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Mission: Impact podcast

Exploring global competence with Katherine Turner

2/20/2023

 
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In episode 66 of Mission: Impact, Carol and her guest, Katherine Turner discuss:
  • The intersections between the fields of diversity, equity and inclusion and intercultural communications
  • Some things to consider when working with a global group
  • Moving folks from awareness to action
Guest Bio:
Katherine L. Turner, MPH (she/elle) is the founding President of Global Citizen, LLC consulting firm that strengthens inclusive leadership and effects organizational transformation and social impact by advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, public health, human rights, and global competence. As Adjunct Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, she teaches and mentors global leaders on leadership, global competence, and other topics.

Katherine provides strategic leadership on global advisory committees, has founded and led boards of directors of nonprofit organizations, and won awards for excellence in leadership, teaching, public health, and advocacy. She is an internationally-recognized executive consultant, coach, thought leader, speaker, author, and change agent who has worked in English, French, and Dutch across all sectors in over 50 countries to deliver high-impact results for a better world.

Important Links and Resources:
  • What if Diversity Trainings are Doing More Harm Than Good? - NYT Opinion
  • Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm Than Good? - The Argument
  • White Supremacy culture characteristics
  • https://www.globalcitizenllc.com/
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineturnergc/

Transcript:
Carol Hamilton: My guest today on Mission Impact is Katherine Turner. Mission Impact is the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I am Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant. Katherine and I talk about diversity, equity and inclusion in a global context. We discuss how the fields of diversity, equity and inclusion and intercultural communications and competence intersect and also how they do not, how globalization and shifting demographics are shifting the field, decolonizing international humanitarian efforts, and how to help people move from awareness to action. 
Well, welcome Katherine. Welcome to the podcast. 
Katherine Turner: Thank you so much. It's great to be here, Carol. 
Carol: So I'd like to start with a question around what drew you to the work that you do? What motivates you and what would you describe as your why? 
Katherine: That's such an important question. Well, I would begin with my background and my accident of birth, if you'll call it that, that, being born a white middle class person and being, gaining so much unearned privilege and power as a result of that and definitely has had a strong impact on my, my values and my perspective of myself in relation to my life, which is around that I, I did gain so much unearned privilege and I have benefited so much from that and that I just want to work throughout my lifetime to try to create more equity and to equalize that. And then certainly as a queer lesbian, my identities in those ways and the kinds of experiences and discrimination that I've experienced have certainly informed a lot of my work, especially around diversity, equity, and inclusion. And then having a biracial son with a multiracial queer family. That is a blended family with my ex-partner who's African-American and her partner who's African-American, and my current partner who's white and our son who's biracial, that as a multiracial queer family, so many of the experiences that I and my ex-partner and my current partner and our son and are, are co-parents are, have experienced, have really informed a lot of our understanding of the world, and again, the kinds of changes that I'm looking to affect in the world to. According to my company's tagline, create a Better World, for a better world, for my son and, and really for all people. And then I grew up with a very global upbringing, so my family moved around a lot in general, and we lived in London, my middle school years. We also share a history with you on attending the American School in London, London for three years. And my family traveled a lot during that time and. and since then I have lived and worked in a number of different countries. And so that has really informed my understanding of myself as having a global citizenry identity and also viewing everything really from a global perspective. So that has a huge impact on, on the work that my firm does and. And then my family, just on a personal level, just my, my grandparents had, had such a profound impact on me as well as, of course, my parents. And, they really raised us with a strong sense of ethics of most of all integrity. AndI've raised my son with that really firm belief, that integrity, our integrity is our most prized trait and possession and that we, that we need to work throughout our lifetime to embody integrity. And so that's always been number one for me. And that said, I also grew up in a family, a white family that didn't talk about our whiteness, didn't talk about race at all, that that raised me to think that it was. Impolite or not nice or wrong to notice, even notice or let alone talk about race and ethnicity and, and differences. And so that has also really informed my convictions and my commitment to proactively addressing systemic racism and other forms of systemic oppression and discrimination. and I have an aunt who's developmentally disabled. And, and so she also, just growing up and, and seeing her, how her life and, and all of our lives have been affected by her disability has really informed my understanding and my compassion and my. Desire to create a better world for people with differing abilities. And I've just always been a systems thinker too. So I approach problems and solutions from a systems perspective. So that informs the work that my firm does around affecting systemic, broader systemic changes. So I think it's in terms of my upbringing and then also my nature and personality just have really lent themselves well. Being a consultant, running a consulting firm and specifically doing this work around diversity, equity, and inclusion or d e I as well as global intercultural competence and global public health. Yeah. 
Carol: There are a lot of common intersections that we have. And yes, and part of the, we, we, we, we found out by accident that we had actually been at the same school overseas together in London. Exactly. During our middle school years. But I just learned another one, which is you, you have an aunt who's developmentally disabled and mm-hmm. I have a brother who's developmentally disabled. Mm-hmm. And I feel like that. I, I also grew up in, in a white family that did not talk about race, that where it was impolite to pay attention to it and all of those common things that you described. But I did grow up with the younger sister of my brother who's deaf and autistic and developmentally disabled, and so was able to see. And experience how the world treated him differently and how he did not fit into systems and all of those things. And I think then also having that international experience certainly enabled me to understand that culture exists and that everyone has a culture and that they all have different assumptions. And to be able to see that in a way that when you're in. and you never leave it. It's very hard to see. And, and one thing that you talked about, you talked about and I, I really appreciate how you grounded your why. And I think really when it comes down to it, everybody's purpose is and what they're doing comes from all those experiences. You're, you're, you're growing up, your family those, those important influences. Your cho , your chosen family as an adult. thinking about the blended family that you have. I'm also thinking about my grandson who has multiple sets of grandparents mm-hmm. and three distinct cultures that he's interacting with. Mm-hmm. through, through that, through those groups of grandparents. So , it's just a different experience that he will have even from mine. So, Appreciating all of that. And one of the things that you talked about was doing d what's called in the United States generally, as I understand it, diversity, equity, and inclusion work. And then also working globally around global competence and intercultural communications. And I've probably been more aware. The field of intercultural communications first and then had learned more about diversity, the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And as I learned about both, I was curious about how each field had developed while they're working in many ways on similar issues. I feel like there's a, there's a very different perspective d e i being rooted in. I, I think if I'm, if I'm correct, the, the. history, the particular history of the United States and our history with racism. But then applied in an organizational context to try to mitigate that. And then, Intercultural communication probably comes out of the experience of, of a previous generation of folks like you and me who either grew up overseas or worked overseas and have that and probably more likely to be white or an elite from an international different country. and yet there's some things from each field that they're mm-hmm. that over overlaps. And then, and I've also experienced where people have no idea that one field or the other exists. Exactly. , I'm curious, I'm curious about your experience with that. 
Katherine: Yeah, I've, I've had similar, similar experiences and it is curious to me, I've always felt that I've straddled these worlds and, and many worlds. And that's one of them. Can serve to play as, as a bridge builder between them and to help people understand the interconnectedness of people as well as concepts. And so yeah, certainly when we think about diversity, equity, and inclusion work and understanding that people and companies use different acronyms and language for that. Sure. So sometimes it could include DEIJ for justice or DEIA for accessibility, et cetera. The alphabet soup. The origins are around the realities of systemic oppression and, specifically racism in the US as well as gender sexism and gender equity work in the us. So a lot of the anti-racism and gender equity work has really informed me. I feel that it started more with focus on diversity and then gradually started to encompass understanding that it's, while it's important to have, it is important to have representation and a diverse mix of people. In any workplace or community , diversity is important and not sufficient to create a culture of inclusion and belonging. And so then that recognition of inclusion and then ultimately working towards equity, that even with inclusion where when we take actions to ensure people are feeling fully valued to part. That still doesn't account for the historic and present day discrimination and disparities that exist because of systemic racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression. And that in order to achieve equity, we need to recognize those historic and present day disparities and take specific actions to address them and provide the opportunities and resources that people who have been discriminated against need in order to actually. Achieve equity and that we know will have achieved it when race or gender or other identity markers like that are no longer a predetermining factor for outcomes. And so that's, that's really important. And yet, as you noted when I was years ago, when, when earlier in the field, When I would participate in or facilitate d e i conversations sometimes people in the US would challenge me when I would bring in a global context or want to have a global conversation around d e I and even feel that I was trying to minimize the realities of systemic discrimination and racism specifically in anti-black. System in the US context. To me, having grown up internationally and really understanding, seeing the, seeing issues through a global lens, it's impossible for me to even think about the history of slavery and anti-black discrimination in the us. Without putting it into a global context, because literally obviously black people in the US , came originally from Africa and, and, and then all of the centuries of movement and political and economic and social and other phenomena that has resulted to us being in the situation we're in, in the US and that there are so, Parallels around systemic discrimination in different countries, and I find it incredibly valuable to learn from experiences in different countries and to apply those lessons across the globe. That we have so much to learn in the US from others, what the experiences and wisdom in other countries and vice versa. I think that because of our history of. Thisin the US we're often really indoctrinated to believe that the US is the best country in the world, that we are superior, that we have all the answers. And that's a lot of the work that, that my firm does around global competence is helping people who have been, as all of us who were raised in the west and indoctrinated with this, this false belief to understand that there, there's so much that we have to learn from people in other countries and systems in other countries. And similarly in. Global intercultural competence, again, goes by different terms fields as you do not. A lot of that has come out of thought leaders who grew up with an international, with international experiences or who held positions in which they were working internationally, and then developing models and frameworks and concepts and understanding of intercultural skills or competence, what the elements of those are and what they look like. And how to teach them and how to learn them and how to practice them. And even as global citizens, we have our own global competence model, the framework and curricula that we use in our training. And yet when we look at the history, as you noted, Many of the earlier pioneers, if you will, of and I guess I'm using that term significantly in the intercultural competence fields were predominantly white western people with an international upbringing or ex or professional experience. And there had not been until more recently an understanding and an incorporation of equity. and justice within those models and frameworks. And so as you noted, there really has been historically a disconnect. I wouldI've written papers, journal manuscripts, and I've been a keynote speaker and done a lot of speaking and writing and. Thought leadership and consulting in each of these areas. And yet the communities and fields have been quite distinct until more recently, I would go to conferences and address, talk about the interrelation with intercultural or global competence and d e i and people would give me, looks like these are completely separate fields. And similarly, again, in the d e i space, like the example I shared where people would, some, some people would sometimes question me bringing a global lens and even my motivations for doing that. But, more recently, I think given the popularization of equity and the, and the greater understanding and awareness, and hopefully as we're working on action more recently around equity, I think there has been more understanding and more interconnectedness among those fields.
