Stories are the fuel to ignite change

Speaker: 00:00:01

Welcome to Generative Leaders, a series of conversations with leaders generating

Speaker: 00:00:06

positive outcomes for society, the planet, and future generations to inspire,

Speaker: 00:00:11

challenge, and have fun with what's universally true of the human mind.

Speaker: 00:00:16

I'm your host, Julia Rebholtz, and this week to help me, I'm in

Speaker: 00:00:21

conversation with Sacha Dench.

Speaker: 00:00:24

So today I'm really delighted to be with Sacha, who is the founder

Speaker: 00:00:28

of Conservation Without Borders.

Speaker: 00:00:30

And Sacha to my mind exemplifies a regenerative leader who really

Speaker: 00:00:36

wants to create impact in the world.

Speaker: 00:00:39

And she probably doesn't know that about herself too much, either.

Speaker: 00:00:45

And uh, Sacha and I have been having a number of conversations about what

Speaker: 00:00:50

she's leading at the moment how to bring that to life, how to create the kind

Speaker: 00:00:54

of impact that she wants to create and, and really has visioned in her mind.

Speaker: 00:01:00

And I thought it'd be really useful to hear directly from Sacha

Speaker: 00:01:04

for, for others that are trying to create impact in the world.

Speaker: 00:01:08

So Sacha, I'd love to in your own words to share with the listeners

Speaker: 00:01:13

what is it that you are, that you are leading at the moment?

Speaker: 00:01:15

Well, at the moment I'm leading the organization and a team of people who've

Speaker: 00:01:19

come on board for this project on an expedition following the migration

Speaker: 00:01:24

of bird, the osprey all the way from the Highlands of Scotland to west

Speaker: 00:01:30

Africa all the way down to Ghana.

Speaker: 00:01:31

I mean, how do you even come up with the idea to follow the osprays

Speaker: 00:01:39

from Scotland to Ghana and and what kind of, what kind of impacts are

Speaker: 00:01:43

you trying to create in doing that?

Speaker: 00:01:46

To cover that I've got to go back a few years to 2015, 2016 when I was asked to

Speaker: 00:01:53

help a lot of scientists look at an issue for another bird for the Bewick's swan.

Speaker: 00:01:58

Its numbers were in decline.

Speaker: 00:02:00

They'd been in decline for about 20 years, and in that time we

Speaker: 00:02:02

lost almost half the population.

Speaker: 00:02:05

The situation was that they'd been an, the global action

Speaker: 00:02:07

plan had been written for them.

Speaker: 00:02:09

Various scientists had studied different elements of the flyway, but they were

Speaker: 00:02:13

really struggling with a few things.

Speaker: 00:02:15

One of those was when you looked at all the diff all the data, all the threats

Speaker: 00:02:19

in the different countries, the birds migrate from, and that's the Russian

Speaker: 00:02:21

arctic all the way back to the UK, across Europe, when they looked at all

Speaker: 00:02:25

the data, the numbers were dropping faster than the cumulative effects of

Speaker: 00:02:29

all the threats that they'd identified.

Speaker: 00:02:31

So there was something missing along the flyaway.

Speaker: 00:02:33

But the critical thing they'd asked me to come and help with was looking

Speaker: 00:02:37

at how to engage all the people that currently weren't engaged.

Speaker: 00:02:40

So they'd written umpteen scientific papers.

Speaker: 00:02:43

A global action plan had been written, but they were coming to the realization

Speaker: 00:02:48

actually that very few people, apart from the scientists that are, that

Speaker: 00:02:50

were writing them and the scientific circles were actually seeing that.

Speaker: 00:02:54

So how do you get mass public engagement, the engagement of

Speaker: 00:02:58

industry who could change some of those things, and the public?

Speaker: 00:03:02

And people in some remote areas, you know, the birds are flying across some

Speaker: 00:03:05

of the remotes parts of the planet, the Russian Arctic, the tiger and the Tundra.

Speaker: 00:03:09

How do you engage people all along that flyway to help us find what that

Speaker: 00:03:13

missing factor was, but also get behind initiatives to try and save them.

Speaker: 00:03:18

And so I think what they were asking me to do was figure out how

Speaker: 00:03:21

to write really powerful letters that get people to meetings.

Speaker: 00:03:24

And I sat there in a room with all of this data and thought like, there

Speaker: 00:03:28

is no way in the world that meetings are going to do this fast enough.

Speaker: 00:03:33

And I also have lived in all different sorts of communities in my life,

Speaker: 00:03:39

including hunting communities.

Speaker: 00:03:41

And I just thought inviting people to meetings isn't necessarily going to be

Speaker: 00:03:45

what does the trick, if shooting was one of the, was one of the major problems

Speaker: 00:03:48

shooting and eating of lead pellets from shooting was one of the issues.

Speaker: 00:03:51

Inviting people to meetings, wasn't gonna work and wasn't gonna work fast enough.

Speaker: 00:03:54

And so I tried to really think big picture about it all.

Speaker: 00:03:58

So I sat there and looked at it all and I looked the migration route of

Speaker: 00:04:00

the birds and I'd, I don't think I'd ever really understood quite how uh,

Speaker: 00:04:04

impressive a journey the, the birds took.

Speaker: 00:04:07

So all the way from the Russian Arctic to the UK.

Speaker: 00:04:09

That means they're starting off in the land of the, in

Speaker: 00:04:11

the land of the polar bears.

Speaker: 00:04:12

They're flying across these amazing wild areas of the Arctic.

Speaker: 00:04:16

Then there's the, the castles of Europe, there's vast agricultural

Speaker: 00:04:20

lands and there's the storms and all the weather involved in all of that.

Speaker: 00:04:23

And I thought, firstly, like the best way that you're gonna reach ordinary people

Speaker: 00:04:29

is by telling them an incredible story.

Speaker: 00:04:30

And there is your incredible story, with the birds during that

Speaker: 00:04:33

journey and also dodging bullets and all kinds of other threats.

Speaker: 00:04:37

Maybe we could tell a kind of a James Bond story for the birds.

Speaker: 00:04:40

But how to bring that story to life was obviously a really big question then.

Speaker: 00:04:43

And I was already flying paramotors for aerial imagery.

Speaker: 00:04:47

So I've worked for a wetland conservation charity and others for ages.

Speaker: 00:04:50

And there's nothing like getting photographs from above of a wetland

Speaker: 00:04:54

and the, the threats that it faces to really make it clear to people.

Speaker: 00:04:58

Cuz when you're on the ground and you look across at a lake, kind of,

Speaker: 00:05:00

you see a stretch of water and that's about it from above, you can see how

Speaker: 00:05:03

it Connects with the wider landscape.

Speaker: 00:05:06

And so I was already doing aerial photography for that.

Speaker: 00:05:08

And I just put a few pieces together and thought, what if I fly in the paramotor

Speaker: 00:05:13

all the way with the birds, I fly at a similar speed and altitude to them.

Speaker: 00:05:17

If I flew with them, I could essentially see the world from their eyes and

Speaker: 00:05:21

maybe that's how we could help to find those missing pieces of the puzzle.

Speaker: 00:05:25

Also with the paramotor, cuz you take off and land on your feet, I can stop

Speaker: 00:05:28

and talk to anybody we see along the way.

Speaker: 00:05:30

So there was plenty to learn, I was sure, from all of the, all of the people that

Speaker: 00:05:35

live with and see the swans at different stages of their journey, that's where

Speaker: 00:05:39

we might find those missing pieces.

Speaker: 00:05:41

So yeah, I put that idea together and the scientists along the flyaway, although

Speaker: 00:05:47

they often work for quite conservative thinking organizations were desperate

Speaker: 00:05:51

enough that they would kind of say, This is so mad it might just work.

Speaker: 00:05:54

So that's what I did for.

Speaker: 00:05:55

And I just had a gut feeling that it was going to work.

Speaker: 00:05:59

And it got to a point where there were so many challenges and I, I won't deny

Speaker: 00:06:02

that there were ridiculous challenges.

Speaker: 00:06:03

Like how do you convince the Russians to let me fly in a tiny paramotor

Speaker: 00:06:07

that isn't picked up on radar across five of their heavily guarded border

Speaker: 00:06:11

regions in a little aircraft with cameras filming the whole thing?

Speaker: 00:06:15

There were gonna be huge challenges.

Speaker: 00:06:17

Not only that, like how do I, how would I pick up fuel and things on the way?

Speaker: 00:06:20

But as I went along, more and more people stood up.

Speaker: 00:06:23

And as, as an obstacle appeared, somebody would pop up and and

Speaker: 00:06:27

offered to solve my problem.

Speaker: 00:06:28

So crossing the Russian Arctic, I was given a small amount of money to go up to

Speaker: 00:06:32

the Arctic and speak to people, try and figure out how I cross the Russian Arctic,

Speaker: 00:06:38

where there's very little infrastructure.

Speaker: 00:06:40

There's certainly no roads, no runways or anything.

