Few people are thinking about the psychology of climate change more deeply and intelligently than my guest this week, Dr. Renee Lertzman. When she was a college student at UC Santa Cruz, she dove into a deep depression in an environmental studies class, learning about how awful things were. From there, she turned all her attention to the inner realm of climate advocacy, asking questions like “what’s really going on when people get apathetic to this problem?” and “How do we transform people so we can transform systems?”
Renee is a climate psychologist and environmental strategist, what she calls an “existential change manager,” has an absolutely brilliant Substack, and is coming out with another book next year, tentatively titled “So You Want to Save the World”. The book is a guide for emotionally-intelligent change-making. If you’re interested in the psychology of change, how to manage it yourself and in groups at work or home, and why we need to become good at change in order to address the climate crisis, then this is the episode for you.
Shownotes
- Lertzman’s essay in The Ecologist, “The Myth of Apathy”
- Lertzman’s 2019 TED Talk, “How to Turn Climate Anxiety into Action”
- Ken Wilber’s “4 Quadrants” concept from Integral Theory
- The concept of “pluralistic ignorance” in climate politics
- Vanessa Andreotti’s book and concept “Hospicing Modernity”
- “The Middle Way” podcast episode on “Yelling, Telling, and Selling”
- YouTube video about talking about climate change inspired by Lertzman’s research
Transcription
Renee Lertzman: What are the conditions that truly cultivate and enable our capacity as human beings to really face what's happening? If we stepped into that mode, we'd see quicker results. We would.
Sarah Ray: Welcome to Climate Magic, a show where we explore the messy, human side of climate politics. We ask: what if our hearts and minds are the most radical leverage points at our disposal? How do our human emotions, mindsets, and cognitive biases and wounds shape climate policy? I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray, an author and a professor of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt. On Climate Magic, I invite experts, spiritual leaders, researchers, neuroscientists, educators, and activists to help me distill digestible, applicable ways to help you tap your own climate magic.
My guest today is Dr. Renee Lertzman. Renee is a climate psychologist and an environmental strategist. In 2015, Lertzman wrote Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement. Since leaving academia, Renee has moved into work as a quote, existential change manager. She has worked with businesses in this capacity, governments, and nonprofits, all the way from the White House to Google to the World Wildlife Foundation. She's a consultant and an advisor, bridging strategic comms, climate, and organizational psychology.
This work acknowledges the complex emotions that people have when they resist or want to support sustainable behavior change. In that role, she founded a project called Project Inside Out, which is a resource hub that brings together changemakers, activists, and clinical psychologists to drive sustainable behavior change for our planet.
Through it all, she gravitates to that messy place where climate and capitalism collide and helps to create communities of care that can facilitate change. Renee has a book coming out tentatively in Spring 2027 called So You Want to Save the World? The book is a guide for emotionally intelligent change making.
If you're interested in the psychology of change, how to manage it yourself and in groups at work or at home, and why we need to become good at change in all kinds of spaces in order to address the climate crisis, but also many other problems, then this is the show for you. Let's dive in. Welcome to the show.
Renee Lertzman: Thank you [laughs]. Deep breath. Landing with each other.
Sarah Ray: I hope that this opening question also helps you to land in our conversation today, which is just about your story. What brought you to bring the world of psychology together with the world of climate or environment or sustainability or however, you want to frame that.
Renee Lertzman: I mean, basically, my experience is that the separation of climate, change, environment, biodiversity, like anything regarding the planet and our relationship with the planet, and what we've done to the planet, and how we repair the planet, all that is fundamentally about how humans behave and process and relate and all these things.
So I don't understand the separation, but going back to, for me, the origin was really in the late 1980s when I was at that time, you know, 19, 20 years old, and I was very identified as being a psychologist, because I had loved psychology, you know, in high school. I had actually already been seeing a psychotherapist. I had benefited a lot from psychology. It's what I read. And so I went into UC Santa Cruz, very identified. Like, I'm obviously a psychology major. This is obviously what my life is going to be.
And then, you know, so I was taking all these -- kind of the usual psychology courses, and then, you know, I needed to fill some requirements, some electives, and so I ended up almost like, you know, just kind of signing up for Environmental Studies 101. It wasn't like, oh, I really need to take this class. It was like, oh, well, that's available at this time. I'm interested. It sounds interesting.
So I signed up for this kind of 101 environmental studies class. And I found myself going into these, you know, lecture halls and sitting in these lectures with hundreds of other students, professor down in front of the room, just kind of walking us through this incredible array of all the ways that humans have harmed and damaged our planet. The -- you know, whether it was about the atmosphere and climate change, or toxins, or biodiversity, or forestry, or soil health, or air quality, or water quality, or rivers, and oceans. Like, you know, it was one of those kinds of survey courses.
