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.)

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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.

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?

Just a single day at last week’s BALLE conference in Bellingham, WA, gave me a lot to think about.  Here’s an excerpt from my HuffingtonPost piece:

“Living Economies.” Though the phrase is a mouthful, a lot more businesses, and businesspeople, should be seeing themselves as part of them.

Perhaps because so much of what we read about business today seems to be reports on bad corporate (or corporate leader) behavior, “business” is getting a nasty reputation, and could definitely use a re-framing. That’s why “living economies,” as coined by the founders of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), is an interesting place to now turn. The way business gets done within this alliance is something so much greater than business as usual.

BALLE members are not content with the old-fashioned, silo-ed ways of doing business. The more local, living economies they participate in are interconnected networks of businesses working together to sustain themselves, the environment and all of the people involved (employees, customers, community members, and beyond). The organization itself exists because so many small- to medium-sized business owners believed in the power of bottom-up, networked change. As the BALLE site puts it: “In the age of the Internet and social networking and the emergence of ‘glocalism’ as a new form of social consciousness, we believe that never before have communities possessed as much power to determine their futures as they do today and in ways that are good for people, places and the planet.”

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I was especially impressed with the social media/networking examples covered at the BALLE event.  See Somerville Local First , for one example.

One – pay attention to how some smart retailers are now committing, and marketing differently to, the specific niche of Hispanic women.

According to this AdAge piece by Laurel Wentz, Kmart is launching a new social media effort highlighting Latina bloggers. The program sounds like it will very cleverly leverage Twitter and Facebook community building and also possibly partner with an educational foundation in the future (which would be a very wise move…).  Key words for sustainability communicators? Hispanic, women, social media.

Two – pay attention to what could be called gendered or sexist language.

Most of you know this is always on my radar because of my marketing to women background, but this particular reminder was gathered via the NYT’s obituary (of all places) of Kate Swift, a co-author of The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. For one, beware of the generic use of “man” (as one of that book’s Amazon reviewers notes).  What if the readers or receivers of your messages were mainly women – because that may well be the case, right now.  Key words for sustainability communicators? gender, sexist, language, women.

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Moral of my weekend story?  If your sustainability filter is always turned on  – even if it’s just idling in the background – your brain will self-select and highlight tidbits of news that may well benefit your company’s communications strategies.  All of you reading this are primed to guide the leading edge of sustainable business practices in your respective industries. In that regard, there really is a lot of news you can use.

Be Transparently Green for Sustainability's Sake

It is not often that I come across such a straightforward example of an organization’s marketing to women thought process.  And, when that case study can be used to provide insight for  better reaching sustainability-minded consumers, it’s all the better.  So, it is with Eric Sass’s recent MediaPost piece which commented on the Wall Street Journal’s clever, and it would seem, fairly successful, marketing to women efforts.  (I know this is meta meta thinking and media covering media – but bear with me!)

As the article puts it:

Anyone who has read The Wall Street Journal regularly over the years can’t help but notice a decided shift in the tone and content of the print newspaper and the Web site, which has grown to include more non-business content: culture, lifestyles, leisure activities, and the like.

Some sort of overt outreach to the women’s market was not what worked here. It was what the WSJ did transparently that made all the difference.

In fact, the one overt “for women” thing the WSJ did was the big, admitted misstep.* As noted by Sass, though the media group did at one point introduce an online “Journal Women” section, it “has since been quietly scrapped.” (If they’d asked me in advance, I could have saved them that trouble…)  But therein lies the difference between transparent – which would be adjusting content and tone, for example,  versus visible (if not overt) – which would be a label or sign that shouts about how this over here is “for women,” so you should be reading it if you are a woman!

On the sustainability front, sometimes the “this is green” label is what really bugs consumers.  It is that visible or overt proclamation, along with the presumption that said brand or company sincerely knows that this is important to you, which makes people run the other way.  Instead, shift the features of your brand’s products or start reporting on more of the socially and environmentally responsible good your company is doing, all without the “this is green” placard, and you will reach sustainability-minded consumers transparently (and effectively). Voila.

