Charly Cox's Agility Narrative on Climate Change Coaching

We are pleased to welcome Charly Cox of Climate Change Coaches to the Agility Narratives, where she joins us to talk about her personal journey as an advocate of climate coaching, and her book - a first on Climate Coaching in the world - “Climate Change Coaching: The Power of Connection to Create Climate Action”.

Charly is impassioned by storytelling and the desire to help others reposition their narratives. Today, she leads by holding space for coaching conversations on climate grounded in social justice, which is now building a global movement. Those involved help people see a different story about Climate Change, a human problem with a human solution, and not just something to do with trees, polar bears, deserts, and other beings in the natural environment that we care for. 

Charly’s narrative started with working for a global organization. This led to seven years of work in West Africa, where she started the first Photography business. In this podcast, we learn that Scarcity was a key element in her awakening to climate issues, as it was the core issue in the conflict at hand. In her work, she learnt that Scarcity has a cousin, Overwhelm; both are, and always have been, clearly present in individual and team conversations on climate.

We found this conversation heartfelt and very timely in light of the natural disasters that are increasingly being experienced around the world. It sparks curiosity about being in the present moment, opening oneself up to love about the planet, and being given the opportunity to reflect on what we might begin to feel as the climate crisis is deepening. This makes for an hour of awe. Enjoy!

Find out more about Charly and Climate Change Coaches at About Us - Climate Change Coaches. Want to learn more about the co-hosts - Martin's LinkedIn Profile and Janet's LinkedIn profile

See full notes at https://theagilitynarratives.buzzsprout.com/ 

1:38 - Charly's journey to Sierra Leone, retraining as a photographer, story-telling and becoming a social entrepreneur

9:31 - Scarcity has a cousin, overwhelm. Together they create inertia.

12:34 - The challenge with people feeling disempowered, and therefore not taking action.

13:44 - How does individual action contribute to systems change?

14:42 - We need to have a good relationship with the problem.

15:32 - Not sounding guilty or angry, but rather owning how worried we are

15:48 - We can move like a shoal of fish; we can shift systems.

18:30 - If you don't listen to voices of dissent, people break things in the change process.

21:49 - Being with uncertainty.

23:44 - One of the challenges for organizations is not slowing down enough.

25:13 - Feeling safe.

26:14 - Listening brings magic. 

28:17 - Spirit of the magic of collaboration, rather than control. 

32:46 - We have no idea of the impact of our actions.

35:16 - Culture Shift - an imaginative leap is involved.

36:36 - There is an arc that teams go through… and then the ideas come... 

41:39 - Bridge building

42:07 - The role of love 

44:05 - Sitting in the grief 

46:53 - It is very easy to be angry. 

47:40 - It's not a niche thing over there.

53:06 - Villianising is not the solution.

54:17 - Humanity is at risk.

59:43 - Charly’s call to action.

Transcript

Janet: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Agility Narratives podcast series. We hold the space, so as a community we can listen to leading change makers and enterprise agile leaders talk about their agility narratives. Each narrative we hypothesize, gives us insight into part of the whole. We are really pleased to welcome Charly Cox to the agility narratives today. Charly is an award winning Climate Change coach and founder of Climate Change Coaches, a professional coach for ten years. She specializes in environmentally focused businesses. She has a background in the creative sector and worked for seven years in West Africa. She has just published the first book in the world on Climate Change Coaching, “The Power of Connection to Create Climate Action”. She's joining us from the UK. To know more about Charly, Martin, and myself, please see the show notes. Hi Charly. I really appreciate you talking with us. We understand it as a busy time for you with the book launch. Welcome.

Charly: [00:01:03] Thank you. Thank you to both of you. It's lovely to be here.

Janet: [00:01:08] I'm intrigued to learn more about the early part of your journey towards the work you do. Where in your personal journey did your interest in Climate Change coaching begin, and how did that grow into a passion? But before we do that, we need a little bit of context. Can you please tell us about the seven years of your work in West Africa? What brought you there and how did environmental issues lead?

Charly: [00:01:38] Well, I think it's probably best to start at the end of university. Faced with what they call in the UK, the milk round, which is when big companies come to the universities to hoover up people. And I remember thinking, working for an organisation where the output is only essentially profit didn't feel motivating enough, and I wanted to go and work for an organisation where there was a different mission or a different output that was desired. And so my first job was with Save the Children, UK, in London, and after a number of years working for them in London, I managed to find my way out into the field, as they call it, which is to go to Sierra Leone in West Africa. And I really loved the country, and I think it was there that I also realized that working directly in an enormous multinational organisation, just wasn't allowing me to flourish in the way I wanted to. So rather than stay in a nice, safe job, I retrained as a photographer. And I eventually built a creative agency in Freetown, which is maybe an odd place to build, another first! I built the first creative agency in Sierra Leone, unsurprisingly. But really that was driven by two things, the desire to tell stories and the desire to help the country to reposition its narrative. And in that sense, you know, this was a country that was frequently the first phrase you heard about, was - Sierra Leone that had a civil war. And the civil war was many years out, finished by the time I arrived and the country wanted to move on. And so this idea of telling a more accurate story, or telling a story that was more supportive, was probably the guiding principle for what we were doing. And so we were providing photography and video and stories to mainly the UN family and the international development sector, to tell to other people back home, wherever home was. And that was kind of four continents for us. And I think that's probably part of what brought me to climate in a way. So I can't claim that I was thinking about Climate Change when I was in Sierra Leone. I was thinking about social justice, about my staff and their development, and I was beginning to realise that what was holding people back was the inability to make really resonant decisions. And that inability wasn't lack of knowledge or skill, it was lack of confidence. I don't believe I can, and therefore I'll wait for you to tell me what the right thing to do is. And that was true not just of my national staff. That was true of my expat staff, that was true of other entrepreneurs I knew, that everyone was hitting inertia for one reason or another, due to a lack of confidence in their ability to make good decisions. So I left Sierra Leone, and I trained as a coach.

