There is a brief discussion of police brutality in this episode around 16 minutes in.
In episode 14 of Mission: Impact, some of the topics that Carol and her guest, Keisha Sitney, discussed include:
- Why leaders need to be role models for their staff and lead by example
- Why organizations need to start with individuals when working on equity 
- How to build the leadership capacity of people who haven’t traditionally been promoted to leadership roles
- Why it is important to not just teach people of color to be like “traditional” white leaders but encourage them develop their own leadership style 
​- How professionals focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion experience profound fatigue in continually educating people about racism and other forms of oppression.

• - Why it’s important for leaders to be willing to share when they make mistakes and what they learned from them.

Guest Information: 
Keisha Sitney is the Chief People Officer for The Y in Central Maryland and the founder of Golden Key Coaching. She works to ensure the people strategies and resources support and match the strategic priorities of the organization. Keisha is an executive leader who has been with the Y for 30 years, both at the national and regional levels. With in-depth experience in coaching, talent management, strategic visioning and planning, and facilitation, Keisha has served in operational roles at the YMCA of Metropolitan Washington, led the national multicultural leadership development movement as well as served as an internal consultant for C-Suite leaders from Ys across the United States. She holds a Master's Degree in Organization Development from American University and a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from Howard University.

Links: 

• https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-aiko-bethea-on-inclusivity-at-work-the-heart-of-hard-conversations/ 
• ​https://www.rarecoaching.net/ 
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Consulting-Agency/Golden-Key-Coaching-799926680207953/ ​​
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/keisha-sitney/

Interview Transcript:
​
Carol Hamilton: Welcome Keisha, great to have you on the podcast.
Keisha Sitney: Thank you. Thanks for having me, I’m really honored to be here. 
Carol: I want to start out by asking, just to give people some context, what drew you to the work that you do? What would you say motivates you and how would you describe your work? 
Keisha: Well, I have worked for Y the organization for [30 years and I’m] celebrating my 30th year there. And being only 35, it's hard to fathom that I've been in that place 30 years. But in all seriousness, I really enjoy helping people to reach their potential. I think that I started off working with young people, and directing childcare centers, and doing team programs and things, and after decades of operations, I really found that my passion is for the people, the associates, the leaders that are doing the work and helping them make sure that they feel equipped, that they feel energized, that they have all the tools and resources, that they have the confidence to do the work that they're supposed to do. Nonprofit work can be grueling, and sometimes we may give and forget that we have to also pour in to ourselves. So that's a part of my why is making sure that people are able to pour into themselves? 
Carol: Yeah. What are some ways that you help people do that?
Keisha: Well, I think that a lot of it is in coaching and reflecting and going through and finding ways to reflect on situations: ‘how did I respond to this, how am I going to do this differently in the future?’ I think that that emotional intelligence and self-awareness is really key. We can get so caught up in the doing of the work, and I find myself telling leaders all the time through our organization: the work is not just the work, it's not just the tactics and the processes. It's how we get things done. It's who we work with in order to move things forward. I think that a part of that is how we are aware of our own selves and how we impact that. So it's important, that critical part of leadership, in my opinion.
Carol: I don't know if leaders are always aware that the folks around them, their staff, are paying very close attention to everything that they're doing. And oftentimes, leaders are relying on what they're saying or what they're communicating in an email, but what they're doing, that is always more powerful, for people to watch behavior and, start to unpack, and doing that reflection so that you can think about, ‘okay, well, these are the things that happened.’ someone's telling me what they saw and that they made some interpretation and it maybe wasn’t what I intended, but that was the impact it had. So it's really key to always remember that, as a leader, you're in the spotlight
Keisha: Yeah, you're accountable, regardless of your intent. Maybe the impact is still being impacted. When you're mentioning leaders and people looking up to you or watching, how do we take off? How do we use it, how do we sharpen the saw? How do we develop ourselves? We tend to say, ‘Oh, we're going to send them to training or we're going to make sure you use your leave,’ but then, ‘Oh, well, no, I'm so important, I've got to work. I've got to be here’ or, ‘call me, I know I'm on vacation, but I'll still be a participant in that meeting.’ And it's risky to, to be the person that says ‘I'm scheduled for leave during that time. Can we reschedule that? I really want to be a part of the conversation, but I've scheduled this time and it's really important to my family.’ Not to say that as a leader, sometimes you don't need to just be there. If it's something that's come up, that's an emergency, but every emergency isn't an emergency. So I think that leading by example and taking care of ourselves and our families is really critical. And it's something that I constantly work on. I can't say I've got it down pat, but it's something that I strive to improve every year.
Carol: Yeah, those are hard boundaries to keep, even when we know that's in our belief, I know that's certainly what I believe and I try to do for myself and then to demonstrate to others. And I have the luxury of being an independent consultant. I used to give the explanation of why I'm on leave. Now I simply say that I'm not available. It's a little easier for me to do that without someone having access to my calendar, et cetera, but it's still hard to maintain those boundaries, and even if you're working, just keep some time for thinking and for analysis, for stepping back and not being in meeting after meeting after meeting as leaders are so often in. Especially now, in COVID, the day can never end sometimes. But I think being aware of what really is an emergency, when is it really critical, and when is it not so that you have those reserves when those emergencies come up. 
Keisha: And one thing that I try to remember is, as women, and leaders, and moms, sometimes there's a thought you're supposed to be super-woman or super-mom, and I don't try to ascribe to that. I try to remember that,  I'm juggling a lot of balls, but. Every ball is not a glass wall. So,  there might be some things that I can let drop and they're going to bounce back and I'll just pick them up wherever they are. Or maybe I can pass it to someone on my team or something like that. But things like my children, or my husband, or my health, those are glass balls that I can't get back. If I drop them, they're shattered. That's been helpful for me to prioritize those things that'll be fine until next week, but this is the priority and takes precedent, so I need to calm myself.
Carol: I love that image because we so often hear ‘I'm juggling a lot of things,’ but remembering that all of those balls that you're juggling don't have the same impact and are not all precious in the same way. You don’t have to be the one juggling all of those things, and you can pull other people in, help them grow by giving them a stretch assignment that you may be in charge of, and maybe it can really help their development.
Keisha: Exactly and people want to help. They want to come through for you. So I think it isn't for us to share those opportunities with others and prioritize for ourselves. 
Carol: So, part of your work has been working on building a more multicultural increasing equity within the Y. What would you say has been missing in past efforts to address equity in the nonprofit sector? I mean, there are a lot of organizations that are trying to address that in the outside of their organizations, but I'm talking about inside organizations. 
Keisha: We have to start with ourselves internally. If it can't be just a process or a policy, or procedures, we have to start as individuals. We come to work with our own beliefs, the way that we are raised and how we see things. And we are all born with biases and it impacts how we show up and impact how we treat others at work. What we value, who we value. Knowing where people's ideals come from and why they make the decisions they make, or the way they behave. It's helpful in us being more empathetic to one another. I feel like the conversations that are being had nowadays, with the pandemic of coronavirus and COVID-19, and the epidemic of racism,  people aren't able to ignore it. I think having these uncomfortable conversations, leaning into the discomfort, and committing to doing it again and again, is what's going to make the difference. 
I've led multicultural leadership-development efforts at a national level for our organization. And there were some times where I felt like we were just teaching the diverse leader how to be within this larger structure that is not necessarily welcome. So, teach you - as a person of color - to straighten your hair, to get in, get the interview, say the right things, and do all those things. But how do we change the system so that it doesn't expect me to conform in order to be successful, that I can be valued for. However, if I choose to wear my hair this way, and I know that sometimes it seems like a small thing, but those small things, they just add up and there seem to be many ways where, as a woman of color, I felt like I haven't always been able to bring my whole self to work. So I do think that it's important that we allow folks to bring themselves, and their culture, and their beliefs, to work and not have to hide who they are. 
Those conversations are key. And in that leadership development that you're talking about, it's essentially like we're refining code switching or refining, basically teaching whiteness. I feel like that's probably replicated across not only programs within organizations, but many, many programs that are offered as not capacity-building, but just different levels. So that's essentially what the program is about. How is that really helping us get to equity. We need to teach white people to be okay with people who are different. I know that there's a lot of books and things talking about being anti-racist. But we have to continue to just work on dismantling the systems. It's not just teaching one group how to be, or how to respond. It's educating ourselves on how things got to be the way they are. And they didn't just start with us here. Here's the impact of those things, here's how this group might've benefited from these laws and these systems. And then here's how this group may not have benefited or how they might've been kept back as a result of those. And then getting people to make change, how do we bring it to the forefront and then start to dismantle it. But it's in the long haul. It was built over time and it won't be dismantled overnight either. 
Carol: Yeah. And it's interesting. I was listening to one of Brené Brown's podcasts, she now has two, and I'm not remembering who the person that she was talking to was, but the person she was interviewing was talking about how, when organizations try to start working on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They'll often go to the policies, the practices, and she described that, as the transactional part of the work. And that was interesting to me - because so often it ends up being posed as somewhat of an either/or of either you're doing transactional, or you're doing transformational and what she was saying, which I found so interesting was you have to have both. So you have to deal with all those practices and systems and how that's all embedded in the code of how we work. That's not enough, it's not sufficient. You also have to work at the relational level and then other work. We're trying to come at this from a conscious part of the brain that actually is not triggering a lot of this. That so much is about the unconscious bias that we've been taught over years. And how that's embedded in our limbic system. 
Keisha: It is. We have to do something to consciously stop it and be aware that, ‘okay, this is what I'm thinking.’ This is what I'm hearing. This is what I'm saying, what I'm replicated. I found that one-on-one conversations have also been very, very helpful with - and I can't speak for every person who's like me - but I can tell you how this impacts me. I can tell you how this impacts my children. I can tell you how this impacts my family, and it's exhausting to share. There have been times when I'm like, ‘I'm tired of educating everyone else. I'm just going to do me.’ I've got to preserve myself. 
