The most effective formats to engage others are as follows:
Group workshops - gathering key people and facilitate an open conversation around what the given topic means to them personally, and what it could mean to the organisation.
Building individual connections (our main focus) with the most crucial people you’ve identified.
This week, we’ll focus on the latter.
Experts point to three key steps in the process of bringing people on-board to build a shared sustainability mission:
Step 1: Hear them out
We generally spend a lot of our time trying to convince people of things we care about. When we’re passionate about something, it’s tempting to tell people all about it and not to listen in return.
Image credit: Organizing for Power
Our key tip here is to seek a different kind of conversation. And by that we mean, stop trying to ‘pitch’! A pitch typically involves pre-determining a specific outcome and aggressively advocating for it with facts, requests and insistence.
Instead, the most effective collaborators usually end up giving some ownership over the project back to those involved from the beginning and refocusing not on a specific outcome, but on building the conditions for collaborative engagement and support for a wider cause.
Thus, we propose to begin your process with an attitude that leaves room for co-creation, lots of input, and collaboration from your colleagues before starting to plan your next steps and inviting people to participate.
Tips on Step 1:
Set up a 1-1 conversation of at least 30 minutes with a key person. This is long enough such that the meeting doesn’t feel pressurised, and allows the other person space to express themselves and potentially articulate their deeper perspectives & experience around the topic.
Keep this initial conversation broad to about all elements of sustainability, not just your specific project or goal.
Let them know there is no agenda or request yet. Outline the goal of the meeting, from the beginning, as purely to listen. You’ll be amazed at how refreshing it is for both you and the other person!
Connect with them as a whole person, not just a co-worker you want to convince.
Find out their personal motivations, interests, and concerns beyond just sustainability. What’s their day-to-day like at the moment? What are their core challenges?
Show them empathy, grace, and patience when connecting with them. They may share opinions you don’t agree with, or traits you find irritating. Now is not the time to address those issues, and it’ll further your connection to stay open and accepting.
Use OARS (open questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries) throughout the conversation.
Be curious and open to learning new things and outcomes that you may not have thought of.
Listen to what they are feeling, not just saying (anxieties, needs, concerns). Check out the 4 Sides of Communication to help with this.
Take lots of notes! You’ll want to remember the exact words and phrases they use, as well as the challenges and concerns they express.
“Hit em where it affects”
This idea from Nick Shackleton-Jones’ book How People Learn points to the scientific evidence showing that people generally remember things according to the emotional state they are in concerning it. For example, the topic of a conversation might be climate change, but if you do not directly feel the impacts of climate change (whether through climate anxiety, changes in your local environment or its intersection with another issue you are affected by, like traffic pollution) you may care more about other things, like your hunger level or if you feel threatened at that moment.
To tap into someone’s ‘affective context’, you’ll need to find out what they already care about relating to the issue that you're trying to pitch (Step 1) and use later that to build bridges between you (Step 2, below).
And remember, people will always see the issue at hand differently from you, and that doesn’t matter! It is more important to get them enough on board than get them to wholeheartedly agree or share an exact perspective (coalition over consensus).
For the tougher conversations
When changing someone’s mind about sustainability seems impossible, motivational interviewing can be a helpful tool. Originally developed by two clinical psychologists, William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, for substance abuse counselors, it was later adapted into a method called deep canvassing and is still widely used by doctors, therapists, and teachers today. This tool is best used in interviews with people who are at least somewhat ambivalent about the issue - not those that are not 100% against it.
The main idea behind motivational interviewing is that people learn more durably when they come to conclusions themselves, not when someone employs urgent demands, shame, statistics, or facts to convince them. It's stories, not facts, that are most compelling to people when they're changing their minds. Research now shows how effective deep canvassing and motivational interviewing is as a strategy for encouraging sustainability or pro-environmental behavior.
Tips for tough conversations:
Asking questions that open ambiguity around hardened opinions. Try asking “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much of an issue is this for you?” If they say a 2: “Can you explain why you're at a two and not a zero?”
Ask questions that build empathy and connection.
“When have you had an issue you really cared about that you were struggling to get buy-in on?”
“When have you managed to shift your perspective on something? And what needed to happen for you to commit to something new?”
Evoke change talk to help them articulate their reasoning.
“I can see that sustainability issue X is really important to you – and that you’re just looking for ways it can be successful”
“What are the reasons you think we need to be more sustainable?”
You can learn more about this process here.
For the climate deniers
Sometimes these conversations will not get past the validity of climate change. When encountering someone denying climate change, try turning your arguments into educational moments using resources like Skeptical Science, which combats some of the main climate denial arguments.
