Dance Show V Sustainability Professionals
What does taking part in a dance show have in common with the experience of a sustainability professional?
In February this year, I was involved in two exciting projects:
1) Interviewing sustainability professionals who work in businesses about their personal experiences and challenges for a research project (which we are launching on the 24th July - see here)
2) And I took part in a dance show and had a month to learn and then perform a moulin rouge number of contemporary, street and zumba dance…
It was interesting to notice what they had in common - imposter syndrome, inspiring the next generation, the need for collaboration and what was different about the experiences - having a clear vision, feeling part of a team and having a sense of achievement. So here are the main differences and similarities I saw and some learnings for sustainability professionals (that come from the interviewees and from my own time as Sustainability lead):
The differences
A clear vision
In the dance show, our teacher created a dance and our job was to learn that dance and perform it. Simple. We knew exactly what we were working towards and how we’d get there. In sustainability, there is no blueprint. There's no one person or organisation saying this is how it needs to be done. There’s a lot of ‘we need to do less of this’ or ‘we need to track and reduce that’. There’s less of ‘this is what we are working towards’ ‘this is what a better future would look like that we need to align around and work towards’.
Learning for sustainability professionals: Spend time yourself and with others in your organisation to think about the vision - what is the vision for what a better world would look like that you can contribute to? What kind of future do you want to be part of creating? How is your work/business contributing to that vision?
Working in a team
A common theme that came up in our research was loneliness, whether that’s because people were the only one working on sustainability, the one that others avoided having conversations with or the one that people got annoyed or defensive with. In the dance show, we were working as a team, we wanted to support each other and help each other out. A key thing I noticed during the interviews was what a difference it made to either have a team of other sustainability people you could talk openly to or working in an organisation who took it seriously and had people thinking in similar ways. In the dance show, we were all a bunch of women, who loved to move, wanted to do something to challenge us, give us purpose and wanted to achieve something. It made a difference to a sustainability professional’s happiness and success if they felt like they were part of a team, that others supported them, listened to them and helped them out.
Learnings for sustainability professionals: Notice if you are feeling isolated, lonely or unsupported - could you make the case to hire someone new? Could you join a group or network of other sustainability professionals or get other personal development support like a therapist or coach or go on a course? Could you have more open conversations with others in the organisation to ask for support you want?
Mistakes are welcome
Making mistakes is how we learn, when learning a routine you constantly make mistakes so you get used to accepting it and continue practicing (self compassion helps, more on that later). In sustainability, we are doing things no one has done before. This is a new ‘industry’. Things are changing rapidly. It’s inevitable we will make mistakes, even what we thought was right a year ago might now be wrong. Noticeable in some interviews was the fear of being cancelled or called out for greenwashing which puts people into this state of fear of ‘getting it wrong’ that means we don't actually get on with what's useful, learn and grow from mistakes. There is so much power in sharing our mistakes and learnings, I share some of what I got ‘wrong’ in my ‘what I wish I knew as a sustainability lead’ blog.
Learnings for sustainability professionals: Practice learning to accept ‘mistakes’, being open and sharing them with others, practice self compassion and knowing that there is no ‘right’ way.
Having a sense of achievement and celebrating the wins
We had a month to learn the dance and then perform it to around 100 people. We knew what we were working towards and there was an end point and we all had a huge sense of achievement after we finished. From the interviews when we asked about people’s highs in their roles, a common one was when a project was achieved or a milestone was reached. These were few and far between because it’s often such long term work, that requires a lots of different people to act and take a long time. Sometimes the small wins seem insignificant to the scale of change needed and the effort required to make even a small change makes the big change feel daunting. In the dance show, we celebrated a lot, congratulated each other for making progress, and we're all on a high after the performance. We need more celebration and recognition of the achievements and progress made by sustainability professionals.
Learnings for sustainability professionals: Celebrate the small wins and work on internal validation and self recognition of progress. Celebrate others who have contributed to change and progress on the sustainability agenda. Regularly look back and reflect on the progress you’ve made.