Carol: Where are you seeing the common points or the interconnections? Where are you seeing people make those, make those links? 
Katherine: Yeah, such a great question. Well, first of all, I think that with increasing globalization and increasing. Population diversity. So in the US for example, we're when we think about people who are currently living in the US who are born in other countries who are at the highest point in over a century, and those trends are only going to continue. So when we just look at the demographic data, On populations in the US and populations in many countries, the world over because of increasing GLO migration, because of globalization, more people are moving to other countries or continents for work or for. Sanctuary or for other reasons. And then forming families that are increasingly across CU cultures or countries. And then having children who are increasingly multicultural that the population, the demographics are shifting and we, in the US and people in other countries are becoming increasingly international. And because of migration and diversity and, and multiethnic and multiracial. And so these sh this also affects a shift in cultures, obviously. And and those numbers also that who's in the majority that they, for example, the US will be a, a majority black and brown country you buy, or before the year 2045. So this is affecting huge cultural changes and I think more and more people are recognizing Global, the global nature of all issues, including DEI. And then in the intercultural or global competence fields, there has been the move towards and in other fields, in the humanitarian sectors and, and in the global nonprofit. And development sectors. There's been an increasing awareness around decolonization which at its roots is about recognizing the systemic oppression affected by worldwide colonization and the lasting impact of that, and the need to to identify and work to mitigate the effects of colonization in all of the work. People do internationally, whatever the sector is, and, and those are different terms, but they're still speaking to an understanding of the root causes, history, causes of systemic oppression, the lasting impact in the ways that oppression has been. Inculcated into all of our institutions or major institutions and into our cultures and the ways that we think and act, and then a need to identify and work to disrupt that, which is. Parallel to the work that we're doing around anti-racism, around sec , gender equity and gender around sexual orientation, gender identity and expression around accessibility for people with differing disabilities, et cetera. So, I think people are starting to understand those root causes and, and consequences and impact, and that the solutions on a systemic level are somewhat similar.
Carol: Yeah, thinking about that history, it's always gotten to me that when I hear folks from Europe saying, oh we don't have those racism problems that you have in the US Wait a second. Where did it start? Who were the colonizers? Who came over here and then colonized? The folks who were the integral parts of the entire enslavement system. All of the countries in Europe, and then all of the ripple effects , Some of them having them more directly because of migration and, and , who's come to live in the countries, for example, in, in the UK. But yeah, that just like, wait a second, . Absolutely. It's, well, and then when different, there may be different particularities, but there's so much that's, that's in common there when you're working with organizations that are, that are. , take steps towards the decolonization that you're talking about in that international context. Can you, can you gimme some examples of what's a useful place for people to get started? 
Katherine: Yeah, I think first of all, just having accurate information to one methodology that I had helped to develop in a previous role when I was a global senior health systems advisor and manager at, at IPAs, which is an international nonprofit working on women's sexual reproductive health and rights and was a values clarification, attitude, transformation methodology. That's really about helping people understand. Replace inaccurate information with accurate, factually correct, accurate information. And then also really undergo a deep process of identifying and identifying their core values and then linking their core values with their beliefs and their attitudes and their actions. And that's, that's an important methodology that we. But just awareness raising as a, as a starting place for many people in particular, like you and I were describing at the beginning the way the, the situ, the circumstances that we're born into the identities that we have been born into or that we have acquired over our lifetime. For those of us who have identity, identity markers that are part of the dominant group, whatever that group may be, and that's gonna be different in different cultural and country contexts. The kinds of privilege and power that we experience is oftentimes invisible to us unless we take actions to really understand what they are. And then again take actions to work to interrupt. And so there are many people going through the world who don't really aren't aware of the kinds of power, privilege, and power that they're experiencing on a daily basis because of their skin color, because of their gender identity because of their sexual orientation, et cetera, because of their ability, et cetera. And so just having that awareness and, and, and helping people to disrupt that. ignorance, not using that in a pejorative sense, but literally not knowing, not understanding and then inciting people or encouraging people to understand the impact that that has on other people. And I think once people start to understand that by. Moving through the world in this unaware way They are, we all are saying and doing things that can unintentionally in most cases. Some people are intentionally doing harm to others, but in most cases people are unintentionally saying and doing things that are causing harm to others. And once people realize that they're having that impact on others, however unintentional, however good intention, their intentions are, however good their intentions are. Most people are going to feel a deep sense of distress or at least discomfort or distress over this knowledge that they're inadvertently doing that, and then are, would be motivated to want to make changes. And then once people understand that's at an individual level. Once people understand at a more systemic level, the ways that systemic oppression has been, again, institutionalized and is con and is, is continuing to cause harm and discrimination towards people. Even if the people in those institutions are not conscious of perpetuating those injustices. , they will feel motivated to want to, as affect systemic changes in order to create an opportunity f where everyone truly has e equitable resources and an opportunity to advance. So I think it's about appealing to, I, I, I believe that at base, at coremost people are good and want good for others, and that we just need to help them understand how. the ways that we're currently thinking and the ways that we're currently acting may be contrary to our values or our beliefs about what's good and right in the world and what our role is in affecting goodness, positive change or affecting harm. Andwhere do we wanna land on that side? And again, I believe in my experience that most people want to do better. and, and then are motivated and, and, and just may not know, ha, may not know what harm they're causing and then may not, or the, the, the level of harm that they're causing and then may not know what to do about it. And that we need to give them the knowledge and the tools to help them align their values and their intentions with their, with their practices.
Carol: Yeah, I I, I saw an article, or I just read the headline in the New York Times of why d e i training doesn't work, and I feel like I will read the article. So I'm, so, I'm a little more informed than what I'm about to say, but just from my experience, I, I think that sometimes or, or maybe too often folks get to that awareness stage, but, The, the next step isn't taken to help people practice well, what, what would I do differently? They might be told to do this, that or the other. But then when you're in that instance of. An uncomfortable person says something that makes you feel uncomfortable and you, you, you're feeling like you wanna say something, but you're just frozen. Like, how do you get yourself outta that and, and to be able to take some action? What have you seen help people move beyond just awareness to, to being able to feel like they're equipped to, to manage a difficult situ. 
Katherine: Yeah, it's a great question. So a number of things. So again, one, just being able to recognize, having the, the self-awareness to recognize in the moment what's happening. And , for many of us, it's only in hindsight or when someone else brings it to our attention that we recognize that something we've said or done has caused harm. Or again, that by doing nothing. in a system that has been designed to favor white people or light-skinned people and oppress brown and black skinned people and indigenous people, that by doing nothing, we are also causing harm. That it's, it's, it's, it's not enough to, to do, to do nothing or to not intentionally do harm to others. That's not, that's not enough because of the way the systems have been designed. And. again, a deeper recognition of that and a, and an acceptance of that. And then, Having people really practice is also helpful to give people opportunities. Some of it is providing some of the language during global citizens training, we will provide some phrases that people can use to interrupt a situation in the moment to give some training on bystander intervention so that , when you're in a situation where you have inadvertently caused harm to someone else, and. Just have realized it or someone else has brought it to your awareness or you witness that a microaggression or a harmful act or comment has just been made. What are some words and what's some vocabulary that you can use? And then also that mindset of commitment. So in addition to giving people the language, in addition to providing scenarios, in addition to giving people opportunities to talk in small groups, even possibly do. Role plays to actually practice it. Because what's true is the more that we practice saying the words, the more that we practice being courageous and intervening, the more comfortable we're gonna become with it. I wanna come back to comfort. And then setting commitments and intentions that we know from the evidence or from the literature, that when people form behavioral intentions, we're more likely to act on those intentions. So in my training, I always ask people at the end to identify what are actions that you will commit to, to do from now on as a result of this training or a result of your a. That you will affect, that you will begin to affect. What can you commit to doing starting today? And then also putting in place what we know is a very. Tried and true method, which is accountability structures. So forming accountability partnerships or groups or as a team or as a leadership group. Again, setting your commitments and then creating accountability structures so that you have shared your commitments and your goals with others. You're, you're checking in with each other with your accountability partner, your.
Support each other when you're running into roadblocks or challenges and, and having people who you can really, who can help you work through those challenges and figure out how to do your intervention in a more effective way. And then as always, checking in. On how you're doing. So asking for feedback and that requires leaders and, and everyone to be more vulnerable and to say, I'm in the process of learning some new skills around intervening. It doesn't feel comfortable to me at the moment. So I'm gonna be practicing these new skills and let me know how I'm doing and, and invite feedback. Is really important. And so all of those techniques are valuable. And then this issue of comfort, which when we think about Tema Ocon and, and others' important work around white supremacy culture, and by white supremacy culture, I mean the full continuum of white supremacy. So in its most extreme egregious form of the KKK and neo-Nazism and all the ways. White privilege and power have been institutionalized and then internalized that we inadvertently perpetuate it and that we could be white people, and it also can be black and brown people or people of color who inadvertently perpetuate white supremacy culture. And one of the traits of white supremacy culture is this belief that we have a right to comfort that somehow. We should not be made to feel uncomfortable. And that's something that I think is really important that I work in my coaching and my consulting with companies and leaders to really have people question this and, and challenge this and lean into a. Are accepting of discomfort. And so often I've, I've been incorporating more somatics or embodiment into our work at Global Citizen. And so I'll often begin a training or a workshop or a talk with asking people to take a moment of mindfulness. A moment of awareness about their bodies and how they're currently feeling in their bodies. And then throughout the training or the workshop or the talk to be aware of what sensations are coming up for them. What are they noticing in their body? Where are they noticing it? What is the. The feeling, the texture, the color, the width, the breadth, the depth of it. And to, to use that information as an, as an important, that noticing as an important source of information about what causes them to feel light and joyful and excited and positive. What causes them to feel distress or discomfort and where there is discomfort to notice. , what the nature of that discomfort is, and then to go back to it later and explore it more so that they can understand it and use that information to inform their actions in the future. And that's, that's a really powerful way of disrupting white supremacy culture and also of helping all of us to become more integrated beings. Because I really believe in one of them. Egregious effects of white supremacy culture is that it has caused those of us who have internalized it to become disembodied, to become, to separate our, our minds and our bodies as though they're distinct from each other, rather than to bring our whole body selves into our lives and work. And so that's something else that I'm. interested in incorporating into our work and also to helping more people to become more fully integrated in this way. And that I think that has, can have a powerful societal impact as well. Yeah. 
