My most recent SustainableBusinessForum piece takes a look at Outdoor Afro, the thriving social-media savvy business launched by Rue Mapp.  This business, which emerged from Rue’s personal passion, is now powerfully connecting African Americans with nature – and with each other – and is poised to do so much more.

Here’s an excerpt:

As the business has developed, Mapp has taken cues from the ways in which social media and interdependence of many systems of connections mimic nature. The more diverse, multi-platformed “habitat’ forms the strongest foundation, which lends Outdoor Afro its likely long-term sustainability as a community. 

In order for the business to create and maintain this, as Mapp puts it, “pathway for people to attach to, that is relevant in their own lives,” it must:

• Serve up deep, personal, authentic engagement. Mapp’s audience, for example, knows she truly understands their interests/issues/apprehensions about doing more camping, hiking or biking.

•  Provide many ways by which community visitors and members can connect with one another around the brand.
•  Amplify the passion and engagement of the core audience so that they then go on to influence their own families, friends and communities.
•  Partner with affinity groups and NGOs to broaden reach and influence.

Please check out the entire piece and let Rue inspire you!

Looking back on the past ten years,  I’d say we’ve seen a significant increase in business awareness of the importance of “emotional intelligence.” No longer a topic only for the geeky social scientist or armchair psychologist, smart businesses are starting to put the wisdom of “EQ” into play, both in serving their customers and toward becoming stronger, more resilient organizations overall.

As behavioral scientist and author Daniel Goleman put it in the subtitle of his book, Emotional Intelligence, it can matter more than IQ.  And this is seeming to be the case in sustainable business.

To be clear, Goleman does not think that IQ and EQ are opposing competencies.  Instead, his point, which I find incredibly relevant to sustainable business thinking, is that cognition is simply not enough. What Goleman wrote in this partiucular book (first published in 1995, mind you) seems advanced for its time.

So, let’s first take a look at what the four core abilities of emotional intelligence are:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship management

Now, when those abilities are considered as sequential phases of learning, it gets interesting.   Seen as phases, these abilities provide a type of map for an organizational (or personal) evolution toward sustainability:

Phase I, Self-awareness: The ability to realize that you are part of the problem.  While many businesses have gotten to this point with regard to sustainability, I suspect there are still plenty of companies that remain willing to sit with it, deny it, and so not move on to…

Phase II, Self-management: The ability to see, control and process thinking and behavior in a more healthy, responsible way.  For instance, seeing and taking control of energy efficiency and working toward healthier employee engagement could contribute much to a business’s success/development, but it must first have realized the need to work on those things.  For a few years now, the green business press has covered both newly formed and long-established companies that have made it at least this far in their journeys. (Let’s hear it for that!)

Phase III, Social awareness: The ability to allow empathy to influence business decisions.  Companies at this phase understand that doing well is not only about them, but that there are also many other human relationships involved – and in a wide range of ways.   As it stands, tackling the environmental/operational issues first in a sustainable business’s journey seems to be the most usual route, while  the raised awareness of how people interrelate with all decisions (hopefully) comes in time.  Tending to diversity, community engagement and social justice, for instance, is likely a lesser corporate priority due to inherent complexity (i.e. it is not the lowest-hanging fruit).  If I were to predict, I’d say this Phase will start to get much more emphasis over the next few years (so check back in 2017, and monitor conference session topics for their attention to the “social” in the meantime).

Relationship management: This is the ability to use the empathy you’ve been practicing at the Phase 3 level to better understand all stakeholders and see/tend to interconnections and innovative teamwork to tackle problems that may even go beyond any one corporation’s borders.  Better communication and more creative partnering and collaboration are heavily in play at this point.  Patagonia is one company leading the way on this front (their recent “Don’t buy this shirt” ad campaign and their founding member status with the Textile Exchange are two examples).

