um it's an absolute honor for me today to introduce this webinar with three truly inspirational women their Drive Leadership and ability to hold space for others to continue or start their Journeys Into Climate conscious coaching is essential to responding to the challenges we now face so Way by way of a very brief introduction our guests today are Charlie Cox founder of climate change coaches she's an ICF accredited coach and co-author of her new book climate change coaching and today she's going to share how coaching can play a powerful role in tackling complex issues such as climate change we also have Sarah Taylor She's a senior specialist for climate change adaptation at Natural England who work in the environment sector and how coaching um so she's going to talk about her work in the environment sector and how coaching proves so valuable to her work and by no means least we also have Alison Maitland author coach speaker and facilitator tackling the changing world of work head on in the areas of leadership sustainability and inclusion Alice Allison is sharing today how she brought climate into her coaching practice welcome to you all thank you so much for sharing your valuable time today and your expertise of course so without any further delay I'll hand over to you Charlie thanks Nick so it's lovely to be here um I'm going to just share a little bit about um our book and the premise of our book which is essentially the our theory of change at the climate change coaches about how coaching has a role to play in creating and galvanizing climate action so I'm just going to very quickly show you the front cover so it sort of sets the scene for us a little bit um and the front cover of the book was quite important because we wanted to show the natural world in some way but we really really wanted to have people in it and the reason we wanted to have people in was that frequently when this in this crisis is imaged there are no people in the in the picture so it's very hard for us to see ourselves in the story and if we can't see ourselves then maybe we can't even connect to the story and we know that there's huge problems with people's disconnect from nature so um the cover shows a cross-section of the Himalayas at the top and it shows the threatened Coastline of Flores near Bali at the bottom and that was quite important to us to sort of show the problem that we're working on but we really wanted this idea of people connecting and helping each other up a hill so I'm going to just stop that share now and um explain to you why the type the subtitle of the book is the power of connection to create climate action when we came into this we very quickly realized this is a human problem is humans that have created it not not the polar bears um and therefore if we look at it as a human change problem and a change management problem on an enormous scale then surely coaches have a lot of the skills required to to make the the changes happen that need to happen this is primarily down to behavior surely now obviously it's down to um huge systems changing and many of us all of us I think when we think about the changes that need to happen feel completely powerless and so do people who are in authority and you listen to people uh interviewed about this subject they often sound threatened which is another form of powerlessness or insecure unsure or they are asserting rank as as a way of reassuring up their sense of self because this feels so destabilizing and as coaches we hear below the words and we hear the fear whatever that fear is is uh is being uh manifested as we hear it underneath us fear insecurity threat um uncertainty so we can do something about that so we decided okay so we can do something about that at individual level we can help people move from a place of disempowerment to a place of feeling capable and Powerful again when it comes to climate and we realize quite quickly that we had to scaffold two things so in traditional coaching we're often helping people believe in their individual ability to do something you know Charlie I've come to you as my coachee and I want you to help me move my career into a climate-friendly job that's what I do a lot of the time in my private practice great so you maybe don't believe you can do it but you probably wouldn't tell me that you didn't believe that other people can't get new jobs because you know other people can get new jobs but you don't maybe believe you can and my job will be to help you believe that you can but when it comes to considering the climate crisis and what we can do about it in a bigger sense we often begin to scaffold our own self-belief but then that can we do it will all these other people do it that then dismantles that belief so we need to be building agency in this and belief in the system faith in our communities faith in our governments and our organizations not just faith in ourselves and belief in ourselves and that's where the difference starts to to show up okay so that's all very well and good when you're working in an individual level but we didn't want to fall into the bear trap that we were starting to set for ourselves that it's all about individuals changing and it's all about individuals doing so because obviously you know it's not all about individuals it's about systems so how do systems change and we spend a lot of time thinking about that and we our solution and it's only one solution to the many uh solutions that need to be part of this is that actually when we connect well to each other we can move together and when we move together we can change systems so if we step back a bit to that connecting well to each other we notice that when it comes to the climate crisis we don't always connect well to each other sometimes there's blame and angst and guilt and you know sometimes we meet people who just don't talk about it with their friends because it just is too difficult so they sense themselves sometimes we meet people who can't put it down long enough to engage in a relationship because they're so tightly attached to the issue that they become quite aggressive with others and they admit it to us as coaches you know I can't believe what I just said to my best friend but I just got so triggered and we've all done it you know I've definitely been guilty of doing that too but both of them censoring and and uh and being kind of angsty so if we can own our emotions in relation to this issue if we can say when we're grieving as much as when we're feeling um upbeat and possible rather than pushing this away into anger and blame or into self-censorship pushing the feelings down then