Speaker: 00:06:42

And I gathered the people that I thought were potentially the most helpful at

Speaker: 00:06:49

understanding logistics in the Arctic.

Speaker: 00:06:52

And they were the hunters and hunting community, hunting tourism people.

Speaker: 00:06:56

And I stood up in front of them with my map and asked various

Speaker: 00:07:01

people this, certain questions.

Speaker: 00:07:02

One of them was I pointed to some of the towns across the north and

Speaker: 00:07:06

said, you know, are there places there that I could buy fuel?

Speaker: 00:07:08

And loaded them chuckled and said, Well, do you know what the word means

Speaker: 00:07:11

in brackets after the name of that town?

Speaker: 00:07:12

Which I didn't?

Speaker: 00:07:13

Cause I hadn't learned my Russian by that time.

Speaker: 00:07:15

Um, and it meant abandoned.

Speaker: 00:07:16

So I um, had obviously asked 'em a pretty stupid question.

Speaker: 00:07:19

And, and they were, there was a bit of laughing going on.

Speaker: 00:07:21

But eventually just, yeah, all it took was one guy to stand up and he started

Speaker: 00:07:25

making little crosses on the map.

Speaker: 00:07:26

And he was showing where he could leave fuel drops for me.

Speaker: 00:07:29

He was a Bush pilot and he was dropping people off in hunting huts.

Speaker: 00:07:33

So with him offering to do that, and he was obviously well respected by

Speaker: 00:07:37

the community, suddenly this room full of men stopped laughing and asking.

Speaker: 00:07:40

So he's the actual pilot, assuming that as a female, it couldn't possibly be me.

Speaker: 00:07:44

Suddenly there was like more discussion about, oh yes, how can

Speaker: 00:07:47

we help if, if lad's gonna do that part, how, how else can we help?

Speaker: 00:07:50

So obstacles appeared, but people came on board to help.

Speaker: 00:07:54

And I started to realize actually, was it, was it me?

Speaker: 00:07:57

Was it the power of the story of the swans?

Speaker: 00:08:00

And this idea that actually, we have a, an amazing bird, an incredible bird.

Speaker: 00:08:05

It does an incredible journey.

Speaker: 00:08:07

The, the loss of it would be sad for everybody.

Speaker: 00:08:09

I think a load of people brought into that story, but they were also seemed to

Speaker: 00:08:14

also be sucked in by my optimism and this feeling that no, we can, we, of course we

Speaker: 00:08:18

can do this if enough of us get together.

Speaker: 00:08:21

So I started to realize there, I suppose, the power of telling stories to people,

Speaker: 00:08:25

and that people were motivated potentially buy bigger things than we think.

Speaker: 00:08:31

Everybody else had said to me beforehand, the hunters will never

Speaker: 00:08:33

the hunters won't talk to you.

Speaker: 00:08:34

Uh, the hunters won't want to listen to you talking about losing swans.

Speaker: 00:08:37

But actually if you ask the hunters to help you do any impossible journey

Speaker: 00:08:41

and tell them why you care about the swans, I've actually found, you

Speaker: 00:08:44

can make them care about something much bigger than themselves, much

Speaker: 00:08:47

bigger than their next hunting trip.

Speaker: 00:08:49

And so I guess that was the, the start of the journey.

Speaker: 00:08:52

I eventually flew with the Bewick's swans and on the back of that, I was

Speaker: 00:08:57

made UN ambassador for migratory species.

Speaker: 00:09:00

So I never intended for my thing to be flying with birds

Speaker: 00:09:04

or following birds on migration.

Speaker: 00:09:05

But I say my initial inspiration was hearing a load of

Speaker: 00:09:08

scientists uh, with a problem.

Speaker: 00:09:10

I really believed in them, what they were trying to do but could see they

Speaker: 00:09:14

needed a pretty radical solution.

Speaker: 00:09:15

And just strangely.

Speaker: 00:09:17

I put together a solution that combined all my strengths,

Speaker: 00:09:21

which were flying paramotors.

Speaker: 00:09:23

I grew up in the Australian Bush.

Speaker: 00:09:24

So I don't mind spending time in remote areas, camping out night after night.

Speaker: 00:09:29

And I quite like meeting strangers and I'm pretty good at picking up languages.

Speaker: 00:09:34

So all of those weird pieces will pull together.

Speaker: 00:09:37

And I count with this idea of, of flying, flying with the birds and it worked.

Speaker: 00:09:41

So now I'm on a mission to, to do more of those things.

Speaker: 00:09:45

But I guess what I've really seen is that the point of view of the

Speaker: 00:09:48

birds is so powerful, but for so much more than just bird conservation.

Speaker: 00:09:55

So on the next project, we're looking at the flight of the osprey, but

Speaker: 00:09:59

what we're really looking at is all the complex issues that we're facing

Speaker: 00:10:03

today, the loss of biodiversity, climate change, et cetera.

Speaker: 00:10:06

But looking at it through the eyes of a single species gives you really tangible

Speaker: 00:10:11

examples, and it makes a lot of things clear and understandable for people.

Speaker: 00:10:15

And I can tell the story in a way that people's heads don't explode.

Speaker: 00:10:19

so Sacha, what you've been really pointing to is, you know, I was hearing two things.

Speaker: 00:10:26

One is when you kind of zoom out from what you are seeing at a linear level and you

Speaker: 00:10:34

kind of really take a step back, you are able to see the picture much more clearly.

Speaker: 00:10:39

And secondly, when you are able to see the picture much more clearly, you are able

Speaker: 00:10:44

to see how you need to lead the different pieces and how they fit together.

Speaker: 00:10:51

So is, is that what regenerative leadership means to you in terms

Speaker: 00:10:56

of, you know, making things happen and, and making things change?

Speaker: 00:11:00

Well, I think, well, I hadn't heard of the term regenerative leadership

Speaker: 00:11:03

until I met you, but I guess what it invokes in me is, well, I definitely

Speaker: 00:11:08

see that looking at things from the big picture feels to me like it's

Speaker: 00:11:11

gotta be an essential part of it.

Speaker: 00:11:13

The ability to step to step back.

Speaker: 00:11:15

And there's good things through that.

Speaker: 00:11:17

And what I definitely noticed from the air is that you see better the

Speaker: 00:11:21

interconnectedness with things.

Speaker: 00:11:23

So if you're interested in looking at systems and systems change, I think that's

Speaker: 00:11:26

quite a, that's quite a useful thing.

Speaker: 00:11:28

But there's another benefit of being, being up high and looking at things from,

Speaker: 00:11:32

from above in that the problems all seem to make a little bit more sense, but

Speaker: 00:11:36

they also seem slightly easier to solve.

Speaker: 00:11:39

Um, they all look a bit smaller.

Speaker: 00:11:41

And that I found personally was important in reminding, well, certainly

Speaker: 00:11:47

reminding myself, whereas my whole aims, what I'm driven by are seeing

Speaker: 00:11:51

problems in the world and coming up with solutions to try and find it.

Speaker: 00:11:55

I gave up ages ago having money as my main aim, despite lots of people

Speaker: 00:11:59

saying Well with your intellectual abilities, you should be in a, in a

Speaker: 00:12:02

role which is making you lots of money.

Speaker: 00:12:04

And I tried in various occasions and though, Actually, this isn't

Speaker: 00:12:07

just, isn't what drives me.

Speaker: 00:12:08

I know this 100% now, it is not what drives me.

Speaker: 00:12:12

And so I guess a part of it is looking at things from the big

Speaker: 00:12:14

picture is really important, but I think, yeah, regenerative leadership

Speaker: 00:12:19

brings up a few other ideas for me.

Speaker: 00:12:21

One of those is I suppose for me, this idea that in any organization, you

Speaker: 00:12:27

are part of a system, you are part of the ecology of the world, and your aim

Speaker: 00:12:31

has got to be, to be leaving it in a better state than what it started, which

Speaker: 00:12:36

hasn't been the case in the future.

Speaker: 00:12:37

So regeneration on the big picture.

Speaker: 00:12:40

But also I think by, it makes me think of this idea of regenerating

Speaker: 00:12:46

of, of people and all your, your human resources as well.

Speaker: 00:12:49

So I, I guess what I focus on with, with people is that I really try and

Speaker: 00:12:54

see, and everybody that's working with me or volunteering with me, I'm

Speaker: 00:12:58

constantly trying to look for what are the magical pieces in them, which

Speaker: 00:13:03

give them the most power or where they can find their strongest powers?

Speaker: 00:13:07

So, I guess in my early twenties where lots of our volunteers

Speaker: 00:13:11

are in their early twenties, I had no idea what I was good at.

Speaker: 00:13:14

I was told what I was good at.

Speaker: 00:13:15

I'd been told what I was good at many times over.

Speaker: 00:13:17

And that was, I've been told when I was young, that I was intellectual.

Speaker: 00:13:20

Not practical.

Speaker: 00:13:21

They seem to be like, if you're intellectual, you're not practical.

