Emotional Intelligence in Communication

Maybe the problem isn’t climate denial. Maybe it’s climate messaging. We’ve been attempting to scare or shame people into caring, and it’s not effective. Is it time to completely rethink how we talk about climate and sustainability? We've spent years trying to influence people through fear, data, and moral urgency. The results? Mixed. If we want genuine buy-in, we need to be honest about what’s isn’t working. Here are seven messaging mistakes we keep repeating. 1. Leading with Guilt and Doom: "We're killing the planet!" doesn't inspire - it overwhelms. Guilt sparks awareness, but rarely leads to action. 2. Talking About “The Planet” Instead of People People don’t wake up thinking about biodiversity - they think about bills, housing, jobs. Make climate personal. What can THEY GAIN out of changing their behaviour? 3. Assuming Rational Facts Will Change Behavior: 1.5°C Warming Is Essential, But Not Sufficient. Facts Inform, but Emotions Drive Action. 4. Using Elite, exclusionary language jargon, such as “net zero” and “green premiums,” alienates the majority. Sustainability can’t sound like it’s just for experts or elites. 5. Neglecting economic and social equity when we assume everyone can afford an EV or solar system, we lose trust. Green should be accessible to everyone - not just the wealthy. 6. Framing Green as Restriction, Not Opportunity: Less driving, flying, consuming... Where’s the upside? A green transition should feel like a win: lower bills, warmer homes, and cleaner air. 7. Treating Climate Like a Separate Issue. Climate isn’t separate from the economy, housing, or healthcare - it is those things. When we silo it, we shrink its relevance. So, how do we change the story? ✅ Speak to lived realities. Discuss how green policies improve everyday life, including jobs, bills, housing, and health. ✅ Shift from sacrifice to solutions. Replace “cut back” with “get more” - resilience, savings, mobility, and wellbeing. ✅ Make it simple. Use plain, human language. Instead of “decarbonize the grid,” say “cleaner, cheaper energy in every home. Help people to measure their carbon footprint.” ✅ Center fairness easily. Ensure that the benefits of sustainability are accessible - especially to those who have been historically excluded. ✅ Embed climate into everything. Don’t treat it like a separate crusade - show how it strengthens the economy, creates jobs, and benefits communities. ✅ Gemify climate action ✅ Give intrinsic value to change of behaviour and reducing carbon footprint. 👉 Time to stop scaring people into action - and start inspiring them with what’s possible. What language has been proven to be effective for climate and sustainability? Let’s share notes. ♻️ Repost this to help spread the word, please! 👉 Follow Gilad Regev for more insights like this.

Real conversations at work feel rare. Lately, in my work with employees and leaders, I’ve noticed a troubling pattern: real conversations don’t happen. Instead, people get stuck in confrontation, cynicism, or silence. This pattern reminded me of a powerful chart I often use with executives to talk about this. It shows that real conversations—where tough topics are discussed productively—only happen when two things are present: high psychological safety and strong relationships. Too often, teams fall into one of these traps instead: (a) Cynicism (low safety, low relationships)—where skepticism and disengagement take over. (b) Omerta (low safety, high relationships)—where people stay silent to keep the peace. (c) Confrontation (high safety, low relationships)—where people speak up but without trust, so nothing moves forward. There are three practical steps to create real conversations that turn constructive discrepancies into progress: (1) Create a norm of curiosity. Ask, “What am I missing?” instead of assuming you’re right. Curiosity keeps disagreements productive instead of combative. (2) Balance candor with care. Being direct is valuable—but only when paired with genuine respect. People engage when they feel valued, not attacked. (3) Make it safe to challenge ideas. Model the behavior yourself: invite pushback, thank people for disagreeing, and reward those who surface hard truths. When safety is high, people contribute without fear. Where do you see teams getting stuck? What has helped you foster real conversations? #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #Communication #Trust #Teamwork #Learning #Disagreement