And I was almost immediately destabilized by the experience of being in a class like that and having really there be no acknowledgement of what this meant, as it -- you know, what does it mean to actually come to terms and learn about these issues? And there was very little at that time acknowledgement of the psychology or the emotional impact of this. So I felt very alone in that. And then I would go over to my psychology classes, you know, that were at UC Santa Cruz. They were taught by really leading, you know, figures in psychology. You know, I remember taking a class with Elliot Aronson, who, you know, is one of the most well-known social psychologists. His classes were always sold out. They were always like full, and he -- never, never any acknowledgement in those classes about environmental issues or about, you know, why have humans done this or how -- nothing.
And so I lived in between that gulf. And what I did with that is, I then realized very quickly that I did want to bridge these fields. Like, it was very clear to me. I was like, well, I'm obviously going to create my own major, and I'm going to call it ecological consciousness. And because at the time, there was a program called History of Consciousness, which is all the cultural studies and you know, kind of philosophy, whatever. So I'm like, well, I'm going to do ecological consciousness. And then I went around and kind of petitioned, you know, different professors, and I couldn't find really, sponsorship.
You know, people were basically telling me -- I mean, the environmental people were just like not tuned in at all. And then the psychology professors were kind of like, you know, that just sounds like a lot of work. I think you should just make things easy on yourself and not do that [laughs]. So, this is like a two-year period where I was kind of in my own existential crisis.
I ended up doing a field study program just again, it felt by chance, where I saw a flyer for a two-month backpacking trip where you were out backpacking for two months reading about, you know, nature philosophy and religion from many, many angles and disciplines, and you know, whether it's indigenous, shamanism, you know, transcendentalists, ecofeminism, the kind of integral theory, Ken Wilber, you know, like all of it. And I came out of that experience knowing 100% that I was onto something. Like total clarity. And also, we were doing a lot of writing and we were sharing our writing, you know, around the campfire every night. And it just brought it all together where I realized: 1, I'm a writer; 2, I'm a -- you know, someone who's, who's here to kind of bridge these worlds; and 3, there's something here to pursue.
And so I ended up transferring to another university and finishing my undergraduate, doing exactly what I wanted, which was this synthesis of actually trauma psychology and environment and climate sciences and studies. And that was in 1993.
Sarah Ray: This tracks really close onto my graduate experience that was happening in the early 2000s. So I -- you know, it still was not really forming into some -- you know, in the field that I became -- you know, I had a religious studies background, and I was trying to figure out how to combine humanities with environmental stuff, too, in a way that it was just like not a lot of people laying that path in that world.
So I hear you on that. And I have since then, and now that I'm more in the realm of psychology too, a little bit. I have since then had such interesting conversations with people about why? Why would there be a barrier still even between people who are doing psychology stuff and people who are doing environmental stuff?
That boundary is still really strong in lots of ways. And so, for example, just an assumption that people make when you say, well, which sciences might we need most to deal with the climate crisis? And most people will think of like maybe geophysics, or they're going to think about ecosystem sciences, or you know, something that has to do with the natural world.
And I often find it so interesting that it's so interesting, that very rarely, never do you hear people say, Well, maybe neuroscience or psychology, you know, as the most important science we might need. And that isn't to put a hierarchy on the sciences at all, but just an interesting window into the kind of assumptions about the human world isn't considered the realm of expertise oftentimes that we might need for these environmental questions, and vice versa, right? And vice versa.
So, what a vignette, a window into that moment for you. And yeah, that's -- I think that story still permeates. I mean, the world of climate psychology is expanding, but that I think that wall there is still there. Even explaining what this show is about, that this show is about the emotions or the cognitive science or the mental mindsets and stuff, or even the spiritual dimensions of climate change, a lot of people scratch their head and say, What? That's a thing. Yeah, there's a whole world of people who are studying this, including yourself. So it's good to keep bringing some light onto that. So that's what we're doing here.
So you, then left academia in 2011, as far as I read on your website. You left it in 2011, and you wanted to do so in order to, as you put it, go farther and closer. What was that calling about? And yeah, farther and closer. Those are your words. I like it. I like it.
Renee Lertzman: So I was -- I spent much of my life in academia. So, just to be clear, I was in academia literally from 1986 until 2011. So, that is a long time to be in master's programs. In -- I was basically in two different PhD programs because I started one and then transferred to another. So did a lot of doctoral training and research, and then ended up with a postdoc position. That was kind of the last role I had where I was teaching classes. And interestingly, I was able to teach a number of classes that I was -- you know, could design myself, which I guess is kind of maybe unusual, but the only classes I've taught are the ones that I've created. Which have been, you know, this kind of interdisciplinary, like the psychology of climate or the psychology of the environment.