***

So, here we are.  2011 closes with wrap ups and best cases, and 2012 begins with hopeful predictions for the sustainable business movement.  While such lists can certainly inspire, your company may more effectively advance its sustainability action and training practices by examining its unique set of circumstances through the EQ lens.

Wherever you find your business currently rests within the four EQ-related phases, think about how to bring it, sustainably, to the next phase.  If your company is resting comfortably in “self-management,” what do you need to work on to achieve, and get comfortable with, “social awareness,” for example?  Perhaps more importantly, are you willing to not concern yourself with any New Year’s reflection or prediction list for at least a few years? I ask this because having longer-term vision is part of your emotional intelligence learning process.  There is no need for you to get distracted by what everyone else is doing, or not.

So, for 2012, and for the sake of helping to further the sustainable business movement, why not work on your company’s emotional intelligence?  If you do, you will be building, in wise, deliberate phases, toward the dramatic sustainability shift we all want our kids and grandkids to thank us for in the decades to come.

What’s something that most people just don’t understand about your area of expertise?

How thinking big about the connections of cultural trends, consumer behavior research, and other-things-that-don’t-seem-to-relate-at-all can give meaning and help build momentum for even the smallest individual sustainable business steps. For example, the sustainability efforts of, say, a brewery in Kansas can become a more compelling story when tied to local agriculture and responsible water use.

What’s an emerging trend that you think will shake up the sustainability world?

A new focus on developing relational traits — like communications skills and empathy — in business leaders. Pay as much attention to these as we do to the usual linear trait suspects and you’ll see the leadership paradigm shift before your very eyes. (I was just researching this for a thesis, so it’s fresh in my mind.)

***

If you haven’t come across them before, the entire series of The Atlantic Conversations is inspiring.  There are a lot of very cool people out there doing meaningful, sustainability-forwarding work.  It was an honor to be included.

I had an interesting conversation today with a friend who is a big thinker on sustainability.  We were bemoaning the fact that sustainability is a topic that can look incredibly boring in the short run, and we (as media and/or sustainable business proponents) are missing a huge opportunity to celebrate and encourage the radical new thinking, boring as it may seem on paper, that is so needed in this movement.  How do we make sustainability sexy, in all its phases and shapes, from compliance to employee engagement to fleet fuel efficiency?  And, this means it has to be sexy enough for the media to want to cover it and sexy enough for younger generations to see sustainability as a very exciting engineering, math and science-oriented career path.  A tall order.

As someone who writes about sustainable business, I am surely guilty of  being attracted to stories about huge new innovations or emerging audiences, for example.  There is something in our culture’s 24/7 news cycle that has jaded us enough that we don’t see some of the foundational work quietly occurring in many industries.  But, the boring stuff really IS moving sustainability in substantial ways, and will eventually serve as models and case studies for all (but perhaps only in hindsight).

Here’s what my friend and I were thinking: if sustainability is about systems, and seeing the long term rather than jumping for the sexiest short-term “green” thing a company or brand can do (or that can be seen in quarterly reports), why don’t we operate more systemically in the way we talk and promote sustainable business?  It is a huge risk and a 180 degree shift from our culture’s modus operandi of delivering and eating up sexy, immediate, celebrity-driven “bits.”  But, sustainability doesn’t happen on the 24/7 news cycle or in always astounding ways.

So, what is always sexy about sustainability and the steps businesses take to move in that direction?  That whoever is leading these charges is taking huge, huge risks to limit themselves to the boring work, with their eyes on a bigger, far in the future, and very exciting prize.  It’s almost an extreme sport to step off the cliff of how things have always been done in a business or ignore the traditional view of what makes for big news coverage, and say.. “you know.. we need to be more deliberate,” or “I see a very exciting long-term result if we start with this small step.”

The thing is, systems thinking involves a future-orientation, and I mean so far in the future that we might not be able to claim “we did it” or be on the cover of The New York Times because we did it.  That is what we have to give up in order to really make a difference in this realm.