Diversity fatigue is a real thing. I’ve found relationships that are important to me and I've really tried to develop those, whether it's professionally or personally, but by sharing, this is the impact of this. When I hear of another police killing a black person, I think about how that could be my son who is 17 now, who's 6’ 4” and it could be my daughter, who's 17 and just a black, young woman. It could be me, it could be my husband. And sharing conversations with folks. One of my colleagues said, that really hit me when you talked about your kids and my kids, because it's always, that's that family over there, but it's like, we have these things in common, but yet our kids can be doing the same exact thing and mine will be killed and Rose’s will not. So I think that that's one way that I've tried to personally make connections with folks and help them to see things in a different light.  
Carol: Yeah. I appreciate that. And I appreciate what you're saying, that there are just sometimes when I'm not going to engage. I need to preserve myself.
Keisha: Yeah. I can't always engage in conversations, and it's not always fruitful. There are some folks who, it doesn't matter what you say, and I'm not willing to sacrifice myself for those types of conversations.
Carol: Yeah. And sometimes I find it can be helpful to identify some bright spots, or  people who are operating under those same circumstances or constraints, within the same context, but somehow are having better results. In your work, have you encountered some of those bright spots because I think that that's a place to start working from.
Keisha: Yeah. I mean, I've encountered quite a few bright spots. We have a movement of leaders of color throughout the national Y and we call it our multicultural leadership development. It's mentors, coaches, and supports. And we've created safe spaces, similar to the employee resource group models where you have groups of people who may be able to come together and work on policies. You've got the affinity groups, those types of things, but ours is more of a mixture. Not just African-Americans with African-Americans. So you might see African-Americans, Hispanic, Latinos, and Asian Pacific Islanders. There you might have indigenous folks of which we need to improve our numbers versus nationally as an organization with regards to leadership, reflecting the communities we serve. But for those of us who are members of those communities, finding the commonalities and being able to support one another, educate one another, and to be with one another, and developing our own cultural competence, just because you're a person of color doesn't mean that you're going to be culturally competent as well. 
The things that we're asking from other groups that we should be able to model those things as well. So it's definitely been a great support system. And we've seen a lot of folks who've been able to engage and advance their careers within our organization. In connecting the dots where they're not just at one small organization, that they can be connected to our larger network of organization. So really a lot of success there. We have seen some increases in our numbers nationally of leaders that are at the top level, in the C-suite CEO position that are of color. But then we've also had some challenges that go on the other side of it. We've done a lot more work on bias and undoing institutional racism. Anti-racism work, a lot more equity work and looking at the systems. And I don't think that that's something that, as national non-profits, a lot of us do. Recognizing that we are a part of those systems that we talk about, a part of this country. We have the same kind of history as we've evolved in these 175 years that our country has evolved. So, I think we're doing a lot and there are a lot of folks who are committed to it. There's much more to be done.
Carol: Sure. Sure. And for the Y particularly, you're a federated system and that can - I'm guessing - make it particularly challenging, but there are many other national organizations that are set up that same way. Can you just briefly say what a federated system is, and then maybe talk about how some of this work has either been able to move forward or, or been challenging.
Keisha: Sure. We're federated meaning each organization, each Y, is its own independent 501 c3. You're all members of the national YMCA, and there are some guidelines that we need to adhere to in order to be a member. But we each have our own boards of directors, our own financial leaders, those kinds of things. And we can make our own decisions. There are a lot of benefits to that because the work that's happening in each community is different. So we don't have to be bound by some national perspective or priorities that are not appropriate for our community. The benefits of being a larger, federated organization, our brand is something that's recognizable that we work hard to have some things that we say are in common and that when you go to a Y, no matter where you are, that there should be these types of things. For us, that healthy, living youth development and social responsibility are three of our big core areas that we do our work. 
Carol: So there was a second part to that question. I'm just also wondering, with that federated system, there's also the autonomy of each organization. So, trying to move forward, something at the national level may take longer because you essentially have to persuade or pull in every organization within the system. 
Keisha: We're a very diverse country. We have, in some ways, a lot of division and something that we all believe in. And then there are some areas where we're not all on the same side and our organization is not any different from that. so for us to all rally around the same thing, it is not always very easy. It can be painstaking, but I know that there are some things we do believe in equity and inclusion as a national organization. We believe in the safety of children and young people. And there's just certain things that are no-brainers for us. But how that gets implemented in each area is sometimes very different and can be difficult. I'm not speaking on behalf of our organization nationally. It is an area that I've seen that, when we’ve pulled together, it's very impactful. 
Carol: You've actually developed your own leadership model. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and what you've found wanting and other models that spurred you to create your own?
Keisha: Sure! Thank you for asking about it. It's interesting because I've coached leaders for many, many years, and also had a lot of focus on learning and development. I feel like we tend to highlight leaders who seem as if they arrived; as if they just showed up and they were perfect, these flawless leaders and I've done presentations, and I've done a little riff on Beyonce’s flawless  music. We don't really highlight leaders who mess things up or who are learning. When I see someone who's in a position that's at a high level I think, ‘man, how do I get there?’ I don't hear about the times that they failed four times, that they were rejected for six other positions that they've gone for, you just get to see where they've shown up. So I really try to encourage my colleagues to share some of their failures, some of their flaws so to speak. The model is that leaders are flawed and they are not perfect, but we do learn from things. So the [idea is that] we're failing forward. Everyone makes mistakes. And how do we utilize those to propel ourselves and our learning, or whatever it is that we learned from those failures. Then maybe we prevent some of the failures in the future, or maybe they'll be a little smaller. But recognizing that all of us will fail at some point and how we fail forward? the lesson for lifelong learners that we constantly have to sharpen that saw, we have to learn more. Part of it is reflecting and getting better, learning about what we do and how we can improve, learning about our field, our craft, just continuing to [learn]. There's no point where you've just arrived so we need to always be lifelong learners. The A is for authentic! I think authenticity in leadership is very important for us. If you want people to follow you, you want them to trust you. People don't want to follow someone who doesn't seem genuine. And a part of that authenticity is [admitting] that, you’re not always right. I may not be perfect, but sharing more of our why, our story, why we do things or what's motivating our decisions  and things like that. Sharing a little bit of a vulnerability. So if we were to talk about Brenè Brown, vulnerability is just super important. So I think that that's all tied to authenticity. And then the W is for work. You can't be a leader without doing the work. You’ve gotta roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty. I do believe in working smarter, not harder. I'm not going to try and take the hard way, but in leadership, you definitely have to put in the work wherever it's needed. That's my model: leaders of LAW.
Carol: I love it. I think it was one thing - I don't think much goes viral on LinkedIn -  but this one probably did where someone actually wrote their failure resume. Yeah, so when you write your bio for when you're speaking or whatnot, you rarely include:  “and right before I got that job, I was the runner-up for four of them.” [You don’t include] where you were laid off here, or where you got restructured out of that job at that. We're resilient. Those are the things that we need to reiterate that, especially with this generation coming up and I hate to sound like the old person in the room, but you want folks to know it's okay, you gotta be resilient. We don't know what's going to happen next, then COVID, and what this next iteration will be, but we will band together. We will be resilient. We'll make it through and figure it out. 
Keisha: Yeah. And I think folks have a lot more resilience than they realize, and it's part of it. It's looking back and seeing, ‘that kind of sucked at that time, but I picked myself back up and got back on the horse’ or whatever and [you need to] try it again. And I think just the way our brains are wired, we learn so much more from those failures than we do from all those successes. So, we have such a negativity bias that those are definitely more memorable. But then not only keep it as our own private learning, but I think what you're saying is, for leaders to actually share those with the folks that they're working with so that folks really know that it is okay. We don't want to make a lot of mistakes. Nobody wants to make mistakes. But on the other hand, if there's a culture where making mistakes is punished, then it just has so much impact on folks willing to take risks. That has to be there for innovation [so it] can really have a chilling effect. So yeah, pretending that you're perfect, it's exhausting for the person who wants to work with that anyway. It's not realistic. It doesn't have to be perfect. We're not expecting it to be our final product, but you're going to put this bad boy out, see how it works, and we'll fix it. We'll continue to hone in on it.
Carol: So, you allow people to be okay with, like you said, innovating and we don't want to make huge mistakes, but we know that's a part of the process. Then we can build our confidence in knowing that it's a part of the process that I may stumble.
Keisha: Yeah. And I think, also for organizations to look at who's allowed to make those mistakes within the organization and who it has higher consequences for. And I'm sure in most cases there's probably already research that shows this, but the more male and white you are, probably the more you can get away with. Yup. Very much so. And I didn't necessarily see it myself. Being in HR, coming from operations in so many places that I'm really drawn to making sure that we're consistent with how we handle those situations. Like you said, are we doing the same thing if the person is white and male that we would have done if they were young and female, or a person of color, or something like that. It’s super important that we have that consistency. 
Carol: Yeah, well I want to shift focus a little bit. At the end of every episode, I do a little game where I ask a random icebreaker question. So, what is one family tradition that you'd like to carry on in the future?
Keisha: I created a family tradition of cookie baking for the holidays, and I'm not a person who cooks nor bakes. So it was interesting for me to come up with that, but I just love the idea of my children coming together, and having other cousins over, and us getting flour all over the place and making cookies from scratch. It's just a great way to set the holiday season off. It's a big mess, and every year I say, ‘why am I doing this?’ but I'm really trying to figure out how to do it during COVID. I'm like, ‘okay, pass out flour and it could be making an idea, or you do something via zoom. It's definitely one of the traditions that I hope my children pass on and that they continue to do it.
Carol: All right. Well, thank you so much. I hope I get a box of cookies.
Keisha: You may not want them! They've gotten better over the years. Like I said, I'm not a baker but, fail forward! I've gotten much better, but I've been failing forward for some years. 
Carol: All right. Well, thank you so much. 
Keisha: Thank you. Appreciate you, Carol. Good to talk to you.