Carol: There's a, there's a lot in, in what you were talking about, but that, that sense of disconnection that is so, ingrained in white American culture Northern European culture as I experienced it, that very distinct of,  Separation, but then also vilification of anything to do with the body. Mm-hmm. So I do appreciate how more and more folks are bringing that to the fore and helping people learn more so that they can be better integrated. And and, and part of the, the description of white supremacy culture to me, in some ways is a description. , any supremacy culture. Mm-hmm. , there are aspects of it that like that right, to comfort anyone who in whatever context and, and not allin some context. The, the, the, as you said, the, the markers, many contexts, the markers of our identity are gonna be in common with who's in that elite group but in some contexts not. And, and so some of those things around right to comfort or power hoarding or maybe some others I think are gonna be pre prevalent and, and, and noticeable in any dominant group in a culture. Absolutely. So it's an interesting thing to think about as well. Well, and 
Katherine: a lot more to explore because that has been something that I and my firm are actually really working more on understanding and. And incorporating it into our work. And We are planning to do some work around decolonizing d e i and understanding and advancing d e I with more global perspective and global understanding about how they're under, how they're experienced and understood and practiced in different contexts. And that even the ways that we're approaching d e I may be inadvertently perpetuating. Colonization and there needs to be a decolonization process. 
Carol: Can you say more about that, what that means or what that looks 
Katherine: like? Yeah, so even just a, a lot when I'm working, I work with a lot of international organizations and so even when we are. Doing our work together. So I haven't really talked a lot about our process, but we always begin with an assessment. So we'll look at secondary data, like any data or survey, survey data or other employee engagement survey. Or demographic data of employee data that we can look at, as well as employee handbooks and bylaws and any organizational documents. And then we also will conduct interviews with key stakeholders, focus group discussions. Obviously there's my observations as I'm working with organizations and. Pulling all of that information together into an assessment of what is the current state of an organization or company. And then doing strategic visioning and planning with the leaders to, to understand what have we learned from this strategic assessment that would inform your strategic vision of where you want your organization to be. And then what are the strategies and steps that we need to put in place to help you work towards that incrementally and. Attaching some success metrics and ways of measuring where you are currently, and using data as much as possible, and data broadly defined as much as possible to understand your current state. And then attaching success metrics to your goals and strategies so that you can measure progress over time and know what, what progress you're making or not making, and then change your strategies accordingly. And so as we're undergoing these processes, another important thing. Step that that we do is to ensure that in our collaboration with our client partner, that we usually are working with a couple of key people in some organizations that might be a D E I. Working group or council that is a representative group of employees who represent different demographics, if they're international or national, different geographies, different levels and roles in the organization, different divisions. And so that's, that's a really key part is that we. Are intentionally selecting a diverse group of people that we're collaborating with who are gonna bring diverse lived experiences and perspectives to the issues. But even in the ways that we work sometimes, getting back to your question is that There's so many ways that white and Western and sometimes those terms can be interchangeable. That white and western ways of working don't work for people in different cultural and country contexts. So some of it is. when we're having a live conversation and we're facilitating a live conversation. So some of what's come up in some of the international companies I work with is for people for whom English is a second language. , hearing a question in the moment and being asked to respond, to give their responses in the moment. For all of us who speak multiple languages, when you're doing it in not our primary language, that's incredibly challenging to be able to understand the question. , think critically about our responses and formulate our response in a secondary or third or fourth language for us. And so being able to provide people with. Questions in advance so that people can have time to think about them, to start to formulate their responses in advance. Also, providing multiple avenues for people to provide input on a given issue. So sure, live conversation is an important one, one important means, but also it could be a survey where for some people, Formulating their responses in writing may come easier in different languages than saying it verbally, and then even in the moment again, providing questions in advance. So what I'm doing now is when I'm going to be doing a training or a workshop or a meeting with an international group, I'll provide the questions that we're gonna be discussing in advance so people again, have a chance to think about them in advance. And then even in the moment giving people the option if it's a virtual session with responding verbally or in the chat. We might have a shared document or a jam board or some other software that people can write their responses in, and that's usually gonna give them a little bit , again, a variety of options to give their responses. So that's some of what we're talking about when we say how to create more globally competent ways of approaching our work together. And then not everyone is going to want to share in live sessions. So even as we're. Co-designing or co. For example, one of the groups I'm working with is an international nonprofit organization and we're co-developing a training series with the d e i working group that comprises representatives from all over the world. And so, in our shared document. , we're, we're creating, we're offering drafts, giving people opportunities for feedback over longer periods of time, having live meetings to check in on how we've incorporated their feedback. Doing multiple rounds of this, where again, people have multiple avenues more time and more advanced notice in order to be able to formulate and provide their.
Carol: Yeah. And I think those are, those are really things that one could do in any context to, to be helpful. For sure. Recently Microsoft has so many accessibility things built into their products and was at a retreat where I accidentally, I, I wasn't paying attention. I accidentally turned on the closed captions and people were just like, oh my God, look at that. And it was great because even in the back of the room they were able to see, they may not have it, it just made that easier, whether folks had a hearing challenge or not. So little there are a lot of ways in which it, it, it, it comes back to that, I guess that sense of universal design when you make it better for. Folks with challenges, you're actually making it better for everybody. 
Katherine: Absolutely, yes. Yeah. And as a hearing impaired person, I find that incredibly helpful. Also, that closed captioning really does help me ensure that I can really grasp everything that's being shared. Mm-hmm. 
Carol: Yeah, absolutely. So just to shift, shift topics now here at the end at the end of each episode, I ask a, a, a, a somewhat random icebreaker question that I have a, I have a box of them that I pull out. So what does the first 30 minutes or hour of a typical day look like for you? Hmm. 
Katherine: Yeah. So I do a little bit of mindfulness in the morning just as I'm awakening just to again, center myself in my body and and to take just a notice of how I'm feeling doing a little bit of stretching as I age, I'm finding that. Some routine stretching throughout the day and first thing in the morning have been helpful. Certainly looking at my calendar and, and anticipating the day ahead kissing my partner even this is in no particular order. kissing my partner and um, and playing with our dog and hugging my son. Good morning. And having breakfast these are all. All the usual showering and dressing and preparing for the day. 
Carol: Well, that sounds like a lovely way to start the morning. So, yeah. I've started recently with reading and then getting out nice and getting some exercise and some stretching. o, yeah, it's mm-hmm. I'm finding it's really lovely to be able to start the day a little bit slower. Mm-hmm. , mm-hmm. than in the past. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on the podcast. What's my pleasure? What's, what's coming up for you? What's, what are you, what are you excited about? What's, what's emerging in the work that you're doing? 
Katherine: Yeah, so one of the areas is what I had mentioned earlier around global citizens and our interns and, and team are going to be doing some research, some assessment, and then some great information sharing with global audiences around decolonizing d e I and understanding. Both DEI concepts and frameworks, and also implementation and practices from a truly global perspective and a more globally competent perspective. And. continuing our ongoing work around global citizenry and global competence. So Global Citizen also has our Global Citizens in Action Leadership Program for young people, and we're always looking for organizations and groups to collaborate with on that. We have curricula, we have interns who assist with the facilitation, and we're always looking for organizations that are serving young people. and would want to collaborate with us because they know the young people they're working with would benefit from this education and training on global citizenry and understanding ourselves as ethical global citizens. And we're working on a project currently about bringing some of the curricular content that we have on this to social media and so engaging. Engaging with TikTok and YouTube and Instagram micro influencers to collaborate on spreading more of this kind of education on global, global citizenry and diversity, equity and inclusion in social media. And of course just our ongoing work on d e I, global competence and global public health are near and dear to my heart. I'm also an adjunct professor at U N C Chapel Hill at the Gilling School of Global Public Health, and I recently collaborated with my colleagues on writing a chapter. For a textbook for public health and healthcare leaders on leadership textbook and wrote the chapter on d e I and cultural Competence for Leaders. And so I'm always excited about it. Doing consulting and coaching with leaders because of course change always begins with leaders and so the more that we can help leaders become more inclusive and effective in their leadership, the more that will affect those changes at a broader organizational level. And I really believe that by intervening at the organizational level, we are also affecting systemic changes because people bring what they're learning in their workplaces out into their families and communities and all of the organizations that they're engaged with beyond the workplace. So as always, it's focusing on affecting change and transformation at every level, the individual, the interpersonal, the institutional and the systemic levels.
Carol: So I love, I love the combination of focus on leaders and their impact on organizations and culture. And then also working with young people, to equip them with skills earlier on in their lives. Career so we're not having to hopefully have as much mitigation maybe to today . Exactly. Let's start now. So I love that combination. I love that combination. Well, thank you so much. It was a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on. 
Katherine: It's been my pleasure, Carol. And thank you. Thank you for hosting this wonderful podcast and thanks for inviting me to join you. I really loved our conversation.
Carol: I am really curious about where Katherine’s work on decolonizing DEI work goes and what emerges from it. 
After our conversation I looked up the article in the Times that I mentioned. It was for one an opinion piece. I will link to it in the show notes. The headline if you want to read it is “What if Diversity Trainings Are Doing More Harm Than Good? By Jesse Singal. One of its main points is that there has not been a large study to demonstrate the impact of diversity training. And how the training can sometimes actually reinforce stereotypes and racial bias and create a backlash when they are mandatory. Since most training happens within organizations – private for profit and nonprofit – it is not surprising that no large study has happened – someone would have to fund the study and gain the cooperation of all those folks. It would be great if such a study or multiple such studies were to happen because I can’t imagine practitioners want to create, offer and implement programs that don’t have the intended impact. But I also feel like a lot of the stories about DEI have that bent and it is certainly an attention grabbing headline. In fact – the Times had a podcast episode in 2021 with almost the same title. In the end I think they do a disservice to the people doing their best to address the deeply embedded social ills and inequities that exist. And no, training is not going to shift hundreds of years of history and culture making. Should we look for and emphasize what works – sure. Yet we need to start somewhere.
Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. You can find out how to connect with Katherine, the full transcript of our conversation, as well as any links and resources mentioned during the show in the show notes at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. I want to thank Isabelle Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production as well as April Koester of 100 Ninjas for her production support. Please take a minute to rate and review Mission Impact on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps other people find the podcast. We appreciate it! And until next time, thank you for everything you do to contribute and make an impact.