But, risk-taking IS sexy.  Think fast cars, steep ski slopes, and extreme skateboarding.

So, how about focusing on the ways never-before-taken risk can lead businesses down whole new paths, into incredible collaborations and toward unanticipated innovation for the good of industries and communities overall? This less-newsworthy stuff has to happen. It is the groundwork.

If we want future generations to look back on the incredible sustainability shift that simply must take place, and be proud of us for helping in that, we have to make boring sexy.

What those involved in greening sports venues are hoping (and getting help from The Green Sports Alliance to do) is that greener consumer behavior might come to be seen as less “Seattle treehugger” and more social norm by these simple nudges that encourage composting, recycling or a similar attitude change.  I could go on and on because I find this challenge so intriguing, but instead let’s just say I spy an opportunity through my gender lens.

If going green is seen as “girly,” why not look to the “girls” who are pro sports fans?  It is not that the percentage of women in those ranks comes close to meeting that number for men, but that the women who ARE fans have a lot of influence over how their households are run, and how their families live their lives.  Women are raising tomorrow’s sports fans, so why not get their help shaping their kids to be the future’s more compost-loving and recycling aware “butts” in stadium seats?

Sustainability is a movement, not something that we’ll see the mass population embrace over night.  If those of us working for change can stand the fact that there will be no immediate and visibly huge shift in consumer behavior in our lifetimes (let’s face it), we should lay some good groundwork for future generations.   In that way, you and I and the sports venues/teams looking to go green might not want to obsess about converting today’s sports fans from their fear of “girly green,” but focus on engaging with those “green girls” who can influence fans to come.

My intention with this column is to introduce concepts, ideas and networks you’ve never noticed before as you wisely develop your sustainable businesses.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

Sustainability and women are inextricably linked.  This is not because of soft inclusive reasons, but for hard inclusive business reasons.  If interconnecting systems of operations, production, shipping, community involvement, environmental responsibility, and more are what we seek, the wider the variety of brains and human traits involved in corporate decision-making, the better. While we have a long tradition of rewarding linear and independent thinking, sustainability will demand a new priority on the relational and interdependent.

I often write about sustainability hidden in plain sight, in terms of what a person or company may already be doing that could be or help drive further sustainability.  In the same way, women are the best sustainability “marketers” hidden in plain sight.  If you want to convince your city to bike or walk more, get to know its women.  As well, if you want to sell more fuel-efficient cars or energy efficient appliances, start by engaging with women.

You may not see their faces when you first think about those topics, and they may not be the ones your ad campaigns directly target, but in most cases, women are the ones to reach for the purposes of their influence on the broader market.  And, all of what we know about marketing “things” to women can now be put to incredible use in encouraging sustainable behavior and practices.  And this is what drives my work today.

Though my writing and consulting career was founded in ten plus years of women’s market research and understanding (I co-authored the book Don’t Think Pink), my focus in more recent years has been on sustainable business and human behavior.  I am driven to better understand how to inspire and engage more people (of whatever gender) to think, live and do business through a lens of sustainability.  What my combined women’s market and sustainable business knowledge tells me is that women hold the key.

But, this is not about having women-only events or about slapping a pink ribbon with an Energy Smart sticker on a refrigerator.  Instead, it may be more about launching a business reminder campaign similar to the “Buy Local First” effort, called: Think Women First.

Why?  Because, women will connect you to what’s important, they’ll let you know which key words to use, what tone to take, which of their values your product or cause needs to reach, and – the bonus – you’ll start to understand how to better connect with men and children on the same topics.  As I have long emphasized in my marketing to women articles and presentations: understand and serve women well, and you will reach everyone better.

This doesn’t mean that women and men exist in separate, polarized camps.  Like all things sustainable, you can’t say, “let’s tackle the women’s side” this year and then address the men’s market next year, because they are connected.  Getting to know women, first, however, will speed your way into the hearts and minds of everyone else.