And for several years, I actually, so the bridge was, I was invited to teach a course and a master's program at Royal Ridge University up in British Columbia, and that was every summer with a group of practitioners. So it was one of those master's programs where it's for people working in the environmental education and communication space across all sectors. So we would have people from business, from government, from NGO, from education, and that was for several years.
And that was the bridge between my more kind of formal academic life and working with practitioners because I learned in that experience that these folks really didn't have that much, you know, patience or interest in a lot of theory. They really were focused on, well, what do I do with this?
So when I was living in Portland, it was like my gateway drug, was when I was invited to be part of an actual consumer-facing campaign. And I came in and did this kind of quote, what we called a thought session, where I shared my research and perspectives about the kind of psychology of energy and energy efficiency, because it was literally a kind of a brand related to that, and it was about green electronics. And I did this thought session, and then they went off and created a bunch of assets and creative work. And then I was able to see these ads that brought to life what I had just said. Like totally amazing. And it took something that seems very esoteric, which is psychology. My focus tends to be on the psychology of ambivalence and the psychology of conflict and where people feel pulled in dilemmas.
And they literally had this incredible campaign, and the tagline was: Love the planet and love your electronics [laughs]. Like, oh, you can actually do both. You can actually love the planet and be very attached and love your electronics. We're not telling you not to love the things that you love, right? And that was for me -- I never looked back after that. That was it.
And very soon after, I started getting kind of commissions and invitations to be part of a variety of, you know, initiatives and engagements and research. And there was a big project commissioned by Skoll Global Threats Fund, which was a think tank branch of the Skoll Foundation, where I did the first kind of mapping of the field of the psychology of climate change by using these four quadrants that you've probably seen, that kind of put the field into these kind of dominant approaches and theories of change.
Sarah Ray: Yes, do you want to share what those four quadrants are for folks who might not be digging into your bio information? Yes, what are they?
Renee Lertzman: I came across a very well known quadrants that were created by Ken Wilber and integral theory, and I adapted that to what I was seeing in the field. And so basically, there are these four quadrants. The first quadrant is a behavioral perspective. We need to change people's behavior: it's coming out of behavioral science. Its roots are in behavioral economics, which most people don't know. So they go around using words like levers, barriers, incentives, motivation. That's all in the kind of behavior lens. And the question is: how do we get people to change their behavior?
The next quadrant is all about messaging, it's all about language and storytelling and framing. And that is -- really comes out of the research around -- you know, that George Lakoff and others helped us see the relationship between the words we use, whether we say climate, carbon, pollution, whatever. So, that's that kind of focus where a lot of people feel that the -- you know, the answer is to use better language or different language and tell better stories, and it's the whole kind of storytelling thing, which is a reaction to using data and facts and you know, that kind of thing.
And then the next quadrant, lower right quadrant, is more of a solutions mindset. It's an innovation mindset. It's like, we got to solve the problem. It comes out of the field of tech and innovation, and people don't realize as well that when you're using terms like accelerator, incubator, hackathon, Climate comes out of that field that was really accelerated in the innovation space, and then IDO.org picked it up and ran with it and created IDOU. And then that led to initiatives like with the Ashoka Fellowship and a variety of other approaches that are very innovation- and entrepreneurial-focused, and they feel that we need to solve the problem. And that's the -- now it's more the impact space, what's called impact.
Then the last quadrant is the emotional, experiential, you know, more relational aspect of this work, and that's where you've been seeing, you know, the intersection of climate and arts. Where you've seen, and by the way, that's been developing for a number of years, it's now kind of broken through a bit more, but people may not realize that there have been incredibly innovative climate art initiatives going back to one that I profiled in 2006, which was the Cape Farewell project that was created by a British organization, Cape Farewell, where they sent artists into the Arctic.
So, that quadrant is really about, oh these -- you know, there is an intersection. We need to really look at how people process these issues emotionally. This is also the whole realm of climate cafes. This is anything that really kind of brings people together. You know, it's kind of the more Joanna Macy vibe, but it's obviously taken off and, you know, has developed dramatically.
It's where I've been primarily positioned for my career over 30 years. It's been in that kind of experiential, emotional piece. So those are the four quadrants, and there's a lot to unpack about those, but the main thing is that we kind of need all of them. And that we tend to be very siloed and we tend to be adversarial, we tend to think, oh, well, kind of dismissive about -- you know, and that's kind of the problem, is that we, you kind of need the climate, psychology, emotional, experiential people do need some element of like, practical application, like, some of the offerings of other schools of thought, and vice versa. So the impact space needs more of an infusion of emotional intelligence, and the climate psych communities on their own are not necessarily going to scale or kind of -- we need these all working synergistically.
And the way to do that is that we need to be able to talk about these things openly and explicitly and name what our theories of change are and say, yes, this is -- I'm really all about storytelling. You know? It's' just like, let just be open about it. And then when we get together and have these conferences or gatherings or whatever, we actually can be, like, thoughtfully engaging with each other's theories of change and not just talking past each other and trying to convince -- that our approach is the one to use.