Speaker: 00:13:23

I have like, that didn't really fit.

Speaker: 00:13:26

I used to like mass competitions, for example.

Speaker: 00:13:28

I was pretty rubbish at most things to do with English, but I was definitely

Speaker: 00:13:31

told I was intellectual, not practical.

Speaker: 00:13:33

Told many things that didn't really fit very well with me.

Speaker: 00:13:36

So in my early twenties, I just decided to start following my heart and try as

Speaker: 00:13:41

many things as possible until I was 30.

Speaker: 00:13:43

And then by 30 I would had it all figured out.

Speaker: 00:13:46

But I guess I, I really like to focus on encouraging the same in, in young people.

Speaker: 00:13:52

I think a lot of them have grown up in a system which has encouraged

Speaker: 00:13:55

them to study and be a certain thing.

Speaker: 00:13:57

But I think in school these days, you just don't have the opportunities

Speaker: 00:14:00

to learn enough about who you are.

Speaker: 00:14:03

That's my perception anyway.

Speaker: 00:14:04

And I think I had an, one other element of my upbringing being growing up in

Speaker: 00:14:09

the Australian Bush, where you have to make your own fun and you're given

Speaker: 00:14:13

huge amounts of freedom, it meant that i, I think I could sort of experiment

Speaker: 00:14:18

more and figure out just what sorts of things i, I was good at, what I liked.

Speaker: 00:14:23

One of the things I feel having worked in the environmental sector

Speaker: 00:14:26

now for, I'm afraid to say a couple of decades, I would love to see, oh yes.

Speaker: 00:14:33

There's various various ways that I think the, the environmental NGO

Speaker: 00:14:37

sector develops a system of competition between organizations, which is

Speaker: 00:14:44

really unhelpful and really wasteful.

Speaker: 00:14:46

But we've also ended up in a few narratives, which I find really

Speaker: 00:14:50

painful, and this is an incredible simplification and not about everybody.

Speaker: 00:14:54

But when I look at it, quite often when you've got your fundraising team

Speaker: 00:14:59

separate to your research teams you end up in a system where the researchers

Speaker: 00:15:05

identify problems, the fundraisers, you know, make use of those problems because

Speaker: 00:15:09

that's there the tier jerkers that will bring in the revenue, but in there's

Speaker: 00:15:13

nowhere in the system where the main aim is to find really incredible solutions.

Speaker: 00:15:20

And that for me is a hugely flawed system.

Speaker: 00:15:24

Whereas I guess in the, in the corporate world, you'll find the whole organization

Speaker: 00:15:30

is aimed at say selling more product.

Speaker: 00:15:32

That is your, your aim.

Speaker: 00:15:34

I don't feel like we have that in the NGO sector.

Speaker: 00:15:36

It's kind of focused on getting as many members and making sure you've

Speaker: 00:15:39

got revenue to keep going, but it feels like there's a broken element of the

Speaker: 00:15:44

system, which is solving the problems.

Speaker: 00:15:46

There's actually no major award for solving a problem because people

Speaker: 00:15:49

are then no longer interested, and it's no longer a story that keeps

Speaker: 00:15:53

allowing you to generate revenue.

Speaker: 00:15:55

And I also think that means NGOs probably don't employ the right mix

Speaker: 00:15:59

of people from all different sorts of background, with all different sorts

Speaker: 00:16:02

of skills to really look at a, at a puzzle and think Actually, we've got

Speaker: 00:16:06

a problem, it might be an animal going extinct, but what is the big picture?

Speaker: 00:16:08

What are all the pieces in the puzzle and how do we manipulate

Speaker: 00:16:11

those to really generate change?

Speaker: 00:16:13

I don't think most NGOs are built to do the best job of that at the moment.

Speaker: 00:16:17

Um, hence why I want to try doing things differently.

Speaker: 00:16:21

I will associate with, collaborate with every NGO out there

Speaker: 00:16:25

working in the area that I am.

Speaker: 00:16:26

We will share all of our resources, our photographs, our

Speaker: 00:16:29

video, which nobody ever does.

Speaker: 00:16:30

We will promote the work of people who are doing incredible work, but yeah,

Speaker: 00:16:34

we are 100% focused on what is the problem that we're trying to solve.

Speaker: 00:16:39

You touched on a few things there, in terms of looking at a problem and then

Speaker: 00:16:44

understanding all the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and then, you

Speaker: 00:16:48

know, figuring out how to configure them to, to solve, solve the problem.

Speaker: 00:16:53

And that, that, you know, requires a different style of leadership.

Speaker: 00:16:58

You know, not one of telling people what to do, but one of collaborating

Speaker: 00:17:03

and bringing people together.

Speaker: 00:17:05

And being prepared to, to think really broadly and speak to very different people

Speaker: 00:17:10

with very different background and skills,

Speaker: 00:17:12

And often very different views from your own, right?

Speaker: 00:17:15

Absolutely.

Speaker: 00:17:16

So you shared with me Sacha, some of your key moments of insight that have

Speaker: 00:17:22

unlocked that way of thinking for you, cuz it's not the traditional way of thinking

Speaker: 00:17:28

about problems and about problem solving.

Speaker: 00:17:30

So it'd be great to hear, you know, what were, what were some of those

Speaker: 00:17:34

moments that you can reflect back on that where something really changed

Speaker: 00:17:38

in you that made you go, Huh, I gotta see the world in a different way here.

Speaker: 00:17:44

The key one would be one that I probably don't share with many people, maybe not

Speaker: 00:17:49

with enough people was a moment in Spain.

Speaker: 00:17:52

I was kind of between a couple of the, the roles that I'd done.

Speaker: 00:17:55

And I was actually pretty frustrated, a bit confused in my early twenties.

Speaker: 00:18:00

Had just had a horrible breakup with somebody.

Speaker: 00:18:03

Had quit my job to try and uh, repair the relationship.

Speaker: 00:18:07

And anyway, lots of things had gone wrong.

Speaker: 00:18:09

And I was a bit lost.

Speaker: 00:18:12

I'd been teaching English for ages and actually this kind of wasn't really

Speaker: 00:18:15

what I wanted to be doing either.

Speaker: 00:18:16

And I ended up in a state of pretty serious depression, I suppose,

Speaker: 00:18:20

the most depressed I have been.

Speaker: 00:18:21

Miserable about all sorts of things.

Speaker: 00:18:25

And to the point where I had considered jumping off a balcony, I was lived

Speaker: 00:18:31

in a very high apartment building.

Speaker: 00:18:34

And I'd been laying on the floor for two days.

Speaker: 00:18:36

Not wanting to pick myself up off the floor.

Speaker: 00:18:38

And considering I'm generally a really positive, optimistic person, this

Speaker: 00:18:42

was a really unusual state for me.

Speaker: 00:18:44

And I remember, yeah, looking over the balcony and just thinking, God,

Speaker: 00:18:48

this would just take everything away, that would be great.

Speaker: 00:18:50

And then I, then I thought actually, I've been so sort of independent my whole life

Speaker: 00:18:56

since sort of leaving home kind of around 15, 16, my parents actually didn't know

Speaker: 00:19:01

exactly where I was living at the time.

Speaker: 00:19:03

I wasn't sure how long it would be before anybody even knew that I was missing.

Speaker: 00:19:07

I went through all these other thoughts of God, you know, I,

Speaker: 00:19:10

um, they won't know where I am.

Speaker: 00:19:11

And isn't this miserable?

Speaker: 00:19:13

This was going down to more and more and more of a miserable track.

Speaker: 00:19:16

And then I remember looking at the stars and thinking actually how

Speaker: 00:19:19

insignificant I was in the real world.

Speaker: 00:19:21

And this started off as being a very negative thought.

Speaker: 00:19:23

I'm so insignificant, I could jump off this now and nobody would

Speaker: 00:19:27

know that I'd gone, and nobody would even notice for a long time.

Speaker: 00:19:31

And I'm such a tiny little dot on this enormous planet.

Speaker: 00:19:35

Do I mean anything at all?

Speaker: 00:19:37

And then I somehow switched it in my head around to, well, if I'm just

Speaker: 00:19:40

a tiny blip in the world and the world's kind of turning anyway and

Speaker: 00:19:43

the systems of the world will going anyway, doesn't really matter what I do?

Speaker: 00:19:47

And if it doesn't really matter what I do, could I actually just try doing anything?

Speaker: 00:19:52

And it might work and it might fail, but in the end, the big

Speaker: 00:19:55

pitch doesn't really matter?

Speaker: 00:19:56

And I ended up deciding that actually I should just follow whatever mad, crazy

Speaker: 00:20:01

dreams I had, and see where it took me.

Speaker: 00:20:05

And that's, I suppose, a moment for me, which was very liberating,

Speaker: 00:20:09

this idea that, yes, I'm really small, potentially insignificant

Speaker: 00:20:12

on this planet for a tiny period of time in the grand scheme of things.

Speaker: 00:20:16

But why not then just make the most of my time here and

Speaker: 00:20:21

follow my heart and my passions?