And, this isn’t just about reaching consumers, either! It’s also about changing organizational culture and leadership. In my recent research on corporate sustainability leadership, a similar relationship emerged, where relational traits, those long considered “softer” or more “feminine” take the lead. In other words, a business or organizational leader’s relational traits contribute to their success in doing their jobs, building teams and integrating sustainability throughout.  It is not one (relational) way of thinking as opposed to the other (linear). Instead: Think Relational First.  When leaders start there, their linear and pragmatic thinking then knows where to go and how to best be applied.

Am I passionate? Yes. In recent weeks, I’ve started to see so much potential for “Thinking Women/Relational First,” it’s crazy.  What excites me most are the mass consumer influencing possibilities.  My favorites include: 1) biking (get more women on bikes to get more people on bikes, then with more people on bikes, you see a decrease in obesity and carbon emissions); 2) the greening of sports (if you want more people to recycle/compost at the stadium, make sure you are talking to women first, then you may just get more people recycling/composting at home); and 3) college campuses (get women engaged with sustainability there, get a lot more future professionals and citizens who have sustainability embedded in their ways of living and working).

So, this is not a women’s story or a women’s issue, and I will have no pink come into contact with this post.  Instead, this is solid sustainable business wisdom that comes from someone who knows, and I am here to help.  What could “Think Women/Relational First” (but not only) do for your business?

Photo by Robert J. Pennington, courtesy RhizomeImages.com

Originally published in The Huffington Post, September 13, 2011

What if your thought leadership got you very little recognition today but contributed to an incredibly significant cultural shift that made a positive difference for generations to come? It is an interesting question at a time when business leadership should be poised to jumpstart the sustainability movement, but could a preference for “show” keep the desperately needed “shift” from happening?

A Businessrespect.net article about Upward Spiral, the Howard Schultz/Starbucks effort to stand against partisan divisions in Congress, explores this topic. The writer makes the point that the well-intentioned, Schultz-spearheaded campaign may be too quickly looking like a campaign for Schultz himself, and that could make the greater cause less successful.

To quote the article:

Entirely pragmatically — quiet influence is far more powerful. It means that once people have been influenced, ways can be found for them to rationalise the shift to their supporters by claiming authorship of their new position. It means that things can change, because the authors of change don’t feel they have to get the credit.

Therein lies the lesson: no matter how worthwhile the cause, businesses must be careful about the way the message is crafted and communicated, and be clear on whether their intention is a true perspective shift or a quick show in the public eye. Especially for the sustainable business evolution, the goal is for innovative thinking to be taken seriously and to inspire and empower others to continue working together for the change.

The legacy of Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface Inc., presents a good example of the shift approach. Only recently passed away, this “radical industrialist” and sustainability pioneer first changed his own ways and then inspired other business leaders and large corporations to do the same. Though Anderson did get media recognition and gain a name for his crucial role in the business sustainability cause later in his own process, that attention was the result of the many steps he took and the steady influence he wielded all along the way.

What does this mean for sustainability thought leadership overall? Can slow, steady and relatively under-the-radar steps toward perspective shift win the race, or do we need Twitter-worthy cover stories and press conferences held by big-name business leaders to reach mass sustainability influence? At this moment in time, I believe we need to focus on the shift over the show.

Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, is another example of someone who, like Anderson, has made a huge difference in the broader sustainable business shift. Though his name is very familiar within the climbing/outdoor industry and to those closely watching the development of the sustainable economy, Chouinard’s less recognized work in helping develop cooperative business exchanges will likely matter more in the long run. Take the Organic Exchange as one example. Now called the Textile Exchange, Patagonia and Chouinard helped found this group in 2001, and its membership today includes big-name brands and retailers, as well as supply chain companies, reflecting a quiet shift of the entire organic cotton industry toward more sustainable manufacturing processes.