In this way, you are letting the consumer find his or her unique “green” relevance in what it is your company is doing.  No one told them anything or decided what they needed to do or to buy in order to “be green.”  In fact, if you asked them, they’d probably not say they were “green” consumers anyway, but instead admit to being smart and socially aware citizen purchasers.

Just as the shiny new object has for years been the “women’s market,” brands are now trying to connect with the latest and greatest shiny new object: the “sustainable market.”  Take a lesson from the Wall Street Journal (I never imagined I’d suggest such a thing), and look at the content, tone and style of whatever it is you are delivering (product, service or marketing, etc.). Do those things speak the language – word, tone and style – of your sustainably-minded customers?

Though there are examples out there of media or brand initiatives that are akin to a “Journal Green” effort, those will soon be considered short-sighted.  Integrating the sustainability shift into what you already do well, and letting consumers identify it on their own, is the most effective and long term way to reach sustainable minds.

(If you are up for learning more about transparent marketing, you may want to take a look at Don’t Think Pink, the book I co-authored.  Though written about the women’s market specifically, the concepts easily convert for better reaching the sustainable market, as well.)

*Worth note: Perhaps, the slightly less business-y WSJ content actually does have something to do with business, so the definition of business is what has actually shifted (& thanks to culture)? Culture and lifestyle developments certainly do have something to do with what people buy and how the economy functions.

Photo credit: Rob Lavinsky

With that in mind, I took notice of what Adam Bryant wrote about Google’s research on leadership for today’s issue of The New York Times.  While the “building better bosses” directives developed by Google’s “people analytics” teams were by no means earth-shattering, the importance of people skills, and their priority over the technological skills so emphasized in the past, did reflect a notable shift.

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock’s group found that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

People skills are demanding more attention in leadership chronicles overall, and a heightened level of social, human-to-human, awareness and ability to communicate with many different audiences is crucial to sustainability leadership, more specifically. (Books by Paul Hawken, Ray C. Anderson and Bob Doppelt can serve as resources on this.) So, what is the “chicken or egg” connection? Which comes first?

Does the integration of sustainability into business culture and processes cause companies to prioritize people skills, or does a new perspective on people skills bring sustainable agendas to the business forefront? This question fascinates me, obviously, but that isn’t the point.  The exciting part is that something is giving more credence to the fact that people skills matter a lot (and to me that also means they won’t continue to be stereotyped as a”woman’s” strength so much).  If sustainability is forcing the issue, all the better.

The crucial move toward sustainability may not come easily for either huge corporations or the average consumer, but we can hasten this evolution by identifying and nurturing the personality traits that most naturally drive sustainable living. Those qualities that we’ve long called “feminine” could be the answer.

No matter how many men also possess them, traits like empathy and a focus on communication and social connections have long been categorized as “women’s ways.” But those same traits also seem to be at the root of sustainable personal and organizational behavior. Understanding known gender differences in thinking and decision-making could provide insights and tools to move sustainability forward more quickly and productively.

Gender Differences in Thinking and Talking

The differences, however subtle, in the ways men and women tend to think and communicate may have important implications for sustainability. According to a 2003 study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “women’s higher levels of empathy, altruism, and personal responsibility make them more interested in environmentalism as a way to protect not only themselves and their families, but also others.” Helen Fisher, sociologist and author of The First Sex, found that women, when compared to men, are more process-oriented and “gathering,” that is, they look to find multiple interactions and multidirectional paths. And sociolinguist Deborah Tannen notes in her book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation that, as opposed to men who “speak and hear a language of status and positioning,” women “speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy.” All of the above seems to follow from brain science. For example, Fisher notes that women’s brains tend to be better integrated, right with left hemisphere. From this she suggests that “women probably have more communication between the right and left amygdalas,” which “may provide them with better access to their unconscious feelings.”

Empathy may be key to promoting sustainability. When a person is in the habit of considering the well-being of others as she makes her own decisions, she is more likely to anticipate the longer term and broader implications of each choice or opportunity. This ability to understand and feel what others might feel helps the empathetic person to, for example, connect the dots between the corporation that has been accused of environmental or social irresponsibility and her own consumer purchases. Despite being considered a “touchy feely” emotion by some, empathy can help people see through corporate or political smoke screens around environmental or social responsibility issues.