Speaker: 00:20:23

And that has always been about conservation making

Speaker: 00:20:26

the world a better place.

Speaker: 00:20:27

And so that's, I suppose, where this idea of, why not aim for the

Speaker: 00:20:31

stars if you want to try and make a difference, that's where that came from.

Speaker: 00:20:35

And the sort of lack of fear of failing, that I think has

Speaker: 00:20:39

also had a big impact there.

Speaker: 00:20:41

Cause I didn't have that as a child, just to be very clear.

Speaker: 00:20:43

I was very good at math as a child.

Speaker: 00:20:45

But I once cried because I got 99% in a maths test.

Speaker: 00:20:49

That's how scared I was of failure.

Speaker: 00:20:51

So uh, getting one wrong in a hundred for me was a failure and like

Speaker: 00:20:54

everybody would, it would be awful.

Speaker: 00:20:56

And that's now gone.

Speaker: 00:20:57

So yeah, that was, that was definitely a moment for me.

Speaker: 00:21:00

Well, thank you so much for sharing that, Sacha, cuz it's, it's obviously,

Speaker: 00:21:04

you know, a very, a very personal moment that you had where, you know, faced

Speaker: 00:21:09

with your own depression, it looked like the only way out was, was for

Speaker: 00:21:15

this physical form, not to, to be here.

Speaker: 00:21:18

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:21:19

But there was something, there was something deep inside of you that sort

Speaker: 00:21:24

of gave you another option and you know, kind of generated something in

Speaker: 00:21:29

you that said, well, hang on a minute.

Speaker: 00:21:31

If you're not significant, then there's nothing to fear.

Speaker: 00:21:35

And if there's nothing to fear, then why don't you just follow your heart?

Speaker: 00:21:39

And everything will just unfold.

Speaker: 00:21:43

And it sounds like, you know, that that moment gave you that resilience to see

Speaker: 00:21:50

every obstacle as not something to be afraid of or scared of, it was a new

Speaker: 00:21:57

opportunity for that, that resilience and that intelligence to see who

Speaker: 00:22:03

you needed, who you needed to bring together and, and see what happens next.

Speaker: 00:22:07

Yep.

Speaker: 00:22:07

And definitely a moment of like, of considering, like,

Speaker: 00:22:11

what if I made this, the end?

Speaker: 00:22:13

Makes you feel like you know, this is a gift this extra time.

Speaker: 00:22:16

It seems really dramatic and I almost don't recognize it

Speaker: 00:22:19

now because I'm, you know, in general, such a, such an optimist.

Speaker: 00:22:23

But that definitely, I guess, was a, was a defining moment for me.

Speaker: 00:22:27

There's been a couple of others, maybe not quite as huge.

Speaker: 00:22:31

But certainly in terms of my journey to figuring out how to drive change

Speaker: 00:22:36

or from a scientist to, I think somebody who's thinks a bit more in

Speaker: 00:22:40

sort of spiderwebs of, of networks and uh, and different people.

Speaker: 00:22:44

So I, at one point in Australia, I used to go out swimming every day.

Speaker: 00:22:50

I started to go and swim out to the shark nets that were off the beaches Sydney.

Speaker: 00:22:54

And, um, I was absolutely horrified by the, a, the concept of a shark net once

Speaker: 00:23:01

they saw what it was, but also by the things that were being caught in it.

Speaker: 00:23:04

So shark net people assume is like a big net that stops sharks from

Speaker: 00:23:07

getting to the beach, but on a beach, like Coolaroo was one of the beach.

Speaker: 00:23:11

They would go to it's five kilometers long, and there's shark net is two little

Speaker: 00:23:14

strips, a hundred meters long, one at one under the beach, one at the other just

Speaker: 00:23:17

about a few hundred meters out to sea.

Speaker: 00:23:20

And it's just meant to randomly catch things.

Speaker: 00:23:22

So it doesn't go all the way to the bottom.

Speaker: 00:23:23

Doesn't go all the way to the top, but it randomly catches

Speaker: 00:23:25

stuff that's swimming around.

Speaker: 00:23:26

And it would catch big angel sharks and they don't really have like biting teeth.

Speaker: 00:23:31

They certainly couldn't do any damage to anybody.

Speaker: 00:23:33

It would catch baby hammerheads just because of the shape of their head.

Speaker: 00:23:36

All sorts of fish and other things, dolphins.

Speaker: 00:23:38

So it's basically random.

Speaker: 00:23:40

It's doing random culling off the beaches.

Speaker: 00:23:42

And I looked at that all and thought, Okay, this is, this

Speaker: 00:23:44

makes no sense whatsoever.

Speaker: 00:23:46

I can't believe people aren't up in arms about it, or they surely they will

Speaker: 00:23:49

be if they knew, knew more about it.

Speaker: 00:23:50

So through freedom of information, I got records from uh, the

Speaker: 00:23:54

government with all the things that were caught in the shark nets.

Speaker: 00:23:57

And it was given to me on printed out paper with draft written all over it

Speaker: 00:24:00

so that I couldn't photocopy it and automatically get into Numbers, I presume.

Speaker: 00:24:04

So a friend and I typed those all out so we could do calculations on them.

Speaker: 00:24:08

And then we ended up with data on what was being caught and how much of that

Speaker: 00:24:11

was actually of any danger to people.

Speaker: 00:24:13

And nobody really cared.

Speaker: 00:24:15

It was statistics and data.

Speaker: 00:24:17

And I was, I was kind of horrified by that.

Speaker: 00:24:19

And then, so as a scientist, you would think people will respond

Speaker: 00:24:23

to, to data that's making no sense.

Speaker: 00:24:26

Uh, and then next thing, you know, I decided to start going out with a

Speaker: 00:24:29

camera and filming my swimming along the shark nets, recording what was there.

Speaker: 00:24:34

And there was a bit more interest in that because I had a, you know, some

Speaker: 00:24:37

interesting visuals to go alongside it.

Speaker: 00:24:38

Suddenly the news would occasionally pick up on it.

Speaker: 00:24:41

And then I became Australian free diving champion, completely

Speaker: 00:24:44

separate to being a, a biologist.

Speaker: 00:24:47

And I was a, yeah, national sports champion.

Speaker: 00:24:51

And suddenly everybody wanted to know my opinion on the shark nets, quite

Speaker: 00:24:54

often, not even asking whether or not I was a biologist or had a new data.

Speaker: 00:24:59

And I at the time just was, I was absolutely horrified.

Speaker: 00:25:02

I was mortif, mortified that they were interested that that

Speaker: 00:25:06

what a sports person had to say.

Speaker: 00:25:08

And then I had just had to have a word with myself that actually,

Speaker: 00:25:11

what was the point in fighting it?

Speaker: 00:25:12

If this was the way the kind of system worked, and this was what was putting

Speaker: 00:25:16

the shark net stuff onto national prime time news, why should I fight it?

Speaker: 00:25:22

This is like more about, I guess it was my first moment of really

Speaker: 00:25:25

thinking You've gotta kind of understand a system and understand

Speaker: 00:25:28

that humans don't necessarily think logically or make decisions logically.

Speaker: 00:25:33

And actually that there are powerful triggers in the human

Speaker: 00:25:36

brain, like human stories that you really need to make use of.

Speaker: 00:25:41

Powerful visuals and, and human stories.

Speaker: 00:25:43

And I suppose that has also set me off on my journey.

Speaker: 00:25:46

So quite often when I'm asked.

Speaker: 00:25:49

When I've been asked to help with a problem.

Speaker: 00:25:51

So one of those was tiny bird that migrates from Russia, uh, the Russian

Speaker: 00:25:55

app all the way down to Thailand, et cetera, so it goes on the east

Speaker: 00:25:58

Asian, a Australian flyway, tiny little brown bird, little brown job.

Speaker: 00:26:02

Who's gonna care about this little brown bird that's the most

Speaker: 00:26:04

threatened bird in the, in the world?

Speaker: 00:26:06

I looked at all of that and thought actually, the key thing for me, the

Speaker: 00:26:09

bit that actually got me into the story was the stories of the people up in

Speaker: 00:26:13

the Arctic who are trying to find these little birds, find their nests, keep

Speaker: 00:26:18

some eggs in captivity, and um, those, those human stories are potentially

Speaker: 00:26:23

the way that we get through to people.

Speaker: 00:26:25

And then we can introduce them to this very cute little brown bird.

Speaker: 00:26:29

But yeah, the, the power of human stories and that you've gotta really.

Speaker: 00:26:33

Imagine what people might uh, talk to people about at a pub.

Speaker: 00:26:36

If you're thinking what story's gonna get their attention, that it's

Speaker: 00:26:38

probably not gonna be data, even if it's really shocking statistics,

Speaker: 00:26:42

it won't necessarily make somebody move somebody the way a story will.

