Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective? YES!

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Can Leading Sustainability be fun and inspiring?

YES! . . . and effective too.

Are you exasperated with never-ending, increasing apocalyptic news about humans wrecking our environment? Are you scared about your future and safety? Are you enraged at people suffering around the world?

But are you frustrated not knowing what to do?

The Solution: A Sustainability Leadership Workshop That Works!

I just finished leading my first workshop in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably: enduring systemic change and immediate personal change.

Best of all: it was FUN! . . . both the workshop and the action it led to.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch the participants:

Some came with next to zero experience acting sustainably or leading others. Others had experience in sustainability leadership. They came from diverse backgrounds. All loved it.

Because it teaches to lead using the Spodek Method, based in intrinsic motivation. Telling people facts, numbers, and instruction—what nearly everyone does in sustainability—rarely works, nor does CCCSC: convincing, cajoling, coercing, and seeking compliance.

The Spodek Method works.

So does the workshop. It uses project-based learning, meaning it’s interactive, active, and experiential. Most of all: FUN!

Again, don’t take my word for it. Hear from a participant in this podcast episode with Lorna Davis (President of multinational consumer goods companies for 20+ years, in Danone, Kraft and Mondelez. She was the President of Kraft China and the President of Nabisco North America amongst others, full bio here) after she took the workshop.

To hear her skepticism before starting the workshop, listen to her “before” conversations:

Here is a podcast episode describing the workshop:

And one on “The Entrepreneurial Strategy to Restore Sustainability Globally Without Waiting for Governments and Corporations”:

Who Am I?

I developed the Spodek Method and use it with hundreds of guests on my podcast, This Sustainable Life, and corporate workshops and with executives from places like Exxon, Google, Boston Consulting Group, Patagonia, and Lululemon.

My sustainability leadership work has been featured in the New Yorker, the LA Times, Washington Post, TIME magazine, Ars Technica, and in the media in Australia, Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, the UK, and Vietnam. I’m just getting started. The workshop participants will start appearing in media too. So will you after you take it.

I have a PhD in physics so I know the science, an MBA so I know leadership, and started ventures that operated around the world so I know building and motivating teams. I also decreased my environmental footprint over 90 percent in under three years.

I have coached and taught for two decades. I attached a pdf with reviews from clients and students ranging from gray-haired adults who have sold businesses and CEOs of publicly-traded companies to undergraduates. Some examples:

“This is one of the greatest classes I have ever taken. It was engaging, thought provoking, challenging, and fun. Josh is an incredible teacher, mentor, and friend to everyone in the class who is passionate about the subject matter. If I could take this class all over again, I would”

“10/10 would take again! I loved every second of this class, but what’s cooler, is that I think I may have loved the homework even more.”

“I cannot even begin to express how much I have enjoyed this course. It is by far the best class I have taken while at NYU. Thank you, Josh, for your time, wisdom, and passion. It made an incredible impact on my life.”

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd Austin, who brought me to co-lead leadership workshops at West Point, wrote of my leadership book:

Great leaders aren’t born with a ‘leadership gene’; great leaders develop the necessary skills and gain confidence through practice and hard work. In Leadership Step by Step Joshua Spodek presents a thoughtful approach to becoming a highly effective leader that emphasizes the importance of experiential learning. It will serve as a valuable resource for leaders at all levels in any profession. Indeed, Joshua’s practical exercises will help prospective, as well as experienced leaders, to master their craft and ultimately to succeed in leading and inspiring others in their various pursuits.

You Will Improve Your Life (and the lives of everyone you know)

You will achieve two HUGE benefits.

First, if you’re like everyone I’ve talked to, the never-ending news of environmental doom gives you an unhealthy mix of emotions: helplessness, hopelessness, dread, fear, rage, confusion, insecurity, and more. When we can’t act on them, we try to suppress and deny them, but they don’t go away. They fester and grow. And we know the news will increase unless everyone acts fast and big.

Did you see the participants’ results in the video? The antidote to denial and suppression is ACTION—effective action, that is. They learned it and now they’re replacing all those emotions with determination and enthusiasm.

Second, for those who want careers in sustainability and to lead in helping solve our environmental problems, this workshop will put you at the front of the pack. You can lead a movement.

You can learn to lead workshops yourself, even to lead people to lead workshops, so the movement can grow virally. We will be creating an online community for people like you to teach workshops to help hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world to live joyfully sustainably. We can do it! . . . and we’ll have fun doing it.