In episode 11 of Mission: Impact, some of the topics that Carol and her guest, Nyacko Perry, discussed include:

• Addressing accountability of past actions as a method of moving forward
• Creating a healthy environment with room for employees to care for their mental health
• The process of making change in an organizational structure
• The disconnect between many organizations’ missions and their internal culture
• The disconnect between front-line workers, the people running many nonprofit organizations, and the communities they serve
• Thoughts on how organizational change happens
• How systems exploit vulnerable populations

Additional Resources:

• William Bridges’ Transition Theory: https://wmbridges.com/about/what-is-transition/
• The 1619 Project: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
• 1619 podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1619/id1476928106

BoardSource 2017 research on demographics of nonprofit organizations - Leading with Intent report.

Guest Information: 
Nyacko Perry utilizes a systems-thinking approach to assist individuals, community groups, and organizations, in creating more inclusive cultures. Her decade long career as a transformational change agent includes national and international facilitation with non-profit, corporate, and government agencies. Nyacko is the founder of Yin Consulting, a collaborative focused on personal, organizational and systemic healing.
She is the Organization Development Partner at the much-anticipated Comfort Kitchen, a restaurant, community meeting space, and a food incubator dedicated to fostering collaboration, cross-cultural understanding, and community engagement. Nyacko also serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the Action Boston Community Development, Inc. Roxbury/N. Dorchester Opportunity Center. Nyacko holds an M.S. in Organization Development, with distinction, from American University. She is also a 500-hour professional level yoga teacher, an Afro Flow Yoga® certified teacher, and weaves her mindfulness expertise into her consulting work.