we stand a much better chance of engaging and connecting with each other when we can put the relationship first and the issue second ironically we get further with the issue because we've spent more time connecting with what someone cares about what their particular stake is in the issue rather than trying to enforce our stake and when we can then connect we help them to engage we help them to feel safe and you know this is no surprise to any of us because this is what coaches do in coaching sessions and at the climate change coaches we work with organizations and networks to help them on their change Journeys and in our group coaching we frequently find that we have teams come into group coaching who just lack confidence in their ability to solve the the problem to to land the organization's climate agenda into their team and because they lack confidence they put it off and once you create a nice safe coaching space they say I just don't know what to do or I'm really worried I'm going to upset our existing Relationships by telling them that their services aren't good enough for our company anymore or I I just don't feel clever enough to understand this topic we hear that a tremendous amount this is too complicated this is for the scientists but actually all of us have a foothold all of us have mistake certainly but we also all have a foothold so that's about initial connection but there's another reason to connect really well which is we need to go on a journey together and so it's not just about initially connecting well but it's also about staying connected and we see movements splintering all the time because people can't manage their emotions inside the movement because this is a really hot topic so how can we then use coaching skills to help movement stay together to help organizations understand the voices of dissent as a useful voice not just a pain in the neck when we're trying to get stuff done because if we don't take people with us who are dissenting apart from the fact that that's not great in terms of inclusion it's also an opportunity to set them up to derail the process or to recruit others to dissent with them so um that's why the strap line to our book is the power of connection to create climate action and we really believe that coaching has a huge role to play in this space in two different ways the first is that we can coach we can use our skills even if we're at the school Gates even if we're in the supermarket even if we're in our MP surgery as a constituent we can use a coaching coaching skills to understand what where someone's coming from and to connect better with them so that we can invite them to change but we can also use coaching behaviors of non-judgment and compassion and curiosity and belief belief that people are good and right we can use those behaviors all the time inside and outside of our coaching practices and so this book was written not only for coaches it was written for people that need to push a climate agenda in their work that this is their job whether they're internal coaches who we also train or their sustainability leads or Environmental Protection professionals or activists who have an agenda unlike coaches and wants to help other people get on board with it so you'll notice if you read the book that it's written as coaches we know so we hope to put our arms around all of us in this room and and put some power in our arms and we often offer really practical examples in the book of conversations not between coaches but between people in an office or between my favorite couple in the book Petra and Raheem and she wants to go vegan and he doesn't and the kind of arguments they have about it but we also have a couple of people in a in a local community activist group and these are all fictitious we made them up but they have fascinating conversations with and without coaching skills to show you how these skills can work and we also have 40 contributors who bring the book to life by telling us how they've used these skills and two of those amazing contributors are here today so um without further Ado uh I'd like to hand over to Sarah um because Sarah can really uh share with you how this has landed in Natural England so we we had the pleasure of working with and her case study really I feel brings to life a lot of um how are these coaching skills can be useful so Sarah can I hand over to you yes thank you Charlie thank you so much for having me here today I'm really excited to be here and um I'm I'm sort of just starting out I still feel like I'm just starting out on my coaching Journey but I've been working in climate change for about 15 years now and at the moment I work for Natural England the government advisor on nature conservation and uh my job title is senior specialist climate change adaptation um and what that kind of involves is taking evidence and information from you know the researchers and scientists and sometimes doing some research and putting together some evidence ourselves but taking that stuff and then putting it into usable resources um training programs documents uh having conversations with all of the people that I work with all of my colleagues across all of the work areas that we cover and also all of our external partners and friends as well that are sort of working towards the um action on the biodiversity and climate crises uh or those who aren't and that we need to kind of talk to you about how we do that and you know that's a that's a big job internally as well you may think that the whole of Natural England or an organization like that is fully on board with climate action I think we're getting there but we're certainly not there yet and the scale of the emergency that we're facing the scale of the destruction of our natural environment our life support system is such that my colleagues are often incredibly stretched we have very few resources and you know it's really hard to think about this other enormous issue of climate change and um so yeah my job is to try and get that to happen along with my colleagues many of my colleagues and uh many good colleagues and friends in Natural England um and I came to coaching a couple of years ago and I started to learn and see how that can help me in this job of trying to get people to take all this stuff on board um I am I'm that angry angsty shouty person in uh By Nature or by nurture as to however I've got here and I I was a real teller you know and I am still to a great extent but I wanted to tell people come on we need to do this it's really straightforward you know we've got this issue there's all this information that we know about