The big mistake in climate communication – and why half the population never even hears the message. In my feeds, climate and transition are often discussed as if the problem were information. As if more reports, more charts, or louder warnings would make people change their behaviour - if only we communicated them more clearly. That doesn’t seem to work. Instead, polarization grows. What if climate communication only reaches half of humanity? In my exploration of the ”ancient group” and our different cognitive orientations, it’s becoming clear that “climate denial” doesn’t necessarily come from unwillingness. Our nervous systems are simply calibrated in different ways. Some are attuned to concrete threats, social stability, and the here-and-now - not to abstract, systemic, long-term risks. That, to me, is fascinating. In the early human group, there were always two core orientations: The open orientation focused on future, patterns, abstraction, change The social orientation focused on order, concrete reality, proximity, continuity Both were needed. Both were forms of intelligence. Both helped us survive. But in today’s society these two polarities have been pulled apart. Which means we often speak in a language only some people can hear. Others hear something entirely different - not a threat to the planet, but a threat to identity, security, and belonging. That’s why we can look at the same graphs and interpret them in completely different ways. And this, I think, is essential for the work ahead. To succeed with transition, climate communication can’t rely on facts alone. It has to find a better balance: between change and stability, abstraction and the concrete, global ethics and local identity, the future and the present, the open and the social. So the climate crisis isn’t only ecological. It’s also a communication crisis, an identity crisis, and perhaps at its core - a crisis of duality. And as long as climate communication keeps: - speaking in abstractions - triggering guilt - overlooking identity …we’ll miss the people who are currently doing their best to stabilise a world that feels overwhelmingly threatened. If we assume this is true (and the research supports it), then climate communication would need to: create safety before it calls for change include all our different perspectives build relationships, not just arguments make risks more tangible offer role, dignity, and meaning in the transition The more I read and reflect on the ancient group, the more convinced I am that we need to create spaces where different nervous systems, different polarities, and different forms of wisdom can form a whole again. Where everyone contributes something essential. Only then can the climate crisis become a shared reality, and only then can we act as the species we actually are - built for collaboration, not fragmentation. * This is from the work for my upcoming book The Starting Point. Follow and support the work - link in bio.

How should our leaders think about, and communicate extreme heat to us? Most people don't process heat as a climate fact; they process it as higher utility bills, disrupted routines, unsafe work conditions, and worry about vulnerable family members. We're not conveying a number, but addressing downstream problems with the most necessary inputs to our livelihoods - e.g. money, health, caregiving, transportation. In this article from Smart Cities Dive, Robyn Lawrence speaks with Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Tucson Mayor Regina Romero who share lessons from a new Climate Mayors toolkit (done in partnership with Hazelwood Network and Switch 5) to help local leaders keep residents safe during dangerous heat. [Link in the comments] Here is what we'd recommend, and we're seeing mayors take this approach already: 1) Frame messaging around lived impacts, not climate science. Talk about heat in terms of higher utility bills, disrupted routines, and risks to vulnerable family members vs. focusing on the wrong things like temperature forecasts or abstract climate impacts. 2) Combine warnings with solutions, not just warnings. Easier said than done in some cases, but discussing tangible solutions like cooling centers, AC in public housing, shade infrastructure, etc. can help residents have something to act on, not just something to worry about. 3) Use data to target outreach. Analyze local data (like heat-related 911 calls) to find who isn't getting help and why, then direct cooling centers and door-to-door outreach to those specific areas. 4) Deliver the message through trusted messengers, in residents' own language. Faith leaders, community organizations, and bilingual outreach carry more weight than official channels alone, especially with immigrant and low-income communities. 5) Extend reach through cross-sector partnerships - e.g. work hand in hand with utilities, healthcare providers, weather services, and local media to make sure heat messaging shows up consistently across the systems residents already interact with.

Boys and men are also limited by stereotypes. And it shouldn’t be controversial to say that. It’s a simple fact. The prescription for boys and men is this: suffocate your emotions because showing emotion is a sign of weakness. And they are inundated with that message. Although most of us know that’s not true, too many influencers and coaches are still discouraging men from feeling, understanding, and expressing emotion. And that hurts all of us. I have one child. A son. Who I love dearly. And I have tried my best to counter all of the messaging that discourages boys from showing emotion. By being able to feel and understand his emotions, he has become so much more self-aware, and so much better able to form strong and trusting relationships. This is more important now than ever. Let’s support the efforts of boys and men to better understand their emotions. And let’s make it safer for them to actually discuss emotions. #genderstereotypes #emotionalintelligence #sexism #personalgrowth