​Links:

• www.yinconsulting.com/
• comfortkitchenbos@gmail.com
• www.comfortkitchenbos.com/
• www.instagram.com/comfortkitchenbos/
• www.allinconsulting.co

Interview transcript:

Carol Hamilton: Welcome Nyacko, it’s great to have you on the podcast. 
Nyacko Perry: Thank you, Carol. I'm excited to be here. 
Carol: So, give people some context, what drew you to the work that you do? What would you say is the journey or the path that got you to where you are now?
Nyacko: That is quite the question. Just for background, I do mostly organizational healings. I'm interested in the wellbeing of people at work, and ultimately doing a process of healing. So addressing and having accountability around some of the past experiences, and making a path forward so that people can feel safe and be the most productive people they can be at work. What brought me to that is quite a journey. I come from a yoga background to start. I was very invested in healing in that regard. Healing for myself, and first for taking care of myself, taking care of my body and my mind, and that quickly grew into ‘how do I facilitate this for other people?’ So I've been a yoga teacher for several years, and after being a yoga teacher for several years, I left and became a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana for two years. That experience was the most eye-opening, incredible experience of my life, both exciting and awesome, but also painful and different. Through that experience, I was working with a lot of Government Agencies. I was based in a local village and there were three local schools that I was supporting with what we would consider life skills, which were mostly around the spread of HIV and making sure that the curriculum invested in that and making sure that the students understood what HIV was and how it was transmitted and so forth.
Through that experience, I found that one, I fell in love with my community. I also got rather disillusioned from some of the institutions that were located there, both the nonprofits, as well as some of the government agencies I was working with. Unfortunately, their approach was ultimately, numbers, very numbers based, very centric towards, ‘you know, what are we doing and how is this making us look good?’ and it really didn't resonate with me. So I had a big internal process going on because I felt like there's so much potential to do our full work if you are in collaboration with the community, if you are really acknowledging how they want to go about their own process of doing this powerful change within their system. I became very interested in that, both during my Peace Corps service, but then afterwards, of course. so after that time of being with them, I thought, ‘okay, more so than actually doing direct service, I'm very interested in the systems that hold this direct service. So, that's where I started and looked into the American program that I believe we both did Carol. Then, going through the master's program became very interested in how to bring back this healing component and this idea around people's wellbeing at work. So all of these different parts of my identity and my experience came together through the master's program. I actually had the pleasure of thinking about a theory around organizational healing from the lens of the chakra system. The chakra system is basically energy centers that live within the body.
They're known in yogic philosophy, they're also known in African practices and traditions as well. I was very interested in considering organizations to be human systems, then how do we apply all of these theories we have about the human experience in the context of work? So that's how I got into all of the things that I got into. 
Carol: That's awesome. Say more about your organizational theory of healing and, how do you define that, and can you dig into a little bit more about how the theory shows up when you're doing work with groups.
Nyacko: Absolutely. For me, I'm a very feeling person, so the first thing that I do when I go into an organizational system is I'm like, what do I feel inside? Do I feel tension? Do I feel joy? Do I feel like apprehension? and so I very much come from an emotional place and healing. What I consider healing is being in touch [with] emotions, but healing takes many, many shapes and forms. So from my perspective, it's really about accountability. I think that's where healing can truly come through. So if an organization gets data that says ‘actually you have been unfair or you have done some things that have caused harm,’ acknowledging that, and really making that be part of the next strategy. [Saying,] we've heard you, we're going to make shifts. We're going to acknowledge what we've done that has caused harm. We're going to actually make some shifts and involve you in that change process. That's what I consider to be healing, but what I've noticed through the work is that every organization will bring about healing in their own way. For some people, healing can be messy, it can be tough. It's where the leader, for example, has to really take in all of the feedback, and sometimes that within itself is like, ‘ah, that hurts.’ or, I had no intention of doing that. I think this is something that happens all the time where the leader has a very different experience from those that are on the lower levels of the system. I didn't realize that making this pay cut and making this particular shift had an actual emotional effect on your life and your ability to come to work and to thrive. I didn't realize that. 
So there's a lot of acknowledging what's gone wrong, but it can honestly be a messy process I've found, but I think for me, it's really about how we create a safe container where people can be honest, and that is usually the first step in a system. A lot of times when I go in, it's very clear to me that nobody's going to really say how they feel, because there's such tension, there's such a tightness and so I open the floodgates, but then the floodgates are open and who knows what could happen. Usually it ends up pretty well.
Carol: Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by creating a container? 
Nyacko: Yeah, even in how I practice. So if I'm leading a group, the first thing I do is a check-in. For some systems, that's very normal behavior, checking in [with] ‘how is everybody?’ and when we're checking in, we're not just checking in on ‘how was work today,’ but [also,] ‘how are you?’ and from a facilitator perspective, I want to understand if somebody is coming in with stress, with some tension, with something that's going to influence how they're showing up here. So that gives me more of a background of what's going on. 
So, one thing is check-ins, which for some systems is radical transforming where people are like, ‘wait, you're asking me how I am versus how productive I was today?!’ It can be a jarring shift. So I think that that's the first step for me in terms of setting a container. Starting with, of course, the check-in, but also in how I'm holding the space. 
I'm not intending to be an authority when I hold space, which for some people is difficult. Because they're like, just tell me what to do and also, this is what I consider to be presence, you know, you're a boss and you come in and you tell us how to do things. So I come in with a radical, different way, which is: ‘hi, I'm here. I'm interested in how you feel.’ I want to support you in this process, I'm not an authority, I hope you feel safe here. So that's how I show up and that really opens where people are like, ‘oh, whoa. I can talk to her,’ especially when it comes down to the data collection process, I tend to do very well in that area because people feel more comfortable with how I show up and how I hold space. 
Like I was saying, there is this other extreme where for some people they're like, ‘I don't get it. Why isn't she doing it how I'm used to seeing,’ not to mention, I also don't always look like what people consider a consultant. They're like, ‘Oh, wow, you're young and black and have all these other parts of your identity that I’m not sure about. How do I make sense of you?’ I think that's also a strength that I have. I look different, I represent something different, I show up differently intentionally, and that helps to set a container for people to feel safe.
Carol: You talked about the messiness of the process. I think too often, people are lulled into the idea that if they do this seven-step process, we're gonna manage change, it's going to happen exactly the way we want it to. I often cringe when I hear the word change management, because to me it creates this illusion that it’s all manageable. Certainly you create processes to help people move through it, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. There might be uncomfortable parts, but those are necessary if you're really going to dig into the real issues that organizations face.
Nyacko: Absolutely, it makes me think a lot about Bridges theory. Just that in between when you're trying to mitigate the change process, you actually have to consider that there's this in-between from what you were, to what you're going to be. That middle space is going to determine whether or not you're actually successful and you need to use it, work on that, and think about how your employees are actually talking and feeling throughout this change process, especially for those that are like, ‘oh, we just let go half of our staff and we're merging with a totally different company and we have to completely change our culture.’ There are two cultures that are somehow supposed to merge together. There's going to be so much messiness, and even just acknowledging that and holding space for that in-between, is so necessary.
Carol: Yeah. That theory that you mentioned, William Bridges does a lot of work on transitions. When I'm trying to explain that to people, I often say that in our American, White-dominated culture we always want to be onto the next thing. So we want to go from point A to point C and forget this in-between space where we're not quite there, not quite here, not where we were, but not quite there yet. I think everyone's feeling that right now in the midst of the pandemic or in this massive in-between space and the discomfort that that creates with folks. 
Nyacko: Yeah, it's quite eye-opening for all of us and even organizations, how they respond to the pandemic, and it seems like there has to be more attention to the employee experience outside of just how they are in terms of productivity, but how are they? 
Carol: You talk about how radical that can be, to ask folks how they're doing. I was talking to a colleague at the beginning of the pandemic and she said, ‘my boss is suddenly incredibly vulnerable, and I don't know if I like it.’ This is very not normal! Many believe - if they're not in the sector - they have this idealistic notion of the nonprofit sector that it's  shielded from dysfunctional culture and dynamics because of the mission focus and because of that good intention and trying to create change or good work in the world, but in my experience, too many organizations have very admirable missions for change that they want to see. Yet the values that undergird those missions just don't show up inside the organization and how they're treating people. What have you observed within nonprofits that you've worked with?
Nyacko: A lot of what I'm seeing is the people that are doing direct service are having a really challenging time - especially around their income, more often than not, they're the least paid person, but they're the people that are dealing with the direct work. Then there's a whole disconnect between the direct service people, and the people that are really high up. The other disconnect in that area is race. Race is something I see very quickly, it's like direct service. That's where all the people of color work, and then as you go up, it's just all white. I find that disturbing, what is that about? Then also in terms of who they serve, more often than not, it's people of color, people that represent a disenfranchised identity, and that's not reflected in the leadership of nonprofits. So, there's just this huge disparity and disconnect that I don't understand and I feel troubled by.
Carol: Yeah and it certainly mirrors our wider society, so it's not like the sector at all is separate. It's all within those systems. So can you say more about how you see that culture of white supremacy showing up within the sector?
Nyacko: Yeah, it's this idea of helping. This idea of who we think needs help, and more often than not the people who need help are people that represent disenfranchised identities. Why is it that we don't have those [identities] represented in leadership? I see a huge problem in that, but honestly, my friends that are in nonprofit, when I've worked in nonprofit, it's almost like it's normalized where the whole board is white, the whole leadership is white, [so] they don't know what's happening. They're not connected to the actual experience of the people that they're serving, but they get to make the most important, most drastic decisions.
The people that are closest to the pain should be closest to the access and closest to helping to make decisions - and I'm pulling from my congresswoman, Ayanna Presley - that's the thing [that] people who are representing the identities should be a part of the solution and should be a part of making those major decisions. I rarely see that, and I think we know statistically, it's not there. I think it's like 0.05%. 
Carol: Yeah, I don't know the exact stats, but I definitely know I can look them up. BoardSource has done a lot of work on this and [on] measuring and calling for more diversity, and the needle not shifting since they've been measuring it for the last 15-20 years or so. Do you see places where that isn't the case though, where those dynamics have flipped? 
Nyacko: I mean, probably occasionally but it's also in our structures. Like our structures in general, our businesses are based on white supremacy. All the way from our educational systems, our business structures. I was listening to the 1619 project, I don't know if you've listened to that, it's an amazing piece by the New York Times that really looks into the history of slavery, and also the legacy of slavery. One major piece is that a lot of our business structures are based on how the plantations were run. They had very complex systems. They had middle management and ideas about productivity, and reports about productivity, how to best feed a slave and have them be as efficient as possible. They were extremely successful in that. So much of our wealth in America is based on that piece of our history. So when I think about structures in general, it [makes it] difficult to live in society and to work in any system. The rationale that I tell myself is that I'm here to dismantle and to support the transition and the change. I think it's very important to acknowledge where our structures come from, where our nonprofit structures come from. If these parts of our communities weren’t disenfranchised, we wouldn't have a use for nonprofits. So how is this an industrial complex? How is it that we're dependent on people being in need and perpetuating that? 
Carol: Then [there’s] the sector being dependent on the little bit of wealth that is put into foundations and then the little bit that they give out each year. Where did all that money originate from? Here we are in a field in terms of organization development that wants to be of service and wants to help. where do you see, you know, how do you see, doing that in a way that does heal rather than doing harm? 
Nyacko: Step one is acknowledgement, but that's the trickiest part. That's the part where, for example, when George Floyd was murdered, so many people, so many organizations, wrote these very blanketed responses, and there was no accountability in the statement. There was nowhere where we wanted to acknowledge what role we have played in perpetuating this system, and the steps that we want to make to dismantle it, to make some shifts within our organization. It's rare that we see that. 
We have seen it in some circumstances, but more often than not, there's a resistance that you've been acknowledging it. It's almost like “la-la-la-la, we're good.” When really, just name it. Name it and start there. I think that's step one, and then once that's open, involving everyone in your organization in the process. Knowing that more often than not, the leadership is not fully aware of all of that goes on in the organization, [and] is not fully connected to the people that are being served, lifting up the voices from the rest of the organization, as well as lifting up the voices of people that are being served by the organization and bringing those voices to the forefront and allowing them to help direct whatever change process you're planning to make, I think that that's the first step in healing. 
Carol: So you also work in the food industry as a partner with a Comfort Kitchen. What type of type of change are you trying to make in that space?
Nyacko: First of all, background. Background on Comfort Kitchen - and I know they're going to read a little bit - my husband has been in the food industry for - I should say my spouse - has been in the industry for the last 15 years. He’s also an immigrant from Nepal and he had a terrible time of being someone that has an MBA who’s fully prepared to bring all of his skills to whatever business he was working for, and just being constantly demoralized and disrespected throughout the process. This is not a different story - this is the story. The industry is interested in exploiting people and chooses to target the most vulnerable individuals. So, 70% of restaurant workers are immigrants. and then a large portion of those are undocumented. So it's really vulnerable people that ended up working there. There's a lot of systems that will choose to exploit that. The whole design of the restaurant industry makes no sense. It's not actually a sustainable model, and that's why, when we saw the pandemic hit, most restaurants cannot go two weeks, let alone months, without generating any revenue. It just doesn't work. That's because the margins are small because it's almost impossible to get healthy food that comes from a sustainable source, and to pay your employees well, and actually sell your food at a fair price to your consumer. That's rare to see. 
So, we would like to try and see if we can build something that is a little bit more sustainable on many levels. [Obviously,] the financial element, but also in how we engage with each other and how we engage with the community. So we're going into a community that I love called Upham’s Corner. It's right up the street from where I live and have lived for many years, and it's a community that has a lot of life. It has a lot of diversity. It's actually one of the most diverse neighborhoods in America.
So there's such a need to bring some love and be like, hey, we're here, we want to engage with you. Also with that comes the incredible cultures that are represented. So within my team: my partner is from Nepal, our head chef is from Ghana, his partner is from Portugal, and then we have a teammate from Ethiopia, and then second-generation Nigerian. So we're bringing a lot of different cultures to share within a neighborhood that's incredibly diverse as well. So a big focus for us is cross-cultural understanding. How do we start to see that actually all of these experiences are valuable, important, and also have similarities. One big similarity that we're finding is spices. Because of colonization and the spice trade, but you will find a lot of similar spice profiles across the world. So that feels unifying to us and really what is the forefront for us in terms of our menu and in terms of what we talk about. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to shift it off. Ultimately, because of the pandemic, huge shifts had to be made, and one major part of that is that we are developing a much smaller team, and that's so that we can be sustainable and do things differently.
Carol: Well, that sounds awesome. So, in each episode, I play a little game where I just ask one random icebreaker question. So I've got one for you here. What's the best compliment you've ever received?
Nyacko: Last night I had a friend over, and she said that I'm very smart and smart in a way that most people don't understand, but she gets it and she sees it. I have really struggled with my intelligence just because I have a learning difference. and so I've gotten messages throughout my life that [I’m] not as smart as other people are. Which are all stories, but when you're young, that can be very much embedded in the way that you think. I love to receive compliments around my intelligence, that feels really good. Thanks for asking.
Carol: Yes, absolutely! Without a doubt, you are incredibly insightful, smart, intelligent, and delightful. 
Nyacko: Thank you very much!
Carol: So what are you excited about? What's coming up next? What's emerging in your work? 
Nyacko: I mean, my consulting work is going well, especially because I think people are aware they need to tap into their emotions and address some of these past harms and make some transitions. So [I’m] definitely feeling busy in that regard, which feels really good. 
Also we have a project coming up called All-In Consulting. I know you've probably mentioned it in other episodes and the other times that you've had people on, but I'm very excited about that. This idea of having a collaboration of people that are committed to doing specifically DEI differently - diversity, equity and inclusion - differently.
That to me feels like home. I feel like I'm at home in our network and our communities. So that is very, very exciting to me. Then Comfort Kitchen is coming, we have a ways to go, but 2021, probably around March-April is when we're thinking. So just plugging away on that as well and excited because I'm going to take my first vacation next week.
Carol: Awesome. That is part of personal organizational wellbeing that people take time off, prioritize that and really unplug. I'm a big believer - maybe ‘cause I grew up in Europe, I'm used to longer vacations and I think that's a way to go. Thi American idea that you can get away with as little time off as possible, it's just not living. It doesn't work. So how can people  know more about you and get in touch?
Nyacko: Sure thing. You can check out my website at yinconsulting.com. That's Y-I-N consulting dot com. You can also learn about Comfort Kitchen, we’re comfortkitchenbos@gmail.com. Then if you are an Instagram person, comfortkitchenBOS is our name on Insta. So you can check us out there as well. 
Carol: Alright, well, thank you so much. It was great having you on. 
Nyacko: Of course. Thank you, it was awesome.