Charly: [00:04:49] And I wanted to work with leaders who were doing something good in the world and didn't really pin it any more closely than that. Increasingly, people came to me, who were involved in some kind of social justice mission, often in companies, not just in the charitable sector, and frequently leaders in big organizations, but sort of come up to me at conferences and say, Hey, listen, I want to do something else from the profit motive organization that they were in. So, that was all a kind of foregrounding, I suppose, to moving into environment. But I would almost say, I still haven't moved into environment, because part of what we do now at the Climate Change coaches, is we're trying to help people see a different story about Climate Change, that this is a human problem with a human solution. And that part of the problem, with my old hat on in the creative sector, is that we have emerged and we have talked about this story as something to do with trees, polar bears, deserts, you name it. When we asked people in the conferences we went to, what are the images of Climate Change? Those were the things they told us. And then, wind farms, you know, solar panels. Where are the people? You know, actually, it's not the polar bears that have to change. It's us. It's a human problem. So I think probably a big part of what I'm still doing now is helping people to see the story differently to the way that they saw it before. And everything we do is helping people make better quality decisions, based not on fear or disempowerment or threat, but based on resonance, meaning and purpose.

Janet: [00:06:35] You brought up the storytelling right from the outset in Sierra Leone, where the narrative is being said about a country, about changing that story, and in that it's about, I don't believe I can. That raises to me something about scarcity. I just wanted to at least hold that space for this. Maybe you'd like to say a little bit at this moment, and possibly continue on later during the podcast. But where does scarcity play in how we hold scarcity telling our story? Where does scarcity play in telling our story as it pertains to Climate Change?

Charly: [00:07:18] Scarcity was our starting point in a lot of ways. So, when I first rebranded, if you like, and called myself a Climate Change coach, it didn't really exist as a term. Then I sort of made it up because it rang true to what I wanted to do. So a lot of people came to me because they wanted to talk about Climate Change in some way. They wanted to change a career, and to move into the green economy. They wanted to do something in their organization, or they just wanted to talk about their feelings about it, time and again. The thing I would name, that was in the room with us, was scarcity. That felt like the underpinning of almost everything we did at the Climate Change Coaches when we started building training courses was - Scarcity is the big one. How do we come at that? And it's still, if you like, this doesn't sound strange, my favorite thing to work on, and that's because I see it holding people back. So I think two things about scarcity. One is it is not the facts of scarcity. Because, there is not enough, there's not enough time, there's not enough resources, there's not enough people acting. These things are facts. I think we can all agree, and how we relate to those facts changes the way we then behave. And so we can say, Oh, look, yeah, there's not enough. What a great opportunity for me to do something. Or we can say, Oh, that's not enough, there's no point. And so for me, and for us at the climate change coaches, everything is about how we relate to things, to ourselves, to each other, to the crisis and to these feelings. And so what we notice is not so much the facts of scarcity, but the mindset of scarcity, and how that is unhelpful. Definitely, we hear not enough, not enough, not enough. And sometimes you hear it in other ways, so you hear too many. But that's also a manifestation of not enough. Too many people are driving petrol cars, flying, you know, not enough people are changing, decarbonising their behaviours. Even under the “too much” you will often hear a “scarcity narrative baked in”.

Charly [00:09:37] But the other thing that became really apparent to us was that “scarcity” has a cousin, which is “overwhelm”. And often, the two things kind of show up together. So a client that arrives and says, I feel incredibly overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. Know when we do group coaching, we work in organizations that have set Net zero targets typically, and will run group coaching. And almost immediately the group will say, look, we just don't know where to start. We feel overwhelmed. There's so much to learn. Now, there are competing priorities. And when our coach will sort of suggest so, just start somewhere. That's when you hit it. Scarcity, triggered, which is “But we don't have time. We've got to get it right. We've got to get it right first time”. And so often, these two are sort of acting on each other to create even more inertia. That's one thing to say about it. The other thing, I guess, is that scarcity in this context, is not just about personal lack. And that for me is the big difference between Climate Change coaching and maybe what I'd call traditional coaching, the kind of coaching I used to do before I trained in any kind of systems coaching, which is, here I am working with an individual on their individual stuff. 

Charly: [00:10:55] And to some extent one of the failings of coaching is that it sort of imagines we're in a goldfish bowl, and we're not some, what we do and decided it doesn't get impacted on by the forces of the outside world. In that coaching, Martin, if you were working with me, and you said, you know, I really want, I want a new job. And then you'd say, but I don't think I can get this new job. I don't have the right CV, or I don't know enough about this kind of company. That would all be lack of personal belief. And my job would be to say, look, come on, Martin, you can do it. Let's look at when you've doubted yourself before, and what you would do then. But what you might say, what you would never say is, I don't believe other people can't get jobs. But actually, in this context, that's exactly what you'd say. You'd say, I can do my bit, but no one else is doing their bit. Or What's the point of our government doing these things when other governments aren't?

Martin: [00:11:55] The question that I would have was, how could I have impact? How could I make a difference? I'm happy to put all this effort in, but what difference is it going to make?

Charly: [00:12:05] Yeah, exactly. So that speaks to that kind of lack of belief in the system and lack of belief in yourself, that those two things have to be scaffolded together. Because one will undo the other. The reason our book’s tagline is - The Power of connection to create climate action, is because one of the things that defeats scarcity is connecting to other people and being in community. And time and again, we see that isolation is is one of the big kind of dangers here, if you're trying to create some kind of climate action.

Martin: [00:12:42] You've taken us from individual coaching and to the group coaching in your book published last month, It addresses a number of transformational themes. So how are you working with groups and individuals to help them with getting to that next step?