Speaker: 00:26:47

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:26:47

And it's, you know, I, I love, I love what you're saying, Sacha, cuz it's,

Speaker: 00:26:50

you know, you've you've without any education you have intuitively observed

Speaker: 00:26:56

that, what creates a realization and a change in one person doesn't

Speaker: 00:27:01

necessarily do it for another person.

Speaker: 00:27:03

You know, and we, we, we see this all the time, you know, it's like if data

Speaker: 00:27:07

and statistics made people do stuff, no one would smoke anymore, right?

Speaker: 00:27:11

We'll put those pictures on the side of cigarette packets showing,

Speaker: 00:27:16

you know, the devastation then damage that it, that it does.

Speaker: 00:27:19

And, and yet still people smoke.

Speaker: 00:27:21

But there's something in the storytelling that, as you said, you know, in, in the

Speaker: 00:27:27

human condition, these triggers get made and people start to have realization.

Speaker: 00:27:35

And it's, it's what realization creates the change that happens for

Speaker: 00:27:40

people, but it happens on the inside.

Speaker: 00:27:43

It's not something that happens on the, on the outside.

Speaker: 00:27:47

And I know that you've been sort of learning about that through

Speaker: 00:27:50

your own you know, journey that you've, that you've been on.

Speaker: 00:27:54

And, and you've also been learning about your mind and how it works, and how it,

Speaker: 00:27:58

how it works for, for all human beings.

Speaker: 00:28:01

And obviously that, that capacity for realization is something that

Speaker: 00:28:05

we're all, we're all born with.

Speaker: 00:28:08

But what it produces is different in, in every one of us.

Speaker: 00:28:11

Um, and so you started to sort of touch on it in terms of what you've been

Speaker: 00:28:16

learning about the human mind, how it works and, and how, how change happens.

Speaker: 00:28:22

Yeah, well, I guess I, I am just learning, and I, I think from what

Speaker: 00:28:24

you just mentioned there, this idea of how, what moves different people.

Speaker: 00:28:29

I guess one thing that put me in a different position on say the, this

Speaker: 00:28:34

flight with the swans to the other researchers was that I was regularly

Speaker: 00:28:38

putting myself right in front of people and different communities.

Speaker: 00:28:42

So we could have sort of thought about the message at a big picture.

Speaker: 00:28:45

And it's one thing to sort of put a message out in press releases.

Speaker: 00:28:48

It's a very different thing to fly and stop and land and talk to people

Speaker: 00:28:52

everywhere from Nenets people living in a hut with their reindeers in a sort

Speaker: 00:28:57

of teepee type structure with their reindeers in the Arctic to um, Polish

Speaker: 00:29:02

fish farmer, to a kind of Lord, somewhere in the UK, I basically had to stop and

Speaker: 00:29:07

land and like, my message was tested face to face with all these different people.

Speaker: 00:29:12

So you get a very kind of instant gut feeling of how is this landing?

Speaker: 00:29:18

And you can sit there and watch people's faces and see which part of this

Speaker: 00:29:22

message is kind of resonating for you?

Speaker: 00:29:24

What, what bits actually spark your interest?

Speaker: 00:29:27

And then I kind of realized the key thing to the beginning

Speaker: 00:29:30

is to spark people's interest.

Speaker: 00:29:31

And that is not hard when you're land in their backyard with a paramotor, that's

Speaker: 00:29:34

the one thing like you're gonna start a conversation, whether you like it or not.

Speaker: 00:29:38

Some of them will be a little bit shirty, but actually it happened very little.

Speaker: 00:29:41

On the whole, that whole flight of the swans expedition, the only angry

Speaker: 00:29:43

person I met was a school grounds manager in Kent, in Rochester.

Speaker: 00:29:48

Um, I'm desperate to go back there and speak to him at some point.

Speaker: 00:29:51

Everybody else was, as soon as I take my helmet off and people can see I'm

Speaker: 00:29:54

female they're instantly kind of ask, Oh my gosh, where have you come from?

Speaker: 00:29:58

Is it dangerous?

Speaker: 00:29:59

And do you need help?

Speaker: 00:29:59

So uh, yeah, the one thing is to kind of get people's attention and

Speaker: 00:30:03

then is to peak their interest, get their imagination going.

Speaker: 00:30:08

And I had that easily with the story of the swan.

Speaker: 00:30:11

So once you know, I've stopped and landed, they're already like, what,

Speaker: 00:30:13

what is this lady doing landing here?

Speaker: 00:30:17

And then it's You're what?

Speaker: 00:30:18

You've come from where?

Speaker: 00:30:19

What do the swans do?

Speaker: 00:30:20

Do they come all the way from the Russian Arctic?

Speaker: 00:30:23

As soon as we had that story, you can see their imagination going.

Speaker: 00:30:26

And I know there's different brain regions that spark up.

Speaker: 00:30:29

And once you spark up that part of the brain where they're imagining and

Speaker: 00:30:33

they're creating ideas, it already puts them in a bit of a space, a head space

Speaker: 00:30:38

of thinking about the bigger picture.

Speaker: 00:30:41

And I wish I'd gone and done a bit more research to remember all

Speaker: 00:30:43

the different brain region names.

Speaker: 00:30:44

But yeah, there's definitely, if you get people thinking, get their creative

Speaker: 00:30:48

mind working, maybe inspire a little bit of awe, they're in the right head

Speaker: 00:30:54

space for thinking about the big picture, potentially collaborating with people.

Speaker: 00:30:59

And that's where people shared a lot of information.

Speaker: 00:31:01

So I'd ask about what threats might there be in this area.

Speaker: 00:31:05

And the sort of responses I got even from hunting communities was

Speaker: 00:31:08

so different to what people told me.

Speaker: 00:31:10

I had to do a specific bit of health and safety training, which was how to

Speaker: 00:31:15

respond if somebody's shooting at you and how to heal yourself if you've

Speaker: 00:31:18

got a bullet wound uh, in an artery.

Speaker: 00:31:21

Because everybody said, Go and talk to hunters about them hunting

Speaker: 00:31:26

and uh, they'll shoot at you.

Speaker: 00:31:28

And actually the reaction I got everywhere was very, very different.

Speaker: 00:31:31

So yes you are right.

Speaker: 00:31:33

But I guess I don't have a kind of theory of exactly how to reach

Speaker: 00:31:38

different sorts of people, but certainly testing the message face to face with

Speaker: 00:31:42

a group of people you learn pretty quickly how they're gonna respond.

Speaker: 00:31:46

And if we break down what you, what you said, you know, it's like, you, you have

Speaker: 00:31:50

realized for your yourself that everybody has the capacity for imagination.

Speaker: 00:31:55

Every human being can imagine.

Speaker: 00:31:57

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:57

And what they imagine, well, you don't know, but they've got this

Speaker: 00:32:00

capacity for, for imagination.

Speaker: 00:32:02

They've got this capacity for wondering and being in awe of something.

Speaker: 00:32:08

They've got this capacity to be curious.

Speaker: 00:32:12

They've got this capacity to, to engage.

Speaker: 00:32:15

And it, it sounds like Sacha, you really intuitively could be curious

Speaker: 00:32:21

about what people were imagining, and engage in that, in that dialog.

Speaker: 00:32:27

Yes.

Speaker: 00:32:28

And I, I definitely tried to keep the conversations at that level.

Speaker: 00:32:34

So again, before the expedition, we had long debates about whether

Speaker: 00:32:37

the kind of message I was starting off with was, You know, we know

Speaker: 00:32:41

there's a problem with swans here.

Speaker: 00:32:42

We know that you are part of a problem, like, can you help?

Speaker: 00:32:45

Or should I go in with the question, like Swans are disappearing, like we've lost

Speaker: 00:32:49

almost half of them, and we're wanting to talk to everybody to see if we can figure

Speaker: 00:32:53

out how and what we can do about it?

Speaker: 00:32:55

And the difference in reaction.

Speaker: 00:32:57

I got, when I said, We've got this problem that we're trying to figure out,

Speaker: 00:33:02

and we're asking everybody, you know, have you got any ideas of how to help?

Speaker: 00:33:05

And I instantly got people in this kind of a phase of, I guess, imagining.

Speaker: 00:33:11

And I could get them thinking like from the eyes of the, from the eyes of a

Speaker: 00:33:14

swan, what could be going wrong here?

Speaker: 00:33:16

And I just found people talked.

Speaker: 00:33:19

Uh, we got lots of incredible, useful feedback, introductions to people.

Speaker: 00:33:24

Ooh I think the fish farm has changed in the last, in the last 10 years.

Speaker: 00:33:27

Maybe there's something there, here, like clips go down and chat

Speaker: 00:33:30

to my mate who runs the fish farm.

Speaker: 00:33:32

Um, so people who were part of the problem were introduced about as, you know, they

Speaker: 00:33:36

could be part of the solution instead.

Speaker: 00:33:38

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:39

And I think it's, it's so important what you are, what you are sharing,

Speaker: 00:33:42

cuz it's, you know, we've sort of been told to identify the people that

Speaker: 00:33:48

are part of the problem, and that engaging with them where if you make

Speaker: 00:33:54

somebody the issue or the problem.