let's just get on and do it okay let's go and um oh I mean to a certain extent that gets you somewhere and you're kind of a specialist so you kind of have this opportunity to provide information and those resources and training and learning to people and that's one thing and I'm talking to a great deal of people and colleagues that uh you know think similarly and and are kind of listening to what I say but I started to realize that this kind of telling wagging my finger blaming kind of telling people off kind of approach wasn't really great and I could do a bit better and and the way I realized that was by being coached myself so I was really lucky to have a trainee coach that had some hours to do and I volunteered to be her uh one of her um coaches and uh yeah I was a bit Blown Away really by the power of coaching and the power of the space in the room and I wasn't really talking about climate change but uh of course as you know um a lot of the things we talk about a lot of the things we take somewhere go very much down into the core reasons and groups of how we feel about various things so there was an awful lot that happened in that coaching space that kind of showed me how important it was for people to have that space to talk about um what drives them their purpose as I was doing and how that might really um be it how I might be able to integrate that into the way that I work um so immediately I realized the value of listening I mean I think I probably listened to people a little bit before but now having gone through coaching training and being the recipient of coaching training and coaching and amazing climate change coaching training from Charlie and colleagues I saw how important the quiet space was how important it was to listen to people and really know as you say really trying to trust in that uh knowledge that people can find those answers because I could when I was in the class when I was in the coaching room and then I could see that it could happen with others and over time with the training I've had I really I've come to a place in my listening where I I don't think I ever thought I would uh would be and I'm kind I'm tapping into that Curiosity as well trying to quiet the place where I know everything and need to tell everybody everything where I can listen and ask questions and questions are really important I'm now seeing as well the power of those really clean really open questions that really draw things out of people and how that will work you know how that works within the climate change world is that empowerment that uh opening up of how people are feeling about this issue and what it is that it will you know them exploring what it is it will take them to the place where they can act on this issue and I've realized myself that um you know this kind of approach where I'm just kind of shouting how I feel about everything um isn't really that good place for an ally to come from I'm not a great actor there I'm a much better actor if I'm connecting and including people and listening and asking those questions and being curious and that's a huge leap from where I was I think just very scared very worried very upset about everything and you know projecting that outwards it's really important because my work is now taking me into places of climate and socio-economic environmental justice and inclusion and making sure that all of the stories that are out there are at the table you know in stories that have been excluded in the past and the nature conservation world is pretty white and fairly male or fairly kind of middle class and you know we we need really uh huge changes in regard to our inclusion and thinking about how we engage with other people that don't usually kind of get a seat at the table and it's really important to think about these kind of listening modes and questioning modes and then learning from other people I mean I'm a big learner but I think there's so much that can be learned just by sitting and listening the other thing that we um sort of do on a regular basis within Natural England um we've we've built and grown our kind of emotional and mental health kind of offer to our staff and colleagues and one of the things we do regularly now is run climate cafes so people can come and talk about their emotions and through Charlie's work um from the climate change coaches to the groups of Natural England employees that took the the training from Charlie and colleagues we explored how important bringing those emotions are to the table understanding how they make you feel and and what that kind of leads to with regard to action or burnout or you know whether you can be motivated or um you know not not feel that ability to kind of move into that action and it's a really important space you know because these are enormous issues they're very they can be very overwhelming um just exploring the feelings of scares and overwhelm that we have in the group understanding that and offering that space for people to bring their feelings and emotions to work is really important and in this case it's specifically with regard to uh anxiety about our environmental State and about our sort of climate change Challenge and um people make a lot of use of it and it's a really great space to be in I also we're part of a climate change sorry part of a coaching Community within Natural England so Charlie has worked with other colleagues of mine and there's a big sort of coaching Community Learning and Development Community really trying to think about how coaching can form part of that offer to Natural England staff not only to develop themselves as Charlie was saying sort of earlier on jobs and and progression into various places but also environmental leadership and how that can span from the top to the bottom of the organization and how coaching um the coaching approach both from us as the coaching Community providing a practice for people but also from for people in those jobs working with Partners working with people on the ground trying to make these sorts of things happen how important that is and that's being led by other colleagues of mine within that coaching community and we're really starting to think about how we can really grow throw that weaving in coaching with nature as well I see one of the coaches online as a CO an in nature coach and how important that is to us as part of our being as Natural England you know we have a job to do for nature how can we use the coaching approach to make that better how can we weave in climate change without the overwhelm and scarcity feelings and how can we say how can we get what we need from nature