Charly: [00:13:02] So to answer that, I might need to tell you a little bit about our theory of change. We realized that there was a big problem with people feeling disempowered and therefore not acting. And as coaches, that's just what we do. We take people from a disempowered place to a place of agency, and then they just tell us what they're going to do and we hold them to account. So we're working on their motivation more than we're working on their action, because we're not standing next to them when they're taking action. So that's great. But the problem when you just focus on that, is that there's a bit of a bear trap to fall into here, which is everything about individuals taking action and that will solve Climate Change. And anybody that works in this space will tell you, that that's almost a lie that's been propagated by the fossil fuel industry. So we need to say to ourselves, okay, well, how then does individual action somehow contribute to systems change? And in our book, we have a foreword by Kimberly Nicholas, who is a climate scientist who wrote Under the Sky remake. And she talks very compellingly in that book about the role of individuals in concert with organisations and governments, and that we can't discount individual action.

Charly: [00:14:15] We need to understand where it sits. So it's probably not about me turning the washing machine down from 40 to 30. It is about me talking to other people, about the things I'm doing, so that I start to spread this message. And then other people do it too. And maybe telling my canvasser when they come around and knocking on the door saying, Will you vote for my MP? Hey, what are you doing about Climate Change? And if everyone on the streets does that, they go back to the MP and they say, Hey, everyone talking about this Climate Change thing. We should probably do something about this, We probably have a policy. So for us, individual action, the role of individual action, this is just our theory of change, is that it gives people a sense of meaning and Purpose and and a feeling of resonance in relationship with climate. Because right now we're feeling quite avoidant and judged and self judging. So, actually that's not helpful. That's just making us turn away into other stuff. If we could do things that made us feel really good about it, then two things will happen. Number one, we'll have a much less charged relationship with the problem which will be good for the way that the emotional field is around this. But number two; when we talk to other people, rather than sounding guilty or angry, we'll sound purposeful and enrolling. We might enrol them to take some action too, even if we're talking from a place of vulnerability and how worried we are.

Charly: [00:15:48] Owning that, rather than pushing it into blame and anger, is what will help other people connect with us. And when we can connect around this issue, without judgement, with compassion, we can move like a shoal of fish, we can shift systems. So connection is not a nicer habit. We really see it as a fundamental, and in the book we have 40 different contributors writing and they're all saying a version of that, what holds their activist movement together is valuing and putting priority on the relationships in the movement, as much as the activities. And the same for organisations, that at organisational Level; it's making space for people to be voices of dissent, so that they don't just get rail roles in the race to zero, so that better ideas can emerge as the change happens. For us, the theory is it's about not doing things that feel bad because they are taking action, and taking action is worth it. It's about taking the action that feels right for you, and then connecting with other people around that, so that we can just change the mood music on this.

Charly: [00:16:59] Final thing to say on those, I was once at a dinner party where people were talking about Brexit and they were from different sides of the debate, and in the UK that was quite charged and still is, but they were quite happily having a conversation. Some had voted leave, some have voted Remain. And I said, You know, one of my concerns is that this is distracting From Government getting on with doing something about Climate Change. And everyone looked at the floor. People looked so uncomfortable, as having previously been completely comfortable to talk about this very polarizing issue, They all went, Oh yeah, Climate Change, yeah. We can't have that relationship with this crisis. We need to be able To get Into a more comfortable Relationship with it.

Martin: [00:17:40] Is that what you mean by connection? So that when the topic comes up, you're comfortable with it, you're involved in it, you've taken your personal action so you feel like you've done something, and that you're part of this movement. Is that what you mean by connection or is it more relational?

Charly: [00:17:56] It's a mix of both, but I would say it's more relational. People just getting to grips with what this means, this crisis means, and recognizing that there are many, many different ways of taking action. And I bit like when we think of this issue, we think of polar bears and trees. We also think of holding placards and walking down streets and being angry. And very many people don't want to do that, so they don't do anything. So I think it's helping people, and this is what coaches do brilliantly customize their responses, Feel Less of a sense of guilt around it. We've all been part of this, this system around us has helped us be part of this. So let's just Get on with changing it Now.

Martin: [00:18:36] You just mentioned listening to dissent. Can you explore that for us a little bit more in context of this connection that you're looking to help build?

Charly: [00:18:46] The book is split into four sections. The second section is around how you use these skills 1 to 1, but the third section is around how organizations change. And I just want to say to start with, this is one section of A book.  And it could be 50 books, and is 50 books and more. So we've tried to look at how a coaching approach helps organizations change. One of the things that became obvious in talking to people was that psychological safety was really important, and that's one of those sort of buzzwords in organizations. But for me, I take quite a practical approach to this. Number one, it is an organizational or a social good to listen to everyone. I think that's just I think we just say, that's a given. It's a good thing to listen to Everyone, from an Emotional, relational perspective. But from an operational perspective, if you don't listen to voices of dissent, people break things in the change process. So we all want to feel like we're good and right. You know, Schurman and Cohen wrote about wanting to feel like we're on the side of the good guys. And so, when we feel like we're in the bad guy camp, we do things to make us feel like we're not. And this explains to some extent the way that this issue has been polarized in some countries like the US, for example, where both sides want to say that they're on the side of good and right. In an organization, if you feel it, you're in the minority because you're questioning the way the organization is trying to make its change, to zero or whatever it is. Then you're probably going to recruit other people to join you in that dissent.

Charly: [00:20:23] And then you're going to slow down or damage the change process. So from a pragmatic/pragmatist perspective, it's a good idea to listen to those voices. But also from an innovation perspective, dissent brings new reasoning, new ideas, and coaches, in the way that we approach the world in our philosophy, if you like, hold that people have same reasons for holding what might seem to be insane ideas, and that we just have to find those same reasons, we have to accept that people are partially right, and we just have to find out what is behind that set of those set of views, and then how can we help you get on board and move with us? And that might mean that we change the way we're moving forward. It might mean we change the plan, because you've told us something that we didn't know about that's actually really useful to know. And rather than making you bad and wrong for not just jumping up and down with glee, we can find out what you need, and what, therefore, the organization needs, and we can fix the process. So that was sort of our position. And the only way to get those voices to really speak is through psychological safety. So making it really safe, voice dissent, and lots of organizations sort of say they want to do that. But of course, what they really want to do is get crack on and get stuff done and it can feel like slowing it down.

