—Systemic change begins with personal change—
I'm following up my recent solo post, 790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk, with another extemporaneous one. This one is also with a former podcast guest and fellow teacher of our sustainability leadership workshop, Evelyn Wallace. This episode gives an inside view of how I develop ideas in our entrepreneurial team. In particular, I share a few insights into what I offer in the workshops. I've long known to avoid facts, numbers, and lecture. I avoid convincing, cajoling, and coercing, which I call bludgeoning. Most sustainability work I know of go in those directions. I've long seen leadership as a performance art. We learn to practice arts through practicing the basics, which is why my books Leadership Step by Step and Initiative teach through experiential learning: practicing the basics. Our sustainability leadership workshops teach the basics of sustainability leadership. As with any skill or art, mastering it creates freedom to express oneself, as well as liberation, fun, self-expression, self-awareness, and other skills that make life transcendent.
On a beautiful sunny Saturday, 9:50am, I was walking to Washington Square Park to charge my battery and talk at 10am to my friend Dan McPherson (he's been on the podcast, where he shared about his heart attack at age 46 the week before we recorded). I saw the guy in the picture injecting. I asked if I could take his picture and a brief conversation ensued. Instead of my planned conversation with Dan, we recorded my experience and thoughts about the conversation with the guy injecting on the sidewalk. I haven't edited anything. I recorded with just my headphone microphone so sorry about the audio quality, but I think you'll be able to understand us fine. I also didn't prepare. I'm not speaking from notes or even more than a few minutes to reflect. You'll get to hear my thoughts raw. As it happens, Dan is about a third of the way through my book, Sustainability Simplified. It came up in conversation, so you'll get to hear the impressions of someone who has read it. Only at the very end of the call did I think to text Dan the pictures, so listen to the end to hear his thoughts on the book.
If you haven't listened to episode 781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community Project, four years in the making, listen to it first for context. That episode describes my journey to start volunteering as an auxiliary police officer and the background to it. Depending on how well you know me or not, you may find the activity as surprising as I do, though I seem to be a minority in that regard. Everyone else congratulates me. I remark on how different this part of my identity seems compared to the younger me who protested America's involvement in Central America, disrupted graduation to protest Apartheid, and knew friends who chose to be arrested at such protests. This episode recounts one of my first activities as an auxiliary. One month ago today I participated in uniform in the Sixth Precinct's September 11 memorial service. I didn't expect the experience to affect me as much as it did. It did, so I'm sharing it, along with how the activity emerged from living more sustainably, related to how living in unsustainable modernity inhibits introspection and reflection with constant distraction.
I started a new project volunteering in my community that is also a big life change I wouldn't believe I'm doing except that I am. In a sense I started the project over four years ago and it's only seeing the light of day now. Sorry I'm writing little about and the episode is long, but for now I wanted only those interested to learn in so you have to listen all the way through to hear the full scope and details.
I hosted two professionals who model population growth with different views, some complementary, some conflicting: Wolfgang Lutz and Chris Bystroff. I learned from both and recommend listening to their episodes first. I've also recorded episodes with many guests and solo episodes on population: 475: We Can Dance Around Environmental Problems All We Want. We Eventually Reach Overpopulation and Overconsumption 294: Population: How Much Is Too Much? 251: Let's make overpopulation only a finance issue 250: Why talk about birthrate and population so much? 248: Countdown, a book I recommend by Alan Weisman I invited Wolfgang and Chris to talk about their different views and see if they could learn from each other and we could learn from them. That's this episode. I clarified I wasn't looking for Crossfire-like talking past each other but seeing what each or the other is missing and mutual learning. I think you'll enjoy the conversation. My only regret is that we couldn't have talked longer because we could have covered more.
