Thrive! A Group Coaching Programme for Sustainability Professionals - Nov 2024
***SIGN UPS CLOSED - If you are interested in a future programme, please drop me a message
Being a sustainability professional can be hard.
You’re the one that people apologise to for not recycling or missing targets.
You’re the one that has to ‘sell’ sustainability to a business.
You’re an influencer because you need ‘everyone’ in the organisation to be making changes, yet you have few (if any) staff directly reporting to you so you have to influence and cheerlead on those who can make sustainability initiatives a reality.
You’re the one trying to change the fabric of how an organisation thinks and behaves, with very little support, resources or budget for your work.
And on top of all, not only do you have to deal with your own eco-anxiety, you also become the undercover eco-anxiety therapist for others as your role force others to confront the scale of environmental and social crises we’re facing and manage the understandable emotions that arise from this awareness.
Often you are doing all this on your own or with a small team.
It can be a lonely role, but you aren’t alone: there are many sustainability professionals out there going through the same experience of trying to make a difference without burning out. So let’s learn together and support each other to thrive!
We surveyed 92 sustainability professionals* and almost 50% said they wanted to join a group coaching programme, so we created Thrive! If you can resonate with any of the challenges below and would like to be part of a supportive group of other sustainability professionals to work through them together, then come and join Thrive!
If you feel weighed down by the weight of the world, and holding the burden of sustainability on your shoulders. If constantly being immersed in news and predictions about the future and doing your best to try and improve things when others don’t seem to care is taking an emotional toll on you and you notice you often feel drained, overwhelmed, sad or frustrated, then…
….Learning how to be with these emotions and to take the weight of the world off your shoulders can be a relief. In Thrive, we’ll create the space for you to work through the emotional experience you face in your role in a group where everyone else gets it. We’ll learn about emotional intelligence skills and different techniques that can support you to process your emotions in a healthy way so you can better show up in your work and life in a more calm, motivated and joyful way.
If you feel like you’re not good enough at your job, you’re not doing enough to make a difference or you don’t know enough - like that new regulation that’s just come out, that report that was released or that new technological development. If you have that feeling of being an imposter then…
….learning that you are enough and you already know enough can help you show up with more confidence. Accepting the fact that this is a rapidly evolving industry and that it’s impossible to know everything means you can let go of that feeling of not being enough. In Thrive, we’ll explore and challenge the beliefs that might be sitting behind those feelings of not being enough and choose a new way of being that empowers you to know that you are enough and makes you capable of doing so much more because you aren’t weighed down by the voice of self-doubt.
If you feel like your company isn’t walking the walk on sustainability. They say they care about sustainability, they talk about it in their marketing, they’ve made some commitments but no ones taking real action, they’re not giving you the budget you need, they keep pushing projects back or cancelling them all together, you feel left wondering, does anyone really care? Am I really making a difference here? What’s the point?
... Learning how to have the important conversations takes courage and the belief in yourself. They hired you to be the voice of sustainability, so how can you become the best voice for sustainability and have the most impact. In Thrive, we’ll explore the different ways to communicate, influence and persuade those at all levels in your business so you can inspire and motivate others to come with you on this journey.
If you feel like you’re not getting paid what you should, at the level of seniority you want or aren’t getting the budget to support your personal development - developing your confidence to ask for what you need, to know your worth and the value you bring...
…In Thrive, we’ll help you better understand the value you bring, build your confidence to ask for what you want and need and what you’re worth, and to have the impact you want to.
If you feel lonely in your organisation. If people cancel meetings with you or dismiss your excellent questions or suggestions. If you don’t feel listened to or seen, maybe people roll their eyes at you when you speak in a meeting or make a joke at the expense of sustainability and aim it at you. If you don’t have a supportive team around you that ‘gets it’…
…Connecting with others going through a similar experience can be extremely validating and give you renewed energy. Learning to communicate your needs and have more open conversations can help, as well as learning how to take care of yourself. Being part of a like-minded group of sustainability professionals, building relationships outside of your organisation can be a support system and a catalyst for more impact. In Thrive, you’ll be part of a supportive group of sustainability professionals all facing these challenges who are all motivated to work through them and to support each other.
On the Thrive! Group coaching programme, each week, we’ll explore one of these themes and work through various exercises together to help us collectively understand the experiences we are all facing, and we’ll guide you through some coaching practices and exercises which can help. There will be a mix of group work, working in pairs and individual reflection.
By the end of the programme, you’ll have made new sustainability friends, you’ll have developed skills to have important conversations, you’ll feel more energised in your role, you’ll feel like you’ve learnt coaching skills that cannot only help you in your day to day life, but that you can take back to your organisation and help you achieve more in your role…
…Not bad for a couple of hours every Friday in November.