Janet: [00:21:49] Psychological safety. Can you talk a little bit more about that? In the world that we've lived in past two years, there's a lot of anxiety related to COVID. And so bringing a word into the podcast that relates to psychological realities, the emotional realities that we all know, what are the challenges today in creating psychological safety, especially in the world of Climate Change coaching and organizations, given where people are actually at because of VUCA in this world?

Charly: [00:22:23] I think you've named it in that sense of being with uncertainty. We, none of us like it, me included. We'd all love things to be certain and nailed down and really within our individual control. Want to say, I want to look at this through the lens of what? What do coaches do, or what do coach like behaviors do? Because I think, one of the things is, being with uncertainty, and accepting uncertainty. So it's a big piece in our book about acceptance, which is difficult in this space; accepting where we've got to, accepting we may not succeed. All of these, the pieces that are incredibly hard, that accepting that we're not in full control. That's, I think, the big thing that most organizations start to grapple with. We predict what will happen in organizations, as the climate crisis deepens, is that there will be two forces acting on people at the same time. The first is very practical. My department is changing. My job is completely shifting. I feel unstable because of that. I don't know where my desk is anymore - type feeling. And so that is threatening. That change is threatening. But the other force that might be acting on people will be, I don't know if my family are going to be safe. I don't know where I'm going to get food and provisions from. That's exactly what happened in COVID. And those two forces together are incredibly pressurizing for people. So as a coach, I would want to say that I think one of the challenges for organizations is not slowing down enough, or rather not slowing down their interactions enough, because people perceive that really listening properly takes ages, and we don't have time for that.

Charly: [00:24:09] But what Coaches do, and what we train people and organizations to use coaching Skills, we train them to listen below the words. So you don't end up in a lengthy story about the topic that someone's coming to you with as a manager. You can get straight to the heart of why you sound really overwhelmed. And you don't end up in this 20 minute discussion about the thing they're overwhelmed by.

Charly: [00:24:34] And so coaching can actually get you further, faster. But to do that, you have to slow down, in the way you show up in your presence. And I think a lot of the reports we get from people in organizations is this place just moves so fast. Speaking to someone this week, I get 300 emails a day. I manage 250 people. Its completely overwhelming. It's even more overwhelming in this space, where you have people who are working on the climate crisis. And so they don't feel they can slow down. They can't take a day off, or they can say no to a new piece of work, because the reason is so compelling and important. One piece of it is that people don't feel safe because they're not listened to enough, and they don't feel they've got the time to listen. But then the other reason people feel safe is structural things that we already know about around diversity and inclusion. And that may be because they are from minority, in a traditional sense of a minority. Or it may be they're in an intellectual minority. So we've worked with people who've said when the organization declared climate targets, I felt like I could suddenly be me, because i could say all the things that i'd been keeping to myself for a long time.

Charly: [00:25:51] Which is point to the fact that previously they didn't feel psychologically safe to talk about, sustainability as an agenda, for example. So it's not just the traditional way that we might think about diversity and inclusion. It's also about diversity of thought. And of course, all of this stuff increases our ability to innovate better, because when we can really hear voices of dissent or difference, we get completely different perspectives on the problem, which gives us better solutions to it.

Janet: [00:26:21] Listening brings magic. There's something about what you just said that's resonating with me about the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, and enabling listening in organisations, in the context of Climate Change. But in this world of creating safety, can you talk a little bit more about that? The term psychological may trigger some people, but listening is a term that opens doors to enable diversity, equity and inclusion lenses within the Climate Change discussion. How might listening open those doors greater than what we've seen today?

Charly: [00:27:02] Yeah, fantastic Question. I think it's first really important to acknowledge that I am a white, middle class woman, sitting in Oxford, one of the oldest cities in the UK, and a huge centre of privilege. Though I'm not at the university, so I'm probably not the best person to answer this question. I think it comes back to our behaviours, or our mindsets, or our come from place, whatever phrasing you want to use about the starting point for our listening. If we're listening, thinking, oh, this person doesn't have a clue, oh, they're useless. They need to buck up their ideas. You know, that's just not the right kind of listening, is it? So one of the things we say in the book is that people's coach-like behaviors or mindset, are as important as the tools they use, that come from coaching.

Charly: [00:27:54] So there's no point in asking powerful questions, if in your heart of hearts you think someone is hopeless, you have to stand in a place of believing in other people, believing in their potential, and their creativity, and their ability to solve their own problems. We also need to stand in a place of acceptance, of not knowing, not believing that we can see the path ahead of the person we're speaking to. And we just have to show them that path That we enter into these relationships. Just As you said Janet, in this sort of spirit of magic, which means we're not controlling the relationship, we're not controlling the conversation. It is just happening between the two of us, which is what I loved about being a photographer. The best pictures were taken when it was sort of coming through me and the people I was photographing. It wasn't me being some genius photographer and directing everything. It was sort of happening in that let go space. And of course, that's where we get innovation, because when we aren't controlling, things just emerge. That takes being comfortable with uncertainty, being comfortable with not being in control, which we're not good at. I don't know enough to speak confidently about what is happening in diversity, capital, inclusion in organizations right now. But I imagine the threat response is high from the people that hold power apparently. And there is a similar threat response that's quite high from the people who feel that they've been kept out of power. And so part of what coaching can do is create space for agreement between people, create space for people to feel safe to say - I feel like I've been kept down. And for others to say I feel a bit threatened, and to get to the heart of those things.