as well as that supportive kind of role in viewing us and and emboldening us and giving us the strength that we need to carry on to do these difficult um difficult jobs and also now I'm a practicing coach as well I know that I will be that climate conscious coach I will bring climate change into the room um as an agenda I suppose as some kind of agenda or rather as Earth as stakeholder you know this idea that none of your choices are going to be neutral on other beings and other situations so making sure that that is part of the story as I am a practicing coach um is really important to me and really important to be clear of as I work in my network within Natural England and externally and I some of the most amazing um experiences uh have come to me via being coached myself and I continue to make use of that with my with my peers with my colleagues um really it's such a great thing to be part of a coaching Community both where I trained as a coach with Charlie and colleagues and also in Natural England because we can tap into that and we can support each other in this really quite difficult um thing to difficult emotional thing to kind of uh follow and and act on and I've realized and you know particularly through Charlie's work um with us as a group how important that is to really keep us kind of in the game you know making sure that we are supported emotionally rested and able to continue to do the work that we do because after I mean I came to I came to climate change about 15 years ago I was already pretty tired and upset about the state of the world so you know 15 years later it doesn't get any easier although there are glimmers of Hope and um yeah that that support that peer support and that um emotional support is incredibly uh useful and I've had some really quite profound experiences in the coaching room with with peers and colleagues and now friends that have really changed um particularly quite recently changed my ability to continue to be motivated in this job and if I through the work that we're doing with Charlie and in our coaching community in Natural England if we can give that to others and sort of spread that around you know that element of connection and working together and yeah facing it together that's incredibly important and it's really motivating so I'll finish there I think that's wonderful Sarah thank you um Allison can can we pass the bat on over to you and and after um so you know guys after Allison has spoken we're going to do some q a so uh yeah well well thank you very much and um uh thank you for inviting me to be part of this I I feel also like Sarah very very excited to be part of this and the first thing I wanted to say actually was really a huge congratulations to Charlie and um Sarah on on the book um I've just got my copy uh just started reading it um I I've got through you know the first uh chapter or two and I really recommend it because um it's full of wisdom it's full of lots of experience but also inspiration and um really you know Fantastic Tools to use and it's very accessibly written so um yeah it's thrilling to see it uh come alive and I know what hard work it's been to to bring it to the world but it's really going to serve the world um yeah so I'm uh I'm a coach um I I had a long career in international journalism and writing books um and I'm still relatively new to climate coaching I'm conscious that there are others with a lot more experience much more sort of deep experience in this area than than I have and I'm um still you know loving learning from um from other coaches with with that deeper experience but um my my purpose today is is to talk about how I came into climate coaching how I brought it into my coaching practice and also how how I overcame some of the doubts that I had about about bringing it in um and then also maybe I'll just touch on some ways that coaching that I found that coaching really helps um maybe a very much resonating with what Charlie and Sarah have said um so I was in a position where I I was already a coach but I've been focused on co-writing a book about inclusion which is interesting in the light of what Sarah's been saying about inclusion and and I was looking to focus more fully on on my coaching practice and I was wondering in the growing climate crisis you know how can I serve more what is mine to do and I was conscious also how closely intertwined climate change is with systemic inequities in the world so I was doing things as an individual as I'm sure all of you are doing um but I just that just didn't feel like it was enough and I was wondering how could I contribute my my skills not being a climate scientist or a sustainability expert or anything like that I did have some personal inspiration from my late mother because um she was someone who was really connected to Nature and she was a climate campaign in fact she became really a climate campaigner late in life and she was campaigning on Plastics and waste late into her 80s possibly even in her early 90s and that you know that was so inspiring so I sort of felt that maybe I need to live up to my mother as well a little bit but I was inspired by um in a professional way I sort of on the coaching front I I was at um a UK ICF conference that was online and I heard Charlie speaking and this just really resonated so much with me so I I also did the the program um the climate coach coach the climate change coaching program and I know there there's somebody else on on the call today who's um who did that with me which is lovely to see them um and that gave me the confidence to know that I could use these coaching skills that I had and apply them to uh and actually that they could be of immense use um I think like Sarah I particularly sort of felt that I gained confidence in um in being with the deep and really painful emotions that people experience around climate change that actually you know that experience in in other parts of their lives as well and acknowledging them sitting with them um honoring the pain as Joanna Macy and and Chris Johnston talk about in their book active hope um and knowing that something will emerge from this and that actually just having this opportunity to to process the the feelings is very likely to help people then move forward from overwhelm or burnout into more sustainable action something that will will work for them um and that action of course breeds hope we know that and that in turn Spurs more action um another I think another light bulb for me was actually realizing that climate is part of every Leader's agenda and and if it isn't yet it will very soon be accepted as such it has