842: Silvia Bellezza, part 1.5 and 2: When at first you don't succeed

842: Silvia Bellezza, part 1.5 and 2: When at first you don't succeed

From This Sustainable Life by Joshua Spodek: Author, Speaker, Professor

December 26, 2025 · 40 min · Episode 842

About this episode

The episode discusses a leadership aspect of the interaction with guest Silvia Bellezza, focusing on commitment and intrinsic motivation in sustainability.

Since Silvia teaches as a business school, I'll address a leadership aspect of our interaction. I skimped on a leadership step, so we did an episode 1.5, which is my lingo for redoing episode 1 when the person wasn't able to fulfill his or her commitment. That's my responsibility as leader of the interaction. Silvia and I had a wonderful first conversation that led to a commitment that sounded like she'd enjoy it and doable, but in the end wasn't quite. Even if a quick hike north of the city would be enjoyable, catching a Metro-North train from Columbia University isn't that convenient and her schedule may not have bee as flexible as she suspected in our first conversation. For those listening to these conversations to learn the Spodek Method, in our first conversation I didn't check with her how practical the commitment was given her constraints. As the leader of the interaction, I should have asked ahead to imagine her schedule, the logistics of catching the train, and so on. The key measure the first time someone acts on their intrinsic motivation isn't how big it is. It's if they person does it. When someone acts on intrinsic motivation, they'll find it rewarding. If they…

People in this episode

Host: Joshua Spodek

Guest: Silvia Bellezza

Topics covered

  • leadership
  • commitment
  • intrinsic motivation
  • sustainability
  • environmentalism

Keywords

  • leadership
  • commitment
  • intrinsic motivation
  • sustainability
  • environmentalism
  • Columbia University

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia University

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