Sarah Ray: Yes, I definitely see that. I see that for sure in especially that impact space, right? Even the concept of love the planet and your electronics conjures up for me this sense of, like, ah I don't know if you can do both. And you said, yes, we can do both. The invitation is to do both. And I think to myself, well, in some ways, I can see how that would be way more accessible to a lot of people. And I can also see the scaling out opportunities there. And anyway, I can see sort of like the I can feel the wall come right up there and say, Oh, I don't want to have greenwashing use the best research on psychology to just sell more stuff. I would like to make sure that the research in the psychology world is the theory of change is to actually do less harm to the planet.
So, there's some ways in which I can imagine these different quadrants are kind of fundamentally at odds with each other, or their theories of change rub against each other. But I still think that you're right about the need to still work with each other, right? So so there's this really complexity there you're raising that I appreciate very much. Yes, we don't want to be working against each other.
Renee Lertzman: No, but the truth is, you're right. Like, fundamentally, a behavioral scientist is going to have a very different epistemic orientation than a relational psychologist.
Sarah Ray: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Renee Lertzman: So, I think we can recognize that and honor that. I have a very strong reaction, or I have over the years, to applying a behavioral approach to these existential complex issues. I feel like it's not appropriate. But you can use behavioral science where it makes sense. How you help people sign up for something or whatever?
Sarah Ray: Yes, I think there's sort of like, these are all just tools, and they are not inherently themselves good or bad for the Earth. It's sort of what you put them towards, right? So, like any tool. I really appreciate that framing. That's really helpful, and it's got me thinking about lots of things because, in these conversations I've had with people, there have already been -- I can sort of see that throwing a whole epistemology under the bus [laughs]. This whole thing over here is not the way I want to go about it. And it's a worthy critique of, let's say, behavioral psychology, not, you know, the sort of like, where does the power lie?
Every one of these has a theory, every one of these theories of change that comes out of these assumes that the power lies somewhere. And there's a power struggle over who gets to make these decisions, and you know, who are these people we're trying to persuade? And are they, you know, empty and don't have all their own experiences and wisdom that is making good decisions?
This leads me to a question. One of your kind of prominent contributions to the field of climate psychology that continues to have ripple out, you know, ripple into people's conversations now, is your critique of apathy. And I think it's an interesting one. It's sort of related to what we were just talking about, this, you know, assumptions that we make about other people and therefore we're going to deploy a behavioral psychology frame on them because we think they don't have any feelings of this kind or the other. This assumption about where people are when we start to have a theory of change relationship with them, whether it's from any one of those quadrants.
You know, this idea that here is this person who I want to get to move from A to B. And the assumption you beautifully take up in your critiques of apathy that people have apathy, and that's why they're not being moved, and therefore we need to come at them with X, Y, or Z approach has been very resonant for me, and it shaped my thinking a lot. I was wondering if you could unpack that a little bit.
What is the myth of apathy? And, you know, that was work that you did in the past, but is that still sort of rippling out for you? And are you still finding that to be a relevant critique?
Renee Lertzman: Yes, it is still relevant. That was the focus of my PhD research, where I spent time in the Great Lakes region listening mainly with people about their relationship with what was happening with the water and the air and the environment in that region, and realizing that they had been -- these people I was meeting with -- had been kind of written off by the environmental groups as being apathetic and not caring, because they weren't behaving in ways that they wanted. They weren't donating, they weren't a petition, and they weren't showing up to a meeting or a cleanup or something, and they weren't voting in a particular way.
And so, therefore, you know, people were just kind of labeled as apathetic. But once, you know, I started listening to people very quickly, I realized that that was absolutely not the case. It was a projection, and that there was so much more going on under the surface that if we listen, we can actually hear where people feel basically conflicted in dealing with dilemmas.
And so the myth of apathy is intended to be an intervention in a default, you know, tendency from those who are changemakers or advocates or you know, trying to do the right thing by basically taking people's behavior at face value. And I was taught and trained as a psychosocial researcher that you don't take people's behavior at face value, because humans are capable of enormous complexity, of contradiction, of paradox, and it's our job, if we are working on behalf of the planet, to pause and slow down a minute and actually seek to understand what is actually going on with people.
And what we find is that there's usually ambivalence. And ambivalence is a concept that I was introduced to primarily in my doctoral training, but then more directly through motivational interviewing, which is a methodology in the public health sector, which really recognizes that ambivalence is just part of the human experience, which is to say, part of me wants to do this, or part of me feels this way, and another part of me doesn't.
And so I think labeling people as apathetic is lazy. It's also -- it's also not recognizing what we know already about human psychology, which is that humans have what's called defense mechanisms. Now, we have known about defense mechanisms for over 100 years. The insight we have about human defense mechanisms has only become more sophisticated and refined to the point where now you can go on Instagram and hear people talk about things like "activation" and "trigger." That was not the case even like five years ago.