Though billions want that leadership, not everyone wants to lead. Most prefer to deny or suppress knowing about the people suffering for our unsustainable lifestyles and, tragically, tell themselves they’re powerless: “What I do doesn’t matter”

Help create the movement billions are waiting for

We will grow these workshops into a movement. Because nobody wants to watch the world burn. Billions of people want to act. They just want leadership—genuine, authentic, effective leadership from people with integrity, character, experience, vision, and a mission—which this workshop teaches, because systemic change begins with personal change.

Early participants will become the leaders of a movement. Unlike movements that may work but are based in in-your-face confrontation, boring lectures, expensive legal action, teaching children who can’t vote or change corporate policy, etc, this workshop is FUN and shows you how to lead anyone and everyone to enjoy living joyfully sustainably.

People You Know Have Used the Spodek Method

You can hear the Spodek Method lead people to enjoy acting on sustainability on the podcast with guests including CEOs, honorees of Nobel, Pulitzer, Olympic gold, and other honors, politicians, and people who are conservative, liberal, Trump supporters, military, old, young, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, straight, LGBTQ, famous, unknown, and every identity I’ve reached so far.

Click here for a list of podcast guests. You’ll know many of them. Most returned for two or more episodes.

You’ll learn to reach as many people at whatever level of influence you want. We want you to. The world wants you to.

A Participant’s recommendation

A participant shared the following letter after she sent it to friends, unsolicited by us:

I would like to share with you my experience with confronting climate change head on this year. I decided to make it the year I stop my gloom and doom and to let go of my self-talk that reinforced that I am helpless to do anything. I am discovering that changing my own behavior is joyful and empowering. Deprivation and sacrifice are the OPPOSITE of how I feel about the daily journey toward habits that care for our beautiful planetary home.

How did I come to this change of heart? My daughter took a class with Josh Spodek in Sustainability Leadership and I happened to be at her house while she was taking it. This led to conversations that challenged my pessimism about being able to do anything more than I was already doing. My pessimism about individual action making any difference was challenged. It fundamentally came down to “I can continue along as I am and for certain nothing will change, or I can take the reins of my part of this giant puzzle and have the chance to be a part of the solution”.

A large part of my motivation came when I used an online carbon calculator to determine my “carbon footprint”. I discovered that from flying alone for the first seven months 2023 I had belched out over 10 times the amount of carbon that is considered the “sustainable limit” per person per year. This number didn’t even include gasoline, natural gas, or any other modes of consuming or polluting. It literally made me cry. It also made me get serious.

I took the course that my daughter had taken and found a source of support, inspiration, information, and skills that were new. One of the things about this class that I think is most powerful is that there is nothing “prescriptive” about it. There are no lists of things you should do now and things you should avoid now. No one is deciding for you or shaming you into choices. Instead, it is an inward journey of connection to one’s own internal motivation that is grounded in our own experiences in nature. It is a process of continuous improvement, so I didn’t decide to reduce my trash consumption and then stop when I did that. I look every day for new ways to lessen my impact, and every time I find another way I feel GREAT and motivated to figure out what’s next.

I am writing to invite you to take this class. Josh’s model is to use conversations with each other as the foundation of connecting to our internal motivation, conversations using the Spodek Method. These conversations help build a community of people who have experienced the joy of taking self-directed action in one’s own life. As with any BIG problem, the solutions require all of us. This class helps, one person at a time, to build a community of people who see themselves as part of the solution. I think you will be surprised and delighted with the empowerment you feel to take action.

Interested?

The Next Workshop Begins Wednesday, March 5, 2025

If interested in making learning sustainability leadership your top priority for 8 sessions . . .

If you want to change the world in learning and living that sustainability means joy, fun, freedom, community, connection, meaning, purpose . . .

The logistics of the next course:

8 weekly 2-hour Zoom sessions
Exercises between sessions
We are planning the next cohort. Contact me to be included.

It’s pay what is right for you, though suggested donation is $699. Nobody will be turned away for paying what they can.

Here is the link to register.

Notice on the bottom left of that page the option to pay what you want. You really can. As it says, we won’t turn anyone away from paying any nonzero amount. Preparing and delivering the workshop takes tremendous resources, so payment matters, but we want everyone interested in helping change the world by acting on intrinsic motivations for nature to love the experience.

Contact Us Today

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