How to move beyond climate jargon in practice

I didn’t stop saying ESG because I stopped believing in it. I stopped because it stopped working. After years of working with finance teams, I started to notice a pattern: 👂 The moment I said “ESG,” "Climate change" the shutters went up 💸 They saw reporting, cost, not value 📊 They heard reporting burden, not resilience So I tried something different. I stopped talking about ESG. Instead, I talked about: ✔ Cost of capital (better financing terms) ✔ Better insurance premiums ✔ Water risk and plastic exposure ✔ Supporting outside workers in extreme heat ✔ Wellbeing and health in a mental health crisis - Productivity efficiencies in your workforce. ✔ Disclosure material risks and financial resilience ✔ The audit trail and evidence behind assumptions and judgments ✔ And this simple truth: How can you deny satellite data? And guess what? They listened. They leaned in. They took action. I didn’t water it down. I just simplified and translated it. Because sometimes, ESG and climate change as a label becomes the barrier. The frameworks still matter. But the language must meet people where they are. That’s the shift. That’s what changed. If you’re tired of hitting a wall, try changing your words, not your message. What language shift helped your message land? 📣 Follow me for practical insights on how sustainability, climate, nature and social factors are reshaping business strategy, risk assessment, and financial reporting. #sustainabilityleadership #climatechange #financialreporting #simplifyclimate #languageofimpact

Last week, someone who’s been working in climate communications for over a year quietly admitted they still didn’t totally understand what “lowering emissions” meant. Not the general vibe of it, but the actual why and how. I loved their honesty. It reminded me how often specialists in the space continue to throw around terms that even insiders don’t fully grasp. If we want the public, policymakers, and private sector to act, we have to stop communicating like we’re at a scientific conference. Here are 5 tools I use all the time to make complex climate and science ideas land: ✔️ The “Grandma Test” Can you explain the concept to your grandma without losing meaning? This test forces clarity without condescension—and it’s one of the fastest ways to reveal jargon you didn’t even know you were using. ✔️ Metaphor as a Bridge Metaphors are powerful shortcuts for understanding. For example, instead of saying “emissions reductions,” try: “Imagine your home has a slow gas leak. Cutting emissions is like finding and sealing that leak—before it gets worse.” It may take longer to say (a communications faux pas) but we process metaphors faster than data. ✔️ Chunk the Concept Break big ideas into bite-sized parts: What is it? Why does it matter? What can be done? Who’s doing it well? This format creates digestible flow and gives your audience mental “hooks” to follow you. ✔️ Visual Storytelling Not every concept needs a paragraph. Sometimes it just needs a sketch, a diagram, or a comparison chart. ✔️ Mirror the Audience Before I write or say anything, I ask: “What does this audience care about most?” Meeting people in their worldview is half the battle. I’ll be sharing more of the frameworks and strategies I use in future posts—but if your team is trying to translate climate science or sustainability language into something people actually understand and act on, C3 can help. Let’s make it make sense. 👉 Feel free to reach out or follow along for more tools from the Climate Communications Collective playbook.

Whether I’m working with climate tech teams or helping people build their personal brands, I keep coming back to one thing: if you want people to get it, keep it simple. In my experience working in climate tech, concepts are layered with scientific jargon, dense data, and specifics that can make even the most interesting projects sound... dull. It’s easy to lose people in the technical details. So I work with their teams to break it down into messages that feel more human, like something you’d explain to a friend who’s hearing it for the first time. With personal brands, the people I find I relate to most have messaging that makes me feel like we’re having a one-on-one conversation. It’s direct, it’s human, and it makes it easier to connect. Simplifying doesn't mean making it shallow. In the words of Maya Angelou ““People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That’s what clear, relatable messaging does. It makes you feel something real and that’s what people remember.

SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP SERIES - THE ART OF COMMUNICATING When I first started in sustainability, I was flummoxed by all kinds of acronyms and terms. Everyone sounded clever and I thought I was stupid. Then I realised…the activists were preaching to the choir in an echo chamber. I was interested. So I had to read a lot. I still do. But this is an exception rather than the norm. After a while, a vast majority of people actually stopped listening. And now things get polarized. That’s why I’ve returned to basics. For sustainability to work, it must either 1) make money 2) save money 3) or both But the key is communicating it once you find the #business case. Here’s some examples: Instead of saying you can reduce carbon emissions by 32% when you use public transport, you can say that you’ll save money from insurance and maintenance by not owning a car and taking public transport. Instead of saying that traffic jams are one of the largest causes of high emissions rates, you can say that reducing number of cars on the road lead to time savings and you can use that time saved for leisure actitivites and get healthier as you walk to public transport nodes. Humans are selfish by nature. Many ain’t interested in saving the world. But if the narrative appeals to their benefits, they will be happy to act on it. It’s time that sustainability professionals drop all the jargon and adopt the art of communications with simpler language. It’s about understanding and talking to folks instead of talking down to folks with our own narrow agenda. Time to sell real and short term benefits (instant gratification) rather than sell fear. Only then can we move ahead, and leave behind a better world for our next generations. What do you think? #LBFalumni #SkyHighTower #Sustainability Leadership Series (archived posts) --> https://lnkd.in/gmK6cbMV