So humans have this array of defense mechanisms that are very sophisticated. You know, we project, we blame, we dissociate, we intellectualize, we dismiss, we devalue, we do all these things. And those who I work closely with in climate environmental groups have dealing with this every single day because they have like maybe managers or bosses, or -- and they're like, they're not responding to my email, or they're not, you know -- and I'm like, yes, because they are trying to protect something. There's a defense mechanism going on. And so you can say, oh, they don't care, which many do. They say, well, yes, you know, the leadership doesn't really care about this. They don't think this is a priority.
And then that makes me really want to say, well, is that true? Do you really know that's true that they don't care? Do you really know that it's not a priority? Are you basing that on what they do, which is how they -- and I just, I don't know. I mean, it takes recognizing that humans often will say one thing and do another thing. And so I think that's where the action is, you know, when it comes to the psychology of threats, issues like climate, and everything that climate represents, which is everything about how we live. We need to look at what's underneath, and so bringing it back to the myth of apathy, I'm not saying that, you know, apathy isn't like a symptom of something. And so it's a symptom like a numbing, a disconnection, a -- what's called in, well, I was going to say disavowal. It's not the same, because disavowal is when you kind of choose to not know something, even though you know. You're like, Yes, I'm just going to kind of not acknowledge that, but you're not denying something as -- you're not saying, oh, planes don't emit carbon emissions. You're just like, yes, I'm going to have to fly, and I'm not going to think about it. You could call that quote apathy, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's really just a symptom.
Sarah Ray: I really appreciate that. One of the things that your analysis of apathy opened up for me was this compassion, right? The sense of, you know, when I think about those other people over there who don't care about climate, I get angry, right? I start to "other" them. I start to feel maybe more anger towards them.
And if you combine that with this sort of research recently on things like pluralistic ignorance where, and I'll put some of this in the show notes, but where I make an assumption that a majority of people or a lot of people around me don't care about what I care about, and so I'm going to get even angrier. When, in fact, the data would show that they do care. I just am making assumptions that they don't, right?
And the defensiveness that it brings up in me, or the othering it brings up, means it's just way harder to collaborate with them, to reach out, to have a conversation, to even open up my mouth about, hey, do we care about the same thing here? Let's try to work together and do something together. So there's all kinds of manifestations of how that myth of apathy actually undermines climate work together in ways that compassion feels to me just one cure or one approach that -- or at least it's the most available for me when I think about apathy -- that your analysis where you're like, no, it's not apathy.
It is a like a cognitive -- an elegant cognitive defense mechanism of people to go into, I can't deal with this, so I'm just going to not participate.
Renee Lertzman: Yes.
Sarah Ray: What looks on the outside is apathy, right?
Renee Lertzman: Right, it should evoke a compassion for the human condition.
Sarah Ray: Yes. Yes, that was your intention, I guess, with that theory. And it did work for me. So thank you.
Renee Lertzman: I'm glad to hear that.
Sarah Ray: And I'm hoping other listeners will hear that, and readers will pick up your work on that. But I do think that this, like you know, extrapolating from non-action in other people that they're apathetic or even hostile is a mistake. And I appreciate your warnings and invitations there to understand this much more complexly as a psychological defense mechanism.
And I actually have had conversations with other people who are even psychology faculty, or psychology people who say, I'm just so angry at people who don't care. I don't understand. And your argument really helps me say, well, anger -- you know, you're angry at them because they seem like they don't care about the way they're acting. But that really, if you really look at how terrible things are, and the lack of psychological or emotional intelligence or psychological tools that we generally have in Western culture, especially to process such awful things collectively, it is no wonder people are shut down. I mean, I actually feel that that is the logical thing to do. I do it every day.
Renee Lertzman: Yes. That's why I wish that the folks working on climate and other big existential issues, but I know we're talking about climate here. I really wish that there was a move towards compassion, but also asking the question: what are the conditions that truly cultivate and enable our capacity as human beings to really face what's happening?
And I feel like if we stepped into that mode, we would see a very different strategy, we would see different activation, we'd see very different ways of engaging, we'd see much quicker results. We would. And then the part that I feel like I'm a broken record on, I feel like I'm saying this literally all the time, and what my book is about, is we already know what those conditions are. We don't have to go and like try to figure -- like, it's not a straightforward. It's not straightforward, like, oh, here's a checklist.
But we know from the field of psychology and trauma research and neuroscience and Indigenous wisdom and all contemplative practice. And now there's like, research centers literally on compassion, on all these human capacities. So we already know those conditions. Okay? They have to do with -- I mean, actually, my five guiding principles are kind of an expression of what those conditions are. And I'll say more about that in a minute.