Martin: [00:29:51] I've noticed it in a lot of change books. We just need to have a proper mission and everybody will follow. Is that strategy to change? There's the personal change and this internal transformation type change, is all from internally, and it's having these great conversations, opening up, and listening relational presence. And so that's another form of transformation. And then we've got that you can have one type people that talk about complexity. I'm trying to put those three components together in a question on how change can happen with all of those different elements.

Charly: [00:30:32] One of the things that we're learning is that because this is such a new problem to grapple with, there are lots of different ways of doing it, and the jury is still out to some extent about the most successful. So it's not new to talk about organizational change. And there are reams of organizational development books which are fantastic on that. And so some organizations approach this simply as assuming everything else will stay the same. We have to get to net zero and decarbonize our operations and our products. And that's probably the easiest way to do it. So we have an example in our book of Uniper who are here in Oxford who said, you know, a lot of the change we could make, five people in a room could make, all of the fleet will become electric. One guy can sign that off, but what they wanted to do was involve the Workforce. They had a coaching approach already baked in to the way they make decisions at the right, at the factory floor level. So they used that, and they got answers and ideas from people across the organization, that would to some extent, deal with actually quite a small amount of emissions that would bring people on board with the why we're doing it and then practically landing it. So for them, it was - we decarbonize our operations. That's what we're aiming for. For other organizations, particularly organizations that have a role underpinning society or economy like financial services, they're asking very big, mindblowing questions of themselves and then feeding that to their staff. So things Like What's The future of Money and what Will Their Decarbonised World look Like? What will that Mean?

Charly: [00:32:25] And nobody has the answers to those questions, so everyone's sort of feeling in the dark. So you've got to change process starting to happen in organization, in the context of total uncertainty in the world at large. And that is fascinating. And I don't think anyone's got a firm idea of how you manage those things, because it's not a change process driven just by the organization for the organization's benefit anymore. That's the other end of the spectrum. So, there's these two kind of places. In the book we talk about the Canadian model, and I spoke to Dave Snowden as part of writing the Book Framework. What really feels about what he's doing is, he framed was this idea that often we look at these situations and complicated situations just require experts. So we just hire a lot of sustainability people, and they'll tell us what to do. Well, in that example, I described of what is the world going to look like? There is no sustainability consultant that I've ever met, that can tell you the answer to that question. So when we look at it as complex, then we realize that in that complexity we can only assume cause and effect after the fact. So that's a bit like saying all the people that contributed to the fall of the berlin wall. I bet none of them thought what they were doing mattered. And yet now we look back and we say, Wow, if that hadn't happened there, and if that hadn't happened there, the Berlin Wall might still be up. So to some extent I take a lot of hope from that, because I think we have no idea of the impact of our actions. That's another one of those ways we can scaffold our belief. We've just got to do it, and assume it will have an impact somehow. But also it applies to organizations is they have to take lots of small bets, they have to try lots of things, and they have to have that psychological safety to screw it up, to get it wrong. I think, the where for us the relational piece comes in, is that. You can have all the processes and systems in the world to manage change. But if people aren't brought in, if people don't understand why, when they're already busy, already managing multiple priorities, they either just switch off from it, or they sabotage it. And part of the reason they might sabotage it, is because there might be perverse incentives in place. The sales team might be incentivized to sell the thing that is actually highly carbonized, and absolutely not incentivized to sell the other. A good example would be in a financial services organization, where you just get much bigger returns on investment from investing in fossil fuels, than you do from investing In farms or something.

Charly: [00:35:05] So dealing technically with those perverse incentives, to enable people to get on board, would be one technical thing to do. But also hearing from those people, we don't think you're bad for not doing this. Why aren't you? And then helping them tap in, is really important. So one of the things we want to do, the Climate Change coaches, was to help organizations make that shift, like culture shift, if you like. And Culture Shift is a funny word to say here, because actually most people are bought in. Most people are really proud of an organization when it says, We're Going to make a stand about climate, we're going to decarbonize. When you talk to staff, that big mission is great; Yeah, fantastic. But it's the implications of the implementation that are hard for people, partly because it represents change, But also in a lot of organizations, because it represents an imaginative leap that those people just haven't been trained to take. So they've been told for years to come up with new strategies and new solutions, but sort of iterative, small ones. And then suddenly they're told, imagine a whole new world, and tell us how to run it. And so what we hear increasingly frequently is senior people make this big, ambitious decision. And then they say to the middle management layer, tell us how. And those people go, Wow, that's overwhelming. Here's some small ideas. And no No, that's too small. We've got to have big change. Well, you've never given us that permission before.

Charly: [00:36:34] So we don't really know if it's safe to suggest things. And also, it feels really risky. One of the things we do is group coaching, and in that group coaching there's a sort of arc that teams go through where they start off by saying all the reasons that they can't. They're busy, that they're overwhelmed, they're not clever enough, they're not sustainability professionals, or all the perverse incentives. We get a good deal from that supplier. How could we change or we don't want to upset people. And then when you clear that out, when they finally said all of that, they start to say, you know, it is great that we're doing this. And then they start to connect back to their mission. It is actually really good. And, you know, I mean, none of us are going to argue against it. 

Charly: [00:37:16] And then they start to come up into, well, maybe. We could do something. The power of them being together is what makes the shift there. It's not a coach, however brilliant our coaches are, and they are. It's the fact that they're together, able to say out loud stuff, that they've maybe not shared with each other, and instead they've been hiding in other priorities. You know, everyone's busy, but this enables people to say, okay, look, we do have to get to grips with this. Let's do it. And the people that commission us to do those groups are usually really surprised at the end by the laundry list of actions that come out of them. And that for me, is a little bit sad, because as much as that's great from our perspective that we've kind of generated all of this action, it's sad that it takes the safety of a group coaching session for people to feel able to unburden themselves of their negative relationship with The Climate crisis, or the organisations targets around It, that their managers themselves aren't creating that safety. So I think, that if I had a wish, it would be that organisations were really focusing on recognizing that this change is threatening, is destabilizing, isn't just wonderful. It is wonderful, you Know, but it is also change. And change is hard. So to your point, a mission on its own probably won't overcome all those feelings of overwhelm and threat.

