Podcast | How Psychology Can Be a Driver for Sustainability – with Alyse Mauro Mason, Dr. Elise Amel and Paige Powers

Alyse Mauro Mason: Welcome to the Board Perspectives podcast, brought to you by Protiviti, a global consulting firm, where we explore numerous challenges and areas of interest for boards of directors around the world. I am Alyse Mauro Mason, and I help lead the ESG and Sustainability practice at Protiviti. I am joined today by Dr. Elise Amel and Protiviti intern Paige Powers.

Dr. Amel earned a Ph.D. in industrial and organisational psychology from Purdue University and is an award-winning professor of psychology at the University of St. Thomas. She has coauthored numerous articles and books at the nexus of psychology and sustainability. Dr. Amel also cofounded the University of St Thomas’s Office of Sustainability Initiatives.

Paige is a Protiviti intern and rising senior at Indiana University, pursuing degrees in organisational psychology and sustainability studies. Paige has a focus on how different ways of thinking about environment can lead to improved climate behavior for organisations, and she has conducted climate-psychology research with professors across psychology, political science and media studies.

Fun fact: Paige met Dr. Amel at the Midwestern Psychology Association’s annual meeting in Chicago earlier this year, where she presented on how psychology can help organisations address climate change. Dr. Amel and Paige, welcome to the Board Perspectives podcast.

Dr. Elise Amel: Thank you for having us.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Today, we’re going to discuss how psychology can be a driver for sustainability. Just a reminder to our audience: We’re joining you today in our personal capacity to share our experience, expertise and insights with all of you. Dr. Amel, one of my favorite questions to ask sustainability leaders is — and I think the audience is going to love hearing your story — what has your journey in sustainability and environmental psychology looked like over the past 30 years?

Dr. Elise Amel: I have to go back to my childhood: Like most kids at the time, I grew up rather feral in the underdeveloped or undeveloped margins of my town, which is in the bluff country of Wisconsin, building forts and that kind of thing. I also harvested asparagus with my dad and painted outdoors with my mom. Then, when I went away to grad school, I returned for a visit, and a favorite bluff of mine had been bulldozed to create a four-lane highway.

For the first time in my life, I wrote a letter to the editor asking people to carefully think about why they love where they are and how to better care for it. Research shows that having mentors who help you connect positive experiences with nature and that experiencing destruction of those places is really a recipe for people to act on behalf of the environment. That explains why I do what I do.

For the first 10 years of my career as a professor, my sustainability work was separate stuff I did on the weekends and in the evenings. But when I became a parent and the evidence about climate change became clear, that’s when I realised I needed to change the way I actually worked. I began doing research that linked psychology with sustainability. I went to a workshop at Emory University called the Piedmont Project, where I built sustainability into one of my classes. Over time, I’ve integrated sustainability into all my courses. But it took about a decade of learning experience, experimenting. It takes time to become an expert.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Change doesn’t happen overnight, and the expertise doesn’t come overnight. But it sounds like your journey started very early — and I love what you said.

Tell me a little bit more about the intersection of sustainability and psychology.

Dr. Elise Amel: My coauthors and I like to say that there are no environmental problems, there are human-behavior problems, and the crises we’re experiencing are a result of people’s beliefs and values and behaviors in their roles as consumers and workers, city planners, legislators, and corporate decision-makers.

Alyse Mauro Mason: If we remove the word environmental and you focus on the human — you said “human-behavior" problems versus “environmental” problems — it sounds like we are part of the problem.

Dr. Elise Amel: The planetary systems would get along just fine without us. The choices we make to fulfill our daily needs and desires are directly impacting where we are in terms of those planetary boundaries.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Do you think boardrooms and organisations should be focusing on the psychological elements that impact people and the planet? And if they’re not thinking about that, what is a good way for them to get into that mindset and get started?

Dr. Elise Amel: We tend to focus on technological fixes, which of course will be necessary to do things differently and more efficiently. But we don’t spend enough time understanding what the barriers are to the human change necessary to keep organisations going in a more sustainable direction and supporting people during the hard work of change.

Alyse Mauro Mason: I don’t know anybody that gets superexcited about change. It’s very uncomfortable, and it takes time — and a different length of time for every human, depending on what their comfort level is with change.

Dr. Elise Amel: In terms of a good way to get started, it’s critical for boards and executives to validate the importance of sustainability action to the long-term viability of their organisations. That’s the bottom line for sustainability. It’s about flourishing in the long run — and most organisations want to be around in the long run.