But like we know humans need safety. We need to feel safe. We need to feel like there's some sort of a container to relax and basically take the hard things in. Obviously, life will give us hard things without a container. You don't have to -- you know, there's a wildfire, there's a flood, there's a death, there's a crisis, there's a pandemic, you know like, life happens without there being a quote container.
But I'm talking about, you know, creating spaces for humans to come together and really sense make and process and deploy the tools of skillful convening, skillful, what I guess people call holding space now. But I don't know, I don't personally even use that phrase because 1, it turns a lot of people off, and I'm interested in reaching a lot more people than those who would like, quote, hold space, because I do work with business and government and so forth. But I think it's more than holding space. It's like recognizing, you know, how to create a sense of I am in a well-managed and well-facilitated environment or space or group where I know that someone is like kind of -- or a group of people are providing a sense of psychological safety.
Sarah Ray: Yes. Yes. If you're just joining us, I'm speaking with Dr. Renee Lertzman about the psychology of change for the climate.
So let's dive into that then. Your five principles. This is coming from your book. I would love to start with -- I have a question for you about why you shifted to thinking more about changemaker and “becoming guides” and Project Inside Out, your work there, which I'm assuming has led to writing The Changemaker Code, the book that's coming out soon.
What is happening there? There's sort of a putting into a bucket with lots of other problems, climate change per se, and thinking more about changemaking as the, if you will, leverage point or the theory of change or whatever. Why have you shifted towards this frame?
And I'm assuming you're gathering from all of your experiences of working with all these different organizations that this is what you think is arising and is needed, and that this will get us to where we need to be on climate. But it's obviously a shift in emphasis, right? So I'm just curious about where you are now. Yes.
Renee Lertzman: So the guiding approach came out of my exposure to motivational interviewing, and working closely with a trainer in the field, Steve Malcolm Berg-Smith, who I worked with, who introduced me to the practice of MI. And MI uses the terminology of guiding. Guiding versus righting, R-I-G-H-T.
And so there's that, and then in 2019 is when I received a grant from the KR Foundation, and that grant was specifically to create tools and resources for changemakers who are working on complex systemic existential threats, specifically climate and the environment. And so that was the kind of pilot where I was able to bring people together like Steve and Leslie Davenport and Sarah Peyton and a whole bunch of people who are working in this kind of space at the intersection of psychology and social change and climate, and see if we could create some like, tools and a kind of a playbook.
So that's what we did. And then in the development of that, that became this kind of framing around becoming guides, which is why, you know, I call my substack Becoming Guides. I have a course that's been commissioned by companies called Becoming Guides. So it's kind of a way of inviting people who are working on any kind of change to see themselves as evolving as guides. And guiding itself as a whole, kind of profound shift in orientation from feeling like you have to make change happen, yelling, telling, and selling. And again, this comes out of MI.
So the MI world, you know, we talk about like you're not trying to convince, persuade, cajole, pitch, game, trick, sell. You're really about guiding, you're really about evoking the change from others. So, that's kind of what happened there, and then the book, the contract I have, which is with Viking, part of Penguin Random House, felt strongly that this is not specific to climate, the environment. And I agree. You know, I agree that this work should be deployed and in the hands of those working on any complex issue, whether that's gun violence or political polarization, equity, hunger, you know, poverty, like all of these issues are forms of systemic existential threats, basically.
So it's not a huge shift to widen the aperture. Although, my personal direct experience has been almost exclusively working on climate and the environment, but I've also been part of initiatives like I worked with the Huffington Post years ago, and I trained their team to go around the country and do a listening tour in 2017. So there's been moments where I've kind of not just been climate, environment, but -- the book, the working title is like in process.
Sarah Ray: Oops, I let the cat out of the bag. Go ahead and revise it if you want. Change it right here.
Renee Lertzman: It's going to change. But right now, the working title is So You Want to Change the World? And then the subtitle is Creating the Future We Want from the Inside Out. So -- and that's kind of a reference to Project Inside Out, right, which is the initiative that I, you know, created with that grant. So that's kind of where it's at right now, because I've been informally testing with a variety of groups and readers, and you know, changemakers, a bit more like people in the corporate space. And then -- but I want the book to reach like anyone who cares about making the world better, basically.
Sarah Ray: I really appreciate that, and I really like the revised title. I'll take that in. Thank you for that. I like it. No, my and my feedback is: yes, I love it. So there's another informal piece of data for you. Thank you. I'm also sort of thinking, you know, one of the things that feels to me like it's at the root of this.
And correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just sort of extrapolating from what I glean from your materials and what I know about you already that the work that you've been doing kind of outside of academia and the ways that the work has come to you, it has come to you -- if you're outside of academia, it sort of needs you're working on this stuff in a way that you're trying to squeeze the best out of these organizations and companies that may or may not really be doing the best stuff for the climate. And that's what gets you up every morning, right? That's what gets you over there to do it.