According to Tannen, women communicate by finding common ground first, while men tend to initiate communication through status comparisons or positioning. This tendency could give women a slight edge in forming the kind of support networks needed for community building and cooperation around sustainability issues.

Putting “Women’s Ways” to Work for Sustainability

How might a more relational approach (i.e., one that recognizes complex interrelationships) directly link to sustainability today? Helen Fisher’s exploration of women as civil thinkers, for one, provides some insight. Fisher finds that women tend “to enjoy making these lateral connections” and to think more contextually, with “a broad focus and long-term social goals.” This broader focus and ability to think contextually can be key to visualizing all that interconnects—and why it matters—in sustainability.

Sustainability is not a movement that can be addressed by just a handful of powerful people forcing the issue from a pedestal on high. Rather, the most powerful change agents may be the people who can connect the big thinkers with the most motivated “doers,” keeping all the players working together and motivated. Such people will certainly call on both left and right brain traits, and will require great empathy to succeed.

When organizations start to operate more along these lines, the men and women within them will be encouraged to incorporate sustainable personal values into their business decisions. When businesses and organizations appreciate and nurture these values in all employees and reward teamwork over individual success, they may come closer to achieving the crucial balance between linear and relational thinking.

Interface Inc. is an example of a company that has practiced these ideas with great success. It is the world’s largest modular carpet manufacturer and has emerged as a global leader in sustainable business. Since 1996, through the vision of the company’s founder and chairman, Ray Anderson, Interface has reduced the energy it uses to manufacture carpet by 43 percent and has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 44 percent (94 percent if you count offsets). The company’s long-term goal is to eliminate any negative impact it has on the environment by 2020. Anderson has acknowledged that “women’s ways” influenced his thinking about sustainability. Anderson writes in his book Mid-Course Correction, “I believe, too, that the ascendancy of women in business is coming just in the nick of time. It is that instinctive nurturing nature, found more frequently in women, but also present in men if they will allow it to surface, that will recognize and elevate in business the vital, indispensable role of genuine caring. Caring for human capital and natural capital (Earth) as much as we have traditionally cared for financial capital will give social equity and environmental stewardship their rightful places alongside economic progress, and move society to reinvent the means for achieving economic progress itself.”

Taking a more “feminine” perspective could mean that organizations pursuing sustainability might be more open to risking competitive vulnerability in order to form creative partnerships or share information. For the greater social good and for the responsibility of the industry, companies could tend to a broader vision, while still maintaining their focus on the all-important bottom line. The Organic Exchange (cotton) and the Green Exchange (with Nike as a founding member) are examples of unexpected and committed cooperation that has resulted in significant industry innovations.

Finally, it is worth noting that, within sustainable development, the values that serve or inspire an organization’s employees or members also attract and serve today’s consumer market. Relational, or more “feminine,” thinking balances out the long-rewarded, linear strengths of successful businesses, and brings them to a more holistic and consumer-connected level of operation.

Women as Sustainable Consumers

In recent years, Ford has been greening its automobile models, perhaps due to recent findings that point to a growing demand for green products among female consumers. A 2009 Synovate study, for example, found that “more American women than men say that their dream car is a green car” (20 percent women versus 17 percent men).  And “The Green Mom Eco-Cosm Revisited,” a 2010 poll of green mom bloggers conducted by the Social Studies Group, found household cleaning brands are under more scrutiny than ever. The study reports, “Regardless of income, respondents were equally likely to buy organic, buy local, seek out alternative energy sources, buy green toys, and choose greener transportation sources. Respondents who identified themselves in lower income brackets were more likely to minimize their overall purchasing than give up buying more costly, but environmentally safe products.”