Speaker: 00:33:57

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:57

There's this immediate sense of resistance.

Speaker: 00:34:01

I'm not the problem.

Speaker: 00:34:02

Whereas if you say to people, We have a problem and it's a collective problem.

Speaker: 00:34:08

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:34:08

Do you have a point of view?

Speaker: 00:34:11

Do you have a, a, a sense of, of what?

Speaker: 00:34:15

You know, it opens up this space of imagining it opens up this space of

Speaker: 00:34:19

wondering, it opens up this space of, of insight that everybody has

Speaker: 00:34:24

the capacity to, to contribute to.

Speaker: 00:34:28

And if you let people be part of being one of the good guys on the team that

Speaker: 00:34:31

are trying to solve it before you accuse them of being the problem, then

Speaker: 00:34:35

yeah, you're on a much better footing.

Speaker: 00:34:36

And that's what we just found repeatedly.

Speaker: 00:34:39

I think I had an amazing moment in in Belgium where a lady had, she drove

Speaker: 00:34:45

all the way from Germany to meet me and the team and to give us a hug.

Speaker: 00:34:50

Because I think we gave her a very similar realization to what you've just mentioned.

Speaker: 00:34:56

So she, she and her other half had helped to like done manual labor,

Speaker: 00:35:01

recreating a wetland in Germany.

Speaker: 00:35:03

And the, when she'd gone to look at where the different tracked

Speaker: 00:35:07

swans had gone to, one of them had actually visited this wetland.

Speaker: 00:35:09

So that was the first thing she saw.

Speaker: 00:35:11

And then in the, there was a piece in the German news about a man

Speaker: 00:35:13

accidentally shooting a Bewick's swan.

Speaker: 00:35:15

They are protected in every part.

Speaker: 00:35:17

And she was furious.

Speaker: 00:35:19

Absolutely furious about the idea.

Speaker: 00:35:21

And she was about to ring up and have a screaming match

Speaker: 00:35:24

of the hunting association.

Speaker: 00:35:26

And then she said, But I stopped.

Speaker: 00:35:28

And I thought, God, what?

Speaker: 00:35:29

Cause she'd followed had an interesting interaction in Poland around,

Speaker: 00:35:32

around the shooting issue there.

Speaker: 00:35:34

And then she stopped and she said, Oh, well, what would the

Speaker: 00:35:35

flight of the swans team do?

Speaker: 00:35:37

And she went onto the website and she read the various different articles.

Speaker: 00:35:39

And she said, Well, maybe, maybe they will be up for just talking.

Speaker: 00:35:42

So she said, Instead I called up and I asked them for a meeting.

Speaker: 00:35:45

And I said like, I've seen this in the paper and it's really sad.

Speaker: 00:35:48

I'm sure you are, you are disappointed as well.

Speaker: 00:35:50

Would you have a meeting with me?

Speaker: 00:35:52

And she said, amazingly, they said Yes.

Speaker: 00:35:54

And so we had a meeting and it was all very civil and they completely

Speaker: 00:35:56

agreed that, yeah, this was a problem that we needed to fix.

Speaker: 00:35:59

And she said, But like half an hour beforehand, I'd been fuming and I was

Speaker: 00:36:03

ready to go in there, guns blazing.

Speaker: 00:36:04

And I have no idea what sort of reaction I would've got.

Speaker: 00:36:06

And now we're collaborating to try and figure out how we solve this issue.

Speaker: 00:36:11

And thank you very much for, for like showing a different way, a way that was,

Speaker: 00:36:15

you know, went from the stress of God, everything's really awful and the bad

Speaker: 00:36:19

guys out there are never gonna change to actually, if we approach this in

Speaker: 00:36:24

people in the right way and maybe kind of collaborate, we have a much better

Speaker: 00:36:27

chance of finding solutions, so yeah.

Speaker: 00:36:30

And it happened in her mind.

Speaker: 00:36:32

Well, true.

Speaker: 00:36:32

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:36:33

Which is, you know, so she went from absolutely crazy, vilifying people

Speaker: 00:36:38

to, in her mind, something switched and opened up this space to make her

Speaker: 00:36:44

wonder what the swans team would do.

Speaker: 00:36:47

And then, and then go and go look at it.

Speaker: 00:36:50

But what do you put that down to?

Speaker: 00:36:51

That moment where something switches inside of you?

Speaker: 00:36:56

I, I know you've had a lot of experiences, you know, very recently where you,

Speaker: 00:37:00

you've been in that really dark place.

Speaker: 00:37:02

And then, and then something's just, just opened inside your mind.

Speaker: 00:37:06

What, what do you, what do you put that down to?

Speaker: 00:37:08

That's a very good question.

Speaker: 00:37:10

I, I, the only way I can think of addressing it is by

Speaker: 00:37:12

thinking of specific examples.

Speaker: 00:37:14

So we, we changed quite a lot of Polish hunters' views on an issue

Speaker: 00:37:18

of lead poisoning, basically.

Speaker: 00:37:19

It's whether or not lead pellets that are shot out of guns are,

Speaker: 00:37:21

are poisonous when waterbirds eat them like a hundred percent.

Speaker: 00:37:24

There's no question of it.

Speaker: 00:37:25

But the hunting community have been told for many years by the lead

Speaker: 00:37:27

industry that it's nonsense and it's the thin end of the witch conservation

Speaker: 00:37:31

is trying to stop you shooting.

Speaker: 00:37:33

It's really not the case.

Speaker: 00:37:35

I mean, in Poland, I talked about lead poisoning on breakfast

Speaker: 00:37:37

television, and it caused a massive uproar from different people.

Speaker: 00:37:41

And we ended up with letters and calls going to the television network that

Speaker: 00:37:46

were angry at the journalist who was then like asking us, what can we do about it?

Speaker: 00:37:50

The same letters we're going to the hunting association.

Speaker: 00:37:52

They were getting angry at the television network.

Speaker: 00:37:54

And in all of it, I just said, well, why don't you ask the

Speaker: 00:37:56

hunting association to dinner?

Speaker: 00:37:58

And the bird association we were working with who had no communication

Speaker: 00:38:02

with the hunters whatsoever were like, Ugh, I couldn't bear that.

Speaker: 00:38:05

And they'll never say yes.

Speaker: 00:38:07

And they did.

Speaker: 00:38:08

And they came to dinner.

Speaker: 00:38:09

So we had like a, a conversation back and forth, a very, very sociable, both

Speaker: 00:38:13

of all of us filmed the conversation.

Speaker: 00:38:15

But the key thing for me, what I understood in that phone call was

Speaker: 00:38:18

that there was a couple of key pieces of that whole argument that

Speaker: 00:38:22

the head of the association really hadn't understood the basic science.

Speaker: 00:38:25

To be honest, it was a basic fact of, and I can understand, because it was

Speaker: 00:38:28

a lot of scientists had just assumed that everybody would know that people

Speaker: 00:38:32

hadn't understood that was actually, it was the pellets that birds were

Speaker: 00:38:34

eating, not pellets being shot in them.

Speaker: 00:38:36

So they could always say, we're not shooting endangered species.

Speaker: 00:38:38

So it's not a problem.

Speaker: 00:38:39

That was a key thing, but I wouldn't have understood that

Speaker: 00:38:41

unless I'd been sitting over dinner, chatting to somebody about it.

Speaker: 00:38:45

But the second most important thing was, some of them said, Look, no one

Speaker: 00:38:47

from the conservation world has ever spoken to us face to face before.

Speaker: 00:38:51

And I, that as a statement in itself was like, was pretty shocking.

Speaker: 00:38:55

And we hadn't done it in like a, you know, round a round, a dinner table

Speaker: 00:38:58

where we were speaking to each other as humans rather than adversaries.

Speaker: 00:39:01

So I guess that's a, that's a pretty simple case where it was, I guess, just

Speaker: 00:39:05

reminding people that other people are, are humans when it's on a specific issue.

Speaker: 00:39:09

But whether that is actually what causes, yeah.

Speaker: 00:39:13

I don't know what it is that gives people a massive epiphany.

Speaker: 00:39:16

I would say for me, in some cases that the, the example I mentioned

Speaker: 00:39:19

earlier was it was a pretty massive shock to the system.

Speaker: 00:39:23

You know?

Speaker: 00:39:23

I had, almost felt like I was crumpled down to next to nothing

Speaker: 00:39:27

and had a moment to actually regrow in a slightly different form where

Speaker: 00:39:31

everything that I thought was the case, maybe wasn't necessarily the case.

Speaker: 00:39:35

But I had to see that for myself rather than I think have somebody else

Speaker: 00:39:38

have somebody else see that for me.

Speaker: 00:39:40

How do you take lots of people through that sort of journey?

Speaker: 00:39:43

Not that we want to make people get people to the point of crumbling?

Speaker: 00:39:47

That's surely that's what your expertise is Julia?