We have to get away from the quarterly-report mindset into the multiyear mindset. If boards and executives communicate that sustainability is expected, that is going to be critical. For instance, once we got our university president on board, we captured a quote from her that became a touchstone whenever people said, “I don’t have time” or “We can’t afford this” or “It’s not my job”: “This is not the job of one person, but of all of us.” There is a crucial role for a top-down set of communications.

Alyse Mauro Mason: That’s right — that it’s expected. It’s not a nice-to-have. It is something that is required for business resilience over time. When you look at short-term horizons, it’s easy to say that maybe it isn’t expected and that it could be something we think about in the future. But if you’re not thinking about it today and it’s not part of your long-term plan, the question becomes “Is the business still around in the long term?”

Paige, I would love to hear what inspired you to get into psychology and sustainability.

Paige Powers: Similar to Dr. Amel. I grew up on the outskirts of a town in rural Indiana, not Minnesota, but my home county is known for having 101 lakes, so it’s a huge tourist destination. I have always had a lake in my backyard, and I came to love being able to go outside and catch turtles and experience biodiversity.

When I was in high school, I knew I wasn’t going to be a biologist — I didn’t think about things that way. But in an English class I had, we had an eco-fiction unit. One of the novels we were assigned was from the Southern Reach trilogy by author Jeff Vandermeer. He talks a lot about how he approaches a novel as a lab — a scientific-research lab. The characters are different variables you're pinging off each other to see what the outcome will be — a scientific, psychological approach to writing a novel.

That novel inspired me to start thinking, if you think about the environment differently, how does that change your behavior in terms of the climate? Are you more likely to engage in pro-climate behavior, not-as-pro-climate behavior? I got interested in how your mindset changes the outcome of your interaction with the environment.

Dr. Elise Amel: I’d like to emphasize that idea of how our thoughts influence our actions. Through no fault of our own, we’ve, as a culture, learned what has worked successfully in the past. But it’s very different than what’s going to help us succeed in the future. We have to actively change our mindset in order to do this right. That is understanding that systems are circular as opposed to linear and that there are limits to the availability of resources and their ability to regenerate. These are nonnegotiable rules for the planet. We have to start behaving as if we understand those boundaries.

Alyse Mauro Mason: When there’s resistance to changing a mindset, this concept in business of “It’s worked for the business the last five years” — it might not work for the next five — what are some ways, from a psychological perspective, that can reshape? Maybe it’s a mantra, maybe it’s just something to help ground. But for executives who have been in business 30, 40 years, who are running companies, what is the motivation for them to change?

Dr. Elise Amel: That’s a big one. We’ve done this before for a lot of things. Back in the 1980s, when technology started taking off, we recognised we would be left behind if we didn’t start doing things on computers and with computers and that kind of thing. We’ve had to manage change in the face of changing technology.

Anybody who’s doing business right now knows that change is constant and it’s faster and faster all the time. Some of those same strategies used to manage that kind of change are exactly the strategies you would use to get folks on board with sustainability. Same thing with multiculturalism and globalisation. In the early 2000s, people were taking training on being culturally competent and that kind of thing. Organisations have to change, and there are lots of forces we respond to all the time. This is yet a different force needed to be addressed in order to succeed.

Alyse Mauro Mason: I love that word too — force. It comes back to, it’s not a nice-to-have. If you’re not thinking about these things, there should be a highly encouraged mechanism to be thinking about them.

Dr. Elise Amel: Probably the biggest difference between sustainability and the other forces around us is that sustainability has been politicised. It does feel a little bit toxic to some folks. That’s another layer: If people feel like their identity is threatened, they won’t engage. Finding an overarching goal or an overarching value we can all agree on makes it a lot easier to make that change.

Sometimes, the word sustainability doesn’t feel good for some people. For instance, at my institution, our mission is about training students to be leaders for the common good. Everybody can get behind the common good. Whenever we discuss sustainability-related work, it’s part of the common good. Organisations can reframe things that are alienating some people to feel more comfortable and more consistent with their identity.

Alyse Mauro Mason: In your book, you talk about organisational culture, and maybe another way to say it is how we do things. Can you share more about values and how values can influence behavior?

Dr. Elise Amel: Values define what is considered right or wrong in the place where you are, whether it’s a business or family, or broader culture. For instance, if profit is valued, doing things that reduce profit are considered wrong. We pick up on the cues around us about what these values are, both from formal rules and policies, but also informally with what we see people openly admiring or what we see people do. These cues guide our behaviors so we fit in.