Martin: [00:38:50] Sounds like a transformational journey. Both Janet and I met at Theory U, which is the sort of U journey of going down through that storytelling part and through that understanding where we're at, listening and listening and listening, and then going through that point, Oh yeah, we could change this. This is possible. This is like creating hope and moving through that journey, and coming to that creative place where you start to be able to inventory those great ideas; that U is so powerful. Change process. So.

Janet: [00:39:30] Thank you for sharing your personal journey, giving context for your personal agility narrative, and thank you for describing the context. So who in your narrative is the protagonist? That central character or concept, that is really driving you?

Charly: [00:39:49] I think if I look back through my career, then the protagonist is the bridge builder. As a coach, I often talk about being a Sherpa, walking alongside someone saying, Hey, can I carry some of those bags? And yes, you can still do it. But I think as as a founder, and an author and also previously in West Africa, my role was to build bridges between the possible future and the where we are now. And to help people see the steps. So when we wrote the book, I was really clear that it shouldn't be filled with jargon. It was off putting, that it should be very practical. I really didn't want a book that was theoretical, and people would read and think, yes, that Sounds that sounds sensible, but then not know what to do as a result. So it's got lots of very practical examples and practical ways you can use the tools. And that I think is because I really want to build the bridge to help walk over. And friends of mine have even joked with me about it, that is just something I can't help myself, but do, but sort of explain how stuff works, or explain why things are the way they are. And sometimes that means I don't take compliments very well, because they'll say, Oh, that's a really lovely cake you made. And I'll say, Oh, it was really easy. All you have to do is that it doesn't hurt. And that's because I think I want to show people, that things aren't daunting or hard or everything's possible. But that's certainly true of the way I wanted people at home to understand Sierra Leone when I was there. It's not this crazy place. It's not dangerous, it's not scary, it's not weird. It's just a place to live full of other people who live there who have exactly the same hopes and dreams as us, and the same. Now, with climate, you know, helping coaches step into this space, it's not terrifying. It's not going to cut you off from the lifeblood of your coaching practice. It's not going to make you angry, and aggressive, and an activist. It's possible to do this with love. Here's how. And for organisations, it's possible to make these shifts. It's not out of the realms of your ability. So, it's not a kind of leaper saying like, I'm over here, come join me. It's I've built you a bridge to come over.

Janet: [00:42:13] You've mentioned love. How does love play in the story as your protagonist?

Charly: [00:42:19] Love is one of those words that we don't get to use enough, because of the context in which we're working a lot of the time. But certainly for me, when I first came into this, I felt enormous amounts of grief, and to be told that grief was a manifestation of love was hugely soothing and relieving. At that point I realised how much? Love is available to us when we connect to the climate crisis. Love for things we may not have even noticed before. I will now put my hand on the tree trunk, which is something you'd never have seen me do five years ago. And just take a moment. I will notice insects in a way I didn't notice them before and feel gratitude or feel love for them. And I think love is one of those things that we have baked into coaching. We don't call it love, but we call it believing people are good and right. Being compassionate, being accepting. But all of that is being loving. And I also see that we need a bit more self-love, because often, there's enormous amounts of beating up going on in this space, by people who are often doing huge amounts, and then not looking after themselves, and for what? Yesterday was someone who runs a very big parent movement, and she said that the strength of their movement was because of their focus on love.

Charly: [00:43:50] And the reason they got in the door with some of the big.companies that they wanted to change, that they were lobbying essentially, was because they came from a love approach, not an anger approach. I thought that was really fascinating. I think there is an enormous role for love, and in some ways, to me, it's the antidote to fear.

Martin: [00:44:11] You mentioned grief. Can you tell us about the journey from grief to love? What is the grief about?

Charly: [00:44:18] When you talk to coaches about climate change, the first thing they assume you're going to talk about is grief. And that's because, I think we have an interest in trauma and grief. And so that is often a place coaches focus. And I haven't focused there, because my coachees usually want to have a purpose, and an action, and doing something. And it is a driver under the surface for us, I think. And it is a place we can find ourselves in cycles, it doesn't happen once. And that's you've done your grief and that's it. You know, you go through cycles of a feeling of loss or anticipatory grief, a feeling of future loss.

Charly: [00:45:05] For me, it was what got me on the pitch. So, I read an article which was the forerunner of the book - The Uninhabitable Earth. The floor drops out from under me. I read it and I couldn't believe that. I didn't know this stuff, that i didn't know how bad it was. We're sitting on a beach in the UK, and I felt that I was going to be made homeless, and it was terrifying, and you couldn't outrun it. Our usual strategy is get away, do something else. Protect myself. You can't run the planet, so well, so I've got to sit with these feelings. And you start to see the entire world differently. You start to see flora and fauna as something incredibly precious, that we're losing far too quickly in a way that you never noticed it before. I felt an enormous amount of grief and sadness. I've coached people who say, you're the only person that lets me talk about this. My relatives tell me I'm getting carried away, or over the top, or I should just forget about it, put it aside. So in the book and in our training course for coaches, we talk about being with grief, not doing something about it, just letting someone share how they feel. And just trusting that they will find a way out of it. I do also think it can be a motivator for me. It's what got me on the pitch. It's what made me say, I've got to do something about this.