Speaker: 00:39:49

Well, yeah.

Speaker: 00:39:50

And that's really, what you just said, Sacha is really articulates the point

Speaker: 00:39:54

very well that, you know, if we, if we remember that not everybody has

Speaker: 00:39:59

had the same experience, not everybody has, has the same thought system.

Speaker: 00:40:05

You know, we're essentially all living in separate realities.

Speaker: 00:40:08

And you know, your, your hunters were living in one reality with,

Speaker: 00:40:13

you know, one, one way of seeing the world, and the scientists were

Speaker: 00:40:17

living in their view of the world and thinking that there was an objective

Speaker: 00:40:21

reality that everybody understood.

Speaker: 00:40:24

You know, And what you did in the middle was you went, Hang on a minute, the

Speaker: 00:40:29

hunters have got this set of thoughts and the scientists have got this set

Speaker: 00:40:32

of thoughts and they are not actually, they've never had a conversation, so

Speaker: 00:40:37

they've never listened to each other.

Speaker: 00:40:39

And then by having the dialogue, you saw that, Wow, this is just

Speaker: 00:40:44

not in their thought system.

Speaker: 00:40:46

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:40:46

And this is what they're missing.

Speaker: 00:40:48

So you saw all of the assumptions and you just kept getting more and

Speaker: 00:40:54

more curious, more and more curious.

Speaker: 00:40:56

And then there was this moment in you, where you realized,

Speaker: 00:41:01

Oh, they don't know this.

Speaker: 00:41:04

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:41:05

And then it just became obvious, Oh, I need to just point this out to them.

Speaker: 00:41:08

And then you pointed it out to them.

Speaker: 00:41:10

And I had to do it in a way that didn't make them feel stupid, because that

Speaker: 00:41:13

was also, as soon as someone feels stupid, you think is like, you know,

Speaker: 00:41:18

you've then shut them down again.

Speaker: 00:41:19

So in fact, in that circumstance, rather than going, oh, you didn't understand

Speaker: 00:41:22

the science, I just described it in the first autopsy I ever saw of a, of

Speaker: 00:41:27

a swan that had died of lead poisoning.

Speaker: 00:41:30

And so I could then describe, Okay, so you ended up cutting down the

Speaker: 00:41:33

neck into the, into the gizzard and in the gizzard, there was these 17,

Speaker: 00:41:38

you know, ground down, lead pellets.

Speaker: 00:41:39

So I just made it obvious actually it's the, it's the ground down,

Speaker: 00:41:42

lead pellets in the stomach.

Speaker: 00:41:44

And then like I described all the symptoms you could see from there.

Speaker: 00:41:46

And you did it without making anybody wrong.

Speaker: 00:41:49

And you did it by exemplifying a story that people would be able to connect with.

Speaker: 00:41:55

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:41:55

And as change makers, as leaders, if we keep seeing that change happens

Speaker: 00:42:00

from the inside, not from the outside.

Speaker: 00:42:03

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:42:03

We keep having to look at, well, where is everyone on this journey?

Speaker: 00:42:08

What are they missing?

Speaker: 00:42:10

And what's gonna help them have the realization?

Speaker: 00:42:13

And so that leadership is really facilitating that realization to happen.

Speaker: 00:42:19

And a lot from what you described is, is kind of parts

Speaker: 00:42:22

of what you would call empathy.

Speaker: 00:42:24

And for so long, we've kind of had it drummed into us that being

Speaker: 00:42:29

empathetic is a bit of a weakness.

Speaker: 00:42:31

I'd definitely say that scientists behave in that way.

Speaker: 00:42:34

You know, their role is to find data and to be right.

Speaker: 00:42:37

Whereas the power of like really sitting and listening to somebody

Speaker: 00:42:42

and understanding what they yeah.

Speaker: 00:42:44

do don't know, feel, don't feel what they're scared of, that feels

Speaker: 00:42:49

really like a soft skill, but in fact, that is where all the power is.

Speaker: 00:42:53

So I feel like all the power is in the, is in the empathy.

Speaker: 00:42:57

And whether in the kind of corporate or NGO world, I still don't

Speaker: 00:43:01

think that people really get that

Speaker: 00:43:03

Well.

Speaker: 00:43:03

And it's, and, what you're describing SAS is that a lot of the time we try

Speaker: 00:43:06

and empathize with other people but we are still really judging them.

Speaker: 00:43:11

So, you know, it's like, well, I can be empathetic towards you, but

Speaker: 00:43:15

you know, actually I'm being really judgey and trying to make you wrong.

Speaker: 00:43:21

When we go down that path and we try to make people wrong, people get defensive.

Speaker: 00:43:26

Cuz we're animals really, if we're trying to push our point of view of the world

Speaker: 00:43:31

onto somebody, you know, so I, if I'm trying to make Sacha do something, but

Speaker: 00:43:36

I'm talking to you really nicely and I'm I'm, you know, and I'm saying all the

Speaker: 00:43:40

right things, but my agenda, you know, it's almost like it's a bubble above

Speaker: 00:43:44

my head that you, you are able to see.

Speaker: 00:43:48

And that's what gets the reaction rather than the, rather than

Speaker: 00:43:52

the, the content and the words.

Speaker: 00:43:53

Humans know that, don't they?

Speaker: 00:43:55

Humans can pick up on whether you are really, really sitting there trying

Speaker: 00:43:59

to understand where they're coming from or whether you are being kind

Speaker: 00:44:04

in a, in a slowly patronizing way.

Speaker: 00:44:07

They definitely do.

Speaker: 00:44:08

And they certainly do when you are kind of face to face and you've just met them.

Speaker: 00:44:10

So yeah, I definitely feel like empathy is kind of my sort of spy skill.

Speaker: 00:44:14

It's like spying on some spying on the kind of view the opposition, if

Speaker: 00:44:18

you want to look at it in that way.

Speaker: 00:44:19

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:20

And I think what you are really saying is that to be able to make change, you've

Speaker: 00:44:24

gotta be able to work with everyone.

Speaker: 00:44:26

And so, you know, to work with everyone, you've gotta be able to tune

Speaker: 00:44:29

into them, and not make them wrong.

Speaker: 00:44:32

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:32

But help them have that, you know, facilitate that

Speaker: 00:44:35

realization for themselves.

Speaker: 00:44:36

And it is quite a challenging thing for certainly a lot of people who are

Speaker: 00:44:40

passionate and having now worked with teams of various young people that are

Speaker: 00:44:45

passionate, I think potentially it's particularly strong in the young, this

Speaker: 00:44:49

idea of it's very difficult, well, you feel like to some extent you have to

Speaker: 00:44:54

drop your own morals for that engagement.

Speaker: 00:44:57

So I give an example on the first expedition, there were vegan, a vegan

Speaker: 00:45:03

in the team who really struggled to speak to hunters because they, he

Speaker: 00:45:07

just found them morally, you know, quite disgusting, but we're talking

Speaker: 00:45:11

hunters in an area where there is no agriculture, the Russian Arctic is frozen.

Speaker: 00:45:14

So they live entirely off meat and then birds, fish, reindeer,

Speaker: 00:45:18

and then berries and mushrooms in the, in the season pretty much.

Speaker: 00:45:21

And so the word hunter now to me means many, many different things.

Speaker: 00:45:24

It's almost the useless word.

Speaker: 00:45:25

But when you are on a project like that, where you're trying to change a

Speaker: 00:45:28

system, it's so much more powerful to be able to, to drop, I suppose, the,

Speaker: 00:45:34

the, the lens and the morals that you would like to try and impose on others

Speaker: 00:45:38

and just try and get inside their heads.

Speaker: 00:45:41

You've gotta do that bit first, and then you might cha find actually that you no

Speaker: 00:45:45

longer find their behavior repugnant.

Speaker: 00:45:47

And um, you might find you do, but whatever, whatever the case,

Speaker: 00:45:52

you'll kind of be armed with the information uh, you need to to change

Speaker: 00:45:56

the system if you, if you want to.

Speaker: 00:45:58

And for our next expedition, we specifically have incorporated the

Speaker: 00:46:01

work of a, of a psychologist who's going to make the team do some of the

Speaker: 00:46:05

challenging tasks they have to do, like save people in a car accident, whatever.

Speaker: 00:46:09

But they're gonna have to do it with people whose views they find

Speaker: 00:46:11

difficult to swallow, because that is what will come across all the time.

Speaker: 00:46:16

The whole purpose of us being in different places is to speak to people,

Speaker: 00:46:20

really find out who the, who they are, how they think before you try and

Speaker: 00:46:24

impose your, your own filter on them.

Speaker: 00:46:27

And that's not giving up your morals.

Speaker: 00:46:29

That's about kind of gaining more, more power in the system

Speaker: 00:46:32

and more power to change.

Speaker: 00:46:34

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:46:34

And if you, you know, if you start to realize that you have a thought

Speaker: 00:46:38

system, every single human being has a thought system and we all

Speaker: 00:46:41

have preferences, and that not everybody has the same preferences.

