Sustainable clinical leadership: Dial down the enthusiasm (part 2)
14 January, 2025
In last week's part 1 of his three-part series Dr Dan Harwood introduced the topic of Sustainable Clinical Leadership. In this second part, as promised, he provides some hints and tips based on past experience to support you gaining traction with colleagues.
Sustainable clinical leadership
- Part 1: How to move clinicians and managers from words to action
- Part 2: Dial down the enthusiasm
- Part 3: More tips for engaging your Trust on sustainability
The first piece of advice is counter-intuitive; but make sure you do not come across as too enthusiastic. I am desperately anxious about the planet, so I’m prone to getting very upset, and then getting over-excited about positive change ideas. This drives me to send what I think are hilarious yet insightful emails, and share what I think are incredibly clever ideas with my line manager. I go to Induction days and Nurse Councils and MRCPsych courses and I deliver what I think are inspirational talks. I send round lists of projects the resident doctors can do, and I try to chivvy them along to complete half-finished studies. I send emails with pictures of bees and caterpillars and I tell people excitedly about a mushroom I found in a flowerpot. I tell wards about Citizen Science projects and I send people what I think are fun little wildlife quizzes. I even email the trainees who are supposed to be sustainability leads and ask them if they’ve any ideas they want help with.
And what happens? Nothing, except the sound of the wind whistling and the scuffing roll of tumbleweed. Far from enthusing people, I have turned them off completely.
I have tried too hard and my enthusiasm has backfired. Many people in the NHS are concerned about the environment, but most are not that interested in doing anything. They hear me, and think, “Great. He’s doing all the work, so I don’t have to do anything!” Or they just think, “There’s no way I can be as passionate as he is, so I won’t bother at all.”
This month I’m re-thinking my approach. I haven’t got it right yet, but I can give you some advice to save you making the same mistakes.
Dial your passion down a bit. Work on being respected not liked. Send your photos of bumblebees only to the people you know will appreciate them. Keep jokey emails to a minimum. When you enter the room where you are to give a talk, stand up tall, squeeze the organisers hand as you shake it. Don’t smile much. When teaching, be restrained, present the evidence for climate change calmly and back up what you say with scientific evidence and references. Don’t try to be funny. Dress smartly and look deep into the eyes of your audience. Ask them questions, get their views, challenge them. If people are playing with their phone during your talk, ask them not to. Do your homework so you can answer the questions of sceptics. Show them that you are emotionally controlled, deadly serious, that you know your stuff and deserve respect.
If you act like you are important, people will believe you to be important and treat you with respect. Respected people never have a problem finding people to work with them. So, let’s start acting like we are important, like the Professors and senior managers do. Because we are important. We might not have personal assistants who bring us coffee and organise our diaries, but we can behave like we do.
Do I always follow my own advice? No! Because I am completely soft, incredibly sensitive to criticism, I can never resist a smile, I prefer people using my first name, I love making jokes and I apologise if I’m twenty seconds late. But I am now at least trying to start off from a position of sober seriousness rather than one of enthusiastic jollity. The idea is to let people warm to you gradually rather than be turned off immediately by your in-your-face passion. When you’ve got people on your side, then you can lighten up.
Do not come across as ‘too green’
When you are giving a talk or at a meeting, remember that not all your audience will be sympathetic to the campaigning tactics of Just Stop Oil, not all of them will be vegans. The Green movement has been rightly criticised for being a little bit elitist. We must change those perceptions. Climate change affects us all. We cannot just welcome the perfect into our green coalition, we must welcome anyone who wants to make a difference.
We mustn’t make people feel guilty because they’ve eaten a cheese sandwich or because they’ve driven a car to visit their ill parents. Show yourself to be human. Show them that you know how hard it is to be green but that every little action helps. Showing off about all the miles you’ve cycled or your triathlon or your vegan shoes or the fact you threw some bricks around at a protest is not going to win over new supporters for our cause. You don’t have to be Greta Thunberg to save the planet. It actually helps if you are not.
Also, don’t assume that clinicians or managers know anything about climate change or biodiversity loss. Don’t patronise, but keep your explanations clear and simple. Not everyone is carbon literate. We don’t want to alienate people because they feel it's too complicated. We need to show them that it isn’t complicated at all.
Dr Dan Harwood