Helping nonprofits boards move toward greater equity with Christal Cherry and Renee Rubin Ross

8/23/2022

 
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In episode 55 of Mission: Impact, Carol and her guests, Dr. Renee Rubin Ross and Christal Cherry discuss:
  • The importance of stressing solutions when educating about DEI
  • How white fragility can prevent the larger issue of a supremacist culture from being addressed
  • Why it is important to see people for who they are while progressing into an equitable future

Guest Bios:
Dr. Renee Rubin Ross is a nationally recognized strategic planning and board development consultant. Committed to racial equity in the nonprofit sector, Dr. Ross supports organizations and individuals in practices that celebrate and amplify diverse voices and perspectives.

Christal M. Cherry is a nationally recognized nonprofit executive and professionally trained fundraiser.  With over 20 years in the nonprofit sector, she has supported higher education institutions, human services organizations and faith-based missions.  Her career portfolio, as a full time professional and consultant includes American University, the United Negro College Fund, Spelman College, Nicholas House, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Florida A & M University, Action Ministries, and the GA Center for Nonprofits.
 In each role, Christal has interfaced, guided and collaborated with diverse boards made up of college presidents, ministers and bishops, politicians, corporate CEO's, civic leaders, consultants, attorneys, stay at home moms and students.
 With passion and a wide breadth of experience, Christal works today with clients to help them mark a clear path to success in board development.  Her style is electrifying, inspiring, and energizing. 
Christal earned a MA in Counseling from Hampton University, a BA in Liberal Arts from Hofstra University and professional development certifications in nonprofit leadership, social media fundraising, and nonprofit management.
She currently serves on the board of the Greater Atlanta chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Villages of Carver YMCA.  She is regular presenter with CANDID, Qgiv, Network for Good, Bloomerang, and the Mississippi Alliance of Nonprofits and Philanthropy where she facilitates webinars and teaches courses in fundraising, board development and equity and inclusion.  Christal has been a guest on multiple podcasts and enjoy serving as a requested expert on board matters. She is contributing author in Collecting Courage, a documenting of racism and survival by 14 accomplished Black fundraisers working across North America.  She also enjoys her membership in the African American Development Officers Network, Toastmasters, and F3, Fabulous Female Fundraisers which she founded.

Important Links and Resources:
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/christal-m-cherry 
  • The Ross Collective
  • https://www.collectingcourage.org/
  • Heather McGee – The Sum of Us
  • Reesma Menakem 
  • RISE for Racial Justice