And while most of us like to think we are rogue cowboys who can do whatever we want and not care, we’re biologically primed to want to fit in, as part of our early evolution as a species — to want to be in groups because it was safer there. When cultural cues are consistent, it builds trust in working relationships because we know what to expect. They also become a huge barrier to change because going against the grain creates unpredictability and potentially breaks that trust, and there are serious social consequences to behaving differently.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Paige, to help further ground us on this topic, what are injunctive and descriptive norms?

Paige Powers: Injunctive and descriptive norms are part of the social-norm theory psychologists have developed: Injunctive is what everyone knows should happen, and descriptive is describing what is actually happening. I remember when I was first getting into research, I read a study of how they found that two- to three-year-olds will copy the majority descriptive behavior — that’s what most people in the group are doing — even as young children. Even if there are negative reactions to the majority-group behavior, the young children who need to imitate in order to survive will still copy that majority descriptive behavior, even if people are reacting like they know that it’s wrong. Like Dr. Amel said, this is coded into our evolutionary psychology. It is deeply embedded in our psyche.

Dr. Elise Amel: Norms are how we train new people to understand the culture and to fit in. It’s especially poignant for people who are new to an organisation: They watch very carefully what people are doing so they fit in.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Dr. Amel, bringing this all together, when boards or organisations experience norm and value misalignment, what happens, or what could happen?

Dr. Elise Amel: As I mentioned before, it can be confusing when people are behaving differently from what the expectations are. It feels hypocritical and uncomfortable. Most of us have experienced when we accidentally walk into the wrong room and people look at you strangely, and suddenly, you feel panic. That autonomic nervous system fight-or-flight stuff kicks in where your mouth gets dry and you start sweating and your heart races, and it’s a survival mechanism, but it’s miscued: Obviously, we’re not going to not survive because we’re walking into the wrong room. But you can see how powerful that response is in humans.

Basically, if we feel like hypocrites, it’s uncomfortable, and we typically try and relieve that discomfort in some way. People who are experiencing a misalignment between what they value and what an organisation values, or this sustainable behavior when nobody else is doing it, they’ll have to readjust their values, which is hard, if not impossible, because these are deeply embedded. By the time we get to the workplace, we’ve had 15 to 20 years of learning that would have to be undone.

Most of the time, instead of readjusting our values, we cope. We rationalise by finding other, more-aligned reasons for doing the new thing. Or we avoid or retaliate — maybe slow-walking the work that feels misaligned. Or we might keep our values and sever ties with the organisation. Anybody who runs an organisation knows that’s a very expensive problem to have — people leaving — because replacing them is time-intensive and expensive.

Alyse Mauro Mason: What about in the context of sustainability, when it’s likely that not all board members or all executive team members of an organisation treat sustainability topics the same, or do so differently altogether?

Dr. Elise Amel: There are two things that can happen: Either you can align sustainability with the preexisting values, or you end up having to change things bit, and change, as we’ve already talked about, is hard for people. Ideally, you’re going to be trying to express the alignment that sustainability has with your preexisting values.

If an organisation is very proud of their innovation or being on the cutting edge of things, this is the cutting edge of things, so that is a source for alignment — dependability or responsibility. These are all things you see in organisations’ mission statements, and they’re usually general enough to be able to be able to link sustainability with what we already do.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Sustainability being the cutting edge — that should be a headline everywhere.

Dr. Elise Amel: Exactly. It is the wave of the future, and if people don’t have that shared understanding of how it all fits together, that can stymie progress. It may require working one-on-one with particular individuals who are new to ideas or are having a retreat where people can learn together and brainstorm together. We have a deep need to belong. When people who get it reject people who don’t get it, that also is a recipe for disaster. You have to build camaraderie around it so people feel like they’re part of this thing, as opposed to an outsider.

Alyse Mauro Mason: That ties back to what you said earlier: This isn’t one person’s job. It’s everyone’s job.

When you think about systems-level change, how does that help create a culture of sustainability leadership — and talk about what that’s looked like for you at the University of St. Thomas.

Dr. Elise Amel: When it’s up to each individual to decide whether to engage in sustainability, the results are going to be hit-or-miss. Sometimes you get lucky: Our IT guy just happened to purchase the gold-standard, energy-efficient computers for campus, which was great. But what if something happened to him? It’s not guaranteed that a new person would make the same choices. Institutionalising the desired behaviors through rules and procedures ensures that no matter who is making the decision, it will be a sustainable one. And now we have a policy that we will only purchase the gold-standard, energy-efficient technology for campus.