to be um just in the same way that diversity equity and inclusion has become you know routinely accepted as part of every Leader's agenda but um despite all of that I still wasn't sure after I'd done the program exactly how I would reach people hey you know people who wanted or needed this and um indeed you know how I would introduce it um into uh coaching with existing or new clients so so what I did was to have lots and lots of conversations um as Charlie said you know we can't do this alone and the book makes clear that we really need support in order to change and that's true I think of moving into this kind of coaching as well um our course had a fabulous International Network um and that was amazing so lots of new connections um lots of people from many different fields coming together with a common purpose which was fantastic and then um afterwards I also joined the climate coaching Alliance which is a an international Network so really reaching into the into and take trying to take coaching into a climate coaching into the global South other parts of the world that don't how easily have access to coaching and uh connecting with people indigenous people and so on in um in order to to Really sort of share and learn from each other and how can we do this how can we do this better the people often who are at the very sharp end of of climate change um and also discussions with peer coaches reading more learning more so I I noticed that I was putting my intention out there um without knowing exactly what was going to emerge from it and um I even started I started mentioning it in initial conversations with new clients um always sort of trying to stay unattached about whether they would pick up on it or not so it was like planting seeds but not necessarily they didn't necessarily Sprout immediately um and I wrote posts about it on LinkedIn and I I started bringing sort of Nature and climate more and sustainability more into my own um you know coaching what I say about myself as a coach on my website um and I just started talking to people about it friends and so on and I noticed that people pricked up their ears if I said I was a coach I was kind of a bit blank you know people already have an idea of what coaching is they're either interested or they're not but when I said climate coaching whoa that sounds interesting what's that what's that all about and that added to my sense that um this would make a difference actually it sort of helped me to overcome my inner doubts and I think through through having all these conversations making all these connections then clients started to appear and um and so I'm now coaching more leaders emerging leaders people who are changing careers who really focusing more on sustainability and um who are addressing climate change who are Keen to disrupt business as usual and I'm also coaching some some groups some teams in organizations and um and then individual you know climate activists who as as Charlie and Sarah said you know often feeling very alone or suffering from overwhelm from grief from anxiety or even close to burnout so I think there's a huge Spectrum actually sort of huge area that you can put climate and sustainability coaching into and this and I should say is I'm doing this alongside coaching other clients who are not yet focused on this area but you know maybe they're curious about it and maybe you know what their role might be so um so something could eventually come of it as well with them um and then just uh just a few things about maybe how coaching how I found that coaching can help and I think there are so many ways and the book is obviously absolutely full of these um these just these are just a few I mean Charlie mentioned that people of uh people want to make a difference they want to do something but they often don't know how they don't know what to do they feel alone or powerless and actually I think that just um acknowledging acknowledging what they are already doing is empowering and it sort of builds confidence in oh yeah actually I reckon so I am doing something you know oh so I'm not powerless so I can't take some kind of action and then building on that then they start to build on that um you know the transition that we that we have to make as human beings is absolutely enormous and we're going to have to move you know we are moving we're going to have to move from exploitation of people and nature into regeneration and that is a massive massive shift and there are lots of books about this of course but but I think you know how how we look at that and whether we see it as um as as a scarcity or as something that we're going to lose um how we can reframe that to what we can gain that that kind of reframing can help shape what people will do and whether they feel they can do something and maybe connect them with doing something that actually gives them final fulfillment or whatever so it helps people we help people as coaches to take another perspective and that's a really uh important part of it um and another thing I think is about coaching is that that change involves um head heart and gut and as coaches we can help clients get more into their bodies and more into their emotions to acknowledge and honor these um and one one other thing is that I mean I use quite a lot of visualizing in my in my uh coaching with clients so visualizing with them and um just asking people you know what's their favorite place you'll notice from your coaching but that often that usually takes people into somewhere in nature um so I was already doing coaching Outdoors some coaching Outdoors are noticing that you know clients can often breathe reflect Be Inspired more when they're when they're out in nature than sitting in front of a computer but I hadn't really sort of joined up the dots with how visceral this connection is to the natural world that we have and when you think about things like Blue Planet the astonishing response from the public to Blue Planet um in terms of you know people saying Oh we must stop single-use Plastics you know we must do something because they saw these beautiful creatures they saw this beautiful sea they saw what was happening to creatures and we have this kind of visceral really gut deep connection with nature it's just that we've lost it in many cases we've lost it it's gone and we can get it back um so so coaching in in nature is now a regular part of my my practice and I just think you know we're all curious as coaches aren't we so um you know you're you're very likely to be curious yourself so just keeping on learning and um and connecting and those things that that support