It’s not just the politicians that seem frozen. A 2007 survey of international technology business leaders showed that, while nearly all keenly watch climate change issues, few have clear plans to reduce their own organisation’s contribution to the problem.
Many Green World readers will have started their personal journey towards a sustainable low carbon future, but feel frustrated by how difficult it is to persuade others to take action too: whether they are family and friends or our political leaders.
The first thing to realise is that new ideas always get resisted (even if they’re much less significant than the threat of climate change), so don’t get demoralised; get smart.
Climate change is currently in the second of the four typical stages of resistance. In the first we are blind: the idea just doesn’t fit, so is totally ignored. In the second stage we are “frozen”: aware of an uncomfortable idea, but insufficiently motivated to take action. In the third stage, we are actively interested, while in the fourth and final stage, we steadily integrate the idea into our lives so that it begins to feel normal.
The great organisational psychologist Edgar Schein pointed out that if people are frozen, rather than get distracted into arguing over the excuses people use to avoid taking action, to unfreeze them you need to do three things simultaneously: demonstrate unequivocally that the status quo is not OK (often this will need a shock), make people care personally about this, and give them the safety to care.
For the first two elements, it’s important to recognise that people are motivated by different things. Many caring “greenies” may be motivated by horror over the growing human impacts of climate change and a sense of guilt if they didn’t take personal action. However, this won’t engage the majority of the population.
The brand consultant Pat Dade points out that only about 35% of the UK population are “inner driven”: the sort of people who are quite likely to be idealists and open to thinking about the future (and to vote Green). About 44% are “outer driven”, concerned much more about status and what other people think about them, while about 21% are driven by a need for security and belonging.
To connect with people you need to fit with their personality and concerns. For example, if you wanted to persuade people to avoid short-haul air travel, the “inner driven” might stop because of the shock of realising the proportion of their personal carbon emissions that came from flying. The “outer driven” would be more likely to switch because of a sudden sense that successful, busy people were starting to travel by train rather than enduring the horrors of budget airlines. “Security driven” people might in turn be more interested in issues such as the relative comfort and cost of the door-to-door journey, perhaps triggered by a particularly nightmarish journey.
As well as giving someone a shock that really connects, you also need to make it feel safe for them to care, otherwise they may well feel stressed, but will remain frozen by the very normal anxieties about doing something new.
You can provide that vital sense of safety in many different ways. For example, it’s as simple as providing encouragement, advice and sympathy (for example during a horrible job like insulating the attic). It also helps to know that other people are taking the same sorts of action, so talk about what you’re doing: you may find you have more allies than you thought.
Finally, of course, we have to give our timid government a shock and the sense of safety to drive them to take the actions we can’t take alone: the shock may come from climate chaos itself, or in the polling booth, but in the meantime we can all help provide the sense of safety by speaking up.
For more see www.themythofthemousetrap.org and ‘The Myth of the Mousetrap – How to get your ideas adopted (and change the world)’ by Anne Miller, published by Cyan/ Marshall Cavendish, ISBN: 978-0-462-09915-6.
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