Climate Leadership for Instructors
The storm of change: Sustainability in Snowsports – Climate Leadership for Instructors
Alongside coaching and running Coastal Peak Fitness, I have a professional interest in sustainability, environmental behaviour change, and how people adopt and maintain positive habits within outdoor, high-trust environments.
This dissertation uses sustainability in snowsports as a case study to explore how instructors and coaches influence environmental behaviour through role modelling, trust, and small, repeatable actions. While the research is grounded in mountain environments, the findings have broader relevance for coaching, leadership, and long-term behaviour change across a range of professional and everyday contexts.
The full dissertation is available via the above download button for those who wish to read it.
Key Findings
Instructors and coaches act as trusted messengers
Everyday behaviours are strongly influenced by trusted professionals through informal cues, language, and role modelling — often more than through formal instruction.Small actions create disproportionate impact
Simple, repeatable behaviours can normalise sustainable practices and influence wider cultural change over time.Environment shapes behaviour
Physical and social environments play a significant role in reinforcing or undermining positive habits, particularly in outdoor settings.Individual intent often outpaces organisational support
While many instructors show strong personal commitment to sustainability, institutional structures and training frameworks frequently lag behind.Embedding sustainability into professional practice matters
Integrating environmental responsibility into training, culture, and leadership enables more consistent and lasting behaviour change.
What this means for coaching
At its core, this research reinforces the idea that coaching is about more than instruction. Coaches and instructors shape behaviour through trust, consistency, and the environments they create.
In practice, this means that small, repeatable actions — how sessions are structured, how spaces are used, and how behaviours are modelled — often matter more than one-off interventions or messaging. Sustainable change comes from embedding positive habits into everyday practice, rather than relying on motivation alone.
For coaching, this highlights the importance of environment-led habit formation, clear role modelling, and aligning values with action. When these elements are consistent, behaviour change is more likely to extend beyond the session itself and into daily life.