you in in this work is is really important because self-care is is also a really big thing as Sarah mentioned so I'll stop there Charlie can I ask you a quick question um so you know a lot of the time people think you either need to be incredibly knowledgeable about sustainability and in the environment I have a bit of knowledge about the the science or you need to be an extremist or we're not an extremist there's probably not the an activist is what I meant um so where you know do we have to be either or can we be a bit of both um you know how do we how do we get involved and take action without either being an activist or being incredibly knowledgeable about the subject well I mean the great thing about an incredibly complicated system level problem is there are millions and billions of solutions right so you know that the difficult thing is it feels overwhelming but the flip of that and I think Alison's absolutely right one of the things I love about this is the ability to be impish and to think what the flip is all the time and the flip is it takes everybody to do everything and um in in the book Alison has a case study where she talks through Purpose with someone and helps them um imagine a an idea for what they can do based on their sense of purpose and I'd say that there's no better example than that that's what we want to be doing we want to help people connect to what matters to them um another really wonderful coach Kelly DeMarco has a story of uh the same thing like helping someone realize um that they don't have to have all the answers when their son wants to know that they could actually task their son with going and finding out the answers and that that could be really exciting for him another story in the book Elizabeth betchard who's written her own book about parenting in a climate crisis which is a beautiful book um has a story about someone who comes and says listen I don't want to be an activist but I want to do something but I don't like the idea of going and you know waving a placard and she says well don't do it then you know what would you like to today so um there's lots of different ways that we can um we can bring our sense of purpose to life I I can say I don't go on marches I just I don't like the noise and the the sort of um the huge number of people and sometimes it feels great to connect with in that way but often I sort of feel like I don't know if this is a really good use of my time I've only got you know certain arrives in the day and I've got small kids so that's not going to be the way that I take climate action so once you come to peace with that you find something else to do and you know all life is lived in the climate crisis now all jobs are climate jobs to some extent you know and we worked with them with some we trained coaches in in a bank and one of them said you know I just really like doing work with the homeless and I said well think about what it must be like for homeless people as the weather changes as Things become less predictable and more extreme so that's there's some climate change coaching in there too you may not be like badging it up that way but you're still in service so you know I I you know I think there's so many different ways that we can apply this foreign and uh Alison it's lovely to hear your journey to talking about it with other people and building that confidence about introducing it to clients as well because there may be clients who want to talk about it but never even considered it was a it was a topic and so it's it's great to hear that um I wonder if anyone uh in the room has got a question please do feel free we do have plenty of time um just put your hand up take yourself off mute go ahead and fire your questions Virginia do you want to come off thanks hello um first of all thank you so much I also just got my copy there so ready to tackle it I can't wait um so I'm also a relatively new approach um I've been for a couple of years um just finished formally my my training and I want to become a climate you know climate change coach I'm I'm a sustainability professional by trade uh So that obviously gives me a little bit of a head start sometimes uh but what I found really difficult as being coping with especially younger people coming to me with saying because I've been coaching people to start a career and sustainability for a while now uh but people coming to me and saying you know what I actually seriously considered ending my life because I'm thinking you know what's the point of this and obviously you know the response has been okay obviously in a therapist you know is that because obviously I felt really not too quick to for that sort of thing but My worry is that more and more the more we advance towards you know certain events which again it might not happen because yeah Infinity infinite infinite possibilities and this and the rest of it um but how can we equip ourselves to ourselves so to you know to to face these sort of really really big challenging issues I don't want to send every client to a therapist if you see what I mean is there a way and I know it I haven't started reading a book by the way but I know at the end that there is a coaching yourself also I suppose there is a little bit of that in there but do you have um you know some suggestions in that sense I wonder if either Sarah or Allison you've got something you'd like to to say about from being sharpened I mean well I I think perhaps it's more for you and Allison as a more practice coach maybe I mean I've had situations in which I have not not this particular situation but a difficult situation with a client and um yeah it's been you know the the talking therapies some kind of talking therapy was the place for them to deal with that particular issue but we could carry on and do other things um you know it was possible for her to say work well I do like you've helped me realize how Central that issue is to the thing I came to you with so I do need to kind of face that and it wasn't my place to kind of help her face that um so I I I've had that experience where you yeah you have to send people off somewhere else the other thing though the kind of anxiety the extreme anxiety that you describe it's a normal reaction it's a natural reaction to the situation that we're in and it can seem really hopeless and um I I don't have an answer to that except for the fact that if it's possible if you can support yourself get the support that you need in order to join with people make connections and feel part of something larger that is moving it in the right direction and this I'm speaking from you know personal