How to become a trusted climate communicator
September 30, 2024
To influence and ignite positive action on climate change we must build trust. Creative Bridge consultant, Kelly Field shares her insights on the ‘how’ after participating in a trust and influence workshop pilot run by the charity, Climate Outreach.
At Creative Bridge we often support registered housing providers and businesses delivering decarbonisation, retrofit and regeneration projects.
Our previous blog on ‘Net zero tolerance’, highlighted that the House of Commons Climate Change Committee estimates that at current prices, it will cost £250 billion to fully decarbonise the UK’s housing stock by 2050.
But as we said then, this isn’t the sector’s biggest challenge. How we communicate at a first-person level is our biggest challenge.
It’s ensuring we inform and communicate the benefits of increased thermal comfort and lower energy costs from any investment. And ensuring meaningful, resident engagement to highlight how lifestyle changes can positively change their lives and protect our planet for future generations.
We can only do this if our communications are trusted and feel relevant. Otherwise, messages don’t stand a chance.
Motivated by this challenge and driven by Creative Bridge’s commitment to continuous learning, I recently took part in a pilot online and in-person workshop run by Climate Outreach on ‘becoming a trusted climate communicator’. The pilot builds on the charity’s findings from its Beyond ‘trusted messengers’ report and alongside 16 others communicators from a cross-section of backgrounds and organisations, we tested a series of self-reflective approaches to understanding what it really means to earn and maintain trust with our audiences.
Key learnings
“There isn’t one climate story”, explained Tara Bryer, programme manager at Climate Outreach who led the workshops. The facts alone aren’t enough, and our storytelling is often complex, biased and emotional.
The workshops identified these additional challenges in ensuring trusted communications:
- Our values underpin our climate stories – we all have beliefs about the world
- Trust and belonging really matters – who we trust has huge influence on our world views
- Concern is not action – just because we care, this doesn’t mean we know what to do or even want to do something.
What we think about when think about climate change:
The above word cloud is the result of mine and other workshop participants’ top three words when we were asked to think about climate change in the first workshop.
Despite the emphasis on gloomy words, there is hope. A survey by the Office for National Statistics ahead of the COP26 UN Climate conference in 2021, showed 81% of adults in Great Britain reported having made some or a lot of lifestyle changes to help tackle climate change. Their motivation tended to be linked to worry and a sense of hopelessness about the future and for future generations.
So, what can we do to harness this concern for good? We can tell our stories with passion, credibility and empathy.
These traits are the three core elements of trust and should be present in all our communications. This is how these traits are perceived in action:
Passion: This person really cares about this issue and they’re clear why they’re talking about it.
Credibility: I believe this person knows what they’re talking about. They’re not just making this up on the spot.
Empathy: This person understands that people have different perspectives. They’re not lecturing me or talking down to me.
To further build trust we need to find common ground to have a conversation with our audiences and not just talk at them. Convey our passion and motivation as well as our credibility. And make sure that the ‘messenger’ – the storyteller, fits the message, which is where relevance comes in.
Finding local, relevant stories
Finding local people to be a trusted advocate and messenger for your organisation can be a challenge. And typically, news stories about the climate crisis and net zero tend to focus on the negatives, insufficient government investment and the different policies being debated.
The Local Storytelling Exchange is different. On this website you can both source and submit stories that shine a light on what the green transition really looks like by topic and region. The non-profit organisation has a talented team of journalists who also regularly partner with regional journalists and campaigning teams to amplify relatable, human stories that bring climate change to life.
Using images that emotionally impact
Another important way to build trust in your climate communications is to use credible images that emotionally impact and engage with audiences. Climate Outreach has launched its Climate Visuals project to help communicators to do just that.
Takeaway top tips
Finally, I leave you with Tara Bryer’s top tips for great climate communications:
- Make it real – connect through local and relevant stories, emotions, values
- Make it normal – normalise through the use of trust and empathy
- Make it possible – help people to recognise what they can achieve.
Kelly Field is a lead communications consultant at Creative Bridge. To find out how I can help your organisation with building trusted communications, please get in touch.
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