Episode 08: ​This week we’re talking to Becca Bartholomew.  
 
We talked about: 
• Ensuring all voices are included in planning processes 
• Why it is important for leaders to not only have intelligence but also have emotional intelligence and somatic intelligence
• What the buffering sign on your computer has to tell us about today’s work environment

Barry Oshrey’s Tops, Middles and Bottoms 

Ladder of Inference: 

Your Body is Your Brain by Amanda Blake 
 
A facilitator and coach with expertise in organization development (OD), Becca has extensive experience working with groups and individuals to foster communication and effective collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Becca helps her clients implement strategies that increase their emotional intelligence and efficacy. She is known for her clear communication, innate ability to foster trust, and firm, yet gentle approach to helping others recognize their blind spots and engage specific tools to articulate and reach their goals. She gracefully supports her clients toward self-reflection, new learning and increased awareness of their impact on others. She works with leaders of all types and has a special passion for those newer to leadership as well as those who hold societal privilege and want to address their roles in upholding and then dismantling systems of oppression.

Carol Hamilton: Welcome Becca to the podcast. Great to have you on. 
Becca Bartholmew: Thanks for having me. 
Carol: Just to kind of give people some context and get us started. Could you just describe kind of what drew you to the work that you do and, and how describe your journey to where you are now? 
Becca: Sure. I'll give you the abbreviated version. I really feel like what I'm doing now has brought together a whole bunch of threads of my life into one place. It's a really inspiring, invigorating place to be. I am the third generation in my family to be doing organizational development work.
That's what exposed me to that human systems piece of what I do. I also spent a long time working in public health and sustainable agriculture, mostly in the nonprofit and academic sector, which has given me a continued learning journey around social justice and issues that I was working on at a systems perspective there.
I've always, my whole life, had a really strong interest in dance and movement and yoga and that sort of thing. And so now I feel like in the work that I do, which is mostly around supporting human systems, to be better at whatever it is they're trying to do. Especially around the communication within that system and the functionality within that system, I take a whole person and whole system perspective on that. Not just working with the mind, but working with other aspects of the whole being. It was sort of all these different interests of mine coming together into one place. I would just add to that is it was being in human systems. And then again, seeing things that I had sort of heard growing up that happen often in human systems, like we're humans, we have human tendencies and just seeing those things has inspired me to make the jump from public health, into really working with the systems rather than within the systems.
Carol: Can you give me an example of what one of those things were that you were like, “I remember them talking about that and now I'm seeing it.” 
Becca: So, there's a lot of talk about people working either on or in their business or their organization. Sometimes we're so much in it that we forget to work on it.
We talk about process and we talk about content and sometimes people are so engrossed in the content that they forget to pay attention to the process and process can be relationships. It can be the processes for how information flows for the timeline, for projects, whatever it might be, the structures and processes, both interpersonal and organizational, that support what's going on.
I remember working in an organization and there was this person who came in and she went through this whole workshop with us about how to create work plans, start with activities and things that we wanted to do, and make these big plans. And then my boss said, “make a draft plan for our organization.”
I remember this so specifically because I went away with my family that week, but it was really important that it be done. So, I agreed to do it while I was away. I worked on it a lot while my family was down swimming in the lake and then I came back and I gave it to my boss and never heard anything.
Oh, it was just crickets. It was just an example to me of even when we're trying, we don't always follow through; those things sit on the shelf or in the email inbox and just never really get enacted within the organization. 
Carol: From what you've learned looking back on that, what might you have said to the leader, how you might have done it, approached it differently considering your perspective now. 
Becca: Great question. What I'm working on now in my life, and I think it relates to this, is getting really clear on my own boundaries and also exploring other people's expectations as much as possible. I think I would have had more of an upfront conversation with my boss: “What does this look like?”; “How do you want it to be”; “what's really important about this” and then, “what will be done with this once I finish it?” and can we put the meetings on our calendar now for the time we're going to talk about this and this and this. 
I was younger then, and less experienced. I didn't really have the same initiative to make sure that this happens because, after all, it's my time and the organization's time, and I don't want to waste either. 
Carol: Yeah. I also remember being on a board one time where I had raised the issue of the organization doing strategic planning and the Executive Director said, “well, why don't you go write a strategic plan?”
And I was kind of like, wait a second, that's not how it works. I could go do that but it wouldn't be at all useful because it wouldn't be informed by everyone in the group. How they're thinking about it. And, really sometimes the plan itself is a useful product, but the process is also such an important part of having all those conversations, thinking about what is our direction and what are our goals of having all those conversations. In a lot of ways, to me, it is even more important than what ends up on the page. Although that also is important, people want to see that it's actually used so that they don't feel like it was just a lot of hot air and a waste of time. 
Becca: Yeah, it makes me also think about why I know a lot about design thinking and it makes me think about even within that process, not only is it important for buy-in and engagement, but there are things, especially that we don't always know about depending on where we are in the organization. Unless we're pulling from all angles, back to the organization through that process, we might miss something and in design thinking, there's that concept of bringing in sort of the smart but naive other person who doesn't have all the information about whatever's being talked about and really having that person there to ask questions and get clarification and guidance.
Pulling from that, I was just doing a leadership training the other day, and we were talking about Barry Oshrey's concept of Tops, Middles, and Bottoms within an organization, and how Tops feel really lonely and isolated and burdened because they have to make all the decisions about everything, and Middles in an organization feel kind of pulled between the Tops and Bottom. So, they're managing people below them, but then they're responding to the people above them. And then often the people at the bottom, I don't necessarily love the terms Top, Middle, Bottoms, but it's your hand and gives you kind of a visceral, real example of feeling of what this is, and the Bottoms, often feel like they have no idea what's going on, that they're at the whim of the manager of the Middle or the Top, and just kind of there without knowing. Really bringing all three of those levels into a strategic planning process or any planning process is really important. Well, also being clear - who are the Tops that have the decision-making power; I've seen in some nonprofits who are really trying to have a flat structure where everybody's important. Yes, that's true, but there needs to be clear leadership so you can have a clear process for gathering information, then it needs to be clear how the decision is going to be made: Who's going to be making the decision and the timeline for that upfront. 
Carol: I totally agree. I think sometimes, with the notion that boards should drive the strategy for an organization, there's this tendency to, and kind of also a sense of, let's make it more manageable, so we'll have less people involved and then you miss all of those perspectives, but then as you said, so important for folks who are leading the process to also say, “We're gathering input from all these different groups, the board and senior staff, or whatever group it is, is ultimately tasked with finalizing the plan, approving the plan.
They are the ultimate decision makers. So getting clear and being clear about that decision making process is really key, too, as you can have lots of involvement, but if you don't that piece, you can actually demoralize people because they thought that they had equal say in this and then something that they were very passionate about doesn't emerge in the final plan and they wonder, “well, what was that for? “What was the point about, we're taking input from lots of people, but not everything's got to get in there for one, it's not going to be Christmas tree ornaments for everybody but also who's actually making the final decision. 
Becca: Yeah, absolutely. 
Carol: And, one of the areas that you focus on is somatics and leadership. Can you define what somatics is first? And then we'll talk a little bit about how that shows up in leadership. 
Becca: Somatics comes from the word Soma, which is body. It's about the body within leadership. I really love ,there's a great book called Your Body is Your Brain by Amanda Blake. She talks about three concepts. I have it here because I always mix them up. So, Xterra exception, proprioception and interception. 
Xterra, if you think about X, like external, that's our, our five senses. So, seeing and touching and hearing and smelling and tasting all of that is our Xterra reception. We're gathering information in three different ways and responding to information in three different ways. Then there's our appropriate section, which is our awareness of where we are in space. You might also tie that to sort of leadership presence, how are you using your body in space? Are you standing firm? Are your shoulders standing broad and relaxed? Exactly, are you clear in your stance? And then interception is the part where I think it gets the most exciting and juicy, but it's all important. That's sort of the internal, physiological, gut feeling or my heart. Some people think it's kind of woo, woo but it's not because there's a real physiology going on and your body often knows things before your brain knows them. Literally your Vagus nerve. Connects right from your gut to your brain, bypasses the cognitive part of your brain and goes right to the instinctual part of your brain and often you're taking in information and making a decision about it at a sub cognitive level, it's sort of your flight fight, flight freeze, animalistic instinct level before your cognition is even aware of it. The more we can become aware of our internal feeling sense, the more powerful we can be as leaders because we're using both levels of our intelligence, our emotional intelligence, as well as what I call our somatic intelligence, our bodies data gathering and processing.
Carol: As you know, science learns more and more about this, the whole notion that we're mind, body and spirit, that there are three separate things. It's really all one. Right. The body, your brain is part of your body, so it seems kind of obvious, but at the same time we experience it ourselves as a different thing. So, it's really interesting. So much of our culture has a kind of demonized feeling - like set your feelings at the door. We're professional beings with this professional meaning, and what's this leader mean? All of those things, I think sometimes what people think about, disconnects a lot of those pieces.
Becca:  Absolutely. If you think about it, think about when you're in a really energetic mood or in a really tired or depressed or sad. Just a run-down mood and how much work you can get done or not get done, or have responsive in a way that takes care of relationships in a positive way you are, or you aren't depending on how your internal state is. And we're not taught in this culture to pay attention to those things. I mean, I have a six-and-a-half-year-old and I try to remember to engage with my kid about, “Oh, are you feeling this?” “I see that you're angry” or, “I see that you're frustrated” and kind of name emotions so that he can start to work with those things and at the same time, it's just not talked about. There's a line, not necessarily an advocate for bringing everything in the door and to the table at work. While I want the whole person to be there, but not necessarily all of the person. It's like the integrated wholeness of the person is able to show up and that person is able to manage what needs to be in the room and what doesn't need to be in the room. I used to joke that the definition for me of maturity is knowing when to be immature and when not. So, it's not being mature all the time. It's knowing when to bring it in when not to. And I think it's the same thing about emotional intelligence, somatic intelligence, any of this, we need our emotions and we need our gut instinct. Yet we haven't been taught to cultivate and manage them. 
Carol: Yeah. And then that brings it up to mind kind of what you were talking about before in terms of setting boundaries and having appropriate boundaries. When our culture was kind of first exploring all this in the sixties and seventies, it was this let it all hang out, whatever, and learning over time that actually doesn't work at all, and it can be very detrimental to relationships. Being able to not only recognize, but manage emotions and manage your response as an adult, is a lot of what that's about. 
Becca:  Yeah. I think this bridges sort of into the diversity, equity, inclusion conversation because when I think about the whole person it's mind, body, spirit, emotions, and identity. So those five aspects: we need our mind, we need our body, we need our emotions, our spirit, or our values. However you want to define that for yourself. And then our identity is really important. All of the social identity aspects of who we are, whether that's race or gender or gender identity or sexual orientation or religion. There's a whole plethora of them. That's another piece we need to be able to bring our whole identity to work and we need leaders who are creating systems and environments where the diversity of those identities is able to thrive and be included and engaged with and valued. Often there's a leave that part of your identity at the door and I do think that bringing whole identity to work is important, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're talking all about various aspects of it if it's not relevant to the work at hand.
Carol: I wonder whether people in a dominant position or a leadership position and in a white dominant culture or whether people even realize that they're asking. They're assuming that people will leave those identities at the door and show up in a way that fits what's perceived in the dominant culture as kind of the right way to be at work.
Becca: Absolutely. And I think there are shifts happening in some spaces. Obviously we have a greater awareness around this as a country with the Black Lives Matter movement and other aspects but I think there's a long way to go. To me, this is what ties into the somatic intelligence work. I really think that leaders need to get good at noticing what's coming up for them when they start to engage in these spaces because a lot of times it can be scary. You don't want to get into legal trouble and you don't want to offend someone. So often people end up not even stepping into this space and not even having the conversation. It's really about doing as people who have what we call dominant identities, which is this white Christian male who’s heterosexual. There are a range of dominant identities in our American culture. Those of us with them need to do some work to realize that we have them and what it means.
It's not necessarily a problem that we have them. It is what it is. We need to realize that it is what it is, and then begin to work with it and ask ourselves, what are our values? What do I want to be seeing? What do I want my organization to be like? And, how can I play a role in creating that? 
Carol: What kind of steps do you think if people, if leaders want to start stepping into this work, that they can start taking?