But of course, they're constrained, and you're sort of working against this tension of their job is to make money, right? We live in capitalism, and they're also helping you pay your bills, right? So there's this sense of like, okay, where is that line to walk with folks? And I sort of wanted to ask you a kind of question that grows out of that, which is: do you feel that -- well, "changemaker" maybe not the right word now, but do you feel that this sort of thinking about guiding change is one way that you can see sort of a route to all of these problems, right? Like, what is the thread underlying all of them that we need the most? Instead of saying, I'm going to pick a politics, I'm going to pick hunger, I'm going to pick equity, I'm going to pick climate change; you're saying, no, we're not picking anything here.
Renee Lertzman: Yes, we're having to just -- it's basically about change. So that's the part -- yes I mean, anyone who's working on behalf of any of these complex issues, you're doing something very specific. You are shining a light on current conditions that aren't working. Okay? That's Number 1. You're literally shining light on something that's not working that needs to be addressed. That in itself is basically a request or demand to certain sets of humans to have to make some changes.
My second guiding principle is Reveal. Okay, you're revealing the truth. You're basically saying people are suffering, animals are suffering. We're killing the planet, the lake, this, the plant. Whatever it is you're looking at, energy efficiency is a good example. You think it's so mundane, it's so like, whatever, but you're basically drawing attention to the fact: like, hey, actually, the energy we're using is not sustainable, it's causing problems. Like, so you're drawing attention to something that needs to be addressed.
That can bring up a whole variety of reactions and responses because, you know, you're pointing out a problem. So that can bring up resistance, it can bring up fear, guilt, shame, blame, insecurity. People feel threatened, people feel irritated. Like it brings up a whole bunch of things. You're basically saying, hey, you over there. And then what can happen, and this is where you can deploy the psychology of cognitive dissonance. It can make people feel suddenly like, oh, you know, am I not a good person? Am I a bad person? Like, it can evoke all of that. Oh, and then we have to learn this new system or we have to do this new thing.
So, another example, like food waste, I'm really interested in the topic of reducing food waste. I've worked on various kinds of initiatives related to food waste, one large company, and it seems so almost technical. It's like, okay, we have to reduce our food waste. But in actuality, think about what you're asking people in the kitchen, what you're asking people to do back of house, you know, like, oh, I have to learn to do a whole thing or I don't know, weigh things or whatever. But you're asking people to learn a new thing. And some people are really into that, and some people are not into that, you know? Any aspect of this work is a type of change work, you know, and in the business world it's called change management. It's basically like, how do you help people navigate?
Like, that's why I say all of this is a form of existential change management, and it requires a whole different set of skills. And we're starting to see more acknowledgement of that. Like you know, in the business -- I guess I'm more in the seeing a lot of the business consulting, coaching, everyone's talking about like complexity and leading in complexity and inner work and inner development and whatever. I think that's all good and moving in the right direction. I just think there could be more acknowledgment of how people working on behalf of making the world better are dealing with a very specific set of conditions.
And so that's why you can't do this work without also working on yourself. You know, you just can't. It's not possible. There is no outer effectiveness without inner work. We are all human. We're of this culture. We're of this society that has problems that are -- some of which we've inherited. And so we have to do our work too, which is like, well, how am I relating with people? How am I coming with anger? Am I coming with aggression? Am I coming with frustration? You know? Or am I coming more from a place of, you know, partnership and collaboration and compassion?
And that's not something that just happens. I personally deal with a lot of -- I personally have a lot of frustration. So that's something that I really empathize with, because I do feel frustrated a lot of the time, you know, especially with the climate movement for not being more psychologically oriented, and for not having psychology in the mix as like -- all these big climate events. Like, where are the psychologists? Like, it frustrates me. But me bringing that energy is not helpful at all. It really is not helpful. So, I'm just saying that we all have our edges that we're working with.
Sarah Ray: Yes, I'm wondering also, too, about -- you mentioned something about cognitive dissonance, and you mentioned about getting people to change their waste streams. What occurs to me as I was listening to you is, and I know this is going to sound so obvious to you, but this thing you said about like we're shining a light on something, what that means is we're asking some group of people to change, and all kinds of resistances will come up.
And it makes me think about things like status quo bias, or -- which is sort of this idea that it's just easier to stay in a status quo, right? Changing is harder, so the easier whatever -- like water going down the lowest place. I'm going to do the easiest thing here, which is stay with the status quo, even if it rationally makes no sense, even if it's not in line with my values, even if ultimately, it actually makes my life harder. It is the status quo.