Charly: [00:46:34] So from there, you have to find a way to find meaning, to find your place of purpose, and your lane. What's yours to do? I think, so that you can translate that well of love and rawness into something, into forward action and momentum. But certainly, it comes and goes. It doesn't get one and done. I don't stay angry for very long, weirdly. I don't know why, but I definitely I mean, it's very easy to be angry or frustrated. I would say that there are times where I have to just avoid. I don't read what I call the fire reports. I say to people, when we know the building's on fire, we can stop reading the fire reports, because sometimes those are aggravating and you can become addicted to those. So sometimes, I'm definitely in a just let's just keep going. Let's just do this and believe and hope that it will work or play its part.

Martin: [00:47:34] What is the theme behind your messages around change?

Charly: [00:47:40] I think for me, Climate Change is one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And yet very many of us haven't entirely seen it. In the book, I write that I was once sent to interview for a conflict organization. I was sent to interview two different kinds of farmers, herders and arable farmers, who had clashed when the cattle had wandered into the crops and eaten them. And they clashed very violently. And this organization had resolved the conflict. In one sense, they had found a way for these people to coexist. But there was another story that wasn't being told, that I didn't even know to think about telling, which was why had the cattle herders moved into the arable area? And that was because there was a climate change backdrop, that meant that there wasn't the herding land available that there had previously been.

Charly: [00:48:34] And that sort of fascinates me. That idea of just missing pieces of the story, is sort of fascinating. So I think one thing that I find myself saying to people quite a lot, is that Climate Change is the context in which all life is lived. It's not a niche thing over there. It's the context in which all life is lived, and all jobs are done, and all communities exist. So, in some senses, everyone's work is Climate Change work. And i think it's still seen by some people as a kind of niche area to work in, the same way that other systems issues may be niche, but it isn't. And I think that's the story we need to be able to tell more compellingly, and it is changing. So when I first came into this in 2016, there was still a real fear that we had to make people care, and that ship has well and truly sailed, I'm pleased to say. When you talk to people on the street or in the school playground, people care. People are concerned. People do know that this is an issue. What they don't necessarily know is that they can make a difference to doing something about it. And so the shift, and this is why I think coaches have such a strong role to play, the shift isn't now from you're not thinking about this and you need to be. The shift is people saying, I want to, but I don't know how; and I want to, but I don't know how, is the beginning of every coaching conversation, whatever the topic. That's why we have a role to play here, because we are not bringing an agenda that's not already there. I think many coaches see it as still as a niche, not as a part of every coaching conversation, whether it's actually said out loud or not. So that's the big picture of what we're trying to do is is trying to help people connect what they care about and what they do to this issue and then feel that they've got a role to play somehow in acting on it. 

Janet: [00:50:35] So in your change now, who are/what are the villains, or are they always constraints?

Charly: [00:50:41] We've spoken about scarcity, and scarcity is a real villain here. Scarcity can also point us to what we really care about, because the things that feel most threatening are the things that we value. So while it is a villain, it's also a place that we can start to say, okay, so what is it about that, that points you to something that you care about some of the value? It's very easy in this space to talk about villains in terms of fossil fuel companies or i don't know, fat cat corporate. So there's lots of kind of traditional villains that people have wanted to demonize. I don't think that's helpful in bringing everybody with us in change. And so I think we have to be quite careful about villains when it comes to people. That's also very difficult for a lot of people in the climate change world, because when you use the word compassion, a lot of people assume you're talking about lying down on the rug and letting people run over you, or letting people off the hook somehow.

Charly: [00:51:47] And so I think we need to recognize that compassion isn't about saying poor behavior is acceptable, but it is about believing that people can make better choices, good choices, and that organizations can change as well. I think there's also spoke a little bit about systems change, and I think there's another villain, which is those perverse incentives, that you want this change to happen, but yet actually your organization isn't equipped to embrace the change because people are incentivized to do things the old way not the new one. And so it doesn't matter how many times you give an inspirational speech, they're motivated to take opposite actions. And then finally, another huge villain, the villain that got us into this in the first place, is fear. And you can call that anything. You can call it disempowerment. And the people who say, I don't believe I can. You can call it threat. I think you're going to take my power away from me. So, you know, this is not a vote winner. I'm not going to go for it, which is also fair. And when I first came into this, I listened to lots of podcasts and radio interviews and TV programs. And I consistently, you know, as a coach, you listen below the words to the subtitles, the emotional subtitles. And consistently, I heard disempowerment. When you say that to people, they imagine what you're saying is, people saying, I don't believe, or sounding a bit hesitant but disempowerment is also people sounding defensive, people obfuscating. And so if we can soothe those fears, we can make change. And so it's not about villainizing and sort of putting those villains in a box over there and getting on with it over here. It's about helping those villains come in from the cold, somehow, helping them change, helping those feelings change, reforming those perverse incentives, overcoming scarcity. And it may be, in the case of organizations that we villainized, that there is a place for hostessing  them out and midwifing something in their place. And that's another role for coaches, that we may be working with organizations to help them die gracefully, or that or a part of their operations die gracefully, if not the whole organization.

Martin: [00:54:10] Can you tell us what's at stake here? What's at stake for your clients, for the industry, and for the world?

Charly: [00:54:17] That's quite an emotional question. I’d start with the world, because that's really at stake. I think we need to realize that what's at stake is human civilization, and a tremendous amount of flora and fauna. I think often we think that what's at stake is over there, and it's coral reefs. Do we need those anyway? It's our way of life that is at risk. It is our success as a civilization that is at risk from climate, and what is at stake for the world and what motivates me, for as much as I love animals and plants, because I do, but what really motivates me is humanity. And it is at stake. It is at risk. It is at risk from mass migration, when whole areas become uninhabitable. And it doesn't take much of an imaginative leaped, then imagine conflict as a result of that migration.

