Leading toward a positive culture and climate

The IPCC's report by Working group III that was issued on April 4th is clear: the time for action is now. “We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a livable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee.?

The next few years are critical: in the scenarios, the IPCC assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C (2.7°F) requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030.

“Having the right policies, infrastructure, and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behavior can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This offers significant untapped potential,” said IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair Priyadarshi Shukla. “The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.” That's great! But will we do it? What do we need to bridge the gap between saying and doing? And what does that have to do with organizational culture?

Climate and culture?

James Heskett said in an interview with McKinsey: "I think changing a [organizational] culture is too much like climate change. If we all agree it’s necessary, and we all agree that we need to do something to address it, but it’s off there somewhere in the future—it’s probably something we can’t do during our tenure as a leader. Therefore, it gets shoved aside, unfortunately, and perhaps rarely addressed."?

Here we see the infamous gap between saying and doing, also confirmed by a study at Duke University. They found that leaders, by and large, get the notion that culture is important and an important determinant of performance. Over 90 percent of leaders said that they could probably improve their culture. Fewer than 20 percent said that they had actually done anything about it. People get it; they just don’t do anything about it.?

It's interesting to read the research on why people know and say something, but don't act accordingly. The IPCC report includes several paragraphs with relevant research about this. National and group culture influences what we know, how we feel about that information, and how we act. Our perception and internal motivation determine what we do if we do anything at all. It depends on the (short-term) advantages we hope to gain, how hard it might be to change behavior, how accepted the new behavior will be in your social circle, how many incentives, and so on. Human beings are not automatons. They're not purely rational either. They're social beings with a diversity of emotions.

Leadership means addressing all those internal and external motivations to nudge people toward the needed, positive behaviors, whether for the climate or the organization and its culture and clients. It means developing a positive, inspirational vision, creating a compelling narrative, and developing a social movement where people influence each other and learn and act together. That's what leadership and leading organizational culture entail. That's what we need to act on in the time window to mitigate climate change (that threatens all of us as people and as businesses).

Three choices

That's why I introduce you to Jeremy Hunter, founding director of the Executive Mind Leadership Institute. Hunter says we have three choices when facing an existential threat: transform, cope or collapse. In this crucial decade to 2030, positive leaders can engage the transformative potential of climate change for their people and organizations. A positive organizational culture contributes to solutions. Let's see how to lead that process - but, first, here's Jeremy's story.

When Jeremy was 20 years old he was diagnosed with an incurable auto-immune system that affected his kidneys. The doctor announced he had a 90% chance of dying within five years. Jeremy said to his dad: “That is good news because someone has to be the 10%”. Jeremy shared his story during the Great Leadership Reset conference: “I went back to school, talked to my professor and he gave me a Zen book. It was a warrior’s religion in Japan and it helps the mind to gain clarity in the face of mortality. It helped me deal with fear, rage, anxiety.”

Your inner game

We are now all facing an existential threat and rationality hasn’t helped us. Knowledge by itself hasn’t helped us shift behaviors. We need something else, too. We all have a blind spot: we focus on what’s outside of us: technology, policies, and results. But our inner game is crucial: think of your self-awareness, self-mastery, and self-transformation.

What is the mind you bring to the situation and how does that affect the outer situation? What if you’re irritated, anxious, or angry? The sympathetic nervous system is sensitive to triggers in our environment, but also in our own minds. The sympathetic nervous system is the accelerator that accounts for our ability to “get up and go.” When overstimulated it leads to the fight-flight-freeze response. We need the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to act as a brake, slowing the nervous system down when it has become overstimulated. Only then can you see what is happening at the moment and what is needed to create positive results. For instance, moving from conflict to a flowing dialogue again.

Hunter shares the story of Christiane Figueres, the lead negotiator of the Paris 2015 agreement, working with 159 governments and suffering a personal blow. She’d just found out that her husband had had another life during their 25 years of marriage. She was beyond shock and felt almost suicidal. Then she decided to build a ladder for herself. She had kids and was working toward these global goals. That mattered. She used what she learned from Buddhism during the negotiations. Christiane says in a video: “Critical to the process was: who was I being? What was the light I was shining on this? What were the thoughts that I was entertaining? I could see them play out in that situation - the reality that emerged in front of us.” This sounds mystical, but your inner response instigates concrete outcomes.

How do you create your situations?

The inner game influences the outer game. How do you create your situations? You are contagious: What are you putting into your network? One hospital department leader realized it was her assumptions about the nurses that influenced people around here - and that caused conflict. This is raising your game: Is your mental/emotional state creating options?

Hunter explains: We are on autopilot 90% of the time. We have to challenge our default reactions. As Harvard University psychology professor Ellen Langer demonstrated, human beings —including leaders— think 95% of the same thoughts as yesterday. 46.9% of the time your attention is wandering. Less than a third of people can explain what emotion they’re experiencing. Without self-awareness, you have a 4% of managing yourself…

The green zone is positive

Hunter: Self-mastery starts with how we manage our survival responses. Our nervous system has a green, flourishing zone. When a stimulus or threat is overwhelming we move into the red zone: we attack, defend, avoid, escape. In the black zone: we freeze, shut down, burnout.

Black and red aren’t permanent zones, just temporary if you cope with situations. However, if you’re in the red zone for too long, you end up in the black zone; discouraged, with apathy.

The question for positive leaders to develop a positive culture is: How do I get myself in the green, flourishing zone? That’s where you need to be to perform and flourish. That's where you take action. Centered, with inner calm. How do you help your people work in the green zone as much as possible?

If you think: “I have to do it all myself” you might not be in the green zone much of the time. What matters, is the quality of your relationships. First with yourself, then with others. (If you want to learn more about positivity research and practices to develop resilience and green zone, check out the Positive Culture Academy.)?

Here’s an exercise that Jeremy Hunter shared to get into the green zone. Get comfortable, close your eyes and imagine:

• Who has helped you? Think about them, see their face, and listen to their voice saying your name. Imagine what they do, say, feel their presence.
• Notice what happens in your body.
• Imagine that person standing behind you still supporting you.
• Bring to mind another person and feel the impact of their presence.
• And a third person, joining you.
• Now you have three people supporting you - how does that feel?

Next, ask yourself: who can I support? You can do the same for someone else. If you experienced this more - would your team perform better, would your quality of life be higher? Would it be easier to discuss climate change and actions you can take to mitigate its effects??

Find your green zone and action

It helps to develop a positive organization if you look for the green zone in yourself and others. What's within your control? What action can you take? How do you contribute to the global outcome, however small? As Amitav Ghosh says in his essay "The great derangement - climate change and the unthinkable": "We have all contributed to climate change, in some measure, great or small."

Ghosh also states: "The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination. [...] Culture generates desires - for vehicles and appliances, for certain kinds of gardens and dwellings - that are among the principal drivers of the carbon economy."

• What does your organizational culture create?

Last but not least, Pope Francis says in Laudato Si': "A true ecological approach always is a social approach - it must integrate questions of justice and hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor."?

The climate is intimately linked with culture, both national and organizational. Cultures shape attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways. Culture tells stories with heroes and villains. Cultural norms define what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted, or rejected within a group. When properly aligned with personal values, drives, and needs, culture can unleash tremendous amounts of energy and action toward a shared purpose and foster an organization’s or a person's capacity to thrive. Let our most important purpose be to mitigate climate change.

What is the story you are telling yourself? How can you look at the options, the half-full glass, and take action? How can you help others in your organization do the same? I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

? Marcella Bremer, 2022.