Aside from that example, we’ve embedded sustainability throughout the curriculum so all students, no matter what their major, get exposed to and understand how their discipline connects with sustainability. It becomes apparent to them how sustainability is consistent with the core values of our institution — the common good I mentioned before. Our mission statement is, “The University of St. Thomas educates students to be morally responsible leaders who think critically, act wisely and work skillfully to advance the common good.” It becomes very obvious to them why this is part of not only the core curriculum but also each major.

Alyse Mauro Mason: When you’re thinking about these topics, how would you encourage those outside of academia, that don’t have a curriculum, to be thinking about this? You mentioned having a policy. That’s good governance practice. What are some other thoughts people can consider outside of academia?

Dr. Elise Amel: Some people might say that academia is so different than everything else. True — in some ways, we operate differently than for-profit businesses and governments and that kind of thing. But they’re really a small city in some ways, so all the different goals and pressures on these entities vary and require different strategies. But people generally operate the same way based on our common evolution. All the principles we would apply at a university would be valid in business or industry.

I’m a firm believer in training and understanding that people are in different places along this journey, so the training isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all type of thing. But there will be people who’ve never thought about this before, and they’re going to need awareness training. But of course, that would bore the bejesus out of somebody who has already been way into this and surreptitiously changing their job as a result, so you don’t want to send everybody to awareness training. You just need to figure out who needs what. And if people are aware but haven’t changed yet, they’re going to need some guidance about what the opportunities are — that they could learn more about — or meet other people who’ve changed their jobs already, and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel; just find mentors for people at some other business.

Yes, we’ve got competitors — we always have competitors — but sustainability is, like, “All hands on deck, people.” Learning from each other about how to do certain jobs more sustainably is something that is often shared at conferences and other gatherings, and people who have been making changes can be included as part of the training, as trainers, to share their expertise. Different people are going to need different things, but it does boil down to getting everybody with a shared competency. I like to think about it as a shared sustainability competency.

Alyse Mauro Mason: There’s an intentionality to that. There’s an access element to all of this, and being aware of maybe not each resource, but thinking about our people and what they need in order to get to that common ground, to that common competency.

Dr. Elise Amel: A common problem with executing what you’ve learned in training is not being able to apply it because of the barriers that supervisors and managers either put up or fail to pull down. It is probably valuable to start any training programmes with folks in the middle, as opposed to folks at the entry level. They’ve got more power. They can make decisions that affect a lot of people, but they can also become the barrier to people executing what they’ve learned in training.

Alyse Mauro Mason: That’s a great point.

What should board members and organisational leaders know about the psychology of change? Can you talk about this in the sense of how it impacts how organisations think about climate change?

Dr. Elise Amel: You can have all sorts of plans: First, we’re going to measure where we are and then set some goals, then we’re going to spread the word throughout our networks, then we’re going to provide opportunities for people, then we’re going to experiment, and then we’re going to . . . . But in actuality, it’s a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of experience. I’ve found at my institution that it’s OK to be an opportunist and roll with the places where there’s a lot of potential and a lot of energy, because that can influence the folks who are a bit more reticent.

Another thing is, it takes time, and most of us aren’t patient enough. If you’re understanding the news about our planetary crises, it’s hard to feel positive. You feel lots of grief and anger and other negative emotions that spill into the work that you do. You can experience anxiety, which can be paralysing. It’s hard to think about it taking a while, because we want it to change right now, but in actuality, it is over years that this change occurs so you end up with a sustainability culture.

That doesn’t mean we should sit back and wait, but we should also be prepared to have lots of setbacks, and we need to build resilience among people, especially the leaders of these kinds of changes, so they can persist in the face of those challenges. Change is hard, full stop. This kind of change is especially emotional for people. But there’s good resilience training available — everything from mindfulness to building relationships, all that kind of stuff. Being outside helps people even for a few minutes — or having indoor nature.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Activations.

Dr. Elise Amel: Exactly. Little fountains and birdsong in the lunchroom, trees — all that kind of stuff can help reduce that anxiety.

Alyse Mauro Mason: One of the things you said is, it takes time, and we’re not patient. I’m thinking about something earlier in the conversation, of the evolutionary element, and I have to imagine we were more patient beings earlier in time and we’ve evolved to this “I want it now — it needs to happen now.” And our patience as human beings has changed over time, and we see that in business often.

