Green Jujitsu: Smart Employee Engagement for Sustainability (Udemy.com)
How to effectively engage employees in environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
Created by: Gareth Kane
Last updated January 2024
Our take
Based on the ratings of 5,113 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in January 2024. No course pays to be reviewed.
Gareth Kane's course is about 98 minutes across 11 lectures, and it tackles one narrow problem: getting colleagues to care about sustainability. The idea is to find where an audience's own interests overlap with environmental goals and start the conversation there. It builds on an Elephant Model of change, with sections on informing the rider, motivating the elephant and shaping the path. It is aimed at practitioners, consultants and students who already know the basic issues. It is about persuasion and culture, not carbon maths.
Reviewers like the teaching most. Kane tells stories and uses relatable examples, and one student says the approach works for any topic where people have not bought in. The workbook gets praise too, though one reviewer wanted more written takeaways in it. Complaints are small. Subtitles are patchy, with English captions on some lectures and not others. One reviewer said the sound could be better and the vocabulary is technical, and another found it not very concrete early on.
The last update was January 2024, so it is a bit over two and a half years old, though a persuasion framework ages slowly. There are no quizzes, so what you get out of it depends on filling in the workbook. About 15 percent of ratings are three stars, so not everyone was won over, and one reviewer said it was not what they expected. For a practitioner with an afternoon to spare, it is a quick, useful framework. Anyone wanting a full engagement toolkit should plan to go further.
Pros
- Kane's stories and relatable examples keep a short course engaging
- The Elephant Model gives a clear structure: the rider, the elephant and the path
- A workbook at each step builds toward a personal action plan
- Persuasion ideas that reviewers say carry over to topics beyond sustainability
Cons
- Only 98 minutes and no quizzes, so depth and practice are limited
- Subtitles are inconsistent and one reviewer found the sound quality weak
- A few reviewers wanted more concrete steps; last updated January 2024
Incredible course on how to facilitate sustainability sessions. Nice and straightforward without filler content.
Suits practitioners and students who already grasp sustainability basics; the All Levels tag is generous.
What you will learn
- Engage people effectively in sustainability
- How to identify which 'buttons to push' for each audience
- How to engage with people emotionally as well as logically
- How to engage the boardroom in Sustainability
Course content
9 sections · 11 lectures · 1.6 hours of video
- 1Why most Employee Engagement for Sustainability fails 1 free preview1 lecture · 6 min
- 2What is Green Jujitsu?2 lectures · 11 min
- 3The Elephant Model of Change1 lecture · 7 min
- 4Information for the Rider1 lecture · 16 min
- 5Motivating the Elephant1 lecture · 19 min
- 6Shaping the Path1 lecture · 11 min
- 7Advanced Green Jujitsu1 lecture · 12 min
- 8Engaging the Boardroom1 lecture · 8 min
- 9Conclusion and Summary1 lecture · 3 min
Who it is for
The instructor says it suits
- Sustainability practitioners
- Sustainability consultants
- Sustainability students
What you need before you start
- Basic understanding of environmental sustainability issues.
How it compares
Against the other 1,210 rated Udemy courses in Business on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 74% of them
- Reviews5,113#160 of 1,211 by number of reviews
- Length1.6 hoursshorter than 75% of them
- Last updatedJanuary 2024earlier than 74% of them
Course Description
With Environmental Sustainability moving swiftly up the corporate agenda, the biggest challenge in facing Sustainability practitioners is undoubtedly engaging employees. Without buy-in, the same decisions will be made as have always been made and the organisation will stick to business as usual.
Unfortunately most employee engagement fails miserably. This is because it is created by Sustainability professionals without any consideration of the interests of key audiences, and simply passes them by.
This course introduces the unique, battle-proven concept of Green Jujitsu. In the same way a jujitsu master adjusts their techniques to exploit the strengths of their opponent, in Green Jujitsu we find the overlap between the interests of our audience and Sustainability and start our engagement there.
