging, coauthored by top executives from these waste and growth places. I wrote more notes from that book to prepare for this conversation than any book, including Bob Langert's, McDonald's former head of Corporate Social Responsibility (that episode is still being edited).It never mentioned reducing consumption, twisting, as I saw it, the idea to reducing material per package. Almost no one gets the subtle but critical distinction between efficiency and total waste. Our polluted world is the result of centuries of increasing efficiency and total waste. Nearly every initiative extends tha

If you've never heard Carl Sagan's spoken essay Pale Blue Dot, you'll get to hear it in today's episode. It still chokes me up.Here is an Earthrise image taken a few years ago like those he contrasts the pale blue dot image with. The Earth straddling the limb of the Moon, as seen from above Compton crater. Taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015.Here is the Pale Blue Dot image. Seen from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles), Earth appears as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right) within the darkness of deep space. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A few months ago I attended the Summit. It was expensive, so I wasn't sure I'd get the value out of it that I paid.As it came together for me, I met the founder, Elliott Bisnow, and then happened to meet his mother, Margot, this episode's guest. She was a big part of making the event great for me. As you'll hear in the conversation, she was like a force of nature, connecting people, doing what leaders do despite no formal role, as many leaders work.To give you some background on her formal leadership, she was an FTC Commissioner and Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Today we more talk about her book: Raising an Entrepreneur: 10 Rules for Nurturing Risk Takers, Problem Solvers, and Change Makers, which applies more to leadership and non-parent relationships than I bet she expected.I wish you could see her at work. She would say she wasn't working, but I think effective leadership, like any active, social, emotional, expressive, performance-based art, when mastered, feels and looks

Today, I'm sharing what value being a guest offers to influential, well-known people.I call Oprah and her peers the single-name people -- people everyone knows by single names: LeBron, Serena, Sergey, Larry, Barack, Elon, Bill, Mark, Madonna, Giselle, Venus, Meryl, Bruce, Maradonna, Cher, Beyonce, Messi, Jay-Z, and so on.I also mean anyone influential or with an audience -- people in politics, accomplished actors, journalists, singers, artists, and the like, bestselling writers, public speakers, winning athletes, and so on.If anyone listening is someone like them or knows them, this episode is for you.I'll say it bluntly, but nothing you haven't heard before: we could potentially could lose civilization. If we don't, it will likely be because people changed culture.Rare moment in human history, where change can create legacy on the scale we see only every few thousand years. Buddha and Jesus level influence and legacy.This podcast emerged from seeing that we lacked leadership. Every scientist and engineer say

Today's guest, Sean, is a friend. We recorded this conversation before the podcast launched in November 2017. It took a while to get through the editing process, but I wanted to post it to document the evolution of the podcast and me.For Sean, it shows him as a leader of leaders, since all the guests since followed him. In showing that I grew as an interviewer, finding a purpose, strategy, and voice, I hope it shows the accessibility for anyone to take an environmental leadership role.This conversation helped the podcast's strategy emerge. It's largely based on learning that community influences behavior more than facts.So I'm bringing world-renowned guests -- people in everyone's communities. If Oprah shares her environmental values, acts on them, and shares that the results bring her joy and liberation, I think many others will -- not blindly following her as a celebrity but acting on their values as she acts on hers.This conversation enabled what came next. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out inf

Nobody likes being coerced to do something you don't want under threat of punishment. Nor do people like being told they're wrong or ignorant by someone else telling you they know better.Yet it happens all the time. Much of our politics and public dialog -- our leadership -- is about coercion, self-righteousness, hitting people over the head with facts, and the like, especially around the environment.It doesn't work. Rather it works at something -- at people resisting, disengaging, undermining leaders' authority. The opposite of what we want. Particularly in the area of environmental behavior. There's a lot of self-righteousness, attempts to coerce, expectations that facts will change behavior.Why do we do it? Would you be surprised to find that our educational system specifically teaches us that way, yet almost no one notices it. W don't have to work this way. For most of human history we haven't. People are recreating education that works at not just factual recall and coercion but developing children as pe

I confess I haven't interacted directly with Al Gore so I don't know how he leads in person. I saw him on stage once, but the person interviewing him, Jaden Smith, was 20 years old and I didn't see grasped the situation. Jaden is Will Smith's son and promotes a bottled water brand---that is, he sells something nearly free with extraneous packaging, which I consider needlessly polluting. My main interaction with Al Gore is through his movies and reading about him in the media.I would love to have him as a guest. I would love to hear him share his history and the history of the movement from his view. He's won a Nobel Prize, multiple Oscars, and more. I could learn incomparably more from him than he could from me. So when I suggest he's missing something, I mean that in the context of his getting much more. But he's not perfect or omniscient.I love what he's done to reach where we have, but reaching the next step is going to require leaders who live consistently with the values they recommend to others. People