An Open Letter to Coaches, the Coaching & Coaching Psychology Professional Bodies and Coach Educators

Dear Colleagues

We believe that coaches, coaching psychologists, coaching and coaching psychology professional bodies and our educational establishments have a vital role to play right now in our collective history as a species, for the human and non-human species alike.

Speaking simply, we’re in the Sixth Mass Extinction. Not on the verge of it. We’re in it.

If everything on the planet dies, we die. Our families die. And our clients and their businesses and families too.

That’s not a distant future. As Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General describes it, we face an ‘existential threat’, i.e. our very existence as a species is in question within ours or our children’s lifetime. We are only a few years away from an irreversible rise in global temperatures, although biodiversity destruction, which is happening at an alarming rate, may be the bigger challenge that leads more quickly to our extinction.

Who would have thought that in the past thirty years we’d see our bees, insects, mammals, plants, coral and sea life slashed so dramatically? For example, in Germany a 75% reduction in insects, in Australia’s Barrier Reef an 89% drop in baby coral. Species extinction happening at a rate of up to 1000 times more than usual. Only 60 harvest cycles left in our degraded soils, fewer here in the UK. It’s real and it’s happening now. With each passing year it worsens and unless we make drastic and immediate changes, we will have more loss of biodiversity and more extreme weather events, bringing storms, floods, fires, famine and wars. Not just people to “over there” but to all of us, everywhere.

Maybe some of you are you’re thinking “What can we/I do?” “I’m just a coach.” “Coaches provide a service” you cry, “It’s the client’s agenda that matters, not ours”, you might assert or “Surely, it’s not the coaches job to save the planet?”

We think we have a significant role to play. As the late John Whitmore put it so eloquently, a key task of coaching is raising awareness so people can take ownership and responsibility. We raise awareness of things that are often outside of our client’s awareness, and help them to face what they might be avoiding, and have skillful conversations they might not otherwise have had. Would we be serving our clients if we failed to raise awareness of and help them to explore and shape their responses to this once unimaginable threat to their very survival?

Being in service does not mean that as coaches, this is not our issue. It surely means it is. The impact of climate change and biodiversity loss threatens every aspect of our way of life and life itself. Leaders across organisations make daily decisions that impact on a wide system. We might create an awareness that impacts on the choices and actions of leaders, we might catalyze more systemic shifts in a life-giving direction.

Supporting business leaders to grow without considering the impact of that growth on the planet and the wider ecology had led in part, to the problems we are now facing. As coaches we have been as big a part of the whole toxic system as the rest of the population. We can no longer just progress the ‘client’s agenda’ without regard for the life-giving system of which the client and their organisation is a part.

If we continue with this narrow, blinkered service, we are choosing to continue to be a part of the toxic degenerative system that has led to this crisis.

If we instead choose to recognize and respond to the climate and ecological crisis, we can immediately use our incredible skills to help to shift the focus and the create space for meaningful dialogue. We can massively reduce our personal contribution to runaway consumerism, and we can stop supporting the externalization of costs with no thought to the consequences – and more. We cannot have a system change without individual change. We can all make a difference. Together we can be the change that we need to see in the world , and help our clients to do the same.

We are asking you to step into the heart of this crisis, declare a Climate & Environmental emergency and act in line with that declaration. We need to wake up and move. Fast. All of us.

The lead has already been taken by Extinction Rebellion on the streets of London and other major cities around the UK and the World. Greta Thunberg has inspired the school strikes for climate movement that now has 1.4 million young people in 110 countries taking strike action each week. Many other organisations, councils, businesses and professions are stepping up in declaring emergencies and taking decisive action.

We can all be leaders. We can all be catalysts that help to shift perspectives and behaviours. It may not be easy because we’re not used to speaking out to this extent. But if not us, who? And if not now, when? Will you rise to the challenge? The level of response required is significant, systemic and direct. We invite you to make a pledge:

For all:

1. Declare a Climate and Environmental emergency, making this public to your connections, clients and stakeholders, whoever they are, including the rationale for why.
2. Assess your own personal and own organisation’s impact and create an urgent plan to be carbon zero, ideally carbon negative by 2025. Base your decisions and actions on this, even if so doing means you have to change the way you do business.
3. Join with others who are taking this step (e.g. join Coaching Declares a Climate and Environmental Emergency) ; and

For the professional bodies and educators, to also:

1. Undertake climate and emergency awareness briefing/masterclasses for all board members and staff. Take urgent steps to raise awareness and educate members and learners. Install climate and environmental emergency as a permanent top priority agenda item and use this as an ongoing criteria for every future strategic and operational decision.
2. Ensure climate and environmental awareness and application are included in your professional coaching competencies, including support and advice to members and learners on how to raise awareness and work with climate and environmental emergency related issues (e.g. how to introduce into the coaching space, how to work with the emotional journey of the crisis).
3. Create, with other professional bodies, a Global Climate Crisis Network for coaches along the same lines and principles as the Global Supervisors Network. This is a time of great anxiety, grief, overwhelm, and guilt, we need nurturing and resourcing to have hope and optimism.
4. Ensure all coaching conferences include at least one session on the climate and environmental emergency.
5. Minimise the impact of all conferences by making as virtual as possible and then when face to face minimising impact in every way (travel, vegan food or at least vegetarian, no throwaway freebies).
6. Create awards with climate and environmental emergency categories to share and promote best practice.
7. Share what you are doing as widely as possible and keep evolving new ways to address this crisis.

Penned by:

• Zoe Cohen ([email protected])
• Linda Aspey ([email protected])
• Alison Whybrow ([email protected])

Since the idea of this open letter was proposed by Zoe in June, we’ve had tremendous support from many including Peter Hawkins, Stephen Palmer, Liz Hall, Neil Scotton and Hetty Einzig; and the list of supporters is growing by the day. We have not met one person who isn’t worried, anxious, wondering what to do, keen to make a positive contribution.

Here is a live, signable version of the letter - please add your signature and your support, spread the word amongst the coaching community, and be the change: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11kGcjGHrlzX0HyrP6-Z_KCM7Yh857RMRpjEodqJwfrU/edit

Resources:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-declare-your-very-own-climate-emergency-zoe-cohen-1e/

https://climate-emergency.com/business/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6558679590150119424/