*We surveyed 92 sustainability professionals and interviewed 28 of them to understand what challenges they faced and what support they needed. You can find the results here , they have been shared in IEMA’s Transform magazine and we are working with them to integrate more soft skills development into their competency framework. This programme was created in direct response to what we heard was the support sustainability professionals really wanted from those interviews and we’re really excited to offer it.
What is Thrive!?
Thrive! is a group coaching programme for sustainability professionals who want to move beyond the you’re-passionate-and-the-world-is-on-fire-so-you-must-work-harder-then-burnout mode of thinking, to work in a way where you are thriving and having more impact, with less stress.
If you want to feel more connected. If you want to learn from others. If you want to work through the hard stuff that comes with the role. This is the place for you. This is a space where we all know the reality of the challenges we face, and we know that by resourcing ourselves, by learning how to be more confident, have more courage, manage our stress and the emotional load of the work, how to be more content with what we can do - we can achieve so much more. And doing it together in a safe space where we can be open and honest about our experience in a way we often can’t be in our day to day jobs. We’ll connect, we’ll lift each other up and you’ll have a new tribe of people cheering you on. You will develop practices and routines in order to feel confident that you can continue to overcome these challenges, to thrive in your role and to make a difference in a way that leaves you feeling calmer and more content.
Your programme facilitators:
Heather Lynch is a coach who works with sustainability professionals to support them to find more clarity, confidence and calm so that they can live and work in a more balanced and fulfilling way. Having worked in sustainability for 10 years, as a sustainability consultant at PwC and Head of Sustainability at Oddbox, Heather has experienced first hand the challenges that many sustainability professionals have. She is an ICF certified coach and her mission is to support people wanting to make a positive difference in the world to feel happier, more fulfilled and more at peace with themselves and what’s happening in the world. She also facilitates workshops on emotional resilience in uncertain times and the conscious evolution collage; hosts monthly mindful nature walks in Surrey and has a podcast which explores how personal growth enables systemic change, called On Becoming the Change.
Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs is a somatic coach mobilising sustainability professionals to find joy in climate action. Katherine has spent over 15 years studying and researching the complex question: how do we live an environmentally friendly life? She has a Bsc and PhD in Sustainable Development and is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow in Sustainable Design based in Scotland. After a decade of community mobilisation for climate action - co-founding a Transition Town, helping raise more than £1 million to set up community sustainability projects, and rewriting her University’s environmental policies - she paused to take a few years to figure out how to do epic things without burning out. Katherine is an integrative coach, with over 300 hours of experience, certified by the Ethical Coaching Collective.
The details
What: This is a 4-week programme launching in November. We’ll come together online as a group of like-minded sustainability professionals every Friday to collectively work through the often unspoken challenges we face. The heart of the programme is small-group coaching to develop our confidence, emotional regulation and the feeling of solidarity. The group coaching sessions will be supported with optional one-on-one coaching sessions (one 30 minute session with Katherine or Heather), reflective exercises and accountability buddies. Together, we will build community and create a space for exploration, reflection and connection.
Who: Anyone working in a sustainability role within an organisation, whether it’s as a Head of Sustainability, Sustainability Manager, Climate Change Lead or in a team that puts environmental and social issues at its core. Corporate, third sector, SME, government, all welcome.
When & Where: We will meet online every Friday from 1-2:30pm GMT from the 8th November to the 29th November. (If you’re interested in joining, but this time will not work for you, get in touch).
Cost: You can choose the rate that best fits your circumstances:
Full rate: £120*
Reduced rate: £95
*Paying the full rate, if you can, helps keep the programme available to those who can’t.
This fee includes 4 live group coaching sessions, a 1:1 30 min coaching session, reflective exercises to do between sessions and a supportive community.
This is a discounted rate as this is the first cohort we are running. We would greatly appreciate feedback so we can develop and improve the programme.
Payment accepted in GBP and USD.
Participants often use their organisations personal development budgets to fund the programme. If you would like some inspiration on how to ask for budget for courses like this, we put together this resource.
How to join the programme:
We would love to welcome you on the programme. If you are ready to join, please make payment through the below links, then we’ll send you onboarding information to welcome you on the programme and share more details about what to expect. We’re excited that you want to join us on this journey!
Sign up to Thrive! at the full rate - £120
Sign up to Thrive at the reduced rate - £95:
If you want to hear more about the programme and aren’t ready to enrol yet, sign up to our mailing list.
If you can’t join this cohort but want to stay in touch and hear about future offers and other resources and support for sustainability professionals, then you can also sign up to the mailing list through the link above.
If you have any questions, then send an email on hello@heatherlynch.co.uk.
We look forward to welcoming you on the programme,
Katherine and Heather