Dr. Elise Amel: If you think about the cultural cues, it’s ASAP and all the words we use: “I need it yesterday.”

Alyse Mauro Mason: I'm very familiar with that in professional services. In a customer-service- facing business, there is definitely an urgency to a lot of the work we do. But it’s OK to be opportunistic, and it’s in that same mindset, it’s OK to acknowledge that this will take time, and there is a patience and an exercise of patience, and a practice and a mindfulness to the emotions that we’re feeling to where we want to go and know if there’s a plan. There’s that long-term mindset that, hopefully, patience will be organic in that because you’re setting that stage of “This isn't a tomorrow, this isn’t a next-month, this isn’t a this-year, but these are the things we’re going to get started, and these are the things we’re going to do next year. There’s a roadmap and plan” so it almost embeds patience into the strategy.

Dr. Elise Amel: I love that you brought up planning, because people respond better when they perceive change as planned — back to that idea of liking consistency, liking predictability. If we feel like things could be changing under our feet, we start wanting to pull back and get back to business as usual because it’s comfortable. When there’s a plan and it’s well-communicated regularly, all the time, overcommunicating — “This is where we are. This is where we’re headed. Let’s talk about how we get there” — that is when people are going to respond better.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Paige, I want to come back to you because as a future sustainability leader — actually, I consider you a sustainability leader today given the inspiration of how you started on your journey and where you’re hoping to go — how are you thinking about change, and what will be important for you as you think about your next chapter following graduation next year?

Paige Powers: Even though I’m starting my career, I am following the adage “Change is the only constant.” It goes across everything. Am I going to change with it? Am I going to take this huge opportunity? I would like to say yes to that. For my generation, especially looking at the job market — which is now a global job market, thinking about what all countries are doing — this is the future. This is where everything is going. When I’m looking at a company, knowing that things are going to be changing all the time, I want to know they have a plan to incorporate this or already have it in the culture where I want to be working, looking at the culture I want.

Dr. Elise Amel: Paige, you have the personality attribute that is valuable for dealing with change, and that is seeing change as an opportunity as opposed to a threat. Unfortunately, not everybody has that personality attribute. This is one of those areas where communication can be valuable about how this is an opportunity for our business, as opposed to what’s comfortable, which is the old way. We need to change, and it’s an opportunity for us to be leaders.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Is there something that you hope, Paige, that boards and executives at companies are thinking about when it comes to sustainability in psychology?

Paige Powers: Coming in as someone new who’s evaluating the job market for the first time, this is something Dr. Amel talks about. The discomfort of misalignment with your values and the norms you’re seeing displayed at an organisation can be incredibly intense. It can be very overwhelming. But on the flip side, that is also a huge opportunity for companies to think about because if I come in and I see a company is aligned with my values — the norms being displayed are aligned with my values — or that the company is willing to align with my values, that inspires an equal or even greater loyalty. I want to be loyal to the organisation I’m working for. That alignment is a huge opportunity for organisations to encourage that loyalty.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Alignment can equal loyalty — another big headline we should put everywhere.

Dr. Elise Amel: And Paige is not an uncommon example of Gen Z. Generation Z is looking toward working in ways that are fulfilling and that are aligned with their values, which include a livable future.

Alyse Mauro Mason: Dr. Amel, to close out our conversation today, what are three key takeaways we hope the audience and boards around the world leave with today?

Dr. Elise Amel: “Every job needs to be a sustainability job” is a good mantra. The way we’ve thought about our relationship with the planet is outdated. We need to build a shared competency that helps everyone do their jobs sustainably. At this juncture, a lot of people are doing voluntary citizenship behaviors like recycling after lunch and that kind of thing but haven’t focused on how their job relates. Helping people develop competency is really important.

That leads me to the third takeaway: Competency is one of three basic needs humans have. Global research on this shows that these three needs come up over and over again: The need to feel competent. The need to have autonomy — to be able to make decisions, not be told what to do, but to be invited to think about things and make some choices. And the need to belong, which we’ve mentioned before. Belonging is hardwired into humans. If sustainability can be the thing that everybody gets together to do, that is when it’s going to gain momentum.

Alyse Mauro Mason: What a beautiful and optimistic way to end our discussion today. Thank you both for being with us on Board Perspectives. I hope we have many more conversations around these topics. It was such a pleasure speaking with both of you.

And to our audience, if you have any questions, please reach out to us at Protiviti and our friend Dr. Elise Amel. Until next time, take good care.