Welcome to Team Humanity


We hear a lot these days about the what and the why of climate change. Yes, it is happening, and humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels. Yes, it’s melting the Arctic and causing disruptions across the globe. And, yes, it’s accelerating.

We hear a lot less about the who and the how of solving the problem. Until recently, discussion about how humanity will organize to deal with disruptive climate change has taken a backseat to the essential project of convincing people that the change is real. Now most of the world accepts that reality, and people are beginning to focus on how we, the members of Team Humanity, are going to get this thing done. Concerned citizens from all walks of life want to know how they themselves can contribute: What does it take to be a leader for the planet?

Our main concerns, and the subject of this book, are the twin issues of climate change and energy evolution. The burning of fossil fuels escalated with the introduction of powered machines in the late nineteenth century. Intensified by improving living standards and a growing world population, it is accelerating worldwide. It is warming the planet, with serious consequences. To address these facts, and also because the Earth’s store of fossil fuels is finite, the world’s transition from fossil fuels to less polluting sources of energy is assuredly, if fitfully, underway. Across the planet, responsible people are gearing up to unleash the creativity and innovation that must fuel this transition.

Leading for the planet means protecting people and the natural systems we all depend on by sensibly managing these environmental challenges. To date, our leaders have prioritized natural science over social science, and reasonably so. Yet, to take the next step forward, humanity must now look inward. Leadership for the planet requires knowledge of both natural science and human nature.

To lead well now is to study humanity’s ways of organizing and to translate that knowledge into sound decision-making and action. To help leaders understand key human factors that affect collective, systems-wide solutions, this book draws on the social sciences, from psychology to anthropology to economics. It takes a strong rather than a weak approach to sustainability; that is, it focuses on leadership for the planet rather than on leadership for individual companies alone. It assumes that the core value of “environmental sustainability” is the obligation to conduct ourselves so that we leave to future generations the option and the capacity to be as well off as we are today.

We will focus here on climate change and energy evolution, leaving for others the simultaneously critical issues of population growth and agricultural development. We address here all climate leaders (and, also, their followers) – not only those who are currently practicing but also those who are emerging, whatever your age, training, organizational position, or resources.

The fundamental question we will consider together is: Will Team Humanity step up to save the planet?

1. THE NEW CLIMATE LEADERSHIP CONVERSATION

You may be familiar with the optical illusion in which, if you squint at the drawing of two people in silhouette, a chalice appears between them. Such illusions demonstrate the interaction between figure (what you see now) and ground (what you do not see now, but which is still there). When people ponder climate and energy, they habitually experience scientific findings as figure and potential solutions as ground. This book flips that gestalt: Since we already know a lot about what natural science predicts for the future of the planet, it turns climate solutions into figure. To achieve the change we need, it prioritizes our own human psychology and systems.

What Team Humanity needs now is a wide-ranging conversation about how people can solve problems together across all levels of society. We need to embrace and develop what we will refer to here as systemic leadership. Systemic leaders move beyond individual psychology to weigh the design of organizations and human systems. They study not only how individuals are motivated but also who society’s powerful actors are, and how key societal sectors wield influence. They figure out how to intervene in situations in which people act and influence each other, lead and follow, in a perpetual loop of action and feedback.1 They examine how societal institutions interact and conflict.

Systemic leaders realize that the nature of a problem and the details of its context both matter. For instance, when systemic leaders ponder how they should talk to their followers about climate science, they know they must understand both how their audiences perceive truth and how society influences those perceptions. When they face the conflict between the fossil fuel and renewable energy sectors, they consider the stakes not only for each sector but also for the broader economy.

In a world that is changing quickly and perhaps drastically, it may seem self-evident that leaders should emphasize systemic analysis and action. In some ways, climate leadership is systemic leadership. Yet, for decades our leadership conversation, especially as practiced in business schools, has been driven by competency theory – the study of individual traits and skills. Although competency theory has been useful for developing leadership inside organizations, it is limited as a tool for promoting leadership in society. For one thing, its focus on static traits and behaviors downplays moral stewardship. Researchers point out that it gives short shrift to the principle that moral decision-making emerges in conversations among organizational members and is subject to societal influences. Competency theory also tends to ignore how leaders actually think and act in real time.2 Its focus on individual traits minimizes the importance of the emotional connections and relationship-building that help human beings work together in systems.3 Climate leaders, systemic leaders, must embrace a more comprehensive theory of change.