Transcript:
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Carol Hamilton: My guests today on Mission Impact are Renee Rubin Ross and Christal Cherry. We talk about how nonprofit boards can work towards becoming more inclusive and more diverse. We explore why it is so important to not just name the challenges boards have with diversifying, but also identify some possible solutions and positive actions to take to create movement, why it is important for groups to unpack and own history, including their group’s history, how white people need to accept being uncomfortable during conversations around race. 
Mission Impact is the podcast for progressive nonprofit leaders who want to build a better world without becoming a martyr to the cause. I am Carol Hamilton, your podcast host and nonprofit strategic planning consultant.
Welcome Renee and Christal to the mission impact podcast. 
Christal Cherry: Thank you. 
Renee Rubin Ross: Thank you so much. Good to be here. 
Carol: So I'd love to hear from each of you on this question, I'd love to start with a question around what drew you to the work that you do and what motivates you, what would you describe as your, why?
Christal: Go for it, Renee 
Renee: Hi. So I'm Dr. Renee Rubin Ross. And a lot of my work is really focused on inclusion and bringing out the wisdom in the room, bringing out all voices. And I would say that some of this comes from, from my experiences as a kid who, and a geeky kid in the back of the library, not feeling included and really observing and thinking about who. Part of the group who has power and how do I change things? And then more recently, I, one of the things that I do is I run the Cal state east bay nonprofit management certificate program. Our students are a rainbow of people of all races and in teaching board development for the program, our students have asked me. Not just to share the problem of board composition, which we're gonna be talking about, but what are some paths to solutions? And that's what, that's, what started to motivate my work. And also then connected me with Christal actually. 
Christal: And I'm Christal M Cherry. And I wanna say, as I started doing this work group, and then we encourage each other to, to share our race autobiographies. And that's something that we do in the work that we do with our boards. And as I started to really think about mine, I realized that there were many times when I was the only in many cases I was bused out as a small child. Out of the neighborhood that we lived in and I went to school were predominantly white children from elementary school, all the way to high school. So there were many times. When I was the only in the classroom and then graduated from high school and went to a predominantly white Jewish college Hoff street university in Long Island, New York and was part of a small program called the new college at Hoff street university. And I was the only one there. And then in many cases after graduation from college, I worked on teams. I remember I worked at the Bank of New York in New York City. And was only for a short period of time. They did eventually hire others. So I've always been the only in, in, in many instances and because of my personality, I'm a type, a personality, outgoing, not shy, not afraid. To enter groups and introduce myself, but there were still times where I felt like, ah, do I really belong here? Do they really get me? Do they really understand? What my lived experience is like I remember in college, my peers during the summertime were backpacking, of course, Europe and I was working at Macy's, so I couldn't afford the backpack. I didn't know anything about Europe. I was like, that's not part of my reality. So because I've always been the only. I think this work is about inclusion and belonging. Resonates with me. And particularly as we talk about boards, because I've been on boards, I've, I've sat in a room with boards and I know how uncomfortable it can be just for board members, periods that don't know each other. But then when you throw in race and culture and background then it gets weird. And if people don't get it, then people might not feel comfortable speaking up and you will find sometimes that people of color on boards are quiet because they're not sure whether or not their voices are gonna be heard. They feel like the only, and they're not sure whether or not it's okay to speak up. If what they're gonna say is gonna really be heard. And respected if, if, if they can weigh in it'll matter, all of those things. So that's why I got started in this work and in particular working with Renee. She's awesome. And, even though we're very different we have this thing in common and we have synergy and we respect one another and we work well together. So here we are. 
Carol: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. And you've named a couple different things there. This extra kind of challenge that hasn't happened, there hasn't been a lot of movement in terms of diversifying boards. Having them folks will recruit people, but not necessarily create a culture that really builds that inclusion. And I love how you talked about not just stating the problem. We, we, many. Many people have done lots of research around, around the problem, but love that you guys are working towards a solution. And, and just to name what it is, is really working towards helping nonprofit boards become more equitable and, and inclusive and create a culture of belonging. So what would you say are some common challenges? That nonprofit. 
Renee: Carol. I just wanted to just appreciate what you just said, which was, you said equitable because sometimes we say we hear people when we start working with people, we hear them say, oh, you're trying to make boards more diverse. And I truly wanna call that out and say from everything, we know, and we've heard and all that without the pieces around culture and around Understanding how boards are connected and how all of us are connected to the larger inequities in our society. You're not gonna make much progress. So we do talk about inclusion and equity a lot too. Yeah. So thank you for that.
Carol: Yeah. I appreciate it. I appreciate you calling that out. And I was reading recently and, and I'm sure others knew this way before me, but how the whole language around diversity came about was basically white or dominant entities wanting to avoid the whole conversation around race and wanting to call it something different. So I appreciate you calling that out. So what would you say are some common- I mean, I appreciate that you don't just name the problem, but let's just say, what are some of the common challenges the boards have in working to be more equitable and inclusive?
Renee: Well, we talk about knowledge gaps. So often things happen and then some people, and it is often the white people don't really understand what just happened. So very concretely, we had a board that brought us in and they had some contentious conversations. There were several women of color who left the board. And, and when they, when the organization reached out to us, they didn't say, this is what happened. They just said, well, we need some, we need some consulting. What do you say? You talk to us, you support us. And then as we got into our interviews and all of that, we started to learn. There had been some really hard conversations and, and interactions. And even after this happened, the people who were involved still didn't understand why this is that they never really went back to those people and said, Hey, is there something we could do to bring you back? You know? So it's just like this real lack of understanding. What had happened with these women, which, we, we didn't interview them ourselves, but we're guessing that they experienced this. We know that there was some aggressive behavior towards them. And certainly that there were most likely microaggressions that happened over time. And they truly just felt like I'm not being respected. I don't wanna do this anymore. Who would? And, and so, so, but, but from the perspective of some of the white people on the board, it was like, Oh, why can't we just talk this all out and not understand the larger dynamics Christal?
Christal: What do, what do you say? Yeah. And we received some resistance when we started talking about white supremacy culture and what that looks like. I remember the board chair pushing back and he was one of the main reasons why the women left because they went to him with their concerns and he threw them off. And it wasn't until we worked with him for a couple months that he really started to realize maybe his, how he was being complicit in this and that he was also a part of the reason why these women left. But it took a while for us and he did come around. But initially he was Kurt with them and dismissive. And so it's with this deep dive work where we really ask people to take a good long look at themselves and we have them do the race autobiographies. As I mentioned earlier, we do some race caucusing where we separate the board by race and Renee talks to the white people. And I talk to the black people, the people of color and and some really, really greeting conversations come out of that experience. And essentially what happens. What I've learned is that people of color are angry and white people are fearful. And so when we come back in the room, we've realized that, unless we start having these conversations where white people really can UN they're confused, they're fearful. They don't know what, what, what they, they don't know what to do. They don't know how to fix it. They, they, they feel shameful. They feel like we're trying to put them on blast and make them embarra. And, and they're like, I wasn't there, I'm not responsible for what happened. I wasn't there during slavery. And that's one of the things I tell people to disarm them. None of us were here were in slavery happened. Right. So, no one's pointing the finger at you and you and you, what we're just asking you to do is to own the history. And to accept the fact that because of what happened, some people live a certain way and some people don't, and that still has ramifications hundreds of years later. And while neither of us were there I still struggle with some of the disadvantages of what's happened to my people and maybe Renee. Some, some perks and bennies, some privileges that she got because of her background and because of the color of her skin. So we just wanna call people out and say, listen, we're not trying to make you feel bad individually. We just want you to see it and not ignore it anymore. 
Carol: Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. You mentioned something that you do with boards, a race autobiography. Can you say a little bit more about what that is and what comes out of that conversation? 
Renee: Yeah. So we got this, this exercise originally from this, or organization called rise, where they teach about facilitating racially dust spaces and what it is is we, first of all, we, we give people some questions ahead of time. Think about when, when did you first notice race? When did you talk about race? How, how was it discussed in your family? So that they're thinking about ahead of time, then the two of us model this together, and it is active listening. So whatever I'm sharing Christal says, Christal doesn't say, oh my gosh, I can't believe that really happened. You know it, but it's actually just wow. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that you opened up and, and shared that. And then Christal shares. Same active listening. And then we send people off into breakout rooms and let them for, three or four people talk and, and listen to one another in the same way and people just really love this. I think that it's so interesting. There are certainly statistics now about our society becoming. More segregated and that it's harder to have these conversations across honest conversations across race. And yet I do think that people are really interested in understanding the perspective of somebody who's different from themselves. And it really has deepened, deepened connection, deepened empathy. And that we believe is the way to start making progress in terms of breaking down all the other hard stuff that is happening, because like I care about this person. And so I want them, I care about the more I understand their story. And so I, now I want them to feel like they're part of this group and I want them to feel like we value what they are bringing because it's, it is needed in this setting. 
Carol: Christal. I wanted to follow up on one of the things that you talked about. It's the different experiences that folks have based on racial background. And the shame that you talked about, a lot of white people are sitting in and then acting out of. And I think, white fragility has been well described, but I think that, that, that oftentimes I know when I. Myself and them working with other white people is that initial reaction is they're saying I did something bad and perhaps they did do something that was harmful that they need to own up to and, and take accountability for. But that shame can be so paralyzing. 