Speaker: 00:46:47

And you know, trying to get to the answer to a problem, like getting

Speaker: 00:46:53

somebody out of a car or conservation of wildlife is gonna require all of the

Speaker: 00:46:58

intelligence of all of those different people, no matter what their views.

Speaker: 00:47:03

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:47:04

And so the more that we can get past our own sort of systems that get in

Speaker: 00:47:09

the way, you know, they interfere and they separate us as a human

Speaker: 00:47:13

species, you know, that's what gets in the way of us solving problems.

Speaker: 00:47:18

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:47:19

So we we're into the last few moments of, of this delightful conversation, Sacha,

Speaker: 00:47:24

and, and I'd just like you to share your kind of parting thoughts on, you know,

Speaker: 00:47:29

what, what would you like to share with other people that are really wanting

Speaker: 00:47:33

to change the system, make an impact?

Speaker: 00:47:36

Hmm, I guess the key things for me would be the fact that I yeah, spent the time

Speaker: 00:47:43

figuring out what my strengths were.

Speaker: 00:47:47

And I saw a kind of fantastic diagram once, which kind of showed that the

Speaker: 00:47:53

place in which you are both happy and powerful is the overlap between your

Speaker: 00:48:00

skill set, the things that you are really good at, the things that your brain

Speaker: 00:48:03

logically told you were important, so issues that were important, but also.

Speaker: 00:48:08

Issues that, you know, get you fired up that you are

Speaker: 00:48:12

passionate about, no matter what.

Speaker: 00:48:13

If you can find an area where your passion kind of logic and your skillset are all

Speaker: 00:48:19

active, then that's where you're gonna be, yeah, happy, and you are most powerful.

Speaker: 00:48:24

And there was definitely moments flying across the, the Russian

Speaker: 00:48:27

Arctic, where I was, you know, about 20 minutes away from landing in a

Speaker: 00:48:32

community that didn't have visitors really, because they didn't have rose.

Speaker: 00:48:36

There were no flights in there I had, so I had no idea what to expect.

Speaker: 00:48:39

I.

Speaker: 00:48:40

I could see nobody, as far as I could see, it was a wild Russian Tundra.

Speaker: 00:48:46

I was in my element, flying in this little paraglider and I thought

Speaker: 00:48:51

for me, this is, this is it.

Speaker: 00:48:52

This is me in my element.

Speaker: 00:48:54

And I know, I knew at that time we were getting lots of interest.

Speaker: 00:48:56

You know, people had said the Russian media wouldn't be interested.

Speaker: 00:48:59

We'd already had 84 pieces on television in Russia talking about the, the project.

Speaker: 00:49:03

So I just knew it was working.

Speaker: 00:49:05

And I was in my element.

Speaker: 00:49:06

But I also knew that there would be people who would be, if you describe to

Speaker: 00:49:09

them, hanging in a little seat, under a paraglider wing in the middle of absolute

Speaker: 00:49:16

nowhere with no humans insight and the odd, you know, any chance I suppose, of,

Speaker: 00:49:21

of bears and Wolverines and things being around, and you're about to go and land

Speaker: 00:49:25

in a remote community that you know, nothing about and don't really speak their

Speaker: 00:49:29

language very well, most people would find that concept absolutely horrific.

Speaker: 00:49:33

And that's the last place that they'd wanna be.

Speaker: 00:49:35

So I kind of felt like I'd really found.

Speaker: 00:49:38

Found a niche where not only yeah, I was in my element, but I was also

Speaker: 00:49:41

having a, having a mass impact.

Speaker: 00:49:43

And scientists along the flyway were kind of already cheering us on and

Speaker: 00:49:46

going, oh my God, this is working.

Speaker: 00:49:48

So yeah, I guess the key thing for me is maybe trust your gut on where

Speaker: 00:49:53

you think your skills might be.

Speaker: 00:49:54

If I had listened to everybody that said, oh, you are, uh, you are

Speaker: 00:49:57

an intellectual, but you are not practical, would I ever have been

Speaker: 00:50:00

brave enough to do this kind of thing?

Speaker: 00:50:01

Probably not.

Speaker: 00:50:02

I think that's other people's potentially kind of limit or their own personal

Speaker: 00:50:05

view of the world that potentially couldn't put those two things together.

Speaker: 00:50:09

I wasn't particularly good at any sport.

Speaker: 00:50:11

So I would've been repeatedly told whether that's kind of sporty stuff isn't for you.

Speaker: 00:50:15

But I just kept following things which were of interest to me.

Speaker: 00:50:18

And I guess, learning new things, because the more things you learn, the more

Speaker: 00:50:22

potential pool of skills, you've got to be able to use for different issues.

Speaker: 00:50:26

So I think that's probably what I'd say.

Speaker: 00:50:29

And I look back now and think I made decisions away from things

Speaker: 00:50:32

which would've looked like a, you know, the sensible career path.

Speaker: 00:50:36

But looking back on it, they all make sense to me now.

Speaker: 00:50:38

Why jumping off to learn that language actually was really has served me in,

Speaker: 00:50:42

in really good stead in the future.

Speaker: 00:50:44

So that's it, you know.

Speaker: 00:50:45

Keep in mind the things that you are really passionate about.

Speaker: 00:50:48

Um, make sure you've got a good range of skills and keep exploring what

Speaker: 00:50:51

they are because they might not be what everybody else told you they are.

Speaker: 00:50:54

Wonderful.

Speaker: 00:50:55

Thank you, Sacha.

Speaker: 00:50:57

It's been a fabulous conversation and the last piece is how can people follow you or

Speaker: 00:51:03

support you on the flight of the osprays?

Speaker: 00:51:06

Conservation without borders is the name of our organization.

Speaker: 00:51:09

On various social medias.

Speaker: 00:51:10

It's either conservation without borders or C No Borders.

Speaker: 00:51:13

Uh, we also do an e-newsletter through our website.

Speaker: 00:51:17

So those are the, the key ways of following and supporting.

Speaker: 00:51:20

And the best way you can support at the moment is to watch and share.

Speaker: 00:51:24

The more people we've got on board from the start of this

Speaker: 00:51:27

expedition uh, the better, but it's gonna be one hell of a ride.

Speaker: 00:51:33

Wow.

Speaker: 00:51:33

What an amazing conversation with Sacha.

Speaker: 00:51:35

She has done so many things in her life.

Speaker: 00:51:39

Uh, we barely scratched the surface on those.

Speaker: 00:51:43

But I hope you enjoyed the conversation and if you did, share it with

Speaker: 00:51:47

someone else who needs to hear it.

Speaker: 00:51:49

You can do that by going to generativeleaders.co.

Speaker: 00:51:54

It's been a while since my conversation with Sacha, cuz she's actually

Speaker: 00:51:58

doing her expedition right now.

Speaker: 00:52:01

She's going from Scotland, following the ospreys all the way down

Speaker: 00:52:05

through Spain and through Africa.

Speaker: 00:52:08

And what's really stayed with me since the conversation with Sacha that gives

Speaker: 00:52:14

me goosebumps when I think about it, that's happening in me right now, was

Speaker: 00:52:19

the moment that she realized that she was completely and utterly insignificant.

Speaker: 00:52:26

That thought just popped into her head, and it was a really

Speaker: 00:52:31

despairing moment for her.

Speaker: 00:52:35

And she sat with that thought and she lay on the floor, and then

Speaker: 00:52:39

her mind gave her another thought.

Speaker: 00:52:42

Well, if I'm completely insignificant and I'm spec a speck of dust on this mud ball

Speaker: 00:52:48

that is floating through the universe, then it doesn't really matter what I do.

Speaker: 00:52:55

And maybe I should do something that's really gonna help people,

Speaker: 00:52:59

and help the habitat and the earth and the planet that we're living on.

Speaker: 00:53:04

So she went from despair to opportunity and freedom.

Speaker: 00:53:10

The circumstances hadn't changed, but her mind gave her completely new thinking.

Speaker: 00:53:17

And we all have that opportunity in every moment, and it's happening all the time.

Speaker: 00:53:23

The other thing that really stayed with me, and Sacha's taught me a lot about this

Speaker: 00:53:29

is that a lot of the problems that we are facing in the world can't be solved by

Speaker: 00:53:34

one person, but we can ask the questions.

Speaker: 00:53:38

and we can ask other people to help.

Speaker: 00:53:41

And Sacha's brilliant at that.

Speaker: 00:53:43

She brings people together, she asks them questions, she asks them for help, and

Speaker: 00:53:50

she shares powerful stories with them.

Speaker: 00:53:53

And those stories shift and move the thinking within other people.

Speaker: 00:54:00

How many times have you been touched by someone's story and it's made you

Speaker: 00:54:05

sort of wake up to some of the thinking that you have and it's changed it?

Speaker: 00:54:11

We all have the capacity to do that, and you can keep following Sacha's journey.

Speaker: 00:54:17

And I'll be in more conversations about the human mind on our next