Years ago I shunned adaptation. I saw a great job advertised, I had all the skills and experience, it would have meant using a climate change model to advise businesses on adaptation measures to take. But I didn’t even apply for the job.
I just couldn’t face the fact that climate change was already happening. For me adaptation meant ‘giving up’.
For 10 years I worked hard in a ‘mitigation’ role. Trying to hold back the incoming tide which is climate change through communication and behaviour change.
Now I help teams and individuals to overcome the personal and relational issues which hold them back from being effective at work.
It strikes me that in this sphere the mitigation/ adaptation debate is alive and well.
Some people have given up trying to change things at work and have squeezed their round peg into a square hole.
Others are so intent on changing the system that they’ve overlooked how they could change themselves.
Coaching helps you to make the choice between changing the system (mitigation) and adapting your own behaviour to work better within the system (adaptation).
When it comes to Climate Change we have no choice – we have to do what we can to prevent catastrophic Climate Change and science tells us that climate change is a current, not a future reality, so we also have to put measures in place to adapt.
I sometimes work with individuals and teams who are not in a position to change the system as they’d like but through coaching there are always ways to change yourself and your approach and that can bring about unexpected change to the system too. If you’d like to talk more about this let’s talk – email me or book a space in my diary