Archive for October, 2009

I work with this great mentor, called Hilary Cotton.  She’s coached me over a long period of time, and her insights and support have been invaluable.

In our last session, I was describing the development of this website, and how the process that the web development team took me through obliged me to think really hard about what I do to help clients and to develop my field.  (Thanks Jonathan, David and Matthew!)

I mentioned the challenge that I have set myself here – for all my work to contribute to real change for sustainable development.

The work that needs doing is the work of transformation, and that’s where my passion is.

But, maybe inevitably, it isn’t where all my work is.

Some of the work clients ask for is a bit more workaday – more about being a bit better in today’s context, than co-creating a transformed future.

And I was feeling uncomfortable about the incongruence, to the point of wondering if I should change the text on the page.

Thanks to Hilary’s incisive questions, I had an insight: I was disappointed that not all my work is transformational, and I was letting my disappointment get right in the way.

The incisive questions technique leads you to identify limiting assumptions and replace them with liberating assumptions.

Here’s the liberating assumption I came up with, which is also a reframing of my emotional response:

If I knew that respecting my disappointment will lead to understanding better the opportunities for transformation, I will pay it proper attention and be unafraid of it.

So here’s the reframe: I can view my disappointment as a phenomenon, and be curious about it and what it teaches me about transformation.

I feel disappointed in what I’ve been able to do in this piece of work.  That’s interesting.

And more, I can respect my disappointment, as a useful companion which can remind me about what I value and what my ambitions are.

Hello, Disappointment.  What can I learn from walking with you, looking you in the face and studying you for a bit?

And then I can bid it goodbye, and try on another attitude.

I’m going to look at this another way: with curiosity about what will happen, gratitude that the work was brought to me, and openness to what might emerge from it.

And I won’t be afraid of being disappointed in the future.

The latest issue of the environmentalist includes an article I’ve written, entitled “who can help me make this change?“.  In it, I share an approach I’ve used successfully in training courses and (as my daughter would say) in true life: it helps people to systematically identify key internal and external players who can help them bring about the change they want to see.

If a particular person or group are crucial to making the change happen, then you want them to be supportive of it.  Ask them what they’d like to see happening, and how you can help them.  Find common ground and enlist their support.

If someone is already very supportive, but not really needed, then see what they can do to influence or recruit those who are needed.  Or enlist them to support you.

Remember, the art of engaging people to help create transformational change involves listening and letting go.

So I’m just topping up on today’s environmental news feed (my feed of choice is The Guardian, a nice little app that even a web dilettante like me can add to their Google home page) and two stories stand out and demand a closer look.

The first states, “Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes“.   The second say, “CO2 is green”, which is less self-explanatory.  In fact, it’s an astonishing TV ad running in the US aimed at scuppering a cap-and-trade bill – thanks to Leo Hickman for picking this up in his blog.

What I notice is that while reading them, I get that creeping feeling up the back of my neck and round to my jaw, and the sinking in my shoulders.  I’m physically cringing.  Not very much.  But it’s there.

And which had the biggest cringe effect?  I can’t be certain, but I’d say that CO2 denialists make me more unhappy than the Met Office’s truly dire research.

So I wonder: what can I learn from this?

That I’m more comfortable with things which reinforce my existing world view, however awful?  Perhaps.

That we need to pull together now and use all our considerable intelligence and organising power to avert the worst and prepare a soft landing, and that I’d rather the US pro-CO2 lobby would ‘get with the programme’.

I’m happier owning up to that as a reason!

The other thing I notice is that these cringe-related feelings are not empowering and motivating.  What I plan to do now is

• forget I read either story,
• remind myself of some of my reasons to be cheerful,
• review my to-do list, and
• plunge into productive work.

Does that make me a denialist too?