
What do a communication arts major, a consultant, and a professor have in common? They’re all Rob Beattie, a familiar name to anyone who’s come through the Nelson Institute in the past, oh, 20 years or so. Beattie has lived a lot of lives; his journey traverses directing UMass Boston’s undergraduate environmental studies program to cleaning up former nuclear weapons facilities. Today, he’s a teaching professor in the Nelson Institute — a promotion that’s been a long time coming. Not only does Beattie lead the Community Environmental Scholars Program (CESP) — which he also helped develop in 2011 —, he also teaches several graduate seminars, serves on master’s and PhD committees, and shapes the Nelson Institute as a member of its faculty governance.
In the Nelson Institute, Beattie’s teaching has made an impression on everyone from first-semester undergrads (“It’s this combination of people who have a tough time adjusting to college, and people who flourish because they’re in college.”) to PhD candidates (“They’re more fully formed human beings.”). But regardless of the class number, there’s a surprising core competency that Beattie preaches to all of his students: emotional literacy. What does that have to do with the environment, you ask? “Being able to listen for emotions is the one thing we don’t emphasize in training conservation professionals or training environmental professionals,” says Beattie.
So, that’s where every class — and this article — starts. Whether you’re working in corporate sustainability or wetland rehabilitation, here are five lessons in finding feelings for conservation communication.
People …
“The biggest problem you’re going to face as a conservation professional is working with people. It’s not going to be figuring out how fast bats fly or where the wastewater is coming from; it’s going to be the fact that you have to talk to people to do those things. Your ability to interact with people is really the key,” Beattie explains. “It’s one of the reasons that both CESP and the professional master’s programs operate with a cohort model. “The cohort experience is so important, particularly for the environmental field, because you really need to be able to understand different people in different circumstances with different sets of values if you’re ever going to promote any kind of positive environmental change — whether it’s climate change or saving the water buffalo.”
“You really need to be able to understand different people in different circumstances with different sets of values if you’re ever going to promote any kind of positive environmental change.”
– Rob Beattie
99 Problems
To approach any conservation conversation, one must first recognize that the issue at hand … really isn’t the issue at hand. “No environmental issue is ever about just one technical issue that can be analyzed by experts. It’s about that issue, plus the history of power relationships, plus the fact that this is happening in a global capitalist economy where the reasons for pollution or the reasons for an organism becoming extinct are really tied into all of these other features. People end up being the only thing that [matter] in these circumstances.”
Knowing Me, Knowing You
Beattie often references The Conservation Professional’s Guide to Working with People. The author, Scott Bonar, uses the term “verbal judo” to describe the notion that listening — not one-upping — is the best way to win an argument. “Say, for example, somebody’s really angry about new wetland regulations,” Beattie explains. “They think the regulations are going to steal their waterfront from their vacation home. That’s probably not going to happen, but that’s what they are worried about, and that’s what they feel. So, if your regulations, one great step is just to talk about how your family has a summer home on a lake or how you had great experiences paddling through wetlands as a kid. [Do] everything you can to establish a level emotional playing field.”
Sit Down, Be Humble
“[What] we’re teaching in CESP is to go in with humility and listen to what needs to be done. If you really want to be of service in a community engagement setting, you take your cues from the community rather than going in and saying, ‘You know what? I want to build a greenhouse so you can have fresh food,’ and then plant food they hate. We’ve all heard those horror stories. Doing community service is not just about doing a good thing, it’s about engaging a community where it is and listening to what it is that they need, not coming in with expectations or assumptions.”
Everybody Wants to (Save) the World
“I really do think that most people have at least some environmental sensibilities, even if they don’t know it. They certainly have senses of justice and fairness and beauty and truth and all those vague values. And all you have to do is listen for them,” Beattie shares. “You can talk to anybody, and you don’t have to be agreeing with them on everything. But they are human beings, and they have feelings and desires and hopes. Chances are, they also share some of your values in many circumstances. Finding that core of shared value is the way that you get an ongoing opportunity to have conversations that can get you in the place you want to go as a conservation professional.”