Working with people you find difficult is no joke. It can impact your well-being, your performance, and definitely your ability to enjoy your job. For Harvard Business Review, I shared 7 strategies to help you work more effectively with challenging coworkers, whether you're dealing with an insecure boss, a passive-aggressive peer, or someone whose behavior simply gets under your skin (we all know people like that!). Here’s a quick overview: 1️⃣ Remember your perspective is just one of many. We all see situations through our own lens. Try asking yourself: Could I be wrong? 2️⃣ Be aware of your biases. From confirmation bias to affinity bias, our brains take shortcuts that often distort how we perceive others, especially those who are different from us. 3️⃣ Don’t make it “me against them.” Reframe the conflict as a shared problem to solve, not a personal battle to win. 4️⃣ Know your goal. What are you actually trying to achieve - peace, productivity, recognition? Let that intention guide how you show up. 5️⃣ Be careful with venting and gossip. Some venting can be helpful, if done the right way. But negatively intended gossip can harden your view, damage your credibility, and reinforce negativity. 6️⃣ Experiment to find what works. Try small behavior shifts and observe the impact. If one approach doesn’t work, try another. Think of it as an experiment, not a fix. 7️⃣ Stay curious. Certainty keeps us stuck. Curiosity opens the door to empathy, creativity, and sometimes even resolution. These aren’t quick fixes - nothing worthwhile is - but they can help you feel more grounded and less reactive, even when someone else’s behavior doesn’t change. Link to the full article is in the comments 👇 Image alt text: How to Navigate Conflict with a Coworker

👊 “𝗝𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗷𝗶𝗻, 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝘁, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵.” That’s what my EVP told me back then. I didn’t have children waiting at home. No school run. No bedtime routine to rush back for. And still: I was wrecked. On paper, I was the classic “high‑potential” woman leader. Big scope, global remit, always “great in complex situations.” In reality, my days looked like this: • Holding the line for strategies I hadn’t designed, but had to defend. • Absorbing my team’s fear during restructures so they didn’t fall apart. • Rewriting senior leaders’ disastrous comms so they didn’t blow up in public. • Being the unofficial therapist for colleagues because “you just understand people.”    Then I’d go home to silence. No kids’ chaos to blame my exhaustion on. Just a brain that would not switch off. One evening, after yet another week of re-orga, late‑night calls, and being the emotional sandwich between up and down, in a vulnerable moment I complained to my EVP, and He just said: “If you’re not willing to suffer for it, you don’t want it enough.” 💡 Here’s what I understand now that I didn’t have words for then: I was absolutely willing to suffer. I was just suffering for the 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀. • Protect leaders who didn’t protect me. • Stabilise a system that depended on women to do the emotional and relational cleanup, for free. • Keep everyone else comfortable, my boss, my peers, my team while I gradually disappeared from my own life.    🚀 I wasn’t suffering for my next orbit. 🩸 I was bleeding out for everyone else’s. And this is not just “my story”. Study after study shows women leaders carry more emotional labour, more invisible work, and more non‑promotable tasks than their male peers – at significant cost to their wellbeing and progression. So the question is not: Are you willing to suffer for your career? 👉 But: What exactly are you willing to suffer for?" Here’s the shift I now help senior women make: • Stop spending your best hours firefighting, smoothing egos, and fixing problems you didn’t create. • Start spending your best hours on 3 things only: rooms where decisions are made, moves that grow your power, and conversations that change your compensation and exit runway.    And you cannot make that shift while thinking in the same rooms that benefit from your over‑suffering. If every strategic conversation you have is inside the organisation’s politics, you will keep optimising for the organisation’s comfort and not your power. This is why we built ㊙️ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗖𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗹𝗲 ㊙️, a high-touch advisory channel for senior exec. women who are navigating complex leadership decisions, transitions, and high‑stakes moments in their careers. If you know you are suffering, just not for the life and work you actually want, DM me! 👊 You’re exactly who I built it for!

This week I joined Liz Taylor and Sylvia Earle of Mission Blue and Ocean Elders for a conversation on the “Dive In” podcast about environmental journalism, public trust, and how to reach people who increasingly avoid news about climate and nature. People are not necessarily disengaging because they do not care. Many feel overwhelmed, distrustful of the media, or uncertain about what they can do. The way an issue is framed can determine whether they engage with it at all. A story about the Amazon may reach one audience through biodiversity or climate. Another may respond more strongly to water security, food prices, energy costs, or economic risk. The underlying facts do not change, but the route into the story does. We also discussed the importance of agency. In an analysis of Mongabay’s most-read English-language stories during the first half of this year, 73 of the top 100 had headlines that conveyed a solution or showed people taking action. Only 21 focused on crisis or emergency without pointing toward a response. That does not mean minimizing the severity of environmental loss or presenting weak initiatives as solutions. It means reporting rigorously on what people are trying, what is working, and what others can learn from it. A restored creek, a canceled destructive permit, or a community protecting a local fishery may feel small against the scale of the environmental crisis. These outcomes are still important. They show that action can produce visible results, and that can help build support for larger change. I am grateful to Sylvia and Liz for the opportunity to chat. 📷 Dr Sylvia Earle. Image © Taylor Griffith

