Last week, in the Green Light Community, we watched a video of starlings doing what starlings do best: swooping, swirling, and somehow never crashing into each other despite there being absolutely no leader, no plan, and no group chat coordinating it all.
And it turns out those birds might be better at influencing change than most sustainability leaders I know (myself included).
Most of us in this space share the same problem, i.e. we tend to believe we have to do everything ourselves.
We think we need to convince everyone (our whole team, our whole board, our entire community), all at once, all of our ideas, all the time. And when that feels impossible and exhausting (because it is), we get overwhelmed. Then we feel guilty for not doing enough. And round and round it goes.
So, if you’ve ever felt like engaging your audiences in sustainability is something you’re dragging uphill on your own, this one’s for you.
What the birds are actually doing
Watch a flock of starlings and ask yourself: who’s in charge? Who told them all to turn left at the same time, or head down to the trees together?
Nobody. There’s no leader bird with a clipboard and a megaphone.
According to research on flocking behaviour (this comes from the short, fascinating paper Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioural Model by Craig W. Reynolds (1987), if you want to go down that rabbit hole), each bird is just following three simple rules, in order of importance:
- Collision avoidance — don’t crash into your nearby flockmates
- Velocity matching — try to fly at roughly the same speed as the birds around you
- Flock centring — try to stay close to the birds nearby.
What’s the common thread?
Every single bird is paying attention to the few birds right next to it. Not the whole flock. Not the birds three hundred metres away. Just the ones nearby.
Why this matters for influence (and why “six seven” went viral)
Stick with me here, because this is where it gets useful.
Think about how trends actually spread, even the daft ones. If you’ve got kids, you’ll know about “six seven,” that bizarre meme that took over playgrounds for about a year and then vanished without explanation (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself lucky, and also: ask any nearby ten-year-old).
It didn’t spread because one person shouted it at a stadium and everyone heard it simultaneously. It spread person to person, nearby to nearby, much like our birds.
But why do some things spread and others don’t?
The real common denominator is this: likability and belonging. We adopt behaviours from people we like, people we trust, and people who we feel like they are part of our tribe.
So, engaging our stakeholders in sustainability will not be as easy as spreading “six seven”. Perhaps the issue is that, right now, our sustainability initiatives aren’t as likeable yet.
But don’t worry because we can fix that.
Two ways to spread a sustainability idea: sprinkler vs. firehose
This is a framework from a book called The Catalyst (by behavioural marketing researcher Jonah Berger), which gives us a really useful lens for thinking about how to roll out change.
The sprinkler approach means spreading your sustainability message thin across lots of people in lots of different groups: a quick mention here, a quick mention there. This works brilliantly when the ask is easy. Think: “Hey, there’s a company that’ll collect our food waste for free and turn it into compost: just chuck your banana peels in this bin.” Low barrier, feels good, no real change required. Tell two people in two different groups, and it spreads almost effortlessly.
The firehose approach is the opposite: instead of spreading thin, you concentrate your effort on one or two people within a single group. You give them the full picture with proof, support, templates, even your time. This is what you need when the ask is harder. Things like “let’s track our carbon emissions” or “let’s reduce car use across the district” come with resistance, because people need proof before they’ll make any significant behavioural change that costs them effort.
According to a well-known marketing rule of thumb, people generally need to hear something about 11 times from strangers before they act on it, but only twice from people they trust.
That’s where the whole game changes. Your job isn’t to engage 100 employees in sustainability. It’s to engage two people who are close to you and to the people you’re trying to reach. Then those two become your messengers.
So… who are your two people?
In line with a popular stakeholder mapping model, your two people don’t necessarily need to be the most powerful people in the room. But they need to be interested in what you are offering, so that they can champion your sustainability ideas either at the board level – if they have that power – or at the “grassroot” level, if they are not high in the ranks.
Applying the bird rules to people
Once you’ve picked your one or two people, here’s how the three flocking rules translate into real ESG and sustainability engagement and communication strategies:
🐦 Avoid collision → Build rapport and lower barriers
Ask how you can help them reach their goals. Pre-empt their objections before they raise them. This means actually getting to know the person, including what keeps them up at night, what they need and what they want. How can sustainability help them to reach their goals?
🐦 Match velocity → Meet them where they are
Don’t drag people into your world with your sustainability jargon and your priorities. Learn theirs. One example that came up in the session: a sustainability leader who, instead of talking about carbon and emissions, learned the language of finance and investment and how carbon savings can save actual money because that’s what his audience cared about. Same message, different wrapping, and it worked.
🐦 Flock centring → Build your core team and give them agency
Keep your champions and sponsors close, engaged and, crucially, give them real ownership. People don’t want to be spectators in a cause they believe in; they want to get involved and contribute.
Over to you
Here’s your homework (this stuff needs to be practised if you want to become a better leader, so it is worth investing the time to do that!):
- Pick one stakeholder group you want to influence (your team, your board, your community, whatever’s relevant to you right now).
- Choose two individuals within that group, ideally people who already like you or have something in common with you.
- Work through the three steps:
- Avoid collision: how will you build rapport and lower their barriers?
- Match velocity: how will you meet them where they’re at?
- Flock centring: how will you keep them engaged once they’re on board?
- Identify what could get in the way. Because something always does, and naming it now means you’re less likely to be derailed by it later.
A question for you: who are your two people? Not your whole team or your whole board, just two. Drop a comment: I’d love to know who you’re starting with, and why.
Finally, don’t aim for perfection; these things take time and refinement. But my suggestion would be to just give it a go, then let me know how it goes: I’m always happy to help.
Now go fly like a (slightly more strategic) bird. 🐦