Additionally, I’ve recently learned of some other exciting, industry-shifting work being done in a slow, steady and under-the-radar way. Consider either the Sustainable Endowment Institute or the Green Sports Alliance, and you will be amazed by the thought leadership and “greening” strides that have been made in just the past five years. In the case of these particular nonprofits, the participating individuals are not getting the glory of media coverage and fame, but they are instead collaborating and forming innovative partnerships for the longer-term goals of sustainability in their fields. With the help of organizations like these, college campuses and sports stadium operations are now focusing on more sustainably constructed buildings, more energy-efficient facilities and grander recycling goals. When one campus can claim a better Green Report Card grade, another steps up. When one baseball team cites 80-percent recycling rates in their MLB Green Track report , the competitive spirit drives other teams to follow.

Ray Anderson took the quiet “shift” approach to sustainable business change, and Yvon Chouinard and these two organizations are now doing the same. Their work has the potential to influence masses of people and make history, if not today’s news. So what if the individuals within any of these new, sustainability-focused collaborations don’t get the credit? The point is that their collective contributions will have an impact beyond what any 15 seconds of fame could ever offer.

Before I go further, take a look at the 10th Collegiate Edition of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary definition #2:

…the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

In interviews and conversations I’ve had with (mainly male) sustainability leaders, I keep hearing about the necessity of empathy in their work.  At the most basic level, these people have to at least theoretically walk in the shoes of a lot of other people – and experience how those people experience the world – in order to make the right decisions and be able to communicate their corporate sustainability messages well.

Whether sustainability leaders need to understand and reach a board member, investor, customer, administrative or facilities staff member, general public/local community member, or any of the other possible corporate stakeholders, the best man or woman in the job will be able to see things from a lot of other perspectives. If not, he or she will quickly lose the trust of those stakeholders, and the decisions they either make or influence will not reflect the whole system of considerations necessary for sustainable business practices.

The ramifications of NOT working with or having empathy are huge!  So, why does it still seem like empathy is for sissies?

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink writes that empathy is one of the six essential (my emphasis) “R-Directed” (right brain) aptitudes needed in this, the conceptual age:

…in a world of ubiquitous information and advanced analytic tools, logic alone won’t do.  What will distinguish those who thrive will be their ability to understand what makes their fellow woman or man tick, to forge relationships, and to care for others.

And, more from Pink:

… Because it requires attuning oneself to another, Empathy (Pink’s capitalization) involves an element of mimicry…

Where else do we hear of mimicry?  In so many writings about biomimicry, and how important the examination of nature’s models and systems can be for solving human problems as we strive toward a sustainable world.

Empathy is powerful stuff, and being able to put it to use will be something at which the most successful sustainability change agents and leaders will need to excel.

To me, that means: Empathy is not “for sissies,” but it is “for Susties!”

While in Vermont last week for the final residency of my  Goddard College Master’s Program, I noticed something.  Whether it was in workshops or site visits, the “social” element of sustainability and corporate responsibility was what made those involved – speakers or students – “lean in” or get more passionate/animated.  This was something I saw in a workshop on inclusiveness for organizational development, heard  in daily student discussion around the cafeteria table, and witnessed during a site visit with the corporate consciousness leader at Seventh Generation.

Marketing communications strategies, resource efficiencies (and product design or development on that front) and technology are definitely among the really important things to talk about and explore on the sustainability front.  But, as humans, it seems like involvement in social issues and attention to social justice, gets at what might be a truly under-tapped muscle in many of us.  And, wow – do we seem raring to use it, if what I noticed last week was any indication!

All of this is to say, that part of our charge as people who want to further our respective company’s or organization’s sustainability pursuits is to pay attention to what gets our stakeholders (employees, customers, supply chain members and so on) really buzzing.  From there, we can build.

Of course, tending to the whole complex system of interconnected people/power/profit elements is the big picture. But, if the social aspects are the ties that most directly bind more of us – as humans – to the sustainability conversation, what does that mean for how we move forward in this journey?