Ey up from Bristol (we moved at the weekend!)
This week’s ep. was about energy, but my takeaway is actually a psychology one…
When Juliet Davonport founded Good Energy in 1999, 2% of the UK’s grid was renewable.
Now, it’s ~50%.
In those 27 years, she’s faced a LOT of opposition from fossil fuel companies and interests.
And possibly my most interesting takeaway from our conversation was her mindset around how to approach ‘the other team’
It’s invaluable because, if you give a 💩 about climate/sustainability right now, the ‘other team’ can feel very loud (sometimes overpowering, e.g. revoking US endangerment finding).
So I asked
“You founded a community driven renewable energy business. Does lobbying by fossil fuel companies anger you or do you feel like it’s just kind of like what you would expect them to do? Are you quite indifferent?”
It’s part of what their business model is. But getting angry about it? No, I didn’t really get angry about it. I just tried to figure out ways to get around it“
Her mindset was striking.
Very pragmatic, not getting wound up or emotional. She just expected they would behave in this way and knew what being reactive would do.
Where did that mindset come from?
“So I did a really interesting process once called the constellation process. You use it in psychotherapy quite often.
The concept is that each person embodies a particular actor in a situation. So somebody became an oil company, somebody became a protester, somebody became a politician.
And you put them on the floor and then they act in the way that you would expect them to and see what happens and see what resolves.
But the thing that really struck me was that when you see the bad actors facing off against the activists, there is almost like a dual energy that matches each other, that gets stuck, that there’s an enjoyment on both sides.
And actually, it can almost get in the way of getting things done and getting on and moving forwards.
Because some of the bad actors, you’re going to have to convince they’re going to have to become good actors, and if you keep shouting at them, it becomes very difficult for them to change their position.”
I’m guilty of this.
Finding myself in a YouTube rabbit hole of watching videos of Trump or Farage talking about fossil fuels or climate change and feeling the anger, frustration and tension boil up.
Juliet takes this mindset into all of her work, and it clearly works.
So next time you find yourself facing the other team, ask if you’re genuinely trying to find a solution, or just feeding off their energy.
Check out the episode at
Last, big thank you to Ecologi for sponsoring the pod! They’re the UK’s most trusted climate action platform.
They help businesses reduce their emissions, restore our planet and report their progress for every step of their climate journey. So if you’re a sustainability manager or taking steps for your company to be more sustainable, check them out here
Have a fab week,
Rob
P.S. This is cool
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