Get the skills: communications

David Attenborough has declared that saving the planet is a ‘communications challenge’. We know what we have to do, it is now a case of encouraging everybody to play their part by communicating the challenges in a simple and inspiring way. Given the complexities of the topic, learning to communicate sustainability issues effectively, could have benefits for how we communicate more generally.

Good communication is about more than simply conveying information. It is about imparting the message with clarity, purpose and empathy. A good communicator needs to understand their audience and how the receiver’s views and emotions shape the way that the message is interpreted. They also need to be aware of their own emotions and intentions and how this may affect the words they choose to employ.

There are many barriers that stop us from communicating effectively. Several of those barriers are further heightened when it comes to sustainability, due to the complexity and urgency of the issues we are facing.

When we are passionate about an issue, we tend to speak more quickly and dart around between different elements of a topic, losing the clarity of the message. We are also less likely to pay attention to our audience; we focus on the information we need to impart, rather than how the audience is reacting to the conversation.

David Attenborough has declared that saving the planet is a ‘communications challenge’

Use of jargon and unfamiliar terms only confuses the audience. From Net Zero and carbon neutral to regenerative business models and Fair Trade, sustainability has more than its fair share of specialist terms.

Particularly in a business context, we tend to want quick action and resort to giving instructions, without helping the other person to understand the need for action or allowing them the opportunity to come up with the best approach. How often do we find ourselves saying: ‘What you need to do is…’? Again, the urgency of the climate and nature emergencies increases our desire for action and our tendency to jump straight to a suggested approach.

Effective sustainability conversations

Effective communication is essential to inspire people towards a common goal, whether that is encouraging a friend to regularly go for a run with you, achieving this quarter’s revenue target, or building a more sustainable future. Talking about sustainability may make us more conscious of how important good communication is, but the tips for good conversations around climate, nature and social issues are relevant whatever the message.

1. Seek common ground: We often create barriers in conversations whether we intend to or not, e.g. through careless comments like ‘you shouldn’t fly so much’. Instead we need to build bridges, finding the issues of common concern and building the conversation from there. For example, it may be that you are both concerned about ensuring the best opportunities for young people and you then think about how climate change could impact that.

2. Ask questions: Find out about the individual’s priorities, motivations and concerns as well as what is stopping them from taking action. In asking questions, you help the other person to decide how they feel about the issues and what matters to them. It may be that they are most concerned about the lack of education for girls in some countries and want to get involved in promoting gender equality. This may then inspire them to investigate the links between gender equality and climate action.

3. Listen: Asking questions is important, but only if we take time to listen to the answers. Active listening involves paying attention to the answers, avoiding judgement and resisting the temptation to offer advice. It is also worth regularly checking that you have properly understood what they are saying by repeating key points back to them in their own words and asking if you have understood correctly.

4. Paint a picture: Fear may be a good wake-up call, but it rarely provides the motivation for sustained action over the long term. A health scare may trigger us to lose weight, but the thought of all the things that we will be able to do once we are 10kg lighter is a much greater motivation to keep going when times are tough. The same is true with sustainability, but we tend to pepper our conversations with terrifying facts about how bad the situation is rather than paint a vision of the sustainable future we are working towards. For example, an organisation may want to position itself as a leader on human rights issues working with suppliers to ensure everyone is paid and treated fairly, feels a sense of belonging and inclusion and is able to thrive at work. Sustainable options are often seen as more expensive, so demonstrate how reducing energy costs can also save money.

5. Tell your story: Psychologists tell us that humans have a preference for the status quo, for being nudged not pushed and for stories rather than a raft of facts. We like to know how the CEO or our favourite movie star got to where they are today. It is easy to feel that if you are not a scientist, that you are not qualified to talk about climate change, but most people want to hear about other people’s sustainability journeys, what first raised their concerns and the actions they have taken to address the issues. This is growing in importance as sustainability becomes ever more embedded in an individual’s roles. It may also be essential to convince those who are slower to take action on climate change because they don’t trust the mainstream media, companies or governments, but do trust someone they know personally. We want to understand what it means to be a sustainable marketer on a daily basis, not just what a sustainable business could be. Talking about these things with your peers helps to make it more relatable and identify how they can take action in their own work, for example by reducing the impact of data centres by deleting data that no longer needs to be stored.

6. Allow time and space for the conversation to develop: In our desire for action, we want every conversation to end in the other person making a commitment to change the way they are doing things. However, the other person may never have heard of the circular economy or thought about what ‘organic’ really means. A two-minute conversation may be enough to plant the seed and make them curious to know more. Action may naturally come later.

7. Simplify the message: For every sustainability topic, there is a raft of jargon; 56% of UK adults cannot confidently explain what is meant by ‘Net Zero’. As much as possible, these need to be stripped out or effort made to explain them and ensure a common understanding of the terms across any group, organisation or society as a whole. There is also a lot of complex science. You may want your audience to understand that taking action in one area may lead to unintended consequences in another. However, trying to convey all the nuances around emissions reduction or protection of human rights in one conversation risks leaving your audience dazed and confused.

8. Be aware of the words that you use: Many climate-related terms are highly emotive. Use of terms like ‘climate change’ has eclipsed that of ‘global warming’ because, for some countries, the more immediate impact may be a wetter not warmer climate. Words like ‘green’ or ‘renewable’ may simply be interpreted as ‘more expensive’. How we talk about nature as birds and trees or individual species such as nightingales, robins, oaks and giant redwoods, is an indication of how much attention we pay to the infinite variation that exists. A poor choice of words in a job description can easily exclude a group of individuals making them feel they are not welcome to apply. Being more conscious of the terms we use supports constructive conversations, as well as helping to broaden our vocabulary.

9. Keep passion in check: We want people who care about sustainability; a population of passionate and concerned citizens will create a groundswell of change. However, it is also important not to let that passion run away with you. Too much passion leads to conversations that are unfocused, one-side and even adversarial.