This Sustainable Life

Why do people who haven't tried it call not flying impossible, yet it was just as challenging for me and I find it one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.Being in a system without realizing it makes it easy to confuse that system's values with your own or with absolute reality. What looks impossible is just impossible within that system.To change, it's easier to exit the system first so you don't feel constrained by its constraints.We were born to some strong systems that make not flying look impossible but not flying is simple. You're probably not flying right now.I present a couple cases -- one simple, the other complex and expensive -- that illustrate what happens when you're trapped in a system versus when you free yourself from it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anisa is another counterexample to believing that working on the environment distracts from getting ahead.She rose to become the director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council despite being early in her career. Though she was doing fine in architecture, she responded to the call for help people and communities in New Orleans after hurricanes Rita and Katrina.Doing what people cared about helped others and led her to positions to help more people, leading her to Washington, DC and being named one of the Most Powerful Women in Sustainability.Still friendly and humble, she shared her environmental values, including where she felt she wasn't living up to them---what many people hide. Then she chose to act on them, recognizing the difficulty.I see her as a role model for improving one's leadership through self-awareness and action. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff has interviewed authors of leadership books since before I started writing mine. I enjoyed being a guest on his podcast.This time he's on mine, and it's a landmark event, as the next section describes.If you're here for leadership, Jeff is a great example of turning an interest into becoming an important person in a field.If you're here for environmental leadership, listen for Jeff's project---one of the biggest of any guest so far in terms of leading himself and others. I'll let you listen to find out the details, but I'll mention that he takes a leadership role in his community to help people achieve something they all want but no one else has done.Later episodes will reveal how his project goes, but already you can hear his interest in acting over just waiting.Why I'm proudI note that Jeff has read hundreds of leadership books and spoken to hundreds of leadership authors. My book, Leadership Step by Step, and this podcast are the first that led Jeff to lead---not just to talk, read, or write about leadership but to act. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

21 million books sold among 60 titles---including one I remember from my mom's shelf as long as I can remember---a lifetime of research, speaking, and consulting, and more.Since I don't often get to speak with people who have achieved so much, I was torn between acting like a fan and speaking to him like a regular guy. I hope I balanced them by sharing my One Minute Manager story at the beginning, then talking servant leadership.Ken just released his latest book, Servant Leadership in Action, compiling lessons from top leadership thinkers and writers. He spoke about the book, the people in it, and their stories. More than one has been on this podcast, so click the link to find which.Ken shares increasingly valuable wisdom as the podcast goes on, so I recommend listening to the end. There is no substitute for experience (why I teach experientially) and Ken has more than nearly anyone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This morning I volunteered to pick up trash along the Hudson River.The experience included baby geese, a crab, lots of plastic and waste, and people not connecting their behavior with all this garbage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David has helped me many times. I felt honored to host him and, I hope, help start his environmental legacy.We covered two main things.First, his new book, Friend of a Friend, on networking. His background as a professor and practitioner means he approaches networking systematically and practically, so beyond learning to network more effectively, you understand networking as a process.Second, his environmental commitment. I loved his choice for reasons you'll hear when you listen. I believe it will improve his life beyond just living by his environmental values.David is direct, knowledgeable, experienced, and plain-spoken. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Which is easier, for a slave owner to free his or her slaves or for you to stop using disposable water bottles and food packaging, flying around the world, turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater in the winter, and so on?If you had slaves, would you free them?I think most people would say it's a lot easier to avoid plastic than to free slaves, but they would also say they would free their slaves -- at least when no one can check. But they don't act environmentally.If you believe you would make the difficult choices hypothetically, will you also make the easier choices here and now? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vincent shares several stories of Patagonia growing from a few dedicated outdoors people to discovering business growth, the usual ways businesses abandon values besides profit, and their not accepting that abdication of responsibility.The company grew financially, its employees grew emotionally and socially, and its community grew numerically.If you think you're alone in wanting to act, Vincent and Patagonia go farther. Vincent shares how the company made difficult decisions to protect the environment, its employees, its suppliers, their employees, and so on---decisions most people think would hurt companies financially---but didn't.As someone who dislikes many major corporations for what many consider standard business practices, I find in Patagonia and its decision-makers role models we can learn from. Having been there from nearly the start, Vincent gives an inside view.His personal challenge also differs from many others', but I expect you'll like it. Mechanically simple, I bet he'll find it insidiously difficult and incredibly rewarding. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

RJ and I talk about the early success of LEAD Palestine, the organization he began to teach leadership to youths that most of the world abandoned in Palestine.Where their environment made it natural to respond with hopelessness and what comes from it---desperation to the point of aspiring to blow oneself up---RJ is bringing social and emotional development to create hope themselves.They happen to have been born into a world where leadership meant in politics authoritarianism and militarism, which bled into personal relationships. Nobody taught alternatives and those who acted on those models succeeded, however much at others' costs.RJ is teaching an effective style of leadership built on personal skill. I can't help but imagine a lot of it came from my class, though, obviously he deserves the overwhelming credit for implementing it. Though the class he took with me was social entrepreneurship, that semester, several students showed great interest and initiative and I'd stay after class to teach and coach leadership exercises, sometimes for hours. Among those students, RJ stood out.I also ask him about his personal role as a student barely older than the people he's helping, as well as his personal challenge of avoiding plastic bottles.For a self-aware, thoughtful, active leader, the modest personal challenge increased his mindfulness, activity, awareness at no cost in time, money, or other resource. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you care about the environment?Do you care about leading?The Leadership and the Environment podcast andNYU's School of Liberal Studiesinvite you to improve both at aPanel of Leadership and Environment ExpertsTuesday, April 3, 6pm – 8pmNYU Silver Building, 100 Washington Sq E (at Washington Sq N), room 405Free, register hereFeaturing Vincent StanleyVincent, co-author with Yvon Chouinard of The Responsible Company, has been with Patagonia since its beginning in 1973, including executive roles as head of sales or marketing. Informally, he is Patagonia’s chief storyteller. He helped develop the Footprint Chronicles, the company’s interactive website that outlines the social and environmental impact of its products; the Common Threads Partnership; and Patagonia Books. He serves as the company’s Director, Patagonia Philosophy, and is a visiting fellow at the Yale School of Management. He is also a poet whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry. Robin NagleRobin's book, Picking Up, is an ethnography of New York City’s Department of Sanitation based on a decade of work with the Department, including working as a uniformed sanitation worker. She is also a clinical professor of anthropology and environmental studies in NYU’s School of Liberal Studies, with research in the new interdisciplinary field of discard studies. She considers the category of material culture known generically as waste, with a specific emphasis on the infrastructures and organizational demands that municipal garbage imposes on urban areas. Since 2006 she has been the DSNY’s anthropologist-in-residence, an unsalaried position structured around several projects. Her TED talk gives a quick overview of and more detail about her work. RJ KhalafRJ is a senior at New York University pursuing a degree in Global Liberal Studies with a concentration in Politics, Rights, and Development and a minor in Social Entrepreneurship. Recently named one of NYU's most influential students by Washington Square News, he is the President of the NYU Muslim Students Association and is a Dalai Lama Fellow. RJ is the founder and director of LEAD Palestine, an organization that aims to inspire, motivate, and empower the next generation of Palestine's youth through a hands-on and fun leadership-based summer camp. Joshua SpodekJoshua PhD MBA, bestselling author of Leadership Step by Step and host of the award-winning Leadership and the Environment podcast, is an adjunct professor at NYU, leadership coach and workshop leader for Columbia Business School, columnist for Inc., and founder of SpodekAcademy.com.  Free, register here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.