Those who listen to my podcast or attended my workshops know The Spodek Method, my two-stage interaction to lead someone to share their intrinsic emotions about the environment, think of a way to act on them, and share their results. I find people enjoy the process and results. They share them openly.

I contrast it with nearly all other techniques I see people trying to influence others’ environmental behavior. I see them relying on techniques like logical debate, instruction, convincing with data, appeal to emotions that aren’t intrinsic, and so on.

At first I thought my discovery was to appeal to intrinsic motivations. Then I realized I already used that technique. It’s in my book, Leadership Step by Step. It’s also time-tested, for example, paraphrasing Dwight Eisenhower: getting him to do your thing for his reason.

Lately I realized the discovery:

Everyone has intrinsic motivation and passion relevant to the environment and nature.

I’m not sure in what other areas, if any, everyone’s passions overlap. Not most issues that people vote on, for example. Many disagree on welfare, immigration, abortion, etc, but everyone wants clean air, water, and land. Nobody wants the ecosphere poisoned. Even the CEOs of DuPont and every other major polluter, I’ll bet, has some equivalent to my sledding hill. They may not act on it how you would, but it’s there.

Every case has edge cases and exceptions, so I’ll allow some exceptions, but I haven’t met them yet. On the contrary, everyone I’ve spoken to shares openly and thoughtfully experiences interacting with nature that they portray as rewarding.

That common interest and passion among 7.9 billion people gives The Spodek Method the potential to inspire everyone.

• ← 510: Jonathan Hardesty, part 6: “This method of doing things is making me become a better husband and parent”
• Spodek’s Law of environmental debate →