Mindset matters
In the final dress rehearsal, I ended up on totally the wrong side of the stage at one point and then laughed my way through the rest of the rehearsal and made a load of other mistakes. It didn’t phase me because I knew all I could do was my best and there was nothing at stake. Before the show, I did some breathing exercises to calm myself and visualised the dance and doing it well. And it went well. Others were getting nervous and panicked about it and thinking about the parts they kept making mistakes on and after were picking up on mistakes they saw in the video.
Eco anxiety was a very common experience for sustainability professionals. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the negative version of the future and to think it’s all going to turn out bad, a few interviewees felt like ‘whats’s the point?’, when the effort and emotional investment into sustainability projects didn’t pay off and they were faced with the scale of the world’s issues. (I share my tips on eco-anxiety here).
Learnings for sustainability professionals: Working on your mindset matters, learning to know and welcome emotions and to focus on what positive future you are working towards. Feeling congruent about what you are doing, so you feel like you’re working in alignment with your values.
Similarities
Imposter syndrome
I have not learnt choreographed dance since I was about 14 and had a very strong belief that I couldn’t and that I was the only one who was slow at picking up the moves. Imposter syndrome and feeling like a fraud were common in the sustainability interviews, people felt like they didn’t know enough, like they needed to know everything about sustainability and everyone else expected them to be an expert.
Coaching has massively helped me to notice my limiting beliefs and to not follow the train of thought of imposter syndrome - in all aspects of my life - so for example in the dance whenever I thought - ‘I’m so behind, everyone else has got this but me, they all must think I’m so uncoordinated’ - I changed the narrative in my head to ‘I’m learning, I’ve nailed that other section really well, I can practice this later at home, I’m doing great’. Being conscious of the negative thought and then choosing a positive empowering thought helped me not only to stay present and learn much better, it also made me a better person to be around. Learning a dance and learning how to ‘do sustainability’ there is no right way, there’s no expertise or experience you ‘should’ have, it’s just about doing your best.
It takes a lot of people all working in the same direction to have an impact
If I had done the dance solo, it wouldn’t have looked great, with 13 of us, it looked awesome. Those who caught onto the moves quicker than others, would spend time teaching others, not just because it’s kind to help but also because it would be a better show if we were all doing the dance well. In our interviews, we asked about people’s highs and lows - a common high for sustainability professionals was when they were around other sustainability professionals, at sustainability events, sharing their insights and learnings with others.
A number of people we interviewed were the only person working on sustainability in their team. We will go further faster and have more fun if sustainability is a truly collaborative effort. Generally those working in sustainability are working towards a greater goal and purpose and knows it requires a movement across every organisation and we become stronger and make more progress if we work to support each other and lift each other up.
In both the need for self-compassion is high.
In both interviews and in the dance show, there are some people who were more highly critical of themselves, annoyed at themselves for not getting the move right or feeling like it was their fault a project didn’t happen (this used to be me too). I believe self-compassion, resilience and success are related. The more self compassion we can create for ourselves by noticing the inner critic (sidenote -give it a name like ‘Gwendoline’ or something because that inner critic isn’t you talking) and then choosing to think different thoughts can completely change the way you feel and therefore how everyone else feels around you. If you think you are rubbish at dancing or you’re not articulate enough to make a point about sustainability in a board meeting that will rub off onto others. Practicing self-compassion and believing in yourself can be key in unlocking your potential and positively influencing those around you, transforming not only your own mindset but also your sense of fulfilment.
Inspiring the next generation
I took part in the show partly because I wanted my 4 year old niece to watch and hopefully be inspired to find something creative and fun that she loves doing and we often now have little dance parties when I go visit with my nephew too. Often those working in sustainability do it because they want to be part of something greater, they want to have an impact, they want to make the world a better place for others and the future generations - and what a beautiful purpose to have.
The research project on the personal experience of sustainability professionals, which was done with Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs from the University of Strathclyde, will be released soon.
We are launching the results on a webinar on the 24th July, you can sign up for here. We are focusing on the support required for sustainability professionals, we believe there is a missing acknowledgement of a number of softer skills required for sustainability professionals to succeed and from our interviews we identified these skills and what support is needed and wanted by sustainability professionals.
If you would like to see the results then subscribe here or follow me on linkedin.