Christal: Yeah. And so, you know what we've learned is, some white people, they don't wanna feel uncom. They don't, they don't want to feel that wiggly feeling when you're in the room and you're just like, something feels itchy on my back and you're just feeling uncomfortable. And so they opt out and so , so, which is what happened to us when we were working with a client in Montgomery, Alabama. We had a client where we were doing Renee and I were doing some deep DEI training with, and it was a large group and it started out with, I don't know, 32 people or something like that. And then at, by the end we realized the group had dwindled down and who was like blaringly? Absent were white men. We had, we had white women, we had black men, we had black women. But we looked around and we were like, we're the five or six white men that we started this training with. They just opt it out. They didn't wanna deal with it. They didn't wanna talk about it. He just didn't come. And, that board talked about having some accountability for them. you can't just not come because it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable for all of us. But if we're really serious about trying to change our culture, then we all have to sit here and deal with this discomfort and they just opted out. And so I think that's why. people of color are so angry because white people wanna just opt out. They don't wanna teach their kids about it. They don't want their kids to feel uncomfortable. They don't wanna feel uncomfortable. And we are just saying, you have to look at it. You have to look at it in the face. You have to own it. And not own it. Like you, you are personally responsible, but own it, that this is just a reality of what's happened to. Yeah, I just, 
Carol: I mean, definitely that, that white privilege of just being able to opt out and being able to say, oh, I'll worry about that tomorrow. And obviously it's not the experience of most people in the United States, so yeah, really appreciate that. And, and yeah, it's, I, it's just seeing that as an unfortunate dynamic. Yes. 
Renee: I, I was gonna just add onto that, that, that many of us believe that our society is better when people of all races can thrive and really understand, like that's the vision. And so it's like, well, what needs to happen? In order to move towards that vision. And one of the great books on this is the sum of us by Heather McGee. And, and it's funny because we just did a webinar for the network for good. And we were talking about this and it was all about building belonging. Right. And we talked about it a lot in terms of race and how people of all races should feel like they belong. On a board and belonging is very specifically, I am part of the circle. And then someone, a colleague of mine just listened to this webinar and said, oh wow. This really applies to, to the people who feel left out to the white people who feel left out.
And I was like, yeah, that's exactly right. Because what this is saying is when we think about all the people in our society and everybody's feelings. There's a sense of belonging. You're thriving. It's actually good for everyone. Right? So that's the, I mean, that's the, I know that there's so much fear around this as if something is getting taken away and, and that's the, the white people's fear, but at the same time, it's like, well, what, what is the positive vision? And I, for myself and in this work and what we talk about, how do we keep holding that positive? And, and for, for, for ourselves, for our clients, for, for these boards, I I'm gonna, I could go on this longer , 
Christal: but our society perpetuates us and we have this capitalist society. We have this patriarchal society and this whole thing about if, if you gain, I lose. Right. It's not like we can both get there. I can't, I can't have it. Nice things. And you can have nice things, right. If I have nice things, that means that you are gonna have less nice things. And, and, and that's what that really is what the bottom line is, is that, we we're, it is this competition. I have to maintain power. I have to maintain influence. I'm the one that has the money and I'm pulling the strings. And if I give. The opportunity to pull the strings. That means I'm gonna have less power. And that's essentially what this book that some of us talk about, but that's really the root of what's going on with this whole diversity equity and inclusion thing. Boards have been historically white male, right? They have been the ones that have been making the, there's 64 million board members in this country. They have been the ones that have been calling the shots about how nonprofits have been operated, how the monies are being spent, decisions on what happens to black and brown children. What happens to women who are pregnant, what happens to, and all of the things that we know, all the missions, the causes are out there in a nonprofit space. These boards who have been historically white male have been the ones that have been making the decisions about what happens to millions of people. And now what we're saying is, Hey, wait a minute. The world doesn't look like it used to. And there are more brown people in the world than it's ever been. And how dare you make decisions? Hello? Does this sound familiar? How dare you make decisions about me without allowing me to weigh in on those decisions? And so now we're saying move over and let other people who actually come from the communities that you're working with, have a say in what happens to them and, and the white folks who have had that power saying. I don't wanna move over. I mean, I know, right? It's, it's politically correct to say you should have a, you should have a seat at the table, but I've always had the seat. I don't wanna make room for you. I don't wanna make room for you. Mm-hmm mm-hmm and so that's basically what's going on. And so people will come to us and say, yes, we wanna, we wanna change our culture, that we wanna change the composition and wrap up. But then as we start working with them, we realize when it really comes down to doing the real hard work. They may not, they may not really mean it. 
Carol: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of organizations and, and boards fall in the trap of the diversity piece. So if we wanna recruit people beyond white men or white men and white women to be on this board and they actually don't think about how it's gonna, how they need to shift in terms of their culture. And be more open. I'm a hundred percent with you, Renee on the, that's the vision of where we want to go. And I'm sometimes a little fearful that that can fall. That white people just wanna say, okay, let's get there. How do we do that? We're just all the same, like I don't see color pieces. So, so as a whole fan, 
Renee: Oppos and we thank you for saying that, Carol, we, we each talk about this as this is, you're, you're on, we are gonna help. What we're gonna do with your board is unfreeze. Because, and by, by starting to deepen conversations around race, I, another thing that we wanna mention is like, everything, from research is you need to talk about race because if you do not talk about race, if you're not able to talk about race, then anyone who experience race experiences, race is those experiences are made in. And so it's not enough to say, oh, we serve diverse communities. I mean, you, you really need to be specific. And, and only by doing that, can you start to really pull out in equities in the society and do something about them? But you're right. It's like, do you want to do this work of building belonging and, and, very simple. Do you feel like people who are equity is defined as people who are closest to the problems should be weighing in on the solutions? It's either a yes or no. Either you believe that, or you don't, or you believe that someone else who's really far away somehow knows. What should happen, which sounds very, patronizing to me, but , 
Christal: Carol, while we focus primarily on race, I mean, we talk about diversity. We talk about all the isms. I mean, not only just color and, and background ethnicity, but able body versus disabled, right. cis straight white heterosexual against, people of color who are LGBTQ+ I right. You know? And so when we talk about diversity, we are just talking about difference. Right. Coming to the table, being different from what has normally been at the table. So Renee and I focused a lot on color and race and background and ethnic, background, but we are really talking about it all. So I don't want us to just be pigeonholed to talk specifically about race, which is our focus. And which we think is really, really, of course, obviously important. But when we start talking about belonging, we're talking about all those isms, right. And all those individuals who are historically left out to be at the table in the boardroom. 
Carol: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I just think it's a hundred percent in what you're saying, the language around belonging. Probably EV I would guess I could go out on a limb and guess that almost everybody has had an experience of feeling left out or feeling not like they didn't belong. They didn't feel included. And so being able to connect into that just as a, at a basic human level is really helpful. And I think starting with race, it's kind of, it's so deep in our history in terms of the US specific context, but I, but I think, I think there are folks around the world who actually listened to this podcast. And so I always make a point of saying, we're talking about this from a us perspective, but at the same time, I don't think it's a uniquely us problem either. So, what would you say are some first steps you've taken about some work that you've done with different clients? What are some first steps that boards can take in terms of becoming more inclusive?
Renee: So we, I mean, we, so again, one of them is deepening one's ability to talk about race. And that might mean Understanding who is on the board. One of the really other things is getting a sense of whether people feel, feel belonging. And I, I told this story, not, not long ago about, we had this conversation with this man named Carl, this white man named Carl. And we said, well, do the people on your board feel belonging? And he said, oh yeah, of course they do. Of course they, everybody feels so much belonging. And then I said, well, how do you know? And, and he was like, well, I don't know. I mean, I asked my three friends, and they all said that they feel belonging. Like, well, there's another 20 people on the board. Do you know anything about oh, no, but I'm sure they feel belonging, like, so, so, so what we do when we come in, we do some assessment that is interviews and a survey. And this, we're a cross race team. Sometimes people feel more comfortable talking to one or the other of us about what's going on. And we're listening and then we share everything back and it, and one of the principles is even if there's one person who has some information that person might be, might feel like, wow, this is, this is a super welcoming board if you're white, but I am, I am black. I'm a Latino, I'm Asian American. I don't feel welcome here. You gotta listen to every single voice and really understand what's going on. So first just getting a sense of what's happening. 
Carol: Yeah, I think that, that, that Taking that step to really gather some good information, qualitative quantitative, and then mirroring that back to the organization so that they have that fuller sense. So it's not just the four people that I happen to be friends with on the board. Right. And talk to them on a regular basis. And so I think I know what everybody the, the, the bad phrase of, well, I think I'm speaking for everyone here. Well, no, you're. Whatever. Right. Even paying attention to who's speaking up in the meetings and who isn't who you are hearing from? And I think some people are, are pretty attuned to that and others just don't, don't notice it at all. And so that can be so helpful. 