Becca: The first step might just be mapping your own identities. Identity maps - put yourself in the middle, draw a circle, and a bunch of lines coming off of that. Think about all of those aspects that make you who you are.
Whether it's where you are in your sibling order. If you have siblings, the economic situation that you have, grew up in, and are in now; your education level, your race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, a range of all those. Once you write that map of who you are, then look through them and try to label, which are done, I'm in it and which aren't. Then take some time with each of those and think, okay, what makes this dominant? How is the world set up such that things are easier for me because I have this identity? What are the systems allowing for me? Because I just happened to have this identity and then get in conversation with other people who have similar identities to you who are also trying to work on this.
One of the things that's really important, and I imagine folks have heard a lot about, is not putting the emotional labor on to people who have what we call the marginalized or subordinated identities. It's not their job to educate us. There's a lot of information out there already, some really great books and we could even include a list of some of those, especially around race, as part of this. To be doing your own learning and engaging with others who are similar identity to you, doing their learning as well. 
Carol: And that I think is important to have those spaces of, similar identities so that people can have all the emotions they're having without putting emotional labor on other people. This whole notion of white fragility, people are going to have their emotions. They're either going to get triggered, and shaming them and bullying them to stop doing that is not helpful; at the same time, a person of color, a person with another marginalized identity, or intersection of those doesn't need to hear that same conversation over and over and over again. How can we create spaces so that white people can start their baby steps in this, and have the full experience of it all, and work through it?
Becca: Absolutely, Carol. I totally agree with what you say. I think you're hitting on a key point. I believe it's necessary to feel the emotions that are associated with this. I know a lot of white women who I've interacted with, especially have felt guilt or shame or sadness as they become more and more aware of what the white dominant culture and their role in that has created in this country. I've heard experiences from colleagues of color of mine who have had white men end up really angry in their sessions when they hear about things. These are generalizations I've mentioned, it's sad and women can get angry, but I believe we need to feel those emotions and become aware of them and let them move through us because as we talked about a little while ago, feelings are literally physiological. There are biological things happening in your body when you feel something and if you just try to suppress it, it doesn't really actually go away. Where are the spaces where that can be released, where it can be acknowledged, process looked at, digested and then do that in a safe space with support and then step into the other spaces of leadership of mixed identity interaction. I want to say clean, where none of us are super clean when it comes to it, but it's about having to 
Carol: Sort of through a little bit of a muck, at least.
Becca: Exactly - cleaned up your boots or like simmered down your sauce.
I think that's really important that too often the message, especially to white people is, “Oh, don't bring your white fragility.” I see that and it's not to say, don't have your emotions. It's be aware of where, where you are displaying them and the kind of help you are seeking for them.
I say, do have those emotions. Become very aware of them and don't get stuck in them. Brene Brown also talks a lot about the difference between guilt and shame. Some of them are part of this learning, some of the learning I've been doing is through WWARA about White Women's Anti-Racism Alliance and they take Brene Brown's work and talk about the difference between guilt, and shame and guilt.
Well, shame says something is wrong with me. I am bad. And then guilt says I did something bad. If we say, “Oh, I did something bad,” then we have agency. “Oh, I did something bad. I can do something different.” If we stay in our shame as whatever dominant identity we might be working with in that shame, if we stay there, we're never going to be able to step into action and make the world a better place.
On the other hand, there's also often people who want to jump to action right away, “Oh, this is a problem. Let me fix it.” A lot of advocates of color, who I've been interacting with have said, “Please, don't jump to action right away. Please slow down, please do your learning. Please do your emotional work. Please get clear about why you want to do this work. Let's not do this work because it's all the rage right now. What's in it for you? Why is it important for you to make some shifts around racism in this country or around bias toward people with different sexual identities, whatever sexual orientation, whatever it might be?”
Carol: Yeah. That action orientation brings me back to one of the pieces that you work with as well, wanting leaders to bring more mindfulness to what they do. I'm wondering if you can define mindfulness in this context and why you think it is so important. 
Becca: Yeah. I think when it comes to leadership, mindfulness is a key tool for engaging our emotional intelligence.
Actually, one of my favorite quotes that I came across recently is by Daniel Goldman. He’s a journalist who did a lot of work around emotional intelligence and has published a lot of books about it. He says the best thing a leader can offer is a well-managed nervous system. I have worked with various client systems where the leader can get triggered really quick and easily and make a lot of assumptions about things.
We talk in this work about the ladder of inference. How quickly we can sort of climb up this ladder of assumptions and then, “well this person said this for this reason, and this means that, and that means that.” And then all of a sudden, we're at the top of this ladder without even thinking. 
Carol: Yeah, without even being conscious of jumping up the ladder, “I'm looking at you now,” and “Oh, she gave me kind of a funny look. She must think I'm a terrible interviewer.” I mean, and that's all going on in my head. I may not even be conscious ….
Becca: That I had something in my eye. 
Carol: Right, right. 've made meaning of it. Just like that. Because we're meaning making machines. 
Becca: Exactly. Mindfulness allows us literally to start to see our mind so we notice, ‘Oh look at that thought,’ ‘Oh look, I just had a thought about that’ and we become more aware of the chatter in our minds. To use the word agency, we have more agency in how we're using our voice and our body and our mind because we become more aware of the automatic parts of it. It can also allow just practice. Mindfulness can bring more pause and space into interactions. I think those are more and more necessary. These days everything is so fast. If we just take a breath before we respond, we might actually be able to be in a place of actually responding rather than reacting and the response to me is, where there's the choice and the agency, the reaction is where it's just automatically coming. Maybe even from that interception, that automatic physiological reaction, which sometimes serves us and sometimes does it. What we need is to become more and more aware of it.
That’s what I'd say about that. Go ahead. I was just going to tie it into the virtual world. I think it's, again, even more important in a virtual space to both engage mindfulness and engage the whole person. We can become, as we are in zoom, I gesture here with this rectangle that we forget that we have the rest of our body and we forget that, it might be, or even in a normal interaction, we might, if I were talking to you in a cafe, I might turn and look out the window while I'm talking to you and think, and that might shift how my brain is working, but because we're so used to the norms in our culture and are just looking at that rectangle and look at each other on the screen that we're literally not being mindful in the same ways that we might have otherwise. 
Carol: So how do you say since people are just, you know, the reality of us working this way of working online, working remotely is probably going to be going on for quite a while.
What are some things that people can do to bring in more of themselves to online meetings? 
Becca: I’m smiling because one of the things that's come I've been working on lately and telling clients and colleagues is to think about that spinning thing on your screen that says buffering. We hate it when that happens, but how are you creating buffers in your day?
It's not just the onscreen, but the, between meetings or between being at the meeting and being with whoever or whatever is in your household. How are you creating spaces? Cause literally we used to walk down a hallway to a meeting or get up and switch offices or pick up the phone, something shifted and took our eyes from the screen.
And one of the things is just to give yourself those buffer zones. Another is to literally take some time, whether it's a chime on your calendar or in your watch or note to take three breaths at various points in the middle of the day and then you can engage a full mind, body, spirit aspect with those three breaths.
On the first breath, what am I feeling; on the second breath what am I thinking; and on the third breath, what's important to me? That can really bring you back. What's important in this moment, to me? What brings you back to what you’re being present with, whatever it is that you really want to be present with rather than reactionary? What you just happened to be being present with?
I also have a whole set of questions that I go through when either designing a virtual meeting or working with others on it about how can we bring in. All of those parts of a person. What are the kinds of questions you can ask your colleagues, “What do you feel about this?” “What's your gut reaction?” What's your heart telling you? What’s your instinct on this? And then you can say, what's your mind thinking on this? What new ideas have you noticed? What are you thinking about now? How does this connect to the other things? You start to engage the brain in that, that's the body brain piece, and then there's just rain.
We just need to get creative. Like how does this tie to your values? Our values as a company that start to get to the spirit and values aspect of things, and then there can be questions, like look around the virtual room. Who's not in the room. When it comes to virtual meetings, there's a lot of inclusion. So not necessarily identity, but inclusion when it comes to are you remembering to try to engage the people who don't have their cameras on in the virtual meeting? Is there a norm that people have to have their cameras on, but maybe they can't. Maybe their bandwidth is low. Maybe their house is a mess. Maybe somebody else's in the room with them. So, what are the aspects of inclusion that we need to think about to make this a virtual space, a psychologically safe space? 
Carol: Yeah. Thinking about the buffering, I was, working with some folks who were talking about, facilitating in a virtual setting and just saying that it just takes a little bit longer for people to kind of absorb, and instruction.
If you're wanting them to go do a next thing, let's say, put them in breakout rooms, to have them work on a separate document that you've sent a link to, and to create those pauses in the meeting as well, and almost imagining that buffer, things spinning, and their technique was to, when you've asked a question, assume that it's going to take everyone a little bit longer to answer because they're kind of waiting to see if anyone else is going to say something and actually take a drink of water while you wait to force yourself to wait a little bit.
Becca: I like that. Somebody once told me that children's brains, as they're learning, take longer to process. So, wait 17 seconds after you ask your child a question, which feels so long. I don't do that long online, but I do sometimes count to seven or 10, just to see and I think that's very true.
I've had a lot of experiences lately where I've given an instruction, we've gone to the next thing and then the person, or in the group, two or three people in the group of seven, have no idea what to do. It's had me realize, and again, if you think about it, we're not giving our nervous system any time to decompress or get in a place of being able to really absorb information again, when we're constantly looking at the screen.
I sometimes also give instructions to folks, you know, get up, stand up for a minute or stretch, or literally please look away from your screen while you think about this. So sometimes you have to be more overt and in the instruction, then slowdown, as you said, and repeat yourself, and then also provide the information in multiple formats.
I'll often put instructions in chat as well as verbally say them and that sort of thing. So absolutely, many things to pay attention to. 
Carol: Probably all things that would be good to bring back when we're in person, working with groups that take that pause and make sure that everyone's understood the instructions of what's next or where you are on the agenda in a meeting or anything. 
One thing I like to do on each episode is I play a little game. I have a box of random icebreaker questions. I've got one for you here, “How did you meet your best friend?”
Becca: Oh, how did I meet my best friend? Well, there's a childhood one, but here's my adult best friend. It's a kind of a fun story. She was the babysitter the summer after I went to college for my younger siblings. I had been in college; my parents were divorced and I went to see my father. I heard about this babysitter who was great with my younger siblings at my mother's house. I remember thinking, who is this person taking over the older sibling role?
I came home, eventually met her, and within half an hour, she was my best friend. We've been really good friends ever since then. I think it's been about 20 years. 
Carol: That's awesome. So, what are you excited about now? What's up next for you? What's emerging in your work? 
Becca: There are a few different things that I'm excited about.
One, as you know we've talked in other times about this, is about peer coaching, peer learning, and people being able to really connect and learn from and with each other in small groups. I'm really excited about engaging with that in a virtual space. I feel like the peer coaching really involves the whole person. It's not just sort of sitting back in a lecture on a webinar or listening to somebody, but it really engages people and it engages people around. What's important to them in the moment and it allows them to be helpful and of service to other people.
I think that's so important for us as humans, for mental health to just feel a value. I'm going to be setting up some opportunities for people within similar industries, but not in the same organization to come together in peer learning groups and connect with each other. I'm really excited about that possibility and really what's possible with that globally right now, because we don't have to get together in person for it and we can't get together in person for it. So, who can come together? I'm working with some of the groups that I do consulting with. They focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. and some of them have been around one of them for 30 years, another for 50 years. And they really know their stuff and their stuff has been in the room like physically together.
I'm really excited about helping them think about how to take it all virtually and keep it really effective and yeah, engaging. And then finally, I'm contemplating, and I might want to rope Carol into this, listeners. So maybe by the time you listen to this, she will have said yes. I want to develop a virtual workshop about engaging the whole person. Go more in depth into some of those example questions and examples scenarios that we touched on around engaging those five aspects of the of a person. Mind, body, spirit, emotions, and identity. 
Carol: So, it sounds like a lot of fun. 
Becca: Yes. Excited about all those. 
Carol: How can people find out more about you and be in touch? 
Becca: They could email me or I'm also on LinkedIn. My email is: Becca.b.Consulting@gmail.com 
Carol: We'll put the links in the show notes as well. 
Becca: Okay. That makes it easier. I'm also on LinkedIn as Becca Bartholomew. I'd love to hear people's reactions. What did you agree with, disagree with, what questions do you have? Let's keep the conversation going. 
Carol: That will be awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for being on the podcast. 
Becca: Thanks for the opportunity. Take care. ​
 