experience here not from feeling suicidal but from feeling like there might not be any point in this and I do have those days still a lot but um there's been a lot that's kind of avoid me and it's always been about making the connections that I'm part of something bigger and not on my own but you know the situation is that dire that we are in that place so these big things are going to come well I I mean I I haven't I haven't actually had that circumstance arise um and I mean we obviously have responsibilities as as coaches and our ethical responsibilities and you know exactly what you what you said um uh Virginia about you know sort of referring referring somebody if if they were saying talking about suicidal thoughts or harming themselves or harming any or somebody else or whatever it was you know um I would do what what you did um but I think there and I know you raised such an important point and there are lots of coaching psychologists as well who are kind of closely allied with um with like with climate coaches climate coaching psychologists so there are lots of sources of help but um but in terms of I but I have I have coached clients with sort of you know Eco anxiety and that is very heavy and um uh and I think there's something just about providing the space and uh for them to speak and to share their grief and to order share their anxiety or their feelings and um actually just sitting with them and listening can be an enormous relief just in itself that can be a sort of starting point for kind of getting back to getting back onto into some kind of balance because they are not listened to maybe they're not being heard but maybe they do feel alone all of those things yeah Charlie what would you what would you add all of everything you said is is um and I think if someone is you know if maybe mentioned suicide then then that's the very obvious as you've said both of you are very obvious referral in the book we have a piece from Megan Kennedy Woodard who is one half of climate psychologists um with her husband who trained with my husband as clinical psychologist well enough and um so she writes about when she refers to she sometimes has a coach hat on and sometimes as a psychologist so if she's working with a coaching client she talks about what she's looking for that would would refer would she would refer someone but I think we also need to recognize that you know whether we're inside a coaching session or not um we can listen I think some of the danger zone is when we start unpacking and we're driving the unpacking what we hear from people more is that they're not suicidal they're not quite at that end but they are feeling very anxious and they're brushed aside or it's they're sort of pushed away because it feels very difficult to be with for other people and that that's more damaging than someone who says do you want to just talk about it and then who doesn't say anything just lets them talk and so I think we can remember that we do hold that space as coaches as Alison said um and then the other thing is that perspective piece you know recognizing that we're taking a slice of the world view when we see that the despair View and believe me you know when I woke up to the news from America and Roe versus Wade I went straight into the despair view about global politics and then I stood back and I asked myself what other views are available to me and I went to the school fate for a couple of schools over from me and I remembered that there are lots of really great people doing stuff for their community and that view was a very different it gave me a very different mindset to this View and and so we can help people without rushing them we can help people to recognize the mindset they're taking the reason I say that is I had a client who funnily knocks in the book because she's just brilliant and she said to me she came into a session and she said I opened up active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnston and it said and it's very out of date now I imagine it said there are I don't know five million organizations around the world working on climate and I thought oh I'm not alone exactly to your point Sarah and it it gave her a different slice of the world to look at so um one of the things I say to people is we know the house is on fire why are you still reading the fire reports you know some of us get really addicted to reading and consuming really bad news and I notice when I do that it's not good for me so there's there's sort of you know there are ways of of helping people but I think one of the first things to do is everyone said is to get in the hole with people and just listen when they're in that place thank you everybody does anybody else have any questions okay Matthew do you want to take yourself off mute I don't want to question more of an observation but um I'd really interested in what Sarah was saying about the uh Natural England and I never really thought that there would be a struggle trying to convince naturally because maybe my years in local government should have taught me otherwise but uh um but it then started me thinking about that sort of national layer and politicians and and local politicians as well which you must come across at various times or your colleagues do and I'm just wondering whether a message around listening and climate change for politicians is probably that that would be pretty radical for them it feels like so I didn't know whether you had any experience of that sort of Engagement with politicians and using coaching skills with them whether that was um have been used at all uh well maybe Charlie has some experience with coaching politicians I don't I don't know or Alison um I yeah I mean in my job I come across uh people at that level occasionally or more at arm's length really and but some of my colleagues do um I I must say that I sort of do tend to focus my efforts and my connections to you know the people that I feel are doing the real work you know on the ground uh the kind of bulk of us down here kind of getting stuck in um but yeah it's really important and colleagues have recognized that the the piece about environmental leadership that I mentioned earlier and the focus on that um from our from my Learning and Development and coaching Community colleagues from top to bottom you know that that is something that we need to change as part of our uh culture and um using um coaching in nature and sort of looking at problems in different ways um as Charlie sort of suggested um and yes I absolutely think that we can move into a place where we can take these coaching skills and these listening