Christal: And Carol, I'm a big proponent of doing self work. Right? And so I always tell the board that before we could start collectively working as a group, you really need to do a selfie. You really need to take a selfie and, and look at yourself in the mirror. This is all part of that whole race, autobiography stuff. It's like really starting thinking about who you are and how you feel and where you fit in. Why do you feel the way you feel about others? How do you feel about yourself? Like where do, where do you fit in, in this whole thing as, so Renee and I, during our, our training, we will, we will show videos, we will encourage art reading articles and we, we copy chapters out of books. Right. And we send them to the board members and we ask them to read, and then we come back and we talk about those things. And so I think, doing your own self work so that you can look at your mirror yourself in the mirror and say, you know what I do have Biase. I do feel this way about this group of people. I have heard certain things and I believe that, and so really breaking that down to see where you stand in this space and then come back to, is that really how I wanna be? Is that really how I wanna navigate through this world? And maybe there are some stereotypes that I've bought into that are not. And so I think when we start to really take a really hardcore look about who we are and how we are behaving and how we may be contributing to what the perceptions are about groups if we can really get people to really see that and start breaking that down, I think that that is another next step. To come back together in, in the room as a group and saying, okay, I looked at myself, I've had the conversations. I'm ready to come and talk to you all about what's happening with me and then how we can work together as a group to maybe make some change. 
Renee: I just, I just wanted to add, I mean, going on to that, that, that we model that ourselves, like as a, as a white person, I feel like I need to keep learning. I need to keep listening. I need to keep stepping back. I have my own communities of, of, places where I learn as a facilitator and trainer, and that are centering. By, black indigenous people of color in this work. And, and so that's really a suggestion that we make for, for the white people in the group too, is, yeah. We're gonna give you some resources and we're gonna share some, some great information, but there is, there is such a, there is often a lack of awareness about bias, about racism and, There's some real catching up that the white people in the group need to do. And, and so, we support them as much as we can, but this is where we do say, all right, we're gonna UN we're gonna unfreeze your group. Mm-hmm and you're gonna need to keep talking about this. And it is if we took 400 years to get to this. It's gonna take a long time to untangle this. Right. 
Christal: And I always say, give yourself a little grace, there's no fixed endpoint to this work. Like I, as much as Renee and I talk about it and read about it and write about it, we're still learning. She's always sending me information. I'm like, oh my God, Renee. That was so good. That was good stuff, you know? And so give yourself some grace, it's gonna take a long time. You're not gonna be able to undo everything that you've learned in your 55 years in, in, in, in three hours. Right. And so give yourself some grace, but start. Start and keep and keep it moving. Right. And then we also talk about finding some champions, finding people who may be a little further along than you are. And I did a lot of that. I interviewed people on LinkedIn, like cold calling people who either wrote an article or blog, or I saw they did something amazing. And I was like, can we do a virtual coffee? Can I get, can I get your ear for 30 minutes? I just wanna learn a little bit about you and your experience and why you wrote that blog. And so find some champions and people who are actually doing the work, who may be a little further along than you. And see if you can get some perspective, Renee, you wanna add anything? 
Renee: About that? Well, I will say that I think one of the unique features of this training that we do is this race caucus work because sometimes, I mean, so I lead the white caucus and this is, we come together. We say, we are. Sent we are, our goal is to build an anti-racist organization. And we are what is doing this and an organization where all people feel a sense of belonging, but we, what is, what, what do we, as white people need to work out in order to get to the place where we can come to the table with the rest of the group and. It was really interesting. I mean, people talk about can, can go through some of that shame and powerlessness without wasting the time of the BIPOC people in, in the group. So we, we, we did this with a group and then, we had the caucus meetings, we came back together and then one of the. people, people were looking at each other. The, it had been pretty emotional, some of these conversations. And so, one of the BIPOC men looked at the group and said, what'd you guys talk about? And we had this woman, we’ll call her Emily, she raised her hand. She said, I just, what we talked about was the, the, the shame and sadness that we are feeling about racism and about the impact of racism. And then this man in the bipo caucus said, well, that's what we talked about too. And it was really this, this amazing moment of like, okay, maybe we're not as different because we're, or, how do we, we can find these, these places to bridge what we're trying to, what we're trying to do. And not all problems were solved. But, we started to, to get to some understanding. What, what do you say, Christal? 
Christal: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And, and when there's anger that comes out of it, we had a black male stand up and said, I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of trying to convince white people to wanna be on this board with me, you know? And if they don't want me here, I can go back to my community where I'm wanted and I can work on and on other things I don't have to be here. I'm tired of fighting. And, we applauded him for having the courage to stand up and, and really share how he, how he was really feeling. And we were all taken aback. But it was definitely a moment. And so we're glad that we are providing space for people to feel comfortable doing that. We round out our training after we do all of this work as we try to come together. If we can come together in person, we can cause a lot of the training is done virtually, but we try to end the training with all of us in the room. And it's really nice after having seen each other in these little boxes for all these months, Renee and I can actually shake hands with people and the first 10, 15 minutes of the training, we're just all sitting around kicking it. And it's just nice. We're just talking, getting to know each other. But we do do some more work and, and we end the training by inviting them to come up with some priorities and goals that they're gonna work on. ‘Cause our time with them is finite. Right? And so we wanna make sure that once we leave that their work continues. And so we realize sometimes it seems so overwhelming. There's so many things I didn't wanna work on, but we tell you to pick three things. Three things that you're gonna work on this year. And then each group comes up with what those things are. And then once we decide, they decide what they are, then we put some timeline and benchmarks and who's gonna do what to it, but we wanna leave them with a plan so that they continue to do the work past Renee and I.
Carol: Yeah, that's so important. And I appreciate what you said about the caucus. And I feel like white people sometimes will be like, what, why will we do that? This is supposed to be diversity trading. And, but I really appreciate how it creates a space for right. The white folks work through that shame, have all those emotions and are not burdened. The people of color, not just waste their time, but also stress them out, from an emotional labor point of view of having to listen to all that. Like, no . And so I think one thing that I would say, Christal, you said you did a lot of reaching out to people who were one step ahead of you. And I would say for the white people listening. Try to find other white people are a little further ahead versus reaching out to the people of color that who are already like, have had it with telling white people about this stuff. 
Christal: yeah. And what's interesting about my caucus is that I have people of color, so it's not just black people. So I, we have black people, we have Asians, we have Hispanics we have, and even in our group, we can't call people, people of color together and think that they even all. The same experience, cuz their experiences are all very different. And even in the group, you'll find that a lot of the black folks are speaking up, they're angry and then the Asian folks are quiet. Right. They're not saying even in the group where they're supposed to feel comfortable with all of us, cuz we're people of color, they still feel like it. So we have those conversations about why is it that black people always feel like they get all of the attention? Why are we adored? Why can't we ever talk? And so, and they're like, we just have been told our culture tells us to be quiet and stay, stay in the background, stay small, and then Latinos have their issues. So we have very interesting dialogue, even in the people of color caucus. It's very different. 
Carol: Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean that, that black, white dot binary is certainly something embedded in our culture, in the US. And then we've lumped this enormous group of like the, the most people in the world into one group as if they all had common experience and they all come with different cultures. Different norms. And so, yeah, that's, that's for sure. Gonna, gonna come up. I would love it. You talked about modeling a couple different times and if you indulge me, I wonder if you guys might model the racial autobiography exercise that you do when you do the training. I wonder if you just would do that for a few minutes. 
Renee: All right. Woo. You're putting us on the spot here. so, what I do is so interesting in terms of reflecting on what, on the conversations in race about race in my home as a white Jewish person. And what I noticed when I thought more about this is that we didn't talk about race and we never talked about race. It is rare. It was almost impolite to notice someone's race or to refer to it. So there was something bad about, bad about mentioning race. And, but the funny thing is I personally was so curious about different people's experiences, but there wasn't even really any space because it was sort of like it was the wrong thing to do. And the only thing that I and I feel so sad about is this. Talking about it. But the only thing that I remember was hearing about a black neighborhood as an unsafe place. And so that was all that, that was most of what I had in my, my mind, in my images. It was this fear and boundaries. And I mean, I've, I've done a lot of work over the last five years to shift all of these images, but they are powerful and yeah, I, I mean, that's, I guess I'll leave that here and, 
Christal: well, thank you for Renee for having the courage to share your personal history and your personal story. We really appreciate hearing it.
Renee: You're welcome. What about you Christal? 
Christal: Yeah. So I had quite the opposite experience in my family. And so race was talked about all the time. And I always share the story about me being a little kid playing on the, on the floor with my dolls and, and hearing my father and my uncles stand around the bar, having drinks, talking about the white. And the white man is not gonna let us do this. And the white man is gonna do this and the white man, he has his foot on our neck and the white man. And I remember as a little kid thinking, who is this white man? And why is he so mean and is he coming to our house? And so I grew up hearing that we should be fearful of white people. And there were times and instances where we would be out in public. And I bring up the instance where we were in the mall one time and we were about to go down the escalator and we got there first, me and my family, but a white family was coming and they got there maybe just a minute or two behind us. And I was just about to step onto the escalator. And my mom pulled me back and pulled me aside. To let the white family get on the escal first. And she said something like, oh, sorry, sorry, come on. Then she said to me, get outta the way. Come on. I can get outta the way. And I remember thinking to myself, Why couldn't we get on the escalator first? And why were we being a nuisance just by being present? The white folks didn't ask to get on first, but my mom felt like it was the right thing to do to push us outta their way to let them go on first. And so I was constantly being fed that white people were superior. And that we were inferior and that we should be fearful. And so I didn't even realize that. And then I was bused out of my neighborhood, which was the message that my neighborhood was not good enough. Right. And so I was constantly fed that black people were not the same as white people. And so I didn't even realize all of that Carol, until we started having these conversations that Renee and I are having about how much that was ingrained in me as a child. And so it has taken me a long time. For me to come around to my own feeling of self love and self acceptance and self-worth and particularly in doing this work. 
Carol: Yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing. 
Renee: Thank you so much. You appreciate so much your story
