You can’t scare people into being empowered

Empowered people take action, scared people don’t!

Well, duh!

It sounds obvious doesn’t it? But the truth is, we see examples every day of people trying to scare us into taking action, making change. The not-for-profit sector can, sadly, be one of the worst culprits.

I understand that many social justice causes we work with are really intense, scary, horrible and even shameful. We certainly don’t want to treat them too lightly or be too flippant about them. But we also need to understand that when problems seem too big, too complex or too overwhelming, people actually feel so disempowered that they become unable to take action. Or so scared that their ability to think of others’ wellbeing disappears and, in survival mode, they think only of what is best for themselves.

I think a lot of the publicity around climate change fell into this bucket. Lots of really smart people were so concerned that the community would underestimate the action required that a lot of effort was put into making sure the absolute size and urgency of the issue was strongly emphasised. Most people I know believe the situation is completely beyond repair and that NOTHING they could do would make a difference!

Obviously, that is exactly the last reaction we want people to have to our causes!

The truth is pretty simple — happy people, with high self-esteem and a strong feeling of connection to other people are the ones who will act. And no action is too small because the first one is always the hardest to take.

So break your cause down into digestible chunks and give people the power and the ability to start acting today — you build on it incrementally over a lifetime once you’ve won them over.