This newly published study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology brings a powerful and timely insight, people do not act on climate change despite their emotions, they act through them. Using large samples from both the United States and Europe, the study shows that negative climate emotions such as anxiety, guilt, anger, and sadness are consistently associated with higher levels of pro-environmental behavior. But the most interesting part is not just this association, it is the mechanism behind it. The findings suggest that these emotions trigger rumination, a process of sustained cognitive engagement with the problem, which in turn amplifies the likelihood of action. In other words, it is not simply feeling bad about the climate crisis that matters, but continuing to think about it, to mentally stay with it, that seems to push behavior forward. This challenges a common assumption in both mental health and public discourse, that distress related to climate change is inherently maladaptive or paralyzing. What this study shows is something more nuanced, under certain conditions, emotional discomfort may actually be functional, acting as a driver of engagement rather than avoidance. From an Eco-Affective Health perspective, this reinforces a central idea we have been developing, emotions are not secondary reactions to environmental change, they are part of the system itself. They operate as signals that can activate cognitive processes, sustain attention, and ultimately shape behavior. Also, these resulta are really alligned with what we are running with Prof Gabriel Gaudencio Rego and his student Sophia Mello Amorim Costa! Let’s see what the Brazilian data show us. This has important implications for how we design interventions. If we focus only on reducing eco-anxiety or emotional distress, we may unintentionally weaken one of the very mechanisms that motivates climate action. The challenge, therefore, is not to eliminate these emotions, but to help structure how they are processed, so they lead to engagement rather than exhaustion. In a world increasingly defined by environmental instability, understanding how people feel is not a soft variable, it is a central component of how societies respond. Article link: https://lnkd.in/dz9ugjyz Also, follow our work at ewahlab.com #EWAHLab #EcoAffectiveHealth #ClimateMentalHealth #EnvironmentalPsychology #ProEnvironmentalBehavior #AffectiveScience #ClimateAction #PlanetaryHealth #SustainabilityScience

How logic killed my first negotiation (and what I learned). I blew it. My first negotiation was a complete disaster. I walked in armed with every stat, every fact, and every logical argument I could find. I had spreadsheets, data points, and bulletproof reasoning. I thought I was ready. Turned out, I wasn’t. Here’s what happened: I was so focused on proving I was “right” that I completely ignored the other side’s emotions. - I brushed aside their emotional cues - I didn’t notice the frustration in their tone. - I missed the discomfort in their body language. And I just kept hammering them with logic. So, what happened? I didn’t just lose the deal. I lost their trust. That was the first and last time I ever let logic take the wheel. Here’s what I learned (the hard way): Negotiation isn’t just about facts. It’s about people. And people are emotional. If you rely only on logic, you’ll: - Miss the real signals: Emotions tell you what data can’t. - Lose trust: People connect with empathy, not numbers. - Hurt relationships: Negotiations are long-term games, not one-off wins. The best negotiators know how to balance logic with emotional intelligence. So, don't make the mistake I made and do this every time you're negotiating: 1. Show empathy: Acknowledge their feelings, even if you disagree. 2. Listen to emotions: What’s not being said matters just as much as what is. 3. Regulate your emotions: Stay calm and in control when things heat up. Now, every time I negotiate, I prepare for the emotional game. Not just the logical one. The result? - Better deals. - Stronger partnerships. - And trust that lasts beyond the handshake. Let’s talk about how you can master both sides of negotiation: logic and emotion. Just send me a DM. ----------------------------------- Hi, I’m Scott Harrison and I help executive and leaders master negotiation & communication in high-pressure, high-stakes situations.  - ICF Coach and EQ-i Practitioner - 24 yrs | 19 countries | 150+ clients   - Negotiation | Conflict resolution | Closing deals 📩 DM me or book a discovery call (link in the Featured section)