Carol: Then since I put you guys on the spot, I guess I'll have to reflect on my own. I mean, I think yes, mine has in common with Renee's that race was invisible to me. I grew up in very segregated areas here in the greater Washington DC area. And then my dad was in the foreign service, so we were overseas in Europe. So it was primarily European, although the country's demographics were changing as I was growing up in two different places. And so when I've had these conversations before, and it's been reflected back to me that the, the time that I noticed race was when there was a black kid in my class, in, in first grade. Right. And so that's when it was an awareness for me or when I was on the London tube and I first saw somebody with dreadlocks and he was like, what is that? And I was a kid, you know? And so I, I think, I think I had that experience of a lot of white people. Since I was part of the dominant culture and had so many boxes that checked off the privilege boxes that that race to me was pretty invisible and, and not, and not spoken about. And so yes, to have to unpack and UN I think we all are untangling all these messages, all these things that we've internalized and, and just need to keep doing that to, to, free ourselves from all of this as much as we can.
Christal: Wow. Well, thank you, Carol, for sharing that it's very brave. We appreciate you for sharing. 
Carol: So you talked about some steps that, and obviously every organization's gonna have different steps that they're gonna be taking as they move along in this journey. What are some examples of success? I know Renee wants us to, to look on the brighter side and not just focus on the problem and think that there can be solutions and we can move in, in a direction of helping more people have a sense of belonging. What are some successes that you've seen? 
Renee: We, we have gone through the process with a couple of organizations and got, again, we haven't solved all problems. Sure. No, but we have, we have worked with them too, to foster conversation and build a plan. And can, and and that they would continue the work going forward. And also we have gotten them to make connections between their work on the board and why this, why it matters to build belonging and talk about race. So, for example, we worked with an arts institution and we started talking about. Well, who needs to be served, who is served now? what, what, where is the organization located? Where are you creating events? And, and why does this matter in terms of even the future of your organization? Right? So it's like this isn't just about us in the room. It starts with us in the room, but it really radiates out. In terms of the future of your organization, if you're ever gonna survive, because it's like, are you only gonna be an organization that's gonna serve white people in this white neighborhood? Or are you gonna be something that belongs to the people of all races and get them to think about that. And so really deepening what is at stake here? 
Christal: And Renee suggested that, because I think one of the issues that we found with that group was that the black people in the community felt like the museum was not located in their community. It wasn't, they didn't have access to it. And so we talked about maybe having a pop-up exhibit and taking the exhibit to them, to their community, maybe in their community center, maybe at their library, maybe in a place where they can walk to it, as opposed to having to take three buses and two. To get to it. And I know that that is something that has been considered. So we're praying and hopeful that they will take some of the things that we said into consideration and maybe try to reach across the lines and, and give access to the artwork. And, and, and also, there weren't many pieces of artwork in that museum that represented those communities. Right. And so Renee and I actually pulled out one of them and had them talk about it. And, while it was that one, I actually went and visited that museum and that piece of artwork, which was absolutely beautiful. It's on the back wall behind like four or five different walls. You gotta walk in and out. You have to walk in and out of the, and then on the very back wall, that one piece of artwork representing a, a, a church scene of people of color. But if you don't make it to that back wall, if you cut your visit short and you decide you're gonna go get some ice cream or something and, and not make it to that back wall, you're gonna miss that piece. Mm-hmm . And so why is that piece on the back wall? Right. And so all of these things, , all of these things are things that we, we, we, we brought to their attention and so practically they've moved that piece and we'll, we'll see what. And 
Carol: Those looking for those glimmers of hope. And I think it's, it's taking away those blinders. So, I talked about how, for me, it was so invisible and now, I can't look anywhere without seeing the implications. And. and I think also just like everyone has biases, it's built into the way our brains work. So the shame that people have about those, yes, those are the stories you were told. Those are the stereotypes that are in the culture, but how can you start, questioning those, thinking about it differently. And it's still in the stem, right? The way back to a part of our brain that's always just looking for. Foe or friend the foe or friend. And we have to have all those shortcuts or we wouldn't be able to manage in the day, but then it's like slowing down, taking the time, questioning, like taking a pause saying, Ooh, no, that's not how I wanna show up. How can I do it differently? Moving forward? Mm-hmm . 
Renee: Absolutely. Oops. I wanted to mention Reesma Menakem and who we just really love his work and a black man who talks about black bodies and white bodies and what we're carrying around in our bodies in terms of love and fear and hate and all of this, because this is very much, sadly, and, and men, other people have done work in. Also, it can be very much on an emotional level. And that's where, again, we're, we're trying to foster these conversations across race to try to get people to rewire a little bit, because this is not just intellectual work. 
Carol: Absolutely. Absolutely. Christal, any, any final thoughts? And then I'm gonna shift gears a little bit.
Christal: No, I just wanna encourage those, those organizations whose boards have not really thought about this, or have not delved into this work to really just begin, it, you have to. Start, what do we say? A journey of a thousand steps begins with just one small step. So you have to just start, and if you're not sure where to start, you could certainly reach out to Renee and I, but find someone who could help facilitate the conversations because it needs to happen and it's no longer an option. The world looks different than it did a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, 10 years ago. Right. And so it's time. It's time for you to, to, to do the work. And Renee and I are certainly here to help. If, if you need us. 
Carol: Yeah. There is definitely magic in getting started. Well, like I said, I will shift gears a little bit. At the end of every episode, I play a game with folks where I ask them a random icebreaker question that I pull out of a box of icebreakers. So I'm gonna ask you both the same question: who had the most influence on you growing up since we talked about growing up.
Renee: Well, I can, I probably can start. I was part of a Jewish youth group. It was actually called Hannah Szenes. And so Hannah Szenes was a paratrooper who was also a writer who died in the second world war. And I just really appreciated her writing her thoughts. Community and connection and the challenge of, of all of that and, and her desire for a better world, a better and more just world. So if someone just, comes to mind at the, at this moment, 
Christal: Yeah. And what immediately came to mind to me was my dad. He just while he's deceased now, but, and and certainly while he was not perfect, he had a high moral compass and he just really just taught us the difference between right and wrong. We used to say there's a right way to do things and there's a wrong way to do things. We laughed at my sisters and I laughed about that today. Cuz we, we always say, people don't care, we're always the ones trying to do the right thing and other people don't care, but he was just a, a man who believed in hard work. He believed that, if you, if you worked hard, you, you, you got, you got success. And if you're treating people right, then even if they don't treat you right. If you treat people right, then you're doing the right thing. And so I think that's probably stuck with me the most. I can always hear his voice in my head. And so that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do the right thing, 
Carol: Carol. Excellent. Excellent. I'm trying to do the right thing each day, too. So what are you guys excited about? What's coming up next for you. What's emerging in the work you're doing?
Christal: we gotta talk. We were in the middle of trying to write this book. All right. Well, not even in the middle. We're at the beginning. 
Renee: We have been interviewing people about this and we have our own work and we have some, a framework that we have created about this work. So we're really trying to write it down. So, yeah. So we're writing a book. We still are offering the training for boards. We'd love to hear from people who are interested and, and yeah. 
Carol: Yeah. That's exciting. Well, let us know when the book comes out and we can add something to the show notes and we'll, we'll put links to your bios and the links that you've talked about and how to get in touch with you. All of that'll be in the show notes. So, but appreciate both of you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. 
Christal: Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for that invite. Yes, we appreciate you as well.
Carol: I appreciated Christal’s point that we need to give ourselves and each other grace when engaging in these difficult conversations. It took us 4-500 years to get where we are and we are not going to dismantle these systems and ways of thinking overnight. Yet this also doesn’t let folks off the hook- especially white people – from continuing to examine themselves, their thinking and how they show. And to keep stepping into growth and learning. And for white people to reach out to other white people who are a little further ahead of them on their equity journey rather than defaulting to reaching out to people of color in their network. That is part of doing your own homework as a white person. I was also struck by the differences in each of our racial autobiographies. Of how within white families – Renee and mine – there was little or no conversation about race and how in many, but not all ways, it was invisible. And for Christal the experience was the opposite. It was a topic of conversation frequently. And in both Renee and Christal’s story there was an element of being taught to fear the other. So it is an uncomfortable conversation – especially if you are white and you are not used to talking about race. Or even if you were taught it is impolite to talk about or a taboo subject. Christal’s observation that white people come into the conversation with fear and people of color with anger – strong emotions to handle and uncomfortable emotions to have in the workplace. As a fellow white person, I invite white people to step in and manage their fear and be in the conversation, knowing that you will make mistakes and screw things up. For people of color I appreciate the grace, generosity and patience I have observed over the years – all in many ways probably undeserved.
Thank you for listening to this episode. I really appreciate the time you spend with me and my guests. You can find out how to connect with Renee and Christal, the full transcript of our conversation, as well as any links and resources mentioned during the show in the show notes at missionimpactpodcast.com/shownotes. I want to thank Isabelle Strauss-Riggs for her support in editing and production as well as April Koester of 100 Ninjas for her production support. We want to hear from you! Take a minute to give us feedback or ask a question at missionimpactpodcast.com/feedback. And until next time, thank you for everything you do to contribute and make an impact.

Nonprofit Leadership with Keisha Sitney

1/12/2021

 
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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.

Organizational healing with Nyacko Perry

12/1/2020

 
Listen here
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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.

Mind, body, spirit, emotions and identity with Becca Bartholomew

10/20/2020

 
Listen here
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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

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    carol Hamilton

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