It’s worth noting that parenthood seems to be a key indicator with regard to how consumers respond to sustainability messages or green brands. The Social Studies Group, in fact, found that family health, not the environment, seemed to be the biggest driver for going green. This is likely true for car purchasing decisions as well; the safety and quality of the vehicle come first, before sustainability. As one mom quoted in the study says, “My consciousness changed a great deal when I became a parent. Those of you who are blessed with children can relate—suddenly every electrical outlet, every strange chemical smell, every dog running down the sidewalk gives you pause: could this harm my child?”

It would seem that many women are receptive to environmentalism and sustainability not necessarily for “green” reasons so much as for the well-being of their families. And if parenthood, not gender, is a critical factor encouraging sustainable choices, then certain progressive policies, such as guaranteed parental leave for both men and women, might have positive implications for sustainability.

Sustainability Traits Worth Nurturing

While not a lot of significant gender-difference research has been done related to sustainability-promoting traits and characteristics, a study published in late 2010 on climate change belief seems telling. Using data from 2001–2008 Gallup Polls focusing specifically on environmental issues, Michigan State University sociologist Aaron M. McCright found that women were more likely to accept climate change science than men. A greater percentage of women than men worry about global warming a great deal (35 percent to 29 percent), believe global warming will threaten their way of life during their lifetime (37 percent to 28 percent), and believe the seriousness of global warming is underestimated in the news (35 percent to 28 percent).7

But, the story is not simply “women get it,” and “men don’t,” when it comes to climate change. In my opinion, McCright’s work suggests something that demands more attention in the sustainability movement. His results largely confirm an earlier account by Paul Mohai of gender differences in environmental concern. Mohai concludes that “Background characteristics, including homemaker and parental status, appear to have little, if any, effect on these [gender] differences [in environmental concern]. This suggests that, to the extent that gender differences in environmental concern do exist, the differing socialization experiences of men and women may account for the differences, rather than the roles they occupy or other structural factors.”

What if, despite the fact that the female gender seems most naturally suited for sustainable thinking and decision-making, it is actually socialization—not sex—that forms the basis for the incredible opportunity our culture has today? Being born a man should not preclude a person from being able to understand or engage with sustainability in productive, and passionate, ways. Rather, the traits and characteristics that are typically seen in women likely exist in most people. If women drive sustainability, naturally, then men—or any person who does not easily default to empathy and relational thinking—can be socialized or taught to think in new ways. Sustainable thinking does not have to come naturally in order to be worth nurturing.

Feminine Traits, Genderless Potential

Given what we know about the traits and characteristics that seem to be behind interest and engagement in sustainability, businesses, organizations, and universities can now lead the charge to ensure that this sort of “feminine” thinking becomes more natural for everyone.

The truth is that a lot of people are capable of bringing more empathy or relational thinking into their work decisions. To the extent that these abilities can be taught and can become the behavioral norm, they can provide the foundation for an overarching sustainable movement in the United States. They are not simply “women’s ways.” To be sure, any gender differences along these lines may give us a template for what to encourage and nurture, but we still have to see the possibilities as inclusive, not exclusive. Women may access such traits more naturally, but men can acquire them.

Sustainability—taking what we need now, while providing for life, human and otherwise, in the future—is in essence an exercise in empathy. The competitive, stereotypically masculine approach likely helped get us into the scary environmental state in which we currently find ourselves. I believe that encouraging the relational and empathetic aspects of human thinking—and better balancing that which has been perceived as masculine and feminine—will lead us to a more sustainable, enduring, and productive global community.

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Please visit the full March issue on The Solutions Journal site to read many other articles demonstrating why everyone’s so-labeled feminine traits may be worth a second and third look in pursuit of global sustainability.

I could go on and on.  But, for now, I’ll leave it in the words of my latest contribution to HuffingtonPost. It might get you thinking a bit.

Here’s an excerpt:

When we realize our cultural impulse is dead wrong, and that gender differences may in fact be more a matter of socialization, we win. According to Kimmel, “Biology provides the raw materials, whereas society and history provide the context, the instruction manual, that we follow to construct our identities.” With regard to sustainability, take note of that word “context.” It will be from an ability to see the text, or linear perspective, as well as the context, or more holistic view, that leaders as people and as organizations will advance and thrive.

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2011 could be a VERY good year…