The Nature Conservancy, the largest nonprofit environmental organization in the world, works to save the planet in an unusual way: not by opposing the big business interests often seen as villains but by partnering with them and other sectors of society, encouraging corporate leaders, policy makers, and citizens to understand the essential value of nature and to protect it by making wiser business decisions. Thanks to its hallmark inclusive, collaborative approach, The Nature Conservancy has raised billions of dollars over its 65-year history and enlisted many unlikely advocates to the cause of environmentalism. In 2008, the nonprofit appointed a new President and CEO who might have seemed an unlikely choice himself: Goldman Sachs investment banker Mark Tercek. But Tercek quickly won the respect of environmentalists and vastly expanded the work of The Nature Conservancy around the world. He credits not only his great colleagues, business acumen, and profound love of nature but also the practice of mindfulness meditation. He spoke with author Peter Jaret about the challenges of his job and the ways mindfulness has helped him.
When did the practice of meditation start clicking for you?
When I became CEO of The Nature Conservancy in mid-2008, it was a challenging time economically—the country was hit hard by the financial crisis. Nonprofits like TNC were having a very tough time raising money. And it was a challenging time for me personally. I had taken the helm of an organization with 4,000 staff members, offices in all 50 states and 70 other countries. There was a lot I knew about the work of environmentalism, but there was a lot I didn’t know. I was doing a pretty good job, I think. But I was also aware that in some ways I wasn’t doing as well as I wanted to on the human relations front. I wasn’t connecting as well as I wanted to with the people who worked for TNC and the many partners we work with. Fortunately, a friend of mine, Marshall Goldsmith, who is a prominent executive leadership coach, offered to work with me pro bono. To get a sense of our organization and the job I was doing, he spoke with the senior team and members of our board of directors. He came back to me and said that in many ways I was doing a good job, but in other ways I was being a jerk. I wasn’t listening. I was being too demanding. I was sweating all the details. I was being too negative. So Marshall and I came up with a game plan to improve in those specific areas. I made some progress, but changing my habits was tougher than I thought. As it happens, I’ve always enjoyed reading about the practice of meditation, and I was doing so again. And I thought, OK, I should give it a try. Maybe it will help.
What was the experience like?
As soon as I began to meditate, I found I was making more progress incorporating the better practices that Marshall and I had set as goals at work. It was easier for me to listen to the people I worked with, to be positive and not sweat the small details. I want to emphasize that mine remains really a beginner’s practice of meditation. It’s still a beginner’s practice in many ways. But even so, I began to experience benefits. My interpersonal relations at work and at home felt better. One of my unfortunate habits, especially when I’m very busy, is to not listen well, to cut people off, to think that I have the answer to everything. No one likes that. It creates stress for everyone involved, including me. It meant I wasn’t getting the best from my colleagues and I was being unkind. On an intellectual basis, I understood that if I listened more and better understood other people’s point of view, everyone would benefit. But knowing that and doing it were two very different things.
So how did meditation help?
Well, it quiets my mind, calms me down, and makes it much easier for me to listen and to understand others better. It helps me slow down, not jump to conclusions, to do my work in a less stressful way. That’s one of the outcomes of a calmer, more mindful approach to work. And at home, when I remember to meditate, it helps me appreciate my family more and allows me to get along with them better. Once I began to notice real benefits, I got more earnest about my meditation practice.
What do you mean by more earnest?
By sheer good fortune, a friend of mine in Washington, DC, not far from where TNC has its headquarters, organized a meditation study group. It’s an all-male businessman’s group, run by Jonathan Foust, who is a great meditation teacher. He’s a leading teacher at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and a founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute, also in Washington. I also began to participate in many of the DC-based mindfulness meditation gatherings. So several things came together at once in my life to help me to develop meditation and really pursue it.
How do you find time in your busy schedule to meditate?
I try to keep it simple. I’m OK with doing meditation sessions of just five or 10 minutes, if that’s all the time I have, to sit very quietly and still, and focus on my breathing. I sometimes do a loving-kindness practice, which I find very helpful for me. I generally don’t make it much more complicated than that. I also sometimes use apps like Buddhify or Headspace, which can be very useful, I think. I often listen to the podcasts of Jonathan Foust as well as his wife Tara Brach. Something else I find enormously helpful in my practice is reading books about meditation. I’m a big fan of Norman Fischer, the author of my favorite book, Training in Compassion. I also like the work of Chade-Meng Tan, the Google executive who started Google’s Search Inside Yourself program and who teaches and writes about mindfulness. And I listen to podcasts like Dan Harris’ “10% Happier.”
Does meditation inform your work as an environmentalist?
In many ways, it’s really at the heart of our vision about how to work for the good of the environment. Our philosophy at TNC is to find common ground with diverse parties in an effort to make environmental progress. We believe that finding solutions for protecting the environment is a win–win proposition. Businesses can benefit; people around the world can benefit; governments and communities can benefit. So we work with a lot of groups that might not at first seem to have an interest in environmentalism. Our goal is to help these diverse interests understand that if we work together, we can make important progress that will benefit everyone. For me, as CEO, when meeting with outside groups, mindfulness meditation really helps. To the extent that I practice mindfulness and behave that way, I do a better job fulfilling my duties as CEO, consistent with the approach we champion. I genuinely believe there is a great untapped opportunity for environmental progress that can flow from a more mindful approach to working with diverse groups.
Can you give me an example?
Sure. In our view, the biggest environmental challenge by far is climate change. It’s also the most difficult to address. It requires radical changes in how humankind sources its energy. Those changes are difficult, and they have a cost. But the costs and consequences of not acting are even greater. We want to do everything we can as an organization to mobilize humankind so that we can get on with addressing this biggest environmental challenge of all. Unfortunately, in the US right now, one of the biggest challenges is the divisive and highly partisan climate of Capitol Hill on climate change. The US doesn’t have the kind of comprehensive, pragmatic, common-sense effective energy and climate policy that we need. Why not? One reason is the big divide between Republicans and Democrats, and between red and blue states. TNC has chapters in every state, red states