By Joanna Burris for CALS505: Leading Change in the Context of Climate Change<\/p>\n\n\n\n
July 30, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my opinion, one of the most harmful mindsets that pervades our culture in North America is individualism. <\/em>Citing Hofstede (1980, 2001) and Gorodnichenko and Roland (2011, 2017), Huang et al. (2022) explain that individualism \u201ccaptures the extent to which people in a society are mentally and habitually empowered to make their own choices. An individualistic culture attaches a greater reward to individual achievements, promoting innovation and economic growth\u201d (p. 2). In this blog post I discuss the tension climate leaders face between wanting to discourage individualistic attitudes and practices and protecting people\u2019s sense of self-determination. By exploring this topic through the lens of Adam Lerner\u2019s adaptive leadership framework of diagnosing, interrupting, and innovating (Royal Roads University, 2023) and Carol Sanford\u2019s framework of working indirectly (Lindsay, 2022), I reach the conclusion that an indirect and implicit approach would work best for a climate leader working to change behaviour across an entire community or population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Individualistic culture encourages and rewards individual economic success and promotes self interest over public interest (Huang et al., 2022) and is therefore a barrier to transformative climate action. People who make decisions through a lens of self-interest are unlikely to respond to appeals to do their part for the good of everyone, which is a critical requirement for a just and sustainable community. It was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic that some people value individual freedoms (or what they perceive freedom to be) above even the health and well-being of their neighbours and community members. Huang et al. (2022) conclude that nations with more individualistic cultures experienced greater negative health outcomes from COVID-19 than those with more collectivist cultures. I believe that this same logic can be applied to identify cultures that would be more and less reluctant to engage in climate action. Carol Sanford frames individualism vs. collectivism another way; she explains that humans do not have a purpose<\/em>, they have a role<\/em> (Lindsay, 2022). <\/em>The difference is that a purpose is an individual calling that encourages decision-making to satisfy one\u2019s own ego and agenda, whereas a role describes one\u2019s place in a cultural, social, or ecological system and what a person needs to do to help keep the system healthy. By extension, it is possible to encourage people to make decisions that benefit the public interest by enabling them to see themselves as part of a collective or a system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To influence transformative change at the community level, implicit emotional work may be more effective than explicit emotional work. Adam Lerner explains that \u201cemotional work\u201d is necessary to address the climate crisis, including learning to sit with the discomfort of disequilibrium and actively interrupting and hospicing practices that no longer serve (Royal Roads University, 2023). Both Lerner and Sanford explain that it is important to cultivate new capabilities to enable a transition toward new paradigms (Royal Roads University, 2023; Lindsay, 2022). The difference in their approaches is that Lerner\u2019s process involves naming and being explicit about the behaviour that needs changing, while Sanford advocates for indirect work \u2013 not telling people what they need to do but helping them to \u201cbuild capacity, build culture, and build consciousness\u201d (Lindsay, 2022, 31:20) to encourage behaviour that helps to maintain the vitality of the systems they are part of. Sanford posits that people learn by living and doing and not by being taught what to think or do. My concern about using Lerner\u2019s explicit approach for community-level change, and specifically to address individualism, is that people would reject the process of interrupting and hospicing individualism. Within the context of a team or an organization, where Lerner does most of his work, there is some level of shared understanding about the change process being undertaken. Within a community, there is a broad range of sentiments about climate change, about whether there is even a problem, and about what responsibilities an individual has to do anything about it. My understanding of Lerner\u2019s approach is that addressing individualism would require the climate leader to diagnose individualism as a problem that contributes to harmful behaviour and guide community members through a process of actively letting go of the individualistic mindset (interrupting) before the next stage (innovating) where a new paradigm would be created. If you name it and identify that you want people to actively let go of a mindset as deeply embedded in our culture as individualism, people may feel more than ever that their rights are being taken away or that they are not in control. Losing, or fear of losing, one\u2019s sense of self-determination is a main reason people reject change (Moss Kanter, 2012). While Lerner\u2019s approach seems to make sense for leading change at an organizational level, I believe that Sanford\u2019s implicit and indirect work makes more sense at the community level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In practice, indirectly working to influence a culture shift away from individualism could look like strengthening community social networks, encouraging positive behaviour change using nudges, and creating social pressure to be community minded by changing the narrative around self interest. Even though an explicit approach may not be ideal for community-level change, there are still many things we can learn from Lerner and apply to indirect work, such as creating spaces for dialogue, vulnerability, and relationship-building (Royal Roads University, 2023). Providing opportunities for people to learn from and about one another may help to strengthen the social resilience of the community. Additionally, if people have better relationships with their neighbours, they may be more likely to consider how their actions and decisions affect others. Nudges are another useful and implicit way to encourage positive behaviour change (Psychology Today, n.d.) , such as by making decisions that are good for the climate more attractive (e.g. cheaper, more convenient, more reliable) than less sustainable alternatives. Finally, Brett Davidson (2018) explains that cultural narratives \u201cembody fundamental assumptions by which we interpret and understand the world\u201d and therefore play an important role in a person\u2019s decision-making. Tools like creative activism, storytelling, and metaphor can be used to change the narrative around an idea or concept (Davidson, 2018). In the case of individualism, a climate leader would want to change the narrative so that community mindedness is rewarded and harmful practices like hoarding wealth or living a high-emissions lifestyle become socially reprehensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carol Sanford\u2019s framework of indirect work is a useful approach to influencing transformative change at the community level. It is important for climate leaders to use methods that protect people\u2019s sense of self-determination and create culture and conditions that encourage people to make decisions that benefit the public interest.Lerner\u2019s core competencies for adaptive leaders \u2013 including compassion, co-creation, self-reflexivity, and interconnectivity (Royal Roads University, 2023) \u2013 also have a place in indirect work and can help climate leaders to better understand how to engage with others. Additionally, Sanford\u2019s notion of humans having roles rather than purposes is a useful reframing of the problem of individualism and offers a glimpse of a different narrative that could influence sustainable decisions, one where each person understands how their actions help to sustain or hinder the vitality of the larger system. References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Davidson, B. (2018, August 3). The role of narrative change in influencing policy. The Communication Initiative Network.<\/em> https:\/\/www.comminit.com\/content\/role-narrative-change-influencing-policy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Huang, L., Li, O. Z., Wang, B., & Zhang, Z. (2022). Individualism and the fight against COVID-19. Humanities and Social Science Communications, 9<\/em>(120). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1057\/s41599-022-01124-5<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lindsay, K. (Host). (2022, July 25). Carol Sanford, Indirect work: A regenerative change theory for businesses, communities, institutions, and humans [Audio podcast episode]. In Systems and Cybernetics<\/em>. New Books Network. https:\/\/newbooksnetwork.com\/indirect-work-a-regenerative-change-theory-for-businesses-communities-institutions-and-humans<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Moss Kanter, R. (2012, September 25). Ten reasons people resist change. Harvard Business Review.<\/em> https:\/\/hbr.org\/2012\/09\/ten-reasons-people-resist-chang<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Psychology Today. (n.d.) Behavioural economics. Sussex Publishers LLC. https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/ca\/basics\/behavioral-economics#:~:text=Behavioral%20economics%20explains%20why%20individuals,Faulty%20heuristics<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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