Guiding 101
It's time for a total reboot of everything we think we know about changing the world.
Many of us working on behalf of a viable planet are preoccupied with what can catalyze massive behavior change at scale. Is it: fear, pressure, social-shaming, education, storytelling, solutions, hope, or something else? What will make people take action quickly?
In 2018, I was invited by the KR Foundation to dream a response to these questions. After decades researching the psychology of existential threats, I wanted to see what could be created that is practical, applied, and usable by anyone wanting to make our world better. And, I wanted to ground this work with clinical practitioners, working directly with humans in the messy work of healing, repair, recovery and change.
Project InsideOut (PIO) was thus born. PIO applies evidence-based research, in conjunction with practices from psychology, neuroscience, and social-sciences; to inform our work with front-line campaign strategists, sustainability leaders and organizations.
Through the applications and wisdom of these disciplines, we developed a new story about how to effectively drive change—at the rate, scale and speed these times demand.
Our Guiding Principles are shaped by studies, research, best-practices and wisdom: and honed through years of clinical practice. Informed by an advisory group, whose members have been applying clinical and depth psychology to existential crises for decades, the Guiding Principles reflect the cumulative expertise of the pillars of the field. This work has been pressure tested and it works. I am proud of this, and keen to see this continue to grow in the world. I offer it to you.
Where we began
In 2019, thanks to the initial grant from KR Foundation along with the 11th Hour Project, a group of us came together in San Francisco to explore the following questions:
What practices do clinical practitioners use to help people to transform or shift hard, seemingly intractable behaviors?
What can we learn from these practices, from clinical and trauma-informed settings, that can be applied to the most urgent issues of our time; such as shifting our consumption patterns—in non-clinical settings, such as business, government, philanthropy, education, healthcare and so on?
What are the key ingredients to promote transformation, that lasts?
We listened, reflected, and explored over a few days. In subsequent months, we then researched, implemented, stress-tested, and experimented: using our advisory group’s reflections and responses. What follows is a distillation of our findings in the form of Principles. (Will share more about applying these to air travel with our partner, GreenFaith, in a future post!)
Five Guiding Principles
1. Attune: Understand your People.
Know your people. Do your research. Invest in insights. Build listening into your strategy at multiple points. Go beyond values, beliefs, attitudes, aspirations, and goals. Listen to the feelings, the messy conflicts, and the dilemmas; where people feel stalled, unsure, overwhelmed, or ambiguous. Apply active compassion and explicit empathy to all interactions—from individual, in-person conversations to large-audience, online events.
What do we mean by explicit empathy? Living in this day and age is hard for many, if not most, of us. But whether we feel passionate or numb, resolute or desperate; the obstacles to action are not the difficult emotions themselves, but our defenses against feeling them. When we welcome the full range of other’s experience with curiosity and compassion, the defenses in which we tangle ourselves tend to soften; including the tendency of many to feel shame, guilt and remorse, all of which are normal responses. Even if our message is upbeat, these feelings are likely present in our people. This is why we must be able to practice explicit empathy: an active and demonstrated mirroring of the emotions your people may be experiencing; even if they are messy, complicated, or ambivalent. When we only appeal to people’s values, we skate past explicit and active empathizing.
Start by tuning in and bringing compassion to the full range of your own experience.
Learn about your people’s anxieties, ambivalences, and aspirations.
Design your communications to explicitly name, normalize and welcome the full range of people’s experience.
Design thoughtful and sensitive tools for gathering insight; from surveys to interviews to informal group calls.
2. Reveal: Be compassionate truth-tellers.
This is about becoming compassionate truth-tellers. Reveal and connect the dots with emotional intelligence. Be emotionally honest. Be daring in how you name what’s real in these challenges. Share stories, and invite experiences, openly and compassionately. Model vulnerability. Resist becoming a positivity maven. This is hard stuff. That’s okay.
Many changemakers think we have to stay positive, focus on success, and hide our fears to keep people engaged.
