To Fly or Not to Fly? Why this is not the question.
How to transform our relationship with air travel, without shame, blame, guilt or 'righting.'
With the recent devastating fires ravaging lands in California, many of us are experiencing profound helplessness, loss and anger. What is it going to take?
As such, we are also turning our attention to the very practices us humans are so deeply enmeshed and attached to, from meat consumption and deforestation, to plastics and food waste, to yes, how we travel, get around, and recreate. A recent visit to the airport (yes, I am currently traveling for work and got on a plane) brought me into contact with what seems to be one of the most intractable aspects of our global lives: flying. (And yes, I cast an envious look at the throng of relaxed and happy-looking people in sandals at the gates heading to Mexico.)
Air travel is recently getting the heat again. This has inspired me to surface an innovative approach to air travel that can be applied to so many complex and seemingly intractable practices, that we are now needing to shift. And it all begins with Guiding.
In September, 2018…
Supported by a grant from the KR Foundation, my small team and I set out to transform how organizations approach the task of transforming our behaviors, practices, and systems in service of life on the planet. The result was Project InsideOut (PIO), the toolkit, program and resources grounded in clinical psychology and evidence-based research.
Our incredible sponsor, Kate Power, really wanted to see this work in action, and applied. She asked if we could do a pilot applying our tools to this topic. She proposed partnering up with another grantee, GreenFaith, the global interfaith organization reaching many thousands of people around the world. Okay, I thought. No big deal. We can take on air travel. It’s only one of the most complex, complicated and seemingly intractable behaviors on the planet today.
We set out on designing a pilot project with our partners at GreenFaith. Fletcher Brown, GreenFaith’s inspiring leader, embraced this wholeheartedly—and their team generously invested the time to co-design a campaign. We decided to create a micro-campaign, called “Grounding in Faith” (get it?) that would be embedded in their flagship program, Living the Change, focused on sustainable behavior change. Our mission was to apply our Guiding Principles to a pilot that results in people flying less.
The experience was a success by many accounts. We learned A LOT. As Fletcher later shared:
“After working with Project InsideOut, our organization has more interpersonal openness about how changes happen, and a commitment to that approach. The approach is not only grounded in the work we do, but also in research and best practices; this approach is fundamental to making change happen.”
The Five Guiding principles we created at PIO, were all applied (free PDF on our site!), and I’ll share with you an overview of each step of our process.
In case you forgot, those principles are:
Attune: Understand your people.
Reveal: This is hard stuff, that’s OK, tell the truth.
Convene: Less talking at, more talking with.
Equip: Be a gardener—grow your people. Give people tools.
Sustain: Go beyond the pledge, keep the wheels turning. Foster co-ownership.
Before we begin
This case study and the resources here are for anyone whose work involves turning other people toward the fire, facing the precarious issues facing our planet today. While I continue sharing these findings and resources with the world and discovering new forms for them to take, partnering with organizations and providing tools, I’m grateful that you’re here reading now. You are well on your way, along with several others, to becoming emotionally-intelligent change makers. I hope this is of use to you.
A case study in guiding change
For more in-depth information on this pilot, please visit Project InsideOut for our case study.
Principle One: Attune
From the outset, our team prioritizes attuning—deep listening and understanding of the underlying anxieties, aspirations, and ambivalence surrounding our relationship with the practices we love and are attached to, but know are unsustainable and damaging. In this case, air travel. We wanted to surface the nuance of our relationship with flying, by focusing on these Three As— Anxieties, Ambivalence, and Aspirations. In contrast to focusing on what people “value,” “believe” or their attitudes, we go deeper: we recognize how our behaviors are driven by affect, feelings, customs, rituals, habits, and often fraught attachments.
We held extensive discussions, interviews, and virtual workshops with the Living the Change global team and their extended network of partner implementers. We listened to the complex dilemmas of wanting to reduce air travel, while seeking to foster strong connections, religious practices (i.e. pilgrimages involving flying), and the joy of travel.
We created a set of personas and insights, and brought them into an Advisory Convening to analyze. Following the convening, we began sharing out the insights and early prototypes of our Guiding Principles with the GreenFaith team.
With the prototype ready, we continued attuning. We submitted a survey to all interested partners, with a focus on understanding their engagement and constituency needs, the nature of their work, time constraints, and interest in air travel as a focus of behavioral change.
Try it: Incorporate listening sessions, conversational interviews, and go beneath the surface. Listen for the Three As. Use surveys early and often. Work as a team to incorporate results into your prototyping. Organize your surveys around key emotional tangles.
Principle Two: Reveal
As part of the PIO approach, we piloted a story-pipeline process which we called Stories from the Ground (get it?) featuring first-person narratives from faith leaders and participants about their experiences with shifting their air travel practices. We knew personal stories were important, and an intervention against the usual “tell, yell and sell” approach.
It was also vital that we did not bombard people with all the facts and statistics about the impacts of air travel. We assumed people knew enough to know it was not good— and waited intentionally to introduce these science-based impacts towards the end. This is implementing Reveal, which is to tell the truth compassionately and with emotional intelligence. Reveal recognizes information and data is always emotionally charged.
These stories, and all of our communications and messaging, modeled the Guiding Principle of Reveal, by including what is challenging, complicated, and hard, as well as the aspirational and more positive aspects of making difficult behavioral changes. These stories were hands-down one of the most popular and compelling parts of the campaign.
