The Power and Necessity of Attuning, Even When It's Hard.

Want to break through the gridlock on climate? Attuning to the Three A's is the Big Unlock. (Yes, it worked with conservatives.)

The view from the shed, when I got The Call.

In the autumn of September 2014, I was a Fellow at the Mesa Refuge, a writing residency tucked away by an estuary in Point Reyes, Northern California. During my precious time away to write, I was looking out at heavy bumblebees enjoying the lavender bushes, trying to focus… when the phone rang. Grateful for any distraction, I took the call from an unknown Washington DC number.

The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as a senior advisor to the Republican National Committee. A seasoned messaging expert, his job was creating messaging for the party on hot-button issues, the kind that tend to fracture and polarize our collective conversations: healthcare, social security, tax reform, foreign policy. Then he’d go brief senior members of the GOP.

A conservative philanthropist—who, he quickly explained, wished to remain anonymous—had approached him for help in developing compelling messaging about climate change: for highly conservative climate skeptics. (No biggie.)

He was seeking my help threading this particularly narrow needle. After explaining the scope, he paused. Then he asked,”So, what do you think?”

This man, a lifelong Republican, confessed that he was feeling increasing anxiety and urgency about our global climate crisis, and he desperately wanted to help engage his party on the subject. This project felt like a way to address his existential dread by doing what he did very well: using finely honed research methods for crafting effective messaging strategies on tough topics, the most polarizing issues in our country.

I felt excited, surprised… and suspicious.

Even so, I asked when we could get started.

I had spent several years in the UK training in a methodology called “psychosocial research,” and knew that having different kinds of conversations was going to be key.

Therefore, we started with training the team on how to get past the party’s usual talking points, and focus instead on how voters were actually thinking and feeling about the issue. I guided them in the practice of “attunement”: being present and listening between the lines of what people are voicing. This approach, developed by trauma researchers, psychosocial researchers and clinical practitioners, focuses on sensing what people are saying or not saying, and raising consciousness around the underlying mood of the conversation, so as to tune into people’s underlying feelings, conflicts, and dilemmas. Instead of the usual “How much do you agree/ disagree with x statement” questions commonly used in policy messaging research, the team agreed to offer open-ended prompts that are meant to evoke:

“What comes to mind when you hear x statement?”

“What associations do you have with y topic?”

“What do you already know about x topic?”

“This is what I hear you saying. Did I get that right?”

They’d then pause, listen and intentionally create space for people to reflect—even if that meant gritting their teeth through the awkward moments of silence that most of us so often rush to fill.

We paid extra attention to their Three A’s.

The Three A’s—decoding people’s unconscious responses to change.

The research team was instructed to listen actively, reflecting back what they heard and asking the subject if they had gotten it right. The aim was to gain richer and more nuanced insights to inform a new kind of messaging.

We had conversations with climate skeptics; and listened.

Using this method, the team conducted more than two dozen one-on-one interviews with a variety of conservatives: young adults, women, men, Hispanics, and Caucasians in around the United States. They interviewed what the Yale Center on Climate Communication calls “soft skeptics''—those who were somewhat convinced climate change was happening, believing it would be a somewhat serious problem for them and their family and that dangerous impacts would happen between ten and fifty years from now—as well as hard skeptics, those who were slightly or not at all convinced global warming was happening, believing it would be slightly or never a serious problem for them and their family, and dangerous impacts would never happen.

Listening in on these interviews and the range of feelings shared, I was reminded of my research interviews in Green Bay in the late 2000s (written about in “Environmental Melancholia” — contact me for a copy). There, I had discovered that many people had unexpectedly profound feelings about issues ranging from toxic contamination to biodiversity loss, which came forward as I listened, with no judgment or preexisting agenda. Similarly, the interviews the team conducted uncovered lots of big emotions about these big issues.