This is understandable because, when we feel overwhelmed, sad, scared and angry, it’s hard to imagine taking any action. We don’t want to encourage negative feelings, we want to inspire positive action. We also know that, for many people, the issues can seem insurmountable; and our involvement can feel negligible. However, when we’re emotionally honest with ourselves, and name possible pitfalls aloud, we build trust and credibility. Also, scientific studies show that when we “name it” we “tame it” (thanks, Dr. Daniel Siegel). We then become more open to learning, engaging and absorbing hard information.
By being open and honest about our shortcomings, we make others feel safe to face, and move through, their own. This is key to sustaining engagement, especially from leadership and key stakeholders in your organization. Though it seems paradoxical: when we acknowledge the hard stuff, we can move more quickly into what is possible.
Use yourselves (and your team/colleagues) as a living-laboratory for a more transparent and honest culture.
Express your humanity with as much humility and humor as possible in all your communications.
Express the enormity of the challenges we face: Don’t sugarcoat this!
Provide opportunities for authentic and personal storytelling. Set the tone for vulnerable sharing at the leadership level.
3. Convene: Less talking at, more talking with.
Create as many opportunities for deep and varied interactions as possible; both with, and among, your people (stakeholders, audiences, users, participants, communities, lists, followers, donors, members, etc). See yourself as a convener. This is about less talking at, more talking with.
Humans are wired for relationships. When we feel connected, we become more creative, more resilient, and better able to learn, grow, and act. Connection is the most basic form of polyvagal regulation we have – feeling understood. Relationships are the drivers of change; especially when sustained over time. We can more effectively process difficult information through interactions.
The more high-quality interactions we can generate, the more long-lasting relationships will form. However, many of us are trapped in a mobilization-mentality where we know the stakes and we want to motivate people to action – whether it’s modifying consumption, political action, or funding our initiatives – it’s easy to “tell and sell” instead of informing and influencing.
When we do this, we tend to “talk at” people as opposed to “talking with” them. If you question whether or not this applies to you: ask yourself a few questions. Do we have panels of experts, to the exclusion of all others, at our events? Are my people spending the vast majority of their time listening, as opposed to discussing, at our events? Can I create more opportunities for small groups or pairs to have meaningful conversations?
Personally, within your organization, create a practice of checking-in: Take a few moments to share what’s happening for you personally—beginning with feelings—from board meetings to daily check-ins.
Foster a conversational approach to your work.
Offer “courageous spaces” for people to think out loud and express their feelings and ideas.
Make actions social: Create ways for people to get to know each other more deeply, while engaging.
4. Equip: Be a gardener. Grow your people.
Being supportive means being a gardener: growing and building capacities, providing tools, establishing resources, and demonstrating guidance that will sustain people while increasing their influence. Support your people (stakeholders, advisors, board members, users, etc.) with resources. Invite unique contributions, encourage peer-to-peer learning, and cultivate future leadership.
Many change agents think we need to have all the answers—and do all the heavy lifting. While it’s true that many people look to us as subject-matter experts and guides, if we build the skills and capacities of others our loads will feel lighter, our organizations will become stronger, and we can unleash more transformation upon the world. When we see our people as partners — instead of supporters, followers, or members—we tap into a vast resource that will allow us to enhance capacity for lasting change, and build loyalty for the long haul.
People are hungry for tools and resources to support resilience. How can we keep going? What do we do before, during and after, we encounter difficult interactions? How can I convince my boss to implement a mindful travel practice? (Hint: we don’t convince, we guide.) How can we practice self-care when we know how much we have to lose? How can we manage our own feelings—which may range from rage to deep grief? The more we, as organizations, support people in navigating these difficult issues: the more they will relate to us as partners—and the more effectively they will be able to actively implement and leverage the desired impacts.
Offer resources, trainings, tools, and lots of opportunities to learn.
Support peer-to-peer learning and mentoring.
Give people real power and control over something about which they care deeply.
Design strategies to invite, amplify and celebrate people’s unique. contributions.