During the course we will cover how to identify the existing culture in the organisation and how to use that culture to engage colleagues from the front-line to the boardroom. You will get a workbook to help you apply the thinking to your own organisation at each step, reinforcing the learning and compiling an action plan for you to take away and use.
If you are serious about making Sustainability happen in your organisation (or a client's) then you must take this course.
Instructor Details
- 4.6 Rating
5,113 Reviews
Gareth Kane
Gareth Kane has been helping business get the most of the sustainability agenda for the last 26 years. He has worked with a long list of blue chip clients including Stanley Black & Decker, the BBC, BAE Systems, Johnson Matthey, the NHS, East Coast Mainline and Sage plc. He is the author of five books including The Green Executive and Green Jujitsu: The Smart Way to Embed Sustainability in Your Organisation and hosts the Net Zero Business Podcast.
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Reviews
By Anonymized User on 2/27/2023
La qualité du son pourrait être meilleur, sinon chaque intervenant avait l'air d'être très compétent dans le domaine ESG. Peut-être faudrait t'il ajouter des sous titres en différentes langue. Le vocabulaire très technique dans son domaine, nécessite parfois de faire des arrêt pour traduire l'expression/terme sur G traduction. Egalement, cours tres long, sur certaine vidéo/interview une musique de méditation en fond, en option, pourrait être intéressante pour augmenter le temps de concentration des auditeurs.
By Karthik Prabhu Nagarathinam on 7/13/2022
The art of Green Jujitsu and Elephant Model of change concepts were intriguing. Gareth's story telling technique with relatable examples were fantastic throughout the course. Enjoyed learning the gentle art of Green Jujitsu and it's advanced techniques!
By Sang Yong Hua on 7/11/2022
The objective of the course is to mainly seeking a comfortable way to convey the sustainability message to the whole company and to let employee act on it in a more fun way, which somehow coverred in the course with some techinique and advices. Thanks
By Gurjas Bedi on 3/18/2022
Learnt some amazing new and very important concepts because we all understand while Sustainability initiatives are highly important, but very difficult to be driven too. Hoping to use these at my workplace now and see the change
By Ester Cismondi on 1/21/2022
Thank you for this fantastic training course! It gave me a deep understanding on how the implementation of green jujitsu techniques would help us make a crucial cultural organizational impact by encouraging sustainability employee commitment and engagement. If we focus on our audience interests, experiences, and strengths, promoting people involvement in sustainability issues, it is where we could find the green jujitsu sweet spot and see a behavioral shift. The right path through which the elephants would ride the riders in a meaningful way that would make them feel part of the sustainability solutions!
By Sarah Foster on 7/16/2021
I thought this course was very informative on how to encourage sustainability at the corporate level but also provides a lot of great tips to apply on the personal level. The elephant analogy is definitely something that is going to stick with me for a long time. You can tell Gareth "practiced what he preached" just within this course alone, i.e. using stories to convince us to use these techniques he provides, etc. Definitely enjoyable, albeit slightly bad quality of sound and video.
By Emma Elias on 5/5/2021
This was a good refresher course on how to engage people on any topic, not just sustainability. I'm happy to say that our organization has already evolved beyond the posters, e.g. we did away with bins under desks three years ago. Sustainability is a top priority for our leadership and is shaping a big part of the business agenda. Very useful advice is to find the overlap between the worldview of the audience and sustainability. Language such as 'brand protection', 'competitive advantage' and 'market demands' is making all the difference where I work.
By Diana Y Messig on 11/15/2020
I am learning a lot and feel engaged. This will help me on my path to achieving a sustainability badge my firm offers.
By Mary Jane Hartmann on 11/15/2020
It was definitely a great match for me
By Arik Bhattacharyya on 11/15/2020
Amazing
By Jason Lippa on 11/15/2020
I sincerely appreciate the passion for sustainability the instructor of this course has. However, I suggest an improvement for this course could be to structure it less as lecture and more as informational summary of content methodology.
By Bora Sezer on 11/8/2020
it is interesting
Quality Score
No CourseDuck member has rated this course yet. Taken it? Give each part a thumbs up or down.
Overall Score : 92 / 100