Try it: If you are wanting to ‘raise awareness’ or launch a campaign, consider carefully the use of narratives, stories and inviting people to reflect on their own experience. Recognize that data and information can shut people down. Shame, blame and guilt rarely leads to the results we seek. Acceptance, compassion and guiding, does.
Step Three: Convene
The heart of our pilot was an interactive workshop, facilitated by myself and my team. Participants were guided through an experience designed to foster trust, connection, and vulnerability, addressing not just the how but the why behind meaningful change.
The design was highly intentional: we opened with asking people to reflect on what we love about air travel, the benefits, and appreciations. It was the opposite of what people were expecting, as as a result, was very disarming. It created a safe and brave space, for us to go into this complex sticky territory. People shared stories of visiting family across the world, engaged in paired conversations, and listened to each other share their poignant relationship with this fraught practice.
We offered these workshops three times, across three time zones.
We also reconvened later in our Grounding Sessions (get it?), see below in “Sustain.”
Importantly— we guided people to make commitments and intentions about their relationship with air travel and their specific practices. Fletcher Brown made a public commitment to reduce his air travel significantly (he offered a stat). Others made commitments. Then in our Grounding Sessions, people could check in on progress, without any shame or blame.
Try it: Trust that bringing people together intentionally can do a lot of heavy lifting. When given space and the opportunity to hear each other, and speak their own truth, people will often move towards action plans and resolutions. You don’t need to force or push it. Give people space to share out their experience. Provide a group and communal learning journey.
Step Four: Equip
The concept of “Equip” is to help sustainability, climate and ESG people get out of the mindset of having to “drive” and “own it all.” We are experts, sure—we have technical knowledge, but our responsibility as Guides is to enable, equip, and provide others with the resources and tools to be self-actualizing and successful. “Equip” is meant to blow up the notion of change work being owned by a subset of an organization, such as an Office of Sustainability. And then guarding it. (I have witnessed this over and over in many organizations, and needs to be called out.) Your role is to share, enable, and grow others. That is the only way this work will scale and transform.
In our air travel pilot, we therefore took great care to provide our participants with resources, tools and practices to support their success and integration. These included:
Workshop template
Workshop facilitators guide
A conversation guide (how to talk with people in your life about air travel)
A storytelling guide (how to elicit and evoke stories)
Email templates (how to skillfully communicate as a Guide via email)
Process worksheets
A website layout template (how to design an attuned campaign site)
Survey template(s)
Discussion guides
We also had a dedicated landing page—a warm, thoughtfully designed digital space that also served as a hub for resources, stories, and continued engagement. It was full of stories and faces. The Grounding in Faith stories were also created based on a discussion guide designed by myself, and the discussion guide was made available to all participants.
Try it: Always prioritize resources or explainer assets that will give your team quick references. Never leave them unequipped. Be generous. Don’t hoard your tools. Open source and see what happens. This positions you as a trustworthy, caring Guide.
Step Five: Sustain
The program didn’t stop at commitments and intention-setting. Recognizing the importance of ongoing support and accountability with any kind of behavioral shift, especially as complex as air travel, Grounding Sessions were created—open, reflective spaces where participants could share, check in, and sustain their commitment. These had NO AGENDA and were very simply spaces to show up and share how it was going. Basically a check-in. We encouraged a buddy system.
The impact was profound. Participants emerged not just informed, but transformed—carrying forward new insights, connections, and a sense of shared purpose. I watched as people before my eyes declared new levels of commitments and shared information and resources, for example about alternatives to flying, talking with family, and redirecting vacation plans. All without guilt, shame or blame.
Try it: The “end” shouldn’t be your actual stopping point. In your plans, include follow-ups after your main engagement has ended. People need accountability. We also need integration. If you offer any kind of experience or deep dive, attune to the fact our lives are messy and complicated. Please provide opportunities for people to stay connected with who they were, when they had the transformative moment.
We do not need to guilt, shame or blame our way into a new viable world.
Grounding in Faith was more than a campaign to me—like my other partnerships, it became a testament to what’s possible when transforming our behaviors (“practices” is my preferred term) is approached with care, curiosity, compassion... and a bit of evidence-backed direction 🤓
Much of this work is asking us to evolve, in the direction of mindfulness, intention and presence. This sounds soft but it’s grounded in neuroscience, cognitive behavioral research and perennial wisdom traditions. We got this. We know what to do. We just need to access our will and courage to lean in. I am inspired by this brilliant talk given by our GreenFaith partner, Kristin Barker, Buddhist teacher and colleague, where she speaks here about “Mindful in the Middle Seat.” Check this out. What do you think?
As we look ahead, the lessons from this pilot remind us: Change isn’t just about taking action—it’s about connection, trust, and establishing the conditions to face ourselves, and each other, with open hearts.
Reminder: These tools, resources and trainings can be offered for your organization. Project InsideOut, and my own consultancy is set up to support change leaders inside organizations. We lead cohort-based journeys, workshops, masterminds, keynotes and advising. I am passionate about partnering with motivated change leaders and practitioners. We take a Guiding approach that is attuned to your unique needs and contexts. Please reach out if you are interested in learning more. The time is now.
With care,
xx Renée
Resources
This recent podcast on PIO with Real Organic 🎧 Renee Lertzman | Successful Activism With Project Inside Out
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This is such a timely article for universities and so informative. Thank you for sharing. I'm curious, do you have any outcome data/results that you can share? Did the process result in actual behavior change?