Systemic leadership is based on three principles. The first is that individuals are embedded within social systems. Much like Russian nesting dolls, we humans exist within our families and our work organizations and our national and international institutions, and all of these systems are embedded in the natural world. Climate change and energy evolution are system-wide issues that need system-wide solutions. Our leaders must undertake not only individual change and organizational change but also institutional change.

The second principle of systemic leadership is that working within social systems requires understanding and practicing power. Leading for the planet must be a collective, cooperative effort while, at the same time, it must unleash competition and innovation. Effective systems leaders seek the moral compass and interests shared by these different approaches. For example, it is well known that the fossil fuel and green energy sectors compete and conflict. Balancing cooperation and competition, effective systems leaders must find ways to manage these power struggles for the collective good.

Finally, systemic leadership assumes that effective decisions are based on moral principle. A shared morality is the social glue that binds a civilized society. It is a core reason why we humans are sensitive to the ethical practices of our companies and our societies, and why we care about climate change even when it is not affecting us personally.

Maintaining our dignity as human beings depends on our common instinct to share a moral universe. No matter how hard we – including the “we” who work in business organizations that assert moral “neutrality” – pretend to the contrary, most human beings do not exist amorally. Our personal experience confirms the importance of the moral dimension: We know intuitively that, when we are deciding whether to follow a particular leader, what he or she believes matters to us a great deal. It follows that, as leaders make hard choices about climate and energy, they will integrate moral reflection and they will lead with moral intent.

2. WHAT MOTIVATES CLIMATE LEADERS?

One popular definition of leadership is that it is any act of influence on a matter of interpersonal or organizational relevance. This broad definition signals that to take meaningful action, you do not have to fit a stereotypical notion of what a leader is (tall, extroverted), and you do not have to fill a particular role in an organization (owner or manager) or in society (an elected official). By this definition, whatever one’s roles in life, whatever one’s starting point, one can learn enough, and one can find the personal motivation and the practical means, to be a leader for the planet. This definition has merit because it is inclusive and inherently optimistic.

At the same time, leadership is magnified by resources. Individuals with limited resources find that their power only goes so far. They soon learn that their personal intent and talent can only accomplish so much. The power to save the planet lies in significant measure with those who direct organizations, build society’s institutions, wield expertise, and spend money.

Leaders are essentially motivators, and motivation has three basic dimensions. Motivated individuals first develop a direction. They then pursue that direction with intensity. Finally, they persist toward that goal even in the face of obstacles.4 Effective leaders know how to motivate both themselves and others.

Establishing a direction means choosing achievable goals that are worth working for. Like all effective leaders, climate leaders will define the challenges they face, choose the best solutions, and plan responsible, common-sense steps to implement those solutions. To attract followers, they will act responsibly by pursuing humane purpose as determined in conversation with others. When choosing their goals, they will keep in mind not only their own community and the world community but also future generations. Above all, when choosing their goals, climate leaders will continually weigh all the evidence available to them, and, as new evidence is found, they will be open to changing direction. (If evidence of global cooling appears, rumor has it that they are planning a big party!)

Climate leaders also find a personal passion for the issues – the intensity that comes from knowing deeply that making time for people and the planet is the right thing to do. Personal passion is not just about being conventionally virtuous, and virtue itself is not only about loving the planet and each other. It is also about establishing ethical systems in which the normal human propensities for cooperation and competition can thrive. Of course, intensity can also be found in intellectual and practical pursuits, such as developing innovative green technology or applying one’s skills to installing solar equipment.

Above all, motivation requires persistence. In environmental circles, “persistence” is often referred to as “resilience,” although behaviorally the terms mean much the same thing: to continue pursuing one’s goals despite setbacks. Climate leaders who persist are likely to have found a network of like-minded individuals who support their goals and reinforce even their small steps toward them. They are able to enjoy life. They learn to avoid burnout. For example, these days people who are paying attention to climate and energy are bombarded with scientific results and real-time impacts. Yes, it’s all happening – warming, melting, storms, droughts, extinctions. Without a clear path to change, absorbing so many details can foster an overload of the feeling of dread. Leaders who are resilient in the face of climate change learn to turn off, for a time, the onslaught of new findings.

