We talk a lot about the urgent need to address climate change and the enormous economic opportunities that come with building a clean, green economy, but we don’t talk about it in a way that reaches people who are not attuned to it. Especially in an election year, in a very polarized time. So, we need to find a way to talk about the climate challenge — and its opportunities — differently.
“When I’m looking at the climate challenge that we have today, what I see is that there are certainly many reasons to be reactive and concerned and very, let’s say, dogmatic in our communication, whereby sometimes we might even polarize the situation,” Jennifer Hough, a systems thinker and leadership consultant through her firm The Wide Awakening, who sees leadership challenges through the lens of physics (in more ways than one) told me.
But, she added the recent spate of more severe extreme weather events – and in unexpected places like her hometown of Asheville, North Carolina – opens the door to reaching some people who were not interested in the climate crisis before.
“I also see that there’s a huge opportunity because people who didn’t understand how dire the situation was, those people are now having real world consequences to their homes, to their environments, to their ability to breathe, to how much water is on their streets,” she explained. “You can’t deny it anymore. It’s at your front door. And so, there’s an opportunity to have a conversation now that wasn’t there before, unfortunately, because circumstances have gotten a little more intense. But, you know, necessity is the motherhood of the invention of good conversations.”
Leveraging that newly-opened door requires a different way to talk about a sustainable future, though. The passion with which some people talked about the climate crisis – justified or not – could have been a turnoff to the people who don’t “get it,” Hough suggested.
“Sometimes when I hear people that are vehement,” (about anything), she said, “It almost repels me, and I know that it’s not just me. There’s a sense that it’s too much, and you’re trying to scare me, and it literally makes me not want to hear what you have to say.”
The Cognitive Dissonance Barrier – Is It An Open Door?
These extreme weather events are triggering a lot of cognitive dissonance, Hough said. “Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs,” they are contradictory, according to MedicalNewsToday. Such as not believing in climate change yet experiencing your home and community unexpectedly drowning from a massive hurricane. It can paralyze them psychologically, but, Hough suggested, it might also open a door to building a bridge to reach them about the climate crisis.
“They get disempowered and overwhelmed,” she added, “So that in-between state is where we feel that overwhelm, we feel the upset. And then of course, we get paralyzed by that overwhelm, and then we do nothing.” But people who are programmed to seek solutions find a way. “It’s almost like the dissonance causes them to, unlike the person who’s anxious, be vigilant only for things that resolve the problem, and people and resources that resolve the problem.” That’s where those folks are reachable.
Building a communication bridge
Those are the moments when the minds of even climate skeptics is open just a tad, when we can maybe, just maybe build what Hough calls “a brain bridge” and reach them, grounding it in what they just experienced firsthand.
Then, just ask questions and “Seek to understand first,” she insisted. “In order to become a master bridge builder, one has to be so committed to asking questions to drop into a place of understanding such that you understand where the commonality is.” It’s not necessarily going to happen in one conversation, though. You’re building a relationship. “This might take three, five conversations, it might take three to five months, it might take three, five years.”
A key is to truly be open to hearing their side, their perspective, to learning something too. “There has to be a commitment to never making the other wrong,” she emphasized too, “Find the common points. Once you have the common points and you develop a relationship.”
A Movement of One
It only takes one, Hough said, drawing on her recent TEDx Talk called “A Movement of One.” It takes one moment, one step, one person, one conversation, one movement. A pebble ripples through a body of water.
“It’s all about the movement of one. And I don’t just mean the movement of one person. I literally mean even the movement of the movement of us as one people. I don’t mean that we have to agree with each other, we don’t have to agree politically, financially, economically, I don’t care. But the thing is that each of us has the capacity to make a difference in many small ways every day, many times.”
The point is to that you are both learning – that’s the brain bridge – learning together. “The point of it is not to manipulate anyone to your point of view. It’s to expand both of your views,” Hough added, “Now we’re making the world a better place where you can agree to disagree, and there’s a certain level of mutual honoring and mutual respect.”
She suggested starting with the question, “What’s important to you? Like, what are the most important things to you?” How they answer reveals their values, she said, and then you can frame talking about addressing the climate crisis, or whatever, in the context of what they value. “That’s the place where you’ll find that you have the most common ground with them.”
Listen to the full interview with Jennifer Hough on Electric Ladies Podcast here.