Links: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccabartholomew
https://twitter.com/thebeccab

​Episode 07: This week we’re talking to Cinthia Manuel.
 
We talked about: 
• the challenges nonprofits face in trying to make their services more accessible.
• What to think about before getting started with community engagement. 
• Why Cinthia thinks traditional mentoring is backwards.

Cinthia Manuel is the CEO and Founder of Autentica Consulting, LLC. She specializes in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Mentoring; and Multicultural Marketing. She is the proud daughter of immigrants and a first-generation Latina. She was named one of the 23 Business People to Watch in 2019 by the Portland Business Journal for her work contributing to communities of color through professional development, mentorship, and entrepreneurship. She is passionate about education and has worked with the Gates Millennium Scholarship Alumni Association, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and the United Negro College Fund. She is a TEDx speaker. She deeply believes that building strong communities is key to creating a powerful voice that drives change.

​Interview Transcript

Carol:    So welcome Cinthia to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you. Thanks for being on.
Cinthia:     Thank you so much for having me, Carol.
Carol:    And just to get us started, can you tell listeners kind of how you came to the work that you're doing? Kind of what was your path? What was your journey?
Cinthia:     Yeah, so I'll give you this super brief version.
But I actually started with a background in coding when I was like super young. And then I quickly, when I started doing internships in school, and in college, I realized that my other passion was marketing. And then I went on to do that for almost 10 years. And slowly, I ended up working for a health insurance company, a startup company that was in need of just, you know, people to come and get it going. And I had been working in the healthcare system and marketing for a few years at that point. And I said, absolutely, so I jumped on board and I got embedded into the startup world, I guess you can call it. And I was doing operations marketing and customer service sales outreach. And it was a really great way for me to explore what was out there and how my skills could be transferable in different areas. And so after that, what I really decided to enjoy in that job was how much I was connecting with the community and really transferring that information to develop the products and services we wanted to do. And so then later on, I ended up in another nonprofit organization. That was I had to set up a program for students at we were placing students of color in companies across the Portland metro area in Oregon, and I really was utilizing my negotiation skills or my strategy skills in that area and again, trying to bring onboard, what we were hearing in the community, what we're hearing from the business side as well as the students. A when I was having those conversations, a lot of the things that kept coming up was a lot and diversity, equity inclusion. And I was meeting with CEOs, VP, C's, etc. like managers in all different areas, all different industries. And they were asking us, well, how do we continue to have this conversation? How do we attract talent? How do we retain talent? How do we develop the talent? And I was like this is a little out of my range. And so then I decided to go back to school and get a certificate and a strategic diversity management from Georgetown University. Because I think I just wanted to have the lingo and be able to have those more effective conversations. And that's when I realized that that was truly probably one of the passions that brought together everything that I had learned in the past. And so now I am a consultant, I have my own company, I am Equity and Inclusion consultant and I love it so much because I have not only the freedom to be able to design what services I want to provide to the community that I care about, but also I'm able to continue to learn and be part of this bigger conversation that has happened in in the US.