5. Sustain: Go beyond the pledge.
Plan beyond the “activation,” pledge, event, or challenge. Foster ongoing opportunities to engage; Opportunities that sustain the effort and build on short bursts of energy. Put yourselves in the shoes of people who take a pledge or sign up; What kinds of challenges and dilemmas do they face? Do they have support, connections, and buddies who can affirm their commitments?
Most campaigns start with a galvanizing goal or event that generates a lot of energy in a short period of time. It feels good to be driving off of a big push, and to have created a lot of buzz and excitement. These are highly productive times. Once the event is over, however, engagement tends to fizzle. We return to our complicated lives and it can be hard to carry the intensity of an event/activation into our daily lives. Plan for the long-haul by ensuring you have resources available after you reach your goal, recruit volunteers to step into leadership, and convene to keep people engaged after the event is over.
Provide the follow-up infrastructure for people to connect and receive training after galvanizing events.
Offer touch-points for ongoing support and inspiration.
Offer tracks for building capacity and increasing leadership.
Invite your participants’ ideas for sustaining and increasing engagement.
The intervention we all need
If we apply these principles in our work, I can promise you that you’ll see the impact. This is essentially a clinically informed intervention that we are needing now.
Don’t take my word for it: each of these is grounded in mountains of evidence-based research and ancient human wisdom practices. And together, they comprise an emotionally intelligent, and more relational way of making our world whole.
Where do we go next…
My dear reader, the time is now for us to significantly up-level our approach to doing good work in the world. We can drop the outmoded and old paradigms of changemaking—the yelling, telling and selling. We can bring more compassion and guiding to our work. However, I won’t lie: this is hard stuff. It takes courage and tenacity to be a compassionate truth-teller, who can stand in the stillness of strength, in the face of outright wrongdoing and ignorance. And yet, it can be done.
Project InsideOut started with a generous grant. This ended in 2023, and we are exploring what is next. If you find this inspiring and want to see this in the hands of impact communities who can actively apply this work, contact me. We’re eager for funding conversations and donations.
I am glad you are here. We can do this.
Let’s unlock care in the world, at scale.
Renée
How did this land for you?
Did you learn something new?
Leave a comment ~
Thank you for asking for comments. You were the resource I turned to, and referred my colleagues in Montana to, when they complained about public"apathy" toward climate change. Your TED talks have been super helpful. I love "It's time for a total reboot of everything we think we know about changing the world." This is reimagining the future. Yay!
Here's my comment:
Decoloniality is foundational to addressing the "wicked problems" that we are facing. "Modernity" is a term that is inclusive of these multiple, interacting crises.
From a book review I published on Medium in 2023:
"Hospicing Modernity"(2021) brings inspiration from “Indigenous teachings from communities of high-intensity struggle in what is known as Latin America and Canada, who swim against the flood of colonialism that subsides modernity.” (Machado de Oliviera, p.38) In her Preface, titled “My Grandmother’s Gifts,” Vanessa Machado de Oliveira describes “existing between cultures in historical dissonances” as the child of a German father and Indigenous mother in Brazil as “painfully complicated.” (p.xxviii) One legacy she received from her Indigenous grandmother was the “insight that the sense of separation and superiority implanted by modernity is a social disease in all of us, that requires collective healing.” (p.xxiv) She gives us a workbook, containing “a language and pedagogical approach to ‘clear the space’ for the possibility of seeing, sensing, relating, and imagining ‘otherwise’ to emerge.” (p.41)"
This video content is new to me and may inform your work. The story "The House that Modernity Built" is just one segment that reminds me of the 5 Guiding Principles you present.
"Climate, Complexity, and Relational Intelligence" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWfHF3MiMT0
Presentation for the Center for Teacher Education at the University of Kassel, Germany, October 5, 2023, by Vanessa Andreotti, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria.
(Vanessa de Andreotti and Vanessa Machado de Oliviera are the same person.)
Thanks to you and your colleagues. You are appreciated!
On a perceptual level working from the outside in is exteroceptive. Working from the inside out is proprioceptive (more so than interoceptive, or visceral). Active inference helps us to model this functionally but it is the somatic anatomy of the proprioceptive sensory motor system that is foundational and supports an inside-out perceptual shift.