skills and share them and use them in all kinds of other places and and Charlie might speak about a group of my colleagues that um that go out and do very difficult work with with people and have you know difficult conversations and how coaching training has sort of really helped them have that and you know I'm pretty sure that would the talking to politicians would fall into the difficult conversation category um in the most part you know some of them not so much but in the most part but yeah it's a really it's a really difficult um situation but I just what Charlie said before about climate change being everyone's job you know that's our message to my colleagues we have a climate change team in Natural England and that can give the impression that we're dealing with it so you know over here someone else is doing something else they're doing planning or farming or you know nature reserves and sites and things like that and and it may and it has been difficult and especially with cuts that come from politicians over many years that really have you know drained us down and and shrunk the resources to do this growing again now which is good but um it's really difficult to get that message out across to everybody that it is your job my job all of our jobs and that that really is you know a key message because across the board in Natural England and all the way out it's um it's part of our jobs so yeah I agree it's something to aim for hmm I'm just going to put a link in there there's I always forget to do this but we can give you 20 off the book on the publisher can if you use that link um before everyone goes um there's a great story that if I've got time to read it I'll read it to you from the from the book that somebody wrote for us about politicians I'll see if we've got time um but everybody has a stake and it might not be obvious so I'll give you a story that I know which I do not come off well so my Builder I was building a kitchen extension and I made my build a tea with loose tea and this little ball thing is before I discovered tea bags they didn't have plastic in them and I and he said what the hell are you doing and I said well you see tea bags have plastic in them and I'm trying to avoid plastic and he said that is just Daft you know it's just completely Daft and I thought there's me you know talking about five in terms of people and connecting and I've completely screwed up with the builder so the next day I said to him look you know Stuart you love fishing you spend you tell me endlessly how often you spend you know fishing every one day of every weekend uh surely you're worried about plastic in this in the rivers and he said oh yeah yeah yeah and he said don't get me started on building waste look out there all those bags of cement that used to be in paper now it's in plastic it actually incenses me but I think that tea bags is just a sideshow so he had a value around proportionality or something like that and I was just jabbing at it you know and and triggering it it's like oh what what a complete waste of time but he did have a reason to care and I've heard that fishing story from someone in Australia on a webinar who said that their climate denying cousin also had a moment of like oh I guess it's climate change when he asked him about fishing so everybody has somewhere that they care um and yet they may push back when you tell them about why you care and you may need to find their sweet spot of caring and we know this from Catherine Hayes talks about left and right of politics you know so um I'm not going to get a chance to read his story but um Virginia is is early on in the book I can't find the page but it's um uh it's uh Jill Bruce Jill Bruce is one of the most inspiring women I've ever met she's in her 70s though she doesn't look like she's in her 70s um she is a climate Ambassador for the women's Institute in Essex which is a voluntary Organization of Women across the country um and they have quite a lot of climate ambassadors they've been working on climate for decades my mum was in the wi working on climate and she decided she wanted to get her MP sir Berna Jenkin to care about climate and yet he voted consistently with the government which was often against uh the benefit of the environment so she very cleverly invited him to chair an event that she would run every year on climate she didn't know anything about climate change particularly but you'll read in the book she said you know we have to do something Our Generation has unwittingly you know made this mess we've got to do something about it which is incredibly inspiring she could be retiring and just having a nice time but instead she's learning about climate change and she's trying to flip an MP she'd never lobbied an MP either but she went to see him at his constituency office and she made friends and she says in her story I never attacked I never you know blamed she played a long game she also was clever because she realized that if you invite an MP to just do a speech they just turn up for their bit and then they nip off again so she asked him to chair because then he'd have to stay the entire time and then she asked people like me and really influenced people the people I was on a panel with were mind-blowing to come and do speeches she had a boat 60 people at the one I was at and they were all women and they were all rural women of a certain age and demographic who were his voters basically and she invited him and she said over six years he sat through hours of speeches about climate change from specialists and last year he put out a YouTube video saying that the rest of his political career was dedicated to the climate crisis Jill Bruce didn't know anything but she decided she had to do something and she applied this rule of issue second relationship first and and because she never attacked him because she said listen I think we can do this together he was more open to influence as a result and I just think that story is so incredibly inspiring you know we can all do this we just think we can't but actually we really can um so I think we should probably end on that on that note and over to unit thank you Emma so much um that's a really lovely story to finish on um I want to express my deep gratitude to uh to you Charlie Allison and Sarah for for giving up your really valuable time thank you so much for being here today um I don't know about all of you but I definitely feel uplifted I feel optimistic about the power of coaching and about the power of collective action here as well for that we that we can all participate in thank you ever so much everybody um that is all