Carol:    And my listeners are generally nonprofit staff, board members, and association staff. And, you know, across our entire culture, folks are grappling with diversity, equity and inclusion issues and and we're recording this in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic and it's only highlighting the huge inequities that are throughout our system, but for those organizations that are serving and wanting to I think people have been talking about this for a long time, but the progress forward hasn't been what we've, wanted, what would you say are the key kind of things that folks need to start thinking about and conversations that staff and board members need to start having?
Cinthia:     Yeah, great question. Definitely think like you mentioned, this pandemic is kind of highlighting a lot of the areas where we still need to do a lot of work. I will say one of the key things you know, I mentioned a lot earlier, that going out to the community, and really talking to individuals. I think that one of the things when we implement policy, so great services that serve those in need. We often forget that there are inequities within those communities themselves. What I feel like I've seen a lot lately is policies that are like, they want to be equal, right? They want to be accessible. Yeah, that is one of the biggest things where they are failing, and accessibility. So I'll give you an example. Super quick. And this is more like a general example. But when we're talking about providing meals to students in schools they are saying, okay, you know, we'll give you the meals, we'll just come and get them at the school, but there are a lot of kids that don't have transportation to get to those sites. And then there might be only one. So a lot of the schools were saying, okay, we'll be open for breakfast, and we'll be open for lunch. So that means that they have to take two trips to figuring out if their parents are still working. What does that look like accessibility? The students that are special needs, what does that look like for them so I think one of the things when it comes to building policies or programs is really understanding the mix. Behind every single thing that could potentially affect somebody not being able to access some of the services.
Carol:    Yeah, there's just so many assumptions built into, you know, the sudden move to okay students, all students are going to be learning online. Well, you know, what access do they have to a device that can access the internet? You know, what Wi Fi to folks have on the other end. I mean, it's just there's so many. I mean, we're having to make a really quick pivot, but at the same time, yeah, there's so many ripple effects.
Cinthia:     Yeah. And I think especially when it comes to nonprofit because nonprofits are there to serve the community, especially right now in moments of crises and anxiety and stress. And also, I feel like we are uncovering a series of things that came along with what we're providing services for in those areas. And I think mental health is a big issue. Well, when it comes to how do you even process that you need some services? How do you know where to find information? I think a lot of the times, we also forget, what language do we want our communities to receive information from, like, my parents are mostly Spanish speakers. And right now, if honestly, if it wasn't for me and my sister who are home or English speakers, we wouldn't be there and wouldn't be able to get a lot of the information that they need. So I think that's another key thing. If you're an organization that is providing a service, you know, try to be able to help other communities even though they might not be your target market. And if you can bring language on board it, that’ll be a huge help for the communities too.
Carol:    Right. So hopefully, organizations have a lot of those things set up already, but because it's hard to create all of that in a crisis, but it's so important. One of the things that you focus on Is his community engagement? What would you say is really key to effective community engagement?
Cinthia:     Yeah. So when I think that, you know, I try a lot of different things, because I think one of the key components that I found when I was doing community engagement was gaining the trust of the individuals that I was actually trying to help or trying to reach out to. And that can make or break a lot of the programs that you implement. Because again, you know, I think nonprofit organizations, often we get an idea of like, you know, we see any, we want to fill it and we want to do everything we possibly can. And there are other organizations who are backing that up financially. But then we come to those communities and we're saying, Hey, you know, here we are, we're providing the service to you. And they might be like, I don't know who you are. Why should I trust you? And I think that sometimes organizations may spend a lot more time trying to gain that trust in services that have been kind of halted in some ways, when it should be all the way around, you should have gained the trust of the community you're trying to serve. And really be genuine. I think one of the things that I always talk about is authenticity. And people can read through your emotions and can read through your body language and your intentions. So I will say, be authentic, be honest, be caring and empathetic, but really gain that trust of that community to be able to really gain and extract their real needs that the community has and for them to be able to, to know that they can feel comfortable utilizing the services you're providing.
Carol:    And almost being in partnership rather than being you know, a one down or that power dynamic of the organization. I think too many organizations, their first step towards you know, trying to center equity more is to start doing, if I haven't been doing engagement, taking that step. And just as you said without putting the people in the center and really starting to build that trust, it's going to feel, you know, it's not going to feel helpful to folks in the community. So what are some things? What are some practical things that folks can do to actually start building that trust?
Cinthia:     Yeah, so one of the things I will say is that, so it might be, it may feel a little awkward, but, you know, so let's say that your nonprofit may provide meals, let's just stick with that. But I think that one of the ways to do that is to really engage in your community is to try to see if you can get engaged in other activities that our community cares about, other festivals where you need to be at, and not necessarily as a provider, not necessarily as the organization, building community. I think it's so important for them to see you for them to get to know other families for you to get to know people in the school district because a lot of times we don't realize, but healthcare organizations like hospitals or clinics, local clinics, especially, or schools are the ones who are sending individuals to specific organizations to receive the services. And so they are, they already have a build system, trust system with their community. So kind of going to them and saying, hey, we want to be part of this community. So how can we join you in this effort, right? And literally, you can even do events in the community for free but just information or like not not even selling their services at all. It's more about just saying, can I you know, can I join this organization and planting trees, can I go to an after school program and get to meet the families because once I've seen you people quickly understand and feel the connection. And like I said, I think a lot of the time we need to go to the source or what people are getting there, they already built it, they have a trust source from to, to just say, teach me about your community, right. Like, let me be part of this community. And I think the other thing, too, that I will say is when you're coming on, be yourself, don't, it’s not about the organization at a point, it's about the individual. And people see the individuals are part of the organization, which means that if they can trust individuals, they can trust organization,
Carol:    Yeah, I think as you were talking that's definitely key what I was thinking about in terms of, you know, just remembering like to put away your organization hat and just remembering that it's person to person, communication and you're building relationship and
you know, just taking the time to have done your homework in terms of who else is already in the community where you can find allies where as you're saying people already have relationships and trust built, that you can build on. And then of course, you're going to have to build trust with those potential allies. But too often, I think, you know, we have so many small organizations trying to do great work. But they're doing it a little bit in a vacuum, and they're not seeing what else is, you know, what else is in their vicinity? Who else is doing work similar to them or maybe complimentary to them? And it seems like, I don't know we have such big systemic issues to work on that my hope for nonprofit organizations is to kind of get out of the idea of competition and really get into more of the idea of partnership and how can we complement each other. How can we, you know, work together, which is hard work. It's not easy to do collaboration. There's a lot of things that get in the way. But you know that that's my hope overall so that we can all have a greater impact. Where do you think organizations kind of make mistakes when they try to do that community engagement work?
Cinthia:     What do they make ain't gonna really go along with what you mentioned earlier? That competition, right, I think is trying to say, trying to be driven by what they feel. They think the community needs, because a lot of the times I have had plenty of conversations in the nonprofit world with other nonprofits, especially healthcare, that was where I came from. And you know, people were saying, Hey, you know, we see this need, we see that people should get this in order for them to accomplish why, for example, in this number of organizations getting built and like you said there's already so much duplication of services. And also there are people then I think, to me, what it looks like is the more and more nonprofit organizations come up to try to serve the same community for the specific need, then you have people who are knowledgeable in that area is splitting it up into this nonprofit organizations, trying to help them come up, come up to speed or, you know, kind of build some momentum. And what happened, what happens is, yeah, you have this organizations that they're feeling in their heart, and sometimes based on the grants, that these are the services that they need to provide for our community that they might not really know very well or if they know very well, there may be their services that they're trying to provide are already a duplicate of other services that are already out there. I know in Portland a long time ago, when I was helping build, I was part of this organization that had nothing to do with nonprofits. But we were trying to provide data to them about homelessness, and how many people in Portland were homeless. And this is like four or five years ago. And so we started talking to all these nonprofits, about their services, because we wanted to compile them in one. We wanted to have a web interface where you can go in there and say, like, do you need access to showers who can provide access to showers, you need access to meals, like breakfast, lunch, and whatever. And what we started finding is what you mentioned earlier that there was a lot of application. And then the worst thing was nobody could keep track of an individual. So we were like, we were triple counting. Sometimes a person and one day, because one person will go to one place to get a shower. And then a few hours later, they will go somewhere else to get a breakfast meal. And then some morning on the afternoon we'll look at dinner and then the evening and then they’ll go there for shelter. And these are organizations who are saying, Oh, we have four people that utilize the service. Right. And in essence, it was the same person, but they couldn't tell it was the same person. So when they were applying to grants, a lot of the grants, were saying, well, we're seeing a huge intake on shelters. You know, because we have X amount of people asking for shelters, when in reality, it could have been the same person, but they just went to different shelters at different nights. So again, I think one of the things too, that I see a lot is when we're applying for grants. And like I mentioned earlier, sometimes the grants come with requirements or the saying, you know, we'll give you the money to do X. But you also have to make sure that you're collecting this other data. I think it's important to ask, when you're applying for grants, why are they? Why do they feel the need of that data is important or why do they feel the need to provide that additional service is important? Because I think a lot of times too, what happens is it distracts you from your reading your purpose and your real goal, because you're trying to meet the needs of the grant, the organization that is providing the grant, therefore, people feel are feeling overwhelmed, because they're like I gotta do what I feel is a need in my community, but I also have to meet the requirements for this grant, that, you know, is going to help us provide those services. So just, I think be really honest with organizations because as organizations that are providing the grants might not be in the front line a lot of the times and they're also going by what they, what data they're getting, what information they're being getting, as well, and it might not be the right. the right opportunity for a nonprofit that really wants to serve our community in a certain way.
Carol:    Yeah, and of course, as you're talking about those data issues, and you know, there's been such a shift to try to shift from, you know, just counting output, so who showed up at what place of course, you know, there's huge privacy issues with with the scenario you just talked about. In terms of data, and, but also trying to as grant makers are trying to move towards helping organizations be able to measure their impact, that's a complicated thing. And it's hard, especially community based organizations for them to have the bandwidth. You know, literally and not literally, to take that on and really have a useful kind of data collection system that goes back to, and can feel like, right can feel like, kind of bureaucracy or, you know, why are we, why do we have to do this? Yeah. So, uh, you are a TEDx speaker, and your focus was on mentorship and you say that, that mentoring is backward. So I'm, I'm wondering if you'd like to talk a little bit about kind of, what do you think is baffling about the traditional approach and some thoughts in the mentoring area.
Cinthia:     Yeah, no, thank you. Yes. So I did add TEDx on mentoring is backwards. So basically what I was coming from on that is that a lot of the times when we think about mentoring, we think, you know, we train the mentors, we're training the mentors for them to actually be helped them to be able to get to the next step. And what happens a lot is that, as a mentee, we feel like there's a couple things that are happening, right. So one, we're like when we asked for some support from a mentor, we respect them a lot. And we're also already grateful that they're giving us their time to engage with us. And so that investment is great but the mentor is trying to move an agenda based on what they think we need because we have come for the support. And so what happens is that a mentee is not being trained to actually manage their own mentoring relationship themselves. So we should be the ones, mentees coming to the mentor and saying, hey, Person A, I really need some support in this area. And this other skills are the time commitment that I'm asking for the support for me. And then the mentor should be the individual that we're asking for help from, she'll decide okay, so do I have the skills or the experience that this mentee is trying to go after, the mentor saying oh, I want to mentor you or companies saying so and so is going to mentor you Cynthia today when there might not be a connection in terms of understanding what my real needs are. So when I was saying the mentoring is backwards is because for the longest time, you know, we have invested so much money in companies and organizations and the community spend so much money meant like training their mentors to be mentored. But there's very little investment and actually helping individuals learn how to become mentees. Like, you know, for us, a lot of the one of the big questions I get is how can you really make the most of this? resource? Yeah. And you know what? Totally, and, like, a lot of us don't get training in high school or college about how to, you know, how do you plan your career? How do you understand all the skill sets that you have? How do you, you know, transferable skills. And I think it came to like, to me when I was working at the last nonprofit organization, helping students get placed into internships, I mean, they couldn't even sell them. And then when I said that they sell themselves as like, you know, they do the elevator speech, to really showcase their skill sets. And, you know, I was just like, we have not been taught to do that at all, like we kind of, we aren't on our own. And one of the big questions that I get asked all the time is, how do I, how do I ask someone to be my mentor and there was some way that the question keeps coming up all the time is because we are literally not trained to know and understand why we should be looking for a mentor that will work for us.
Carol:    And I see parallels between, you know, our previous conversation where this is at the one to one level, right? It's about a mentor and a mentee. But if it's all about the mentor, and what can they provide, if you think of that, as the organization in the community, if you know that the traditional approach has been, it's all about the organization and what it can provide the community, let's flip that around and say, well, you know, helping and, you know, creating ways for the community say, no, these are the things that we need. And these are the things that the resources that we're looking for, in the same way that you want to help a mentee, you know, take ownership of that relationship and take ownership of you know, what they're trying to get out of it. Yes, it was interesting parallel.
Cinthia:     Yeah, totally. I think a lot of people don't realize that right? Because for the longest time, I was one of those people that I can skip going to two individuals that were not only in a higher level position than I was, because I thought this is how you do mentoring, this is what we've been trained to do. We've been trained to look for those people that have the jobs that we dream of or have the profession that we want to go after. But in reality, like mentoring can be peer mentoring, it can be, you know, I took on my TED Talk, finding you're unlikely. So sometimes we get into relationships and relationships where there's not engagement because we feel like oh, well, the mentor doesn't really match with my style, or my expertise, and then the mentor thinks exactly the same thing. So that relationship doesn't really flourish as much. And then mentors are saying, you know, think immediately like, oh, that person wasn't into it, the person didn't when I get whenever we engage, when it should really be, they should really look at the other way, right? Then they can say, you know what, like, I'm gonna actually see why we're so on like in, and why can I actually learn from this relationship? Is there something that they know how to do really well that I don't? Is there information that they have that I haven't been exposed to? And so I'm trying to find, again, learning opportunities and those situations. And that's what happens. A lot of times, you have corporate programs, and they kind of match you based on the needs of the mentor, right? Like, when can the mentor meet where, you know, how much availability Do they have, you know, who's gonna leave that relationship? And that's why I think a lot of times mentors shy away from wanting to be mentors because they feel that our suitability is false within them. And the mentor mentee is suspected to kind of follow their lead, when again, it should really be all the way around.
Carol:    Yeah, and I worked for an organization where we started out, the program started out as a one to one mentorship for emerging professionals in the particular field that that organization serves. And what we found over time is that it worked way better if we moved it to a group mentoring model. So we had a solid mentor, we ended up calling them coaches, you know, who had been in the field for a little bit longer, but then had a way of leading and facilitating a group of people. And so, you know, it gives you that many more chances to connect. Because when we did the first instance, where it was one to one, about a third of the people ended up having a great relationship, and they're probably still connecting with each other, you know, some maybe met one or two times but it didn't really work, and then it dropped off. And then, you know, maybe the other third never ended up getting in touch with each other. That just wasn't enough structure and kind of support for them all those tools that you're talking about. And it was so interesting to see that. Then we move to that group model, you know, you have that person who is a little further ahead, but then you also have the peer relationships being built as well. And so you know, they just have that many more chances to connect with somebody that many more perspectives. And the other thing that was really interesting, that we learned, we found worked better, which was surprising, was the assumption that at first when the when the program was built that, you know, we should be recruiting people who are super senior in the field, you know, they've been doing it for 35 years, you know, whatnot. And what we actually found was that people, maybe five to 10 years ahead of where those professionals were in there just that far ahead was a much better connection because they could still remember having to learn, you know, they could still remember, for the folks who have been in the field for so long they had long forgotten the experience of being new and having to go through that learning curve. So it was really interesting. All those assumptions that we had that we had to rethink. 
Carol:
Yeah, so, so I want to, at the end of each episode, I'm doing a little game with folks. I have a box of icebreaker questions. I'm really glad that other people have created lots of things like this, because even though I am a facilitator, it's not it's not my strongest strength. So I've got a couple questions here. And I'm just going to pick one. And so my question for you is, if you could solve one world problem, what would it be? Excellent question.
Cinthia:     Exactly. So one world problem. I think it would be, oh, gosh, I will I think I'll be our. accessibility to opportunities when you graduate college. I think a lot of the times, like I mentioned earlier, that we don't prepare students enough, and what the real world looks like. And we expect them to act like they know automatically how they should survive. So for me, what I think is a world problem is because it does affect a lot of individuals and affects a lot of communities and I've been in that area for so many years and seen it repeatedly and even with myself as a first generation woman of color what that looks like. So I will say that will be the one problem I will want to fix is providing more real life experiences as you're going through college and high school. So then you know what to really spec and really know how to navigate the environment once you graduate in this and are able to be an adult.
Carol:    I think that would be awesome. You know, I felt clueless when I was graduating about all of that. And you know, not a parallel experience in terms of being first generation. But you know, my mom was mostly a stay at home mom. So she hadn't gone through that. And I don't know, somehow we never got the memo of how to navigate so it took a lot of stumbling and a lot of meandering to figure it out. At the same time, I do feel like young people feel like they have to have it all figured out. And I think that part of that, part of your life is a little bit of that stumbling and meandering that where you learn, and you try different and I guess hope just hoping for folks that they're willing to try different things and know that, you know, over time, I mean, I feel like I'm, you know, I might have finally figured out what I'm supposed to do when I grow up. But yeah, it takes a while. It takes a wow, yeah, that would be a good one. So what are you excited about in terms of things that are emerging for you right now?
Cinthia:     Oh, I guess what I'm excited about is, you know, really trying to figure out how to continue to find passion in what I do. Think you know, is it in the times that we're on right now with a pandemic, trying to really be creative and really dive into maybe, skills that I didn't really utilize as much in and connect reconnecting with people. I think that has been one of the things that I really have enjoyed the most is for some reason, you know, I always tell people like, oh, we'll come back we'll have coffee, we'll have learned. And you know, that happens very slowly. Because all the things that are on the way and with, you know, in this situation that we are right now, is like I'm automatically sending messages to people in the cyclists jump on zoom. And I think I'm learning so much more about individuals, how they're trying to cope with this situation. And it's helping me really understand a little more about who I am and, and really try to bring up a different perspective on how to look at things, opportunities, innovation, accessibility. And I think right now that just one is, is definitely a moment where I kind of feel that there's a lot of opportunity for growth. And it's also an opportunity for risk.
Carol:    Definitely. So how can people find and get in touch with you? How can they find out about your work?
Cinthia:     Yeah, thank you. So you can go to www.autenticaconsulting.com/ and that's authentic in Spanish and it's authentica. And yes, my website, you can find the things that I do there, you can definitely go to my LinkedIn is Cynthia Manel. And my Twitter is also Cynthia Manuel. So yeah, follow me as well. And, you know, hopefully we can connect and I'm happy to just have conversations about nonprofits equity, diversity and inclusion. I’m always happy to talk to new folks.
Carol: All right, well, thank you so much. 
Cinthia: Thank you so much, Carol.

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