And to then imagine economic difficulty as a result of all of that. I don't think we have the experience of that in a really globalized way. We have pockets of it, that we race in to solve. But our capacity to solve multi country, multi continent problems, all at the same time, is what will be tested. So that's what's at stake. And a lot of people say, Oh, it's about my grandchildren, little realising it's here right now, it's here right now, it's happening in Australia. Last week is the temperatures in Europe at the moment, that are on a seasonal. It is here right now for us, and so it is us that we are saving. So that's the kind of big, dramatic world peace, which is what motivates me to do something. Also, what motivates me is a tremendous sense of responsibility. There's someone in our book, Jill Bruce, who is in her seventies, and said, my father and my grandfather both fought in world wars to make the world a better place. And I found out about Climate Change, and realised that my generation had unwittingly made it worse. And I couldn't sit with that. I had to do something. And that for me was inspiring, for that sense of taking responsibility, which has always motivated me to do everything I've ever done. So that's the big, big end. There's a sort of practical, slightly more boring, and which is when you set about organising, what's at stake. It's also survival. But it's slightly more technical version of survival. So, for organizations, what's at stake is their ability to get finance, their ability to get insurance. Their social licence to operate is at stake, if they're operating in countries that are feeling the effects, and they seem to be perpetuating the problem. And you particularly see that in the developing world, or the Global South, where you may have been an example of a Coca-Cola plant that's using lots of water at a time of a drought. You know, we don't really think about license to operate here in the global north, but that is a big topic in the global south. So those things are at risk for organizations that don't realize. And for smaller organizations, what is at risk is their ability to work with their bigger buyers, because increasingly, organizations, when they decarbonize, are looking at three scopes. I'm not an expert in this, but scope one and two are largely within your gift as an organization. Scope three exists with your supply chain. Who are making things on your behalf. And so their emissions are basically your emissions. So increasingly, the really big guys are turning around to the smaller folks in the supply chain and saying, so you're making us look bad. What are you doing to reduce that carbon footprint? And so what's at stake for those people who might be really quite small businesses? If you think about the automotive industry, for example, those people are now having to ask questions about how they're going to do it, too. So what's at stake is their survival. Or their ability to trade with bigger partners. It's all survival at the end of the day. But I think there's another piece, which is what's to be gained. And what we see to be gained is enormous staff loyalty, easier staff retention as a result, easier recruitment, specifically easier recruitment of the under thirties. Who have a different frame around work, almost a bit like mine.

Charly: [00:58:56] You know if I'm going to do it, I've got to enjoy it and it's got to mean something. Rather than I endure it, I retire and I enjoy myself at retirement. It's a very different mindset. We are in a time, certainly in Europe, where recruitment is incredibly difficult, and so this can be a real boon to organizations, and I think you can see that in the growth of the big corporation movement, which is just ballooning here in Europe in the last couple of years, there is a lot at stake. There is also an end in practical organisational terms, but there's also a lot to be gained in terms of connecting to each other better, and realizing that we are an interconnected whole, not a anthropogenic domineering species. I think those things can only make us stronger and more successful, and happier ultimately.

Janet: [00:59:50] So to close this conversation, you're talking to a group of key stakeholders wanting to move their organization forward. And honestly, they feel stuck. You've been brought in as a Climate Change coach and you understand their difficult position. You empathize. What's going on? What would be your call to action to them?

Charly: [01:00:11] I think I'd want to almost impishly, ask why bother when people are stuck around an issue, but yet still talking about it, that implies that they care. It's somehow hooked them, and so rather than standing in the road and tussling over it, and me being the one that says you should, and that just creating resistance, we won't. You should just get out of the road. Don't bother. Oh, no. Because we do want to do. Okay, so what's that bit what's that bit of care there? And how can we amplify that? And if there's disagreement, then what can we all agree on? Maybe we can all agree that this is exhausting and we can all agree this is overwhelming. We don't necessarily have to agree on good stuff. But we can agree. And then where can we go from that place of agreement? So I guess, you know, as coaches, as I said at the beginning, where we're working on is that journey from dissonance to resonance. When we get people into a resonant state, we just tap them and they come up with a list of actions. We don't have to do the hard doing thinking for them, the action thinking. But what we do have to do, is manage the emotional field with them, help them get back into a place of possibility again. And so for an organization where, let's say it's the C-suite, and they they're really stumped, it's certainly normalizing that. This is really complicated. This is hard. When have you dealt with complicated, hard things before. What did you do? And what do you want to do here. And really clearing out the we should do's from the we want to do's. And what is really resonant. Certainly sometimes we come in after the sustainability people have been in, and they've produced a really comprehensive plan for how to do something. And then that looks really overwhelming and scary, and it's at risk of not happening, unless there is some shepherding and some supporting through that emotional, psychological, if you like, feeling of unsafety, of threat, because all the good reasons in the world won't address that feeling of being threatened know you have to get to the heart of that. And that's really, really the great thing about coaching is that it's really safe. It doesn't feel as risky, maybe as hiring a therapist, to do that work with you, but actually it's a lot of the same skills.

Janet: [01:02:38] Thank you, Charly, for being with us today on Agility Narratives, looking at Climate Change through the lens of a relational journey, and how Climate Change actually provides and supports that space, beginning with creativity in your personal journey in Sierra Leone, and how you began to see the lens of climate in everyday situations, and how that led you into the world of Climate Change coaching, which created a path to basically hold conversations, and is holding conversations, and is training changemakers to hold conversations and bringing opportunities for people and changemakers and other coaches to create spaces, to have conversations that move individuals from a place of fear into moving through their grief, into finding love. So this book, Climate Change Coaching: How a Connection to Climate Action is really a resource, it appears for a number of individuals, whether you be a coach, whether you're a sustainable expert, whether you are a parent looking actually to say, how can I begin to work with what I see? How can I begin to move beyond what I'm doing to. I thank you for accepting the invitation to be with us today, and I encourage everyone to start asking for and get a copy for the book. Looking forward to the next time we meet.

Charly: [01:04:22] Thank you very much for having me.

Martin: [01:04:25] Thank you very much, Charly. Thank you, Janet. Excellent.

Charly: [01:04:29] Thank you. That was really fun.