3. THE FIVE PRACTICES

The narrative of this book is straightforward: To make effective decisions on climate and energy, leaders must first get the truth about the state of the planet and then use this scientific information to evaluate essential risks; next, they must identify the interests and power of key stakeholders and societal sectors; finally, they must implement change within and between organizations and sectors on a global scale.

This narrative is grounded in five practices. To “practice” means to learn a set of facts, theories, and strategies and then apply these to drive policies, plans, and actions toward a major goal. The practices described here are based on social science research and informed reasoning about human decision-making. The overarching goal of the practices is to help us all avoid the worst of global warming and create a clean energy future through democratic processes.

A complementary view of this set of five practices is that they comprise a model of effective climate leadership. Building on my experience as an organizational psychologist, I have developed the components of this model inductively over a decade in conversations with hundreds of students and colleagues in such university disciplines as business administration, natural resources, engineering, and philosophy. Academic researchers might explore this model deductively.

Each practice advances knowledge of current realities and conflicts along with psychological and other social science that can help leaders interpret those phenomena. Further, each practice is developed with facts, themes, and research that are written to spark discussion and further thinking. Many of these topics can be approached as short cases. For example, in the first practice, I describe the cooperation between politically right- and left-oriented researchers as they explore whether the temperature of the Earth is going up. This case invites a discussion: How can leaders continue to promote that sort of cooperation?

I offer this book as a framework of essential issues that readers can consider together with others. Conversational learning – learning together through dialogue – is fundamental to ethically engaged social science.5 No one individual is going to have the information and the answers we need. As the author of this book, in these pages I am sometimes “I.” However, most often I am simply one part of the “we” that is Team Humanity. “We” must work on climate and energy together.

Here is a brief introduction to the five practices.

The first practice (1. Get the Truth) is to understand and promote the truth about climate and energy. Knowing what one believes about such planetary issues as global warming and such local issues as the efficacy of solar power is fundamental to being an effective climate leader. Climate leaders must understand the truth not merely as consumers of facts but as psychologically complex and morally engaged human beings.

The chapter on this practice explores the dual origins of humans’ sense of truth and shows why leaders and decision-makers cannot afford to ignore either aspect. It explores the nature of modern scientific truth and how humans’ belief in the truth of climate change is influenced by scientific reports and media accounts. It weighs such issues as why leaders should both trust and distrust science, whether they can trust scientific interpreters, and how they can work with science that they do not fully understand. One goal of this chapter is to motivate leaders to explore basic climate science at a level that will help them build their influence, while not attempting to be experts themselves.

The second practice (2. Assess the Risks) is to understand the psychology of risk and how leaders and organizations make decisions about managing risks. This practice includes understanding the fundamentals of risk prediction, risk modeling, and risk management as they apply to climate and energy, and how organizations and societies plan to face risk based on knowledge and probabilities. What are models and scenarios predicting for the future of the planet? Is there a downside to pursuing risk management as traditionally practiced?

The third practice (3. Weigh the Stakes) is to identify societal sectors and systems and their effects on planetary sustainability. In this practice, we review the most powerful societal sectors and explore their stakes and conflicts. To interpret these dynamics, we go a step beyond the classic “tragedy of the commons” scenario to consider the more complex scenario of the stag hunt dilemma. Analysis of a group stag hunt reveals the roots and limitations of altruism in inter-group conflict. Finally, we weigh business’s predominant impact on the environment against government’s responsibility to protect individuals and communities from environmental degradation.

The fourth practice (4. Define the Business of Business) is to manage profit-making organizations sustainably while taking into consideration that they exist within the larger context of society and the natural world. We go inside of organizations to see how some leaders maximize sustainability in the context of increasing profits and reducing costs. We suggest practical steps that organizational leaders can take to better manage the adoption of strong, systemic sustainability initiatives aimed at protecting the planet. Organizational leaders drive change in part by assessing their organization’s culture and understanding their own emotional investment in that culture.

The fifth practice (5. Engage Global Leadership) is to assess the realistic prospects for global change. What types of leaders and practices are most likely to be effective globally? What does economic theory contribute to our understanding of the future? How do global cooperation and competition work today, and how might climate leaders apply both philosophies to foster change?

In the final section, “What’s the Plan?” we reflect on that specific question and review the choices that Team Humanity has made so far. What grade should we humans give ourselves as leaders and decision-makers? How can we minimize our weaknesses and build upon our strengths? In what should we place our hope?