People felt scared of the specter of climate threats, if in fact real (several noted that “if the science was conclusive,” they’d take action). They were aggrieved about perceived hypocrisy among climate advocates (“Al Gore flies around the globe, telling people to do what he is not willing to do!”); and overwhelmed by a profound sense of powerlessness and resignation (“There’s not much I could do about it, anyway, if the issues were real”).

There was a strong current of underlying despair about the possibility that much about our cherished ways of life would need to change.

Striking, too, was that people (yes: conservative climate skeptics) also had lots of ideas about solutions. They felt strongly about empowering individuals to innovate, using the power of the free market system, rather than locating the responsibility in government. And they recognized that this innovation would be linked to job creation and economic growth.

Perhaps the most significant finding was that personal empowerment was important to respondents—they wanted to be part of the solution. They were tired of feeling patronized and spoken down to. They resented the tone of climate messaging and felt it was not taking into account the welfare of those who are most vulnerable. Particularly when it comes to transitioning out of extractive practices and energy sectors.

They could not tolerate being patronized or treated as if they did not care about what’s at stake.

Taking all of this in, without judgment, we set about about crafting different kinds of messaging that was attuned to these feelings. We realized that for many people, these messy, complex feelings simply were not being named or acknowledged. We wanted to know what would happen if we openly acknowledged these feelings in a political message about climate change. I had not seen that done before. Focusing on innovative solutions, we sought to emotionally engage skeptics on climate. Far less effective was to raise the problem directly, which tended to elicit knee-jerk rejection and tuning out. Instead, we emphasized shared values of caring for and loving nature and what makes America so remarkable–and the potential costs of losing these gifts.

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After much trial and error, they tested a two-minute script across several groups of conservative Americans, using live dial testing to obtain moment-to-moment feedback. In the script (read by an actress), they acknowledged people’s anxieties, ambivalence and aspirations — the double binds. Their appreciation for nature and wide-open spaces in the great outdoors, and the certain knowledge that humans have not always been the stewards of creation. We spoke to their aspirations of taking action on climate change, without demanding more from the working class than we expect from our nation’s leaders.

Speaking to the Three A’s is the big Unlock.

To our amazement, the climate messaging actually worked.

Conservative climate skeptics resonated with and responded positively to messaging that openly affirmed and acknowledged their anxieties, ambivalence, and conflicts, as well as their deepest held aspirations for a healthy and sustainable world. They wanted to be included and listened to when it came to these profound existential threats.

My client these findings with the GOP, urging them to use this messaging in the upcoming election. He made his rounds briefing and sharing the data.

Unfortunately, the leaders he shared these insights with, were not willing to make this leap of faith. The messaging failed to make it onto the convention floor, key policies were not passed, and today, we can all see polarization on this issue is even more entrenched, and existential fears are more potent than ever.

So what next? What does this mean for us, now, today?

At this particular moment, it seems the gulf is massive between those who care about our planet, our species, our web of life, protection of those most vulnerable, and ensuring our planet is healthy and thriving for future generations.

This can lead to a profound despair that words cannot touch or describe. I know. I feel it, and am living with this every day.

However, based on my experiences working with people around the world, often involving deep listening and applying the skills of motivational interviewing, reflective listening, psychosocial methods and actual conversations—I know that under the surface of resistance, fear and contraction, is a lot of insecurity and fear.

I also know that when we attune to these underlying currents, we can actually gain some traction.

There are no easy solutions here, but I want to encourage you to consider how you can weave this into every aspect of your changemaking work.

Whether you are working at high-level strategy, on the ground in your community, actively influencing, organizing, showing up to your job. We can foster conditions that create safety and the ability to name our fears.

My recommendation is to seek training, skill-building and resources when it comes to these capacities. It may be one of my trainings (stay tuned!), a training offered at work (contact me!), Non-Violent Communication, Appreciative Inquiry or Motivational Interviewing. There are resources. The question is: Will we leverage them?

Thanks for reading and channeling your care for the world.

We need each of us.

Renée