Or I think about stuff like Vanessa Andreotti's work about hospicing modernity, which is this sort of invitation to say, you know, if we want to bring about some other kind of world, we're going to have to figure out how to let go of the way we're doing things, right? We got to let go of modernity, we got to let go of our attachments to the ways that we are doing things in that status quo space.
Yes, and so I sort of think that -- what I'm hearing you say is that you are really sympathetic, that change is hard. Human behavior is hard. How do we get the people behind the curtain to want to start doing different systems to not have so much food waste, for example. Human behavioral change on the scale of every single person in a system needs more attention. And that's what I'm really hearing you say.
And I really appreciate that that is the answer to this question: why is change at the core of everything you're doing now? Yes. And you don't have to convince me that the psychology of all these individual humans is central, and it should be at the center of the table, too. I'm with you on that. Is there anything else that you'd like to say? And if so, please do. Maybe you want to speak more about the principles of your changemaking? And also, if people wanted to learn more about you or work with you, what might they [inaudible] to do that?
Renee Lertzman: Well, I'll mention the five guiding principles which came out of Project Insight Out. And we did learning journeys with people around the world based on this work. And I've since developed it and run it with companies and organizations. And I'm now in a place where I'm really interested in developing it more broadly, making it more accessible to anyone. You know, like really creating some sort of an academy or an offering of some kind. So, if anyone's interested, you guys should, you should get in touch with me.
But the five guiding principles are: attune, reveal, convene, equip, and sustain. So if you -- each of those five guiding principles has a set of kind of very tactical, but skills, practices; but also a whole shift in your mindset from the usual activist, kind of advocate changemaker, which is, I got to go out and make people care. I have to educate, I have to cheerlead, I have to, you know -- this is like literally, this is what you have to do. And if you do these five things well, you will be effective. You attune to yourself, you attune to your community, you attune to your stakeholders. And you also learn how to do better surveys, how to design better instruments to gather insights.
And so, whenever I do a workshop or an off-site or retreat or a masterclass or summit or whatever it is, there's always an initial attunement. We attune, either listening interviews or do a short survey or a combination of that, and then you reflect back to the group what you heard.
So that's part of the sensemaking that relates to -- you know, Otto Scharmer talks about a system can't change until it sees itself. So that's kind of like, how do you attune, but then like be a mirror for those that we're working with? Reveal is revealing the hard news about like we have to change this, here's the carbon, the climate, the data, the rising temperatures, the coral is dying, you know, whatever, like that's revealing. And how do you reveal with compassion, with empathy, and with skill? So that's reveal.
And then there's convene, which is how do you learn how to be a more skillful facilitator? How do you know how to hold a meeting? How do you bring people together in a way that actually is competent, which is not the case a lot of the time. Because people don't have that skill. Like, people don't have that training. So if you're holding an event, like for the love of all things good, bring in someone who knows how to be a good facilitator. There's no reason not to, there's no excuse not to, it's irresponsible. If you're working on impact, if you're working on environmental issues, climate, like, please learn how to facilitate or bring a good facilitator in to work with you. Because otherwise, what -- all you're doing is you're just kind of -- you're not honoring the resources involved that everyone's bringing putting into being together and coming together, their time, money, whatever. So that's convene. Not talking at people, but bringing people together and fostering productive interactions.
And then the fourth is equipping people with tools, which is why, you know, I'm interested in offering more of an academy, and why we're seeing a lot of online learning and like a lot of skill building going on in this broadly speaking. So that's equipping people. Don't hold it all to yourself, like an office of sustainability in a big company where it's like, oh, we're the experts. We're going to just send campaigns out to people and get them to whatever. It's like, no, equip people, give them tools so they can be effective changemakers if they want to. And then sustain is like how to keep it going for the long haul. Really sustain yourself and each other and think really big picture.
Sarah Ray: I love it. It shows how challenging and long infrastructural change is. It takes away from this idea that it's just going to be some flashy, spectacular, heroic moment where someone comes in and says, unilaterally, this is how it's going to be henceforth.
Renee Lertzman: Sometimes we need interventions. And right now, the climate world and the environmental space, like we need interventions, because we can't keep going at these issues the way we have been. We can't keep alienating people. We can't keep going around yelling and telling and selling and driving people away. You know, we need to create ways of bringing people together in a whole -- I mean, there's many, many ways to do that, you know? But to me, like, that's where we really want to put our energy and our attention right now is literally developing capacities and seeing it as an opportunity to evolve as human beings, basically. It's not like, oh, I'm doing something wrong or I'm bad. It's more like, oh, we're -- this is what it means to evolve as a human being to be our highest selves possible.
Sarah Ray: I can't think of a better invitation to end on than that. So, thank you so much for talking with me today about this and inspiring me. Thank you.
Renee Lertzman: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Sarah Ray: You've just listened to my conversation with Dr. Renee Lertzman. Subscribe and listen to this and other episodes of Climate Magic wherever you listen to your podcasts.