If no one is changing culture in your world, it's your opportunity to fill the leadership vacuum, no matter where you are in your organization or communities. Many companies are making strides toward goals for greening their businesses but need to find ways to maintain the momentum now that they have tackled the easiest challenges. Others are about to embark on their sustainability journeys and seek a roadmap and best practices. Increasing regulations, particularly in Europe and the U.S., and demands from investors are pressing businesses to define, monitor and publish their net zero targets and green their practices and products. The IPCC reports that there is a closing window in which global citizens can mobilize to reduce carbon emissions and hope to achieve the target needed to stabilize the climate. It is becoming clear that it is up to leaders to transform corporate and political cultures to meet these inside and outside pressures. The webinar panel featured guest speakers: Lorna Davis, TED Speaker, Coach and Board Member, created largest B-Corp on Earth (Danone USA) Gautam Mukunda, Author, Podcast Host, Senior Advisor, America’s Frontier Fund and Professor at Harvard and Yale Michael Ventura, Advisor, Author of Applied Empathy, Entrepreneur and Keynote Speaker Bob Inglis, former U.S. Congressman for South Carolina, Executive Director of RepublicEN, leader of EcoRight They shared success stories and lessons learned: how they got reluctant board members, voters, and employees on board; what products and processes they prioritized and how; how they held suppliers accountable; what worked; and what didn’t. Speakers discussed their journeys and answered questions. If you are a senior executive responsible for mobilizing your organization’s sustainability initiative, a shareholder who realizes her investment companies’ efforts need a boost, a citizen considering running for office, or a board member who wants to catalyze the greening process, you'll enjoy this lively panel. Moderated by Joshua Spodek PhD MBA, a premier voice in sustainability leadership, host of the award-winning This Sustainable Life podcast, four-time TEDx speaker https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx, bestselling author of Initiative and Leadership Step by Step, professor at NYU, and leadership coach.
Evelyn joined the first workshop I led in the Spodek Method: practicing it, leading others through it, and how to create a movement. She then became the teaching assistant for the next two workshops. The liberation, fun, and intimacy of sharing one's fears, anxieties, and other vulnerabilities from acting more sustainably in a corrupt culture that makes it hard, all the more so in teaching others to reveal these things and still to act, led us to get to know each other. We decided the world could benefit from hearing how people who have acted to live significantly more sustainably sound: fun, playful, but still challenging. We decided to livestream our conversations for people to join and ask questions. Setting up the technology is taking time. Do we wait to figure everything out before starting? Hell, no! We just started recording with what we could. When we get livestreaming working, we'll do it there and hope you can join us to ask questions, challenge us, and whatever you want. In the meantime, here's how we sound. We start with Evelyn sharing about a sustainable cooking workshop she led at a culinary school with a chef. He invited her as an expert even though she only started anything on sustainability about six months ago. Then I talk about my third annual cooking workshop I led in the Bronx. Many digressions and such along the way.
You've heard me talk sustainability leadership on this podcast and probably others. Have you wondered what I sound like talking to friends unrecorded? A friend who also teaches leadership at NYU knew my background and had talked about climate with her students. She scheduled a call to talk sustainability leadership with me to help prepare. She told me she would record it, but since we were talking on the phone and I wasn't using my recording microphone, I forgot. I felt like I was just talking to a friend. I'm posting that recording: what I sound like when I haven't prepared and don't know I'm being recorded. In this case, I'm talking with someone I know who wanted to talk about sustainability, so it's not out of the blue with a stranger, but unrehearsed and raw.
Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective? Yes! I just finished leading my first workshop in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably: enduring systemic change and immediate personal change. Best of all: it was FUN! . . . both the workshop and the action it led to. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the participants results. Today's post is the audio from a conversation with them on their experiences. Better yet, watch the video. You can learn to help change culture and restore a safe, clean, healthy world. We're organizing two summer 2023 cohorts. If you want to help fix our world, sign up at https://spodekleadership.com/workshop
See the video for this episode here. I speak about the concept of a constitutional amendment on the environment with former guests on this podcast: Michael Herz: Constitutional scholar and former lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund (Michael's podcast episodes and bio) James Oakes: US historian, focusing on the Revolutionary War to Reconstruction (James's podcast episodes and bio) We approach the concept from many perspectives, especially comparing it with the Thirteenth Amendment. This is my first conversation with two experts on a topic I'm just starting to learn about based on very detailed fields, including law, history, abolitionism, and politics. I have to start somewhere. We recorded this conversation months ago and I've learned tremendously since.