Step 2: Find the sweet spot
Now that you’ve learned what is important to this key player, you’ll want to find ways to combine these things with your sustainability goals and with the broader goals of your organisation.
In Step 2 you can begin to draw links between their interests and the commitments, strategies, and policies of your organization. You can then combine all of these aspects to find the ‘sweet spot’, which balances the personal motivations you heard in the interview, the organizational goals they are working on, and what you’d like them to work on as part of the sustainability goals.
At this point you may want to do some extra desk research - understanding the core priorities of your organisation’s business strategy, reading up on interviews & articles with leadership, and anything else that can inform you of the status quo, as well as and gathering data accordingly on the impacts, risks and opportunities presented by your sustainability proposal.
Seek out links and reflect on what you heard using:
The wording, values, and goals of the organization.
The topics and wording of their personal challenges and frustrations.
Based on what you heard in the 1-1 conversations, and your desk research findings, you may decide to adapt, refocus or tweak your sustainability initiative - or indeed seek more collaborative input than initially expected.
Step 3: Invite them on board
After the first two steps of listening and making connections, you can now prepare an informed draft proposal for your sustainability initiative and reach back out to the individual to invite them to join you. Here is how you can strategise these invites:
It is easier to invite people on board if you:
Intervene where people care. How can we include their goals and favorite topics in my language & in the initiative itself?)
Intervene when people care. At what moment would your message be most effective? To do this you can even try engineering a point of frustration OR redirecting existing frustrations towards what your initiative is working against.
Tips on inviting people:
Put their active participation at the center of every conversation:
“Nothing changes (the shared issue of sustainability will not be fixed) without you”
“How can we tackle this challenge together?”
Make them feel empowered and capable to support the mission:
Get their input and opinions on first drafts
Ask for their advice on decisions
Adapt your approach to your audience:
Each person will have a different perspective, and similarly you may not speak to leadership like you would to others in the organization. Spend extra time personalizing each of these invitations to each person.
Ask for a 'Low-hanging fruit' favor:
It has been scientifically proven that if you get people to engage in an action or experience, they will retrospectively align their beliefs accordingly. In other words, they may change their minds to agree with you! Even if they're not wholeheartedly on board with sustainability yet, if you ask them for one small inconvenient ask, like, “can you facilitate this meeting with me?”, they may do it and subsequently come to realise that they do perhaps care about the project or issue it concerns.
Use language that encourages lasting cross-departmental engagement:
An important aspect of gaining support for sustainability initiatives is what you say and how you say it. Be careful about the words that you use when you're convincing people to get on board. For example, what are you conveying when you say, “Thank you so much for helping me with the sustainability project”? This suggests that they're personally doing you a favour and that sustainability is not their responsibility or part of their work.
Instead, use language that conveys the message that change doesn’t come from one sustainability manager, but rather begins with all of us and is part of everyone’s responsibility. For example, rather than simply saying “Thank you,” say, “Hey, that was a brilliant job that you did on (that thing). This is going to be a huge step towards our (shared sustainability outcome).” This acknowledges the value of their contribution and communicates that there is a shared goal between everyone, increasing their ownership over the topic.
Another example of what not to say is a vague, indirect, impersonal, othering statement like “the sustainability team needs more people on board to meet our KPIs.” This is alienating and doesn't encourage people to get involved since it does not seem to directly involve them.
Instead, try saying “The only way for us to achieve the kind of impact that we want together is if you and I both take this first step and do (X).” This conveys that they are being invited on board and their contribution is necessary. It's personal, direct, aligns with their personal goals, and creates a shared mission. It’s important to make them feel as if they will benefit the team and directly contribute to your initiative.
Wrapping up
Finally, note that these three steps are the beginning of an ongoing ‘buy-in’ mission, one which you will hopefully share the burden of over time as more and more people come aboard. It can be helpful to build an influence roadmap of how to gradually get people on board over time - more on this in our upcoming Strategic Sustainability Roadmapping and Leadership & Change Management courses.
Thanks for reading! If you’ve made it this far, here are three questions to take with you:
Do I currently actively invite and engage others in sustainability issues at work?
If so, how?
If not, why not?
The above content is informed by LFCA Academy instructor Osbert Lancaster of Realise Earth change management consultancy, various research by Sarah Stein Lubrano, this book by Kevin Wilhelm, the Organizing for Power course at the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, the instructors at New Economy Leadership Academy, Pia Schwanenberg at Forto, and many other sources and members of our LFCA Community.
We highly recommend Osbert’s podcast to learn more about engaging your coworkers in sustainability initiatives. Some particularly helpful episodes are: