S2, Ep 12: Supporting Nonprofit Leaders of Color: Insights from Sean Thomas-Breitfeld

SEASON 2, EPISODE 12

Supporting Nonprofit Leaders of Color: Insights from Sean Thomas-Breitfeld | S2, Ep 12

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott, and you are listening to the Race in the Workplace Podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a racial equity consultant and founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity centered through sustainable step-by-step changes.

[0:00:39.2] JSS: Hi, it’s Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you’re listening. This week’s episode of the podcast is an interview that I did with Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, who codirects the Building Movement Project.

This season of the podcast has been about leadership and as I wrap up Season 2, this is the perfect interview to close with. As soon as I decided leadership would be my focus for this season, I knew that I wanted Sean Thomas-Breitfeld to join me in a conversation.

Okay, a little bit more about Sean. Prior to joining The Building Movement Project, he spent a decade working in various roles at community change, where he developed training programs for grassroots leaders, worked in policy and communications, working coordinated online in grassroots advocacy at first, and lobbied on a range of issues including immigration reform, transportation equity, and anti-poverty programs.

I invited Sean on the podcast to share his experience supporting leaders of color in the nonprofit sector. This sector itself is in a time of transition, and with that comes both complexity and a need for nuance as this shift is occurring in a time full of political pressure from the right, figuring out how we live in this new normal with COVID and great fatigue among nonprofit leaders and staff. To learn more about Sean’s work, visit buildingmovement.org.

All right, let’s get into it, a conversation about racial equity leadership with Sean Thomas-Breitfeld.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:20.5] JSS: Hi Sean, it’s so awesome having you on the podcast. Thank you for joining.

[0:02:25.9] STB: Thank you for having me.

[0:02:27.5] JSS: If you could, tell us a little bit about the work you do.

[0:02:32.9] STB: Sure. So I am the co-executive director of an organization called, The Building Movement Project, and at BMP, we’re a national organization that does research on the nonprofit sector. We also develop practical resources to support organizations and organizational change efforts and then we also really focus on relationships and transformational relationship building to help knit people and organizations together in order to strengthen progressive movements.

And I just want to add that you know, I’m a co ED and my co-ED, Francis Kunreuther, is the founder of BMP and we trace our organization's founding back at this point, almost 25 years to a meeting that Francis and other colleagues, Linda Campbell, and other people organize to try to bring together different people from different parts of the nonprofit sector because, at the time, there was a concern that the sort of investments in nonprofit infrastructure, in nonprofit capacity, were so modeled on a business model.

They had a different perspective having been activists, organizers, service providers, they wanted the center of the work to be about building infrastructure that would help organizations achieve progress and social change, not just operate in a more streamlined business-oriented way and so that really is the sort of legacy of BMP and why we do work on race and equity in the sector.

Why we do work on organizing and establishing that organizing is and needs to be a preferred model for making change and why we focus on the ecosystem of organizations that make it possible for movements to be impactful for our communities.

[0:04:40.6] JSS: Thank you for sharing that. I find that for those of us who do work where there’s an equity component, there’s always a little bit of a jagged journey, right? In terms of how we end up in these phases. So can you share with us a little bit about how you landed in that particular meeting that day or how you landed doing the work that you do in the nonprofit space?

[0:05:03.8] STB: Sure. I would say, that in a way, it actually goes back to being a pastor’s kid. Both of my parents are ministers.

[0:05:11.2] JSS: Oh, I didn’t know you were a PK.

[0:05:13.8] STB: Yeah. I’m a double PK and you know, pastor’s kid also, child of the interracial marriage. My mom is black, my dad is white, and so having grown up in a faith community where there were professed values and ideals, and then there was real-world action and exclusion, particularly, you know, that I saw in terms of my mom’s sort of opportunities in the ministry being very different.

You know, I think that that in a way, prepared me for but also put me on the path to working in this nonprofit sector because we’re pretty idealistic about what our ideals are, and then often, there are these reality conflicts between what we say about equity and then what the actual experience is of people of color and organizations or what we say about valuing the voice of constituency and clients.

But then boards, making a lot of decisions from a place that has no real connection to the stakeholders of the organization. So those sorts of contradictions I feel like I kind of grew up in because my whole childhood and young adulthood was informed by the church and I come from you know, a mainline protestant church that also had a tradition of, you know, it was definitely not the kind of church that was about prosperity gospel, right?

We were much more focused on racial and economic justice and so I got my politics from you know, those faith-based institution organizers who really have been focusing for years on getting churches to be sites of activism in our country.

[0:07:05.6] JSS: I love that and I appreciate you sharing that so much or I connect to that in a lot of different ways. I grew up in a church that was more like the prosperity gospel like that was the center and like figuring all of that out and what that meant and what’s embedded in that, so I appreciate that.

I do think that this culture we live in that is so much steeped in white supremacy is in a lot of ways, a spiritual problem. I don’t have the tools to help people through that, but I recognize it. Do you know what I mean?

[0:07:39.9] STB: You know, being someone who is queer, you know I’m married to a man, I’ve had my own struggles with that faith community and yeah, I very much feel grounded in that upbringing in a way, you know? And I think there have been times in my career where I’ve had the opportunity to work with faith-based organizers and you know, people from that organizing tradition, which is different from sort of some of the Alinsky style, you know, more hard nose economic justice organizing that I might have been more trained in but you know I’ve always loved those communities.

You know, those spaces where people are figuring out ways to really meld a deep understanding of value and mission with the activism, the organizing, the moving people to take real action to deliver material change for their communities and their neighbors.

[0:08:39.3] JSS: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that so much. I do, thank you, that’s a real gift. I wanted to have you on the podcast because this season has been all about leadership and when I think about leadership and the experiences of leaders of color, I can’t help but think about the work that you do at BMP and Race to Lead work.

So I wanted to know if you could talk about the intersections that you see. It’s so complex and nuanced and I wanted to know if you could kind of talk about either what you’re seeing in your work in terms of race and leadership and either both opportunities and challenges that you're saying in the sector.

[0:09:24.8] STB: Yeah, I want to give a little bit of context for how and why we as an organization got into creating this whole Race to Lead initiative because, for years, BMP did a lot of research on generational dynamics in organizational leadership always with the race-based lens and analysis and at the time that I joined the organization in 2013, there was a sort of generational dynamics I think were seeming less the fault line and there was more concern and agitation around, “Well, you know if there were these transitions that might have been happening between the sort of boomer generation and Gen-X, was that really leading to the kind of increased opportunity for people of color?”

There has been sort of this assumption that because Gen-X and I’m you know, a young Xer and X-ennial but because Gen-X demographically looked very different from boomers, there had been this assumption that, “Oh, the sector’s just going to end up being more diverse in the 2000s, 2010s than it had been in the '90s,” and what we were seeing and observing was that that didn’t seem to have happened and we were curious as to why.

So as our organization that takes research seriously, we started out by interviewing a bunch of colleagues and asking why they thought things hadn’t changed as much as we expected and then we did this survey and the recently, survey in 2016, you know the number of respondents was double what we expected. So we knew that we were really, like, hitting on some of the – people wanted to discuss and explore in the sector.

I think between the data that we collected in 2016 and then 2019 and now, we’re in this meaning-making phase from the data we collected in 2022, a very strong through-line has been that leadership is challenging. I think that’s always been true and there had been this narrative, “You know, maybe people of color don’t want these crazy executive director jobs because the job isn’t sustainable.”

Well, it is true, that the job often is not sustainable but what our data showed was that it was not true that people of color didn’t want those jobs. We saw higher aspiration on the part of people of color but people of color were also reporting that their aspiration was being blocked by structural barriers, and so the new twist on that data as we start looking up the data we collected in 2022 is it seems like the aspiration is maybe not as high as we saw in 2019, right? And so that’s then concerning, right?

Like aspiration was declining for white respondents, evisceration now starts also declining for respondents of color. As a sector, what are we going to do to finally figure out ways to make the job and the jobs of leading organizations be sustainable? So that people will aspire to and want to take on leadership instead of feeling like it’s always being thrust on them or that they’re unprepared for it or that they’re not supported in it, which are the narratives that we hear too often.

[0:12:41.8] JSS: I want to unpack that because there is a lot in what you said. I want us to go back to that generational piece. So I’m a Gen-Xer. In my work with organizations, I’m definitely seeing the generational differences among how people see leadership, what people expect in terms of support, and how people see power, and so I would love to know if either in that earlier iteration of data or even in what you’re seeing as you work with different organizations, how that generational divide is playing itself out?

[0:13:18.4] STB: So the generational lenses, one that we’re really interested in exploring with the 2022 data because, you know, we’ve now gotten to a point where there are sort of more younger respondents as a part of the whole sample and so our hope is that we’ll be able to see trends from like a quantitative perspective more clearly this time but anecdotally, I’m hearing the same thing.

Both from other capacity builders who are noting or observing some real differences between older and younger staff of organizations and think how to think about power, how people think about power, how do people think about sort of authority in relation to position in power or not, you know? And I think some democratization of our organization is really important, right?

I think that there has been an over-reliance on hierarchy in a lot of organizations and sort of an attitude of like decisions get made at one level, and you, at a different level are just tasked with executing them, right? And so when we created the race equity assessment, one of the things that we were really interested in surfacing was how people felt about their opportunity to have voice in their organization and to not just feel inexperienced.

That they have an opportunity to be consulted if there were going to be decisions made that will impact their own work. So you know I think, we’re in this moment of there’s a lot of negotiation around all of these things, what does leadership mean, what should power look like inside of organizations, et cetera, and I think it’s very unsettled right now.

[0:15:08.3] JSS: That makes sense to me because I think, at least, what I tell folks I work with is to be very clear around how the open issue are around the shift and structure and I’ve had clients say this to me, “Not changing structure, structure is what it is” which I think, “Okay, you got to be honest about that and be direct so that people can decide if that’s where they want to stay, employee or not” you know what I mean?

Because there is, I feel like a shift in generation. Some of the things I was asked to do as a young professional, I would never ask other folks to do, you know what I mean? And nor do I feel like just because I did it, you have to. I don’t feel that way either, but a lot of people do, right? So I think that those are some of the things people are negotiating.

I appreciate you putting it that way because I think it is a delicate balance as people try to figure out, “How do I fit in, in a way that not fit in but how do If it in this organization, still be who I am and do work I love?”

[0:16:11.4] STB: I think that part of what can get confusing in the way that we oversimplify when we talk about the justice of function of generation is that people’s sort of life career, like where they are in their life and career, often tracks to their levels of seniority and authority in an organization, right?

And so those things often travel together, and I have gently been reminded by a former boss that I was sometimes an agitational questioner of him around organizational decisions, and I do remember being asked at one point when I was being agitational was, “Well, if you had the power to make a different decision, what would you do?” and I was stumped, right?

And so as a young staff person, the fact that I was stumped about what I would have actually done once I had all of the information that like senior leaders at the organization were juggling when they made the decision that I disagreed with, you know? So that’s where, “Are we posing questions, or are we proposing solutions?”

I think that’s the challenge. I think, and especially for those of us who, you know, went to college, got graduate degrees, all of that. We’ve been very trained in analysis and an analysis that is deconstructive, right? Like we’re deconstructing all of the problematic things but are we trained in constructive decision making?

Like that feels like it’s not always what we’ve been oriented to, and as someone who did “adjuncting” at my alma mater for a few years, like I know that I was trading my students to be critical about deconstructing things but not always pushing to make strong propositions to factor in competing information and have that be with an informed, what they would say to an organizational leader about how to actually move forward, so I think that’s also then part of what makes all of this complicated in real-world organizations.

[0:18:24.5] JSS: You all can’t see me but I’m nodding as we talk because that’s – I probably took the same approach with my students too, right? Ask, you know, critical questions.

[0:18:33.8] STB: Ask critical questions, yeah.

[0:18:34.5] JSS: But it’s all – right? But it’s also this piece that I’m sitting with more and more as like, “What does the ‘something new’ look like?” And how can we – sometimes it’s hard to imagine that there can be anything new and different, right? So I appreciate that.

[0:18:48.9] STB: And I think also what often gets in the way of imagining something new is that so many of our organizations, particularly organizations that are led by people of color are so cash-strapped because of the inequitable ways that money moves in our sector.

[0:19:02.3] JSS: Yes, yes, and so I want to pick up on the thread of something you said earlier when you talked about the waning aspirations of wanting to lead in an organization and when that was down a little bit from the last time you all did the data collection for Race to Lead. Can you talk a little bit more about what some of those barriers to leadership might be?

[0:19:24.5] STB: Yeah, and so this is speculation, I want to be clear because we haven’t, you know, reports will be coming out later in 2023, but you know, I think right now, some of what we’re speculating is that people have seen how difficult the experience has been of a lot of people who have moved into leadership and recognize that those jobs are hard and that it may be what made it hard was not about someone who didn’t look like you being in the position.

Now, people have seen other black people in this positions of power and has seen the hell that they catch. So you know, I think that that is part of it. I suspected that that is part of it. I also think that in this moment that we collected the data, right? The survey was opened in 2022 only two years after COVID, I just think the amount of fatigue was just real, deeply felt, and unaddressed oftentimes by our organizations, by our sector, just by the world.

The sort of assumption has been that we’re just moving forward again now that we’ve got vaccines, but you know, I think that there’s some lingering struggles that people have had and I think people have, maybe this is pulling more from some of the quiet quitting narrative, but the people have been wrestling with and questioning what is the role that they want work to play in their lives and what should work-life balance really look like and recognizing that often organizational leadership requires that balance being often weighted more towards work than towards life.

[0:21:07.2] JSS: I’m definitely seeing that too, definitely seeing the fatigue, and it’s fatigue both from how hard it is to do this work to your point but also just the environment that we’re doing it in, that people are working in. It’s COVID, it’s politics, depending on where you live, it’s just the national climb and what that is. So that makes leading a nonprofit really hard.

[0:21:31.7] STB: Yeah, and I think, you know, going to bring up research that the independent sector, supported and commissioned, finding the nonprofit organizations are doing less advocacy, right? I worry that that is a response and like sort of a chilling effect from the last few years of really divisive politics and when actually, what is needed from our sector is to take a stand, right?

Like that’s what staff are often calling for their leaders to do is take a stand. That was the call in 2020, and I think that’s also an important way that organizations demonstrate their commitment to race equity is by taking a stand on those issues in the world, even if it seems unrelated to the particular programmatic focus of the organization. It is just a very interesting time for organizations in our sector.

[0:22:31.9] JSS: Yes, for sure. For sure. So I’m wondering if you want to talk a little bit about the building blocks for change work. So I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit more about what that is and how to use it.

[0:22:47.5] STB: Absolutely, yeah. So super excited about Building Blocks for Change. It is a race-equity assessment that we developed based on insights and learning from the Race to Lead initiative and. So you’ll remember [inaudible 0:23:02.5] from like maybe 2019, 2020 because you were a part of a lot of these conversations when we started moving in this direction of like what could be assessment too, what would the framework be.

So just so excited that it’s live. Anyone who is interested should be going to buildingmovement.org but also buildingblocksforchange.org to learn more about the framework itself but as I said, it does draw on lessons from the Race to Lead dataset and what we started doing with Race to Lead in 2019 was asking respondents about their experiences in their organizations and part of what we thought was important about the assessment was to really try to put at the center, the staff experience.

We looked at other tools that were out there and recognize that sometimes assessments took a little bit of a shortcut and were more like audits of organizational policy that was filled out by organizational leadership, which is important, right? Like that is critical, but if a policy is on the books or implemented but staff are not experiencing it as making a change, then there’s still this gap, and so that’s part of what we wanted to be able to help organizations inform by building out the assessment.

The way that the assessment works is that staff of an organization, everybody, staff in leadership roles, et cetera, take a survey, and we are able to automatically, through the magic of algorithms analyze the data from an organization and then produce a customized report with custom narratives, custom visualizations that help organizations make sense of the data that we’ve collected through a framework of learning as a core capacity.

Leadership as a core capacity, voice, and sort of like the sense that staff have a voice and power in the organization, has a core capacity, and then conversation as a core capacity. And that last one is right now standing out to me or really resonating because we recognize that that is one area, that capacity that a lot of organizations really need to develop more that the ability to actually relate, have meaningful dialogue about complicated things is the pathway to organizations being more equitable and inclusive.

If organizations are always shutting down these conversations, you know, it may not even just be about like race equity, right? But if that is the default modality, then oftentimes what we’re seeing is that staff are not experiencing that organization as inclusive, as equitable, as organizations that have more of a facility and capacity to have difficult conversations.

[0:25:59.1] JSS: I will drop all of the links to the resources that you’ve mentioned, including the assessment, the Race to Lead EMP, all of that, I will link to the show notes. So folks, go and check that out.

I think what that last piece is so important that you mentioned around having the capacity to have the conversations, right? So I think there is a willingness, “Do you want to have it?” right? But then I think, “Do you have the tools to have it?” Right? What I find is people try to dive into the deep end like a white supremacy culture, and you only had one swim lesson, right? One swim lesson and I find that leaders are trying to have these really complicated nuance conversations around really tough stuff and maybe they’ve never had a conversation before, maybe they’ve had three other ones that went really bad, you know what I mean?

I really appreciate that last part very much because I think the reality that I see in my work is that people are very much having different experiences, and lots of times, no way to talk about that.

[0:26:58.5] STB: With the assessment is that it would be resource for organizations themselves but also for capacity builders, right? So there’s some drudgery that I hear from my friends who do consulting and capacity building around, you know, custom survey every time for a different organization and really could be asking the same question with like they’d feel like they need to get something custom to justify it.

So our hope is that more consultants and capacity builders will also integrate the assessment as a toolbox so that they’re able to have the organizations they’re working with go through the process. The organization gets the report, but the consultant and capacity builder is there to help really hold their hand as they move from, you know, affirming if they have the motivation to then experimenting with practices and then to having those practices become really embedded processes and structures that are a part of the organization’s core infrastructure and fabric.

We recognize that that is a key and critical role for consultants and capacity builders like yourselves, and our hope is that the assessment will help support folks to do that work as well.

[0:28:07.5] JSS: Yeah. I was on the site kind of poking around a little bit and definitely see that sometimes, you need an assessment. Lots of times, people, if you are a small nonprofit and you’re working with limited resources, that’s a challenge, right? That’s a barrier but also, people need sometimes that report to say, “Here’s what’s happening.” You know what I mean? Again, it’s a nice level set of, “Okay, this is what’s happening. Here are some things we can do to address what’s happening.”

[0:28:35.9] STB: Yeah, and we’ve created resources and tools to support organizations and taking it from, you know, the level setting based on the report to then figuring out what actions people will commit to collectively and you know, so – and we’ve tried to keep the pricing accessible so that organizations that are smaller can really take advantage of the resources and then figure out ways to take action themselves.

And we also want organizations that have the ability to work with a skilled and experienced consultant and capacity builder to also integrate the assessment process into what they’re doing with the paid consultant. So we’re trying to have it work in both modalities, and we’ve had success in both ways.

[0:29:22.0] JSS: Absolutely. Yeah, I could see. I could totally see that, I could totally see that. I wanted to kind of pivot a little bit and ask you what – because you mentioned a role in that particular piece of work for capacity builders. I want to ask you as you think about support for black leaders and leaders of color, what concerns you most about DEI and ways that it's used to support or not support leaders of color? I would love to talk about that.

[0:29:58.7] STB: Well, I have very mixed feelings after these ten years of working in this field of sort of national capacity building and developing resources for organizations to make change, in part because I think there’s often a lot of concept-creep like people utilize the same words but to mean vastly different things, and so they don’t want to have to be a semantic thing about like, “Well, how are we really defining diversity, equity, and inclusion?”

But it’s more that as the terms become ubiquitous, I think they generally begin to lose their meaning and halved in a way, and so that’s why I think some people are now adding J into the mix, but you know, I think increasing the acronym doesn’t feel like it’s actually what we need to do as a sector, and so you know I think for me, I think the other part of the sort of DEI equation is that as we now have more people of color in executive leadership roles and positions, have we as practitioners updated our thinking?

So that the work of pushing for diversity, equity, and inclusion is supporting leaders of color as well, right? I think in a previous generation, DEI was about challenging white leaders, right? But now we have leaders of color in those positions, and so how can DEI as a field and as a practice support leaders of color, support staff, and also ensure that our organizations are having impact that benefits communities? I think that all of those stakeholders are not quite, don’t seem to me at least, to be in balance right now, and a lot of what I hear around sort of DEI efforts gone wrong in black or BLC-led organizations.

[0:32:06.4] JSS: No, I hear you on that, and I think that there’s disconnect, or I don’t know if disconnect might not be the right word but there are real differences in the experiences of white leaders and black leaders and leaders of color, right? I think that sometimes that’s not always acknowledged. I say that myself coming out of a nonprofit in the leadership role where some people cannot take instruction from me.

They couldn’t, and I think that I hear the nuance and your point around how do we get to that, right? How do we get Boris to be more so? Not only just be supportive, I don’t think a lot of times even acknowledging. There is this push to diversify the executive role with no support, right? And I think some of the concepts that have been used to kind of dismantle as we talked about earlier, right?

How we may be – well, some of the things we taught our students, I think are then weaponized against leaders of color or their experience in that way, whether it’s intended or not, that’s the way it’s experienced. So I think I hear what you’re saying; there is a level of nuance that I think requires a shift.

[0:33:20.7] STB: And then the added wrinkle, how do we name and address when the staff person who can’t take instruction or direction from a new black leader or other person of color is themselves a person of color, right? The assumption is that it’s only difficult for white staff when an organization has an executive transition that’s also a racial one but based on what I hear from friends, it’s not just white staff who end up sort of having difficulty once the leader is a person of color.

So I think of you know, a friend who moved into an ED role following a white founder and then said to me, “Why is it that once I’m the executive director, staff have all of these issues with policies that I’m just maintaining from my predecessor?” You know? How much of that is about expectation that a lot would change based on the change in the executive leadership versus feeling like they were more free to push back on black leadership, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

We want people to be able to engage in dialogue, and I think for a lot of leaders of color it feels like, “Why am I being undermined?” You know, I think that’s the sort of thing, that’s the complication that has been really fascinating and also really painful to hear about from so many of my friends and peers in the sector.

[0:34:53.8] JSS: Y'all can’t see me, but I’m nodding and because that I can connect deeply to that experience and when I do think that there is not the level, as you eluded to just earlier, but not the level of grace, right? Not the level of having a long runway to make mistakes, right? And not the recognition that typically within a new role, I mean, it could be two, three years before that organization becomes yours.

It is, you’re dealing with your predecessor’s organization, policies, practices, the paint and color on the wall, like that is not your organization yet, but staff often hold that new leader responsible and I do think that there is a level of, "Why are people coming for me?" Like, "I’ve been there two weeks,” you know what I mean? And "Here I am, a black woman; why are black folks coming for me?" I think that’s real, and I – having had, you know, friends and colleagues in that situation is so painful, it is so painful, and I think that nuance is what our current DEI frameworks don’t address.

[0:36:08.2] STB: I completely agree. You know, I have to admit, though that I don’t exactly know how to address it myself. I know how to name it when it’s happening to a friend or a colleague and it helped to provide context and be able to say this as a normal experience, but sadly, it is an experience that is observable in the data that we have collected. We can actually see that leaders of color who have a predecessor of color versus leaders of color who have reported that they had a white predecessor are saying different things about their experience, but they’re bored in their staff, right?

So it’s useful to normalize that, but how do we actually address it? That’s, I think, the opportunity but challenge also for our peers in the sector, and I think it really is particularly for those who have been doing this work for a longer time to be able to figure that out. I think that right now, that seems, well, maybe less right now, given the very clear backlash against DEI affirmative action, et cetera.

But for a period of a few years, it seemed like there are people hanging on a shingle every week saying they could open an organization with DEI with no actual track record of having done it, but you know, so I don’t think those thoughts are necessary going to help us figure out this complicated thing, but you know, people like you who have the experience, who have been doing the work, who have been thinking about it and doing the research, et cetera, I think that is an opportunity for us to really figure out how we’re going to help organizations.

So that this moment, when there is clearly going to be a lot of executive transition in the sector and people who we thought might have retired a decade ago are now starting to actually retire, I do think it’s going to be an opportunity for people of color to step into leadership positions, we as a sector need to be able and willing to really support their leadership and I just think sadly too often, they haven’t had the support they’ve needed.

[0:38:07.9] JSS: Yeah, I appreciate that so much because I think kind of moving into talking about the opportunity in the work, I think that’s the opportunity in the work is to – because a lot of some of what we’ve talked about in terms of challenge not only that’s preventable, but I also think there has to be a recognition that there needs to be a stronger onboarding process for people and that for new leaders and not new to leadership but new organizations and more work to be done in preparing for new leadership and I think some of that piece that we just talked about, about the intra-racial can happen there.

So I would love for you to – I want to try to end on a positive note because we’ve been lifting up lots of variables and lots of challenges. So we talked about that opportunity in around leadership transition. What’s one opportunity, or maybe there’s more than one that you see in the work that you're doing to create a better sector?

[0:39:10.4] STB: I see a lot of opportunity. I do think that the transitions that have already happened in terms of having more people of color in positions of influence and power in the sector is going to continue to make positive change within the sector, and I think it helps to normalize that we can lead, that we can lead in ways that are collaborative and supportive of each other not just building our own individual empires.

But really committing to organizational ecosystems of support, and so I’m really excited about what the lessons end up being around how organizations and leaders are in deep solidarity and alignment with each other to deliver real change for communities. That’s what I’m really excited about, and for that to be the case in the face of a resurgent right-wing, conservative supreme court, et cetera, right?

The other side of the political aisle is thrashing, certainly, and wreaking a lot of havoc for communities of color, for LGBT folks, for women, et cetera. Part of the reason that they’re thrashing is because, in a lot of ways, our movements have won a lot already, right? And they’re trying to claw us back to the 1950s. You know, it is, for better or worse, 2023 right now, and time only marches forward.

So I am hopeful about what the current generation of nonprofit leaders and the upcoming rising leaders of our sector can do for the sector and for our country.

[0:40:59.2] JSS: I love that. I have nothing to add. If you had one piece of advice that you would give a nonprofit leader, what would it be?

[0:41:10.3] STB: So it’s so funny that you asked me that question because a colleague and I have just been interviewing a bunch of black leaders for a project, and we’ve been ending our interviews with them with that same question, and you know first, often, like I hear this chuckle of like, “Don’t do it, don’t step up,” you know? But people don’t really mean it, but I do think that the sort of sentiment that I have heard and felt is find your squad. Because you might be in a leadership role that is a sort of a solo leadership role of your organization, and that can be isolating.

But the structure of your organization does not need to limit the relationships that you have outside of the organization and so find a squad of other leaders, particularly other leaders of color who might have experienced similar struggles on their pathway to leadership or once they get into that role but whatever it is, find and build that community of other leaders because it will support and sustain you in your leadership, but it will also help to bring your organizations closer together.

To have that kind of alignment that our sector needs between organizations that we’re all moving in a similar direction, we can stay in our lanes and be complimentary but we need to have strong relationships so that we’re moving together forward.

[0:42:39.3] JSS: Oh, I love that. I love that, and if people want to connect with you and your work, where can they find you?

[0:42:44.5] STB: So check out buildingmovement.org. Our website has staff emails on our About page. Also, check out racetolead.org, which is where all of the reports and research for our Race to Lead initiative is housed. Check out buildingblocksforchange.org, which is the Race Equity Assessment. Check out our Solidarity Is work.

There’s just so many parts of BMP that I hope people will check out. And I’m just really excited to have had the chance to reconnect with you and talk about all of this work. So thanks so much for having me.

[0:43:18.6] JSS: Oh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, here just sharing your experience is such a gift, and the work that you’re doing to support our nonprofit leadership, particularly among leaders of color is so important, and I love the nuance that you bring to this conversation, so I knew I had to have you on this season. So thank you so much for agreeing to the conversation.

[0:43:43.4] STB: Absolutely.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:43:45.5] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it.

Until next time, take care.

[END]

S2, Ep 11: Hurry Up Already, Your Equity Work is Moving Too Slowly

SEASON 2, EPISODE 11

Hurry Up Already, Your Equity Work is Moving Too Slowly | S2, Ep 11

SEASON 2 EPISODE 11

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:01] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott. You are listening to the Race in the Workplace podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a Racial Equity Consultant and Founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered through sustainable, step-by-step changes.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:38] JSS: Hi, it's Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you're listening. This week's episode is all about racial equity work that moves too slowly and how that slow movement or that slow willingness to live into commitment can diminish staff morale. So, I'm calling this episode, hurry up already. I talk about analysis, paralysis, and how even from the most well-intentioned leaders, analysis paralysis can keep them from advancing needed shifts in their organizations’ practices, resulting in racial equity fatigue. All right, let's get into it.

Moving too slowly erodes staff morale. This week, I want to focus on instances where racial equity work moves too slowly. Where stated commitments take too long to realize. Usually, my guidance around time and speed focuses on moving too fast. Taking up racial equity in a fast-paced work environment means that staff will not have sufficient time to grapple with adaptive questions, will not have sufficient time to think about how to apply new approaches, or practice using new tools, like the racial equity impact analysis, which is the first tool that I use with clients and I'll link to it in the show notes. However, moving too slowly, has dire consequences as well. Let's unpack it.

A key element to realizing an organizational equity commitment is listening to staff feedback and taking clear and decisive action, once pain points become clearer. But too often, leaders get stuck in analysis paralysis, because they have too many options to consider. Or they're afraid the option that they chose is a mistake. So as a result, nothing happens. Staff are waiting, and nothing happens. So, that's hard and erodes staff morale. Addressing staff asymmetries. I worked with an organization once where the decision to make a racial equity commitment had lingered for a very long time, and it struck me because as I said, a second ago, I caution clients about speed most of the time. Follow-through that happens too slowly, is just as destructive and demoralizing as moving too fast, even when the intent to take action is present. This instance is another one that calls the question between intent and impact that a leader and executive director, for example, can have the best of intentions. But taking up the work too slowly, or failing to live into commitments fast enough, can have a devastating impact and we have to hold both of those.

If your organization has expressed an explicit commitment to doing equity-centered work, then do it. Do something, a small thing and do it with intention. Your equity conversation in this part, so let's say if you're a new leader, or you're coming into an organization, or even if you've been in an organization for a long time, and are deciding to take up this work, your work in this space might be for your staff, their first real conversation about race and racism, and what it means in their everyday work. And for some, it can really challenge belief systems.

So, when leaders create expectations to include a racial analysis, for example, in work products, it feels daunting, and there's no shame in that, which is why it's so important to be clear. But for others in your organization, it's not their first exposure to this analysis. It's their 601st conversation, and perhaps they're witnessing the third racial equity initiative. Maybe you are coming into the organization for some staff, you might be the third or fourth executive director. Maybe your initiative is the third initiative within your organization.

So, don't ignore this asymmetry between those who are not as far along in their respective journeys as others, right? I mean this cross racially. Don't ignore this because we bring different sources of knowledge into every workplace. Lived experience is just one way to know something. There are other ways that staff without lived experience can tap into, like race and formed research, and practitioner knowledge. These asymmetries are why communicating clear expectations about what staff needs to know and how it needs to be reflected in their work to do their jobs becomes critically important. Avoid racial equity fatigue. As I just mentioned a second ago, moving too slowly comes with real consequences, including racial equity fatigue.

In the article overcoming racial equity fatigue, I'll link to it in the show notes. Benjamin Abtan writes that racial equity fatigue is the fatigue of those who feel that progress toward racial equity is frustratingly slow, or even stalled, and those who are disgusted by the political backlash against reform. This is the fatigue of those who feel that the charges of systemic racism being made are not always fair, who resist change, and for whom the changes are happening too fast. This is the fatigue of organizations that have been spending time and money with little visible improvement in team cohesion and effectiveness.

I want to unpack this a little bit, and I have seen this kind of fatigue in organizations too. My colleague, [inaudible 00:06:38] talks about the tread being stripped off tires, and this is what that feels like to me. It's where an organization could have worked using different approaches, led by consultants, because we all tend to approach and work differently, maybe different approaches, and they've still not gotten the outcome that they wanted, and staff feel exhausted by it. There could be as noted in the quote, a lot underneath that exhaustion. It could be people are sabotaging. It could be people are resisting, and it's just for those people who are deeply committed to mission, want to see the organization move forward, want to see it move forward in racially equitable ways, but it's not happening, and it's happening, or it's happening so slowly, that they feel like they're just pouring energy and effort and nothing's happening. That in itself can create a fatigue.

So, those of us who are working with organizations like that, have to be really careful about how we approach that work, what kind of time and space that we give people to recover, because there can be a recovery. But we just have to be very intentional about how we got an organization who's in that place.

Moving through this level of fatigue can be done, for sure. But will require both trust building, and decisive intentional actions. It's important to kind of hold all of these things at the same time and navigate very carefully for an organization experiencing fatigue.

This is a podcast about the practical. So, I want to give you some practical actions that you can take to avoid the too slow trap. These are just my thoughts, and in no way does this convey consulting relationships. I feel like I have to say that. But here's some things that you can do.

Number one, ask and act. Ask staff and decide where equity work can happen and create opportunities for those who are ready to take on projects in their respective area of focus. In other words, when you have folks who are ready to go, who want to try things, let them. I do think that you have to be mindful about how far people go. But as long as you are being very clear about expectations, and you're walking alongside, meaning, you leader, are in it too, then I think let people try things. I think innovation is incredibly important in this space and let people try things. It may work. It may not. Either way, it's a learning experience. So, ask and act.

Okay. Here's the second thing. Acknowledge areas where people need support. So, make space who for people who aren't there yet. I think it's fine to say that one to ask, what is it that you need in terms of staff? What is it that you need to know in order to be able to meet this expectation? But in order for that to happen, you have to have a clear expectation. So, acknowledge where people need support, and it might be people need support around specific areas of knowledge. It could be people need a class. It could be people need to grapple with their own privilege. It could be people need to grapple with their own lack of privilege, so you won't know unless you ask. But it's important to ask the question and to acknowledge that sometimes folks need support, and then offer it, right? Even if that person is a leader, I think even more so to be vulnerable enough to say, “You know what, I don't know everything and I'm still learning.”

For me personally, as a consultant, that is absolutely the case for me. Even at my big age, I feel like there are so many things I don't know, and I don't feel to me personally. I don't feel like I have to pretend like I know every framework or I know every reading about everything connected to diversity, equity, inclusion, and what it looks like and organizational development. I don't feel like I have to do that. I have no problem doing research and figuring things out. But at the same time, I think there's a vulnerability in saying, “I don't know. I'm still growing. I'm still learning.”

The other thing I want to say about support is that I talk about my work in the context of journey, and I feel strongly for me, it is a journey, but it's not one that I'm starting off at point A and then I'm going to stop at point B, and then I'm going to land at point C, and ultimately, I'm going to land at point D. For me personally, my journey is not a linear one in that way, and I want to name that because even in my own personal journey, what I call a growth journey, there are things that I learn, I go back and revisit, and I'm like, “Wow, I think about that totally differently now.” Or there are things that I think I'm over it in terms of things that have happened in my background, work related things, and then a situation will come up and I come back and reconsider that.

Right now, I'm in a place where I'm really, I wouldn’t say say stuck, but I'm really deeply considering historical connections between the past and present. And over a period of history that I've studied before reconstruction, I'm there. I'm back there and I'm reevaluating and thinking about things that I've learned in the past and then coming back and relooking at that from a 2023 lens. So, it's not linear. It's back and forth and sometimes you go to the left or to the right. So, I just want to name that, as we're thinking about how to support people who have been asked to work differently in some kind of way or work according to a different expectation.

That leads us to number three, which is create clear expectations. I feel so strongly about this, y'all. Whether you are an executive director or policy director or research director, whatever your title is, you should always create very clear expectations when you're asking them to incorporate either a new racial equity practice, a new protocol, a new way of working, that should always come within a very clear expectation. It should connect back to your organization's equity why, and then those expectations should be equitable, meaning they should draw on the different ways of knowing.

This is not a load for staff of color to carry. Okay. This is not for black staff and staff identifies people of color to own. In other words, you want to avoid over privileging those with lived experiences as a way of knowing, or who have an existing racial analysis. I've seen this happen too, where people who have this analysis already coming into policymaking organizations, for example, their leadership will overly rely on those, because those are skills those people already have. They don't compensate them anymore. But overly rely on those folks to always produce that kind of analysis, which I think in some ways, doesn't without necessarily challenging those who don't have that level of analysis to gain it, and that can also be demoralizing. Not only create clear expectations, but hold staff accountable to those expectations and equitable ways.

Leaders of organizations, if you have supportive systems, and structures within your organization, and take intentional actions, your organization's work will move forward, avoiding the too slow trap. Staff who are ready and willing and interested in this work are watching how and how fast their leaders move. Leaders, take the help of your staff seriously because it is fragile. Speaking for myself after we up on hope every day. Moving too slow will extinguish your staffs’ willingness to continue to dive into really hard places with you. Be mindful of how many times you go to that well. All right, until next time, take the best of care.

[OUTRO]

[00:14:53] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time, take care.

[END]

S2, Ep 10: Turning the Fire Inward, Part 2 for DEI Professionals

SEASON 2, EPISODE 10

Turning the Fire Inward, Part 2 for DEI Professionals

[INTRODUCTION] 

[0:00:01] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott. You are listening to the Race in the Workplace podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a racial equity consultant and founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered through sustainable, step-by-step changes. 

[EPISODE]

[0:00:38] JSS: Hi, it's Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you're listening. This week's episode is an encouragement to those who do DEI work, regardless of title. I'd like to encourage you not to turn our passion and fire for racial justice inward in ways that burn up our industry. DEI is a relatively new field and is facing many challenges, both within our field and politically. 

I'm calling this episode, Turning the Fire Inward, Part Two. It's for folks who do DEI work because I think that there's a moment happening in our field. We can either turn our passion for racial justice toward white supremacy and lock into disrupting it in all of its forms and every type of organization everywhere it is, or we can turn that fire in on ourselves as a field and unleash that passion, that fire toward our own. What are people going to do? I don't know, but I'd to share a little bit of what I see and, ultimately, what I hope for. Let's get into it. 

I want to start by unpacking the pressure that we're under right now and that is a historical moment. I believe we're in a historical moment. That moment, or this moment rather, has our field under a pretty significant amount of pressure. There is a campaign underway to strip DEI out of higher education institutions. Legislatively, it started in Florida, but model legislation is slowly working its way around the country. 

In season two, episode eight, called Turning the Fire Inward, Part One - For Progressives, I discussed a philanthropic pullback from supporting DEI. In that episode, I talked about the struggles of progressive organizations due to their own internal race and generational dynamics and how they struggle to meet their current moment, this moment of white rage. Honestly, when I think about even using that language, I'm reminded of Carol Anderson's book entitled, White Rage. I'll link to it in the show notes. 

I'm recording this episode just one day after the Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action. All of this in my own thinking is swirling, but it certainly feels like there is an unraveling of systemic ways to address institutional harm. Our field is needed more now than — I don't want to say an ever before and be dramatic, but certainly, our field is needed for sure. 

All right. Let's talk about another challenge. Retrenchment, structural challenges, layoffs inside organizations. According to the article, Demand for Chief Diversity Officers is High. So is turn Over from the Wall Street Journal. The author writes, “The chief DEI officer role often has the smallest departments. They're often the least resource from a budget and staffing perspective. Yet, they're responsible for both influencing and creating wholesale systemic change.” The other thing the article notes is that 63% of diversity chiefs at S&P 500 companies have been in their roles less than three years. 

These are relatively new roles, but they're responsible for managing or leading large-scale change and are often the least resourced. Many of these roles have been cut since exploding in 2020. We're dealing with organizations who many of us may work in or contract with, whether there's a pullback in commitment and time and effort, resources, all that's happening too. 

I want to lift up an internal pressure. How we use others' work, particularly Tema Okun’s work on White Supremacy Culture. I have used Okun’s work naming white supremacy culture in organizations for years. So, for folks who may not be familiar, I'll link to it in the show notes, but in short, it was a list of the characteristics of white supremacy culture and how they're reflected in organizations. Recently, I was on LinkedIn in an article about white supremacy culture and Okun’s work popped up in my feed. Curious, I went to the article. I read it. I thought, “Okay, this is a solid critique.” I did a bit more searching and found, wow, there is quite a bit of critique. Some of it felt really personal, just my observation. 

Perhaps the intensity of people's feelings about Okun’s work is connected to their experiences of her work and how racialized dynamics play out in organizations. I don't know, but it's a curiosity that I hold. Once I discovered the critiques, I went digging even more, and I listened to a podcast she was on to hear her perspective. I'll link to it in the show notes. I read more articles and remain in this place of curiosity. 

I want to be really clear. I've seen Okun’s work weaponized for sure. I've seen white staff weaponize it. I've seen Black staff weaponize it. I've seen people who identify as people of color weaponize it. I've seen Okun’s work weaponized against white leaders, I've seen Okun’s work weaponized against leaders of color. I've seen her work weaponized against Black leaders, particularly Black women. Is any of that, okay? No, absolutely not. I've seen leaders absolutely devastated and tied up in knots around being accused of maintaining and perpetuating white supremacy culture in the organizations they lead, especially if they are newly hired in the ED role, using non-profits as an example. It's a hurtful accusation. 

Because I'm a systems consultant, my focus is on policies, practices, and protocols. The how and where equity lives inside organizations and the surrounding culture. When I've seen that happen, I want to encourage us not to blame Okun’s work but rather to explore what's underneath the weaponization of it. Let's name the system causing the pain, and I would guess what is underneath is powerlessness, which harkens back to the way that many progressive organizations have failed over the years to move beyond naming racism. 

I talked about this explicitly in season two, episode eight of the podcast. Just for context, I'm going to play a little bit of that episode here and I'll meet you on the other side. 

Many progressive organizations tend to be white-led, not always Black, and leaders of color experience these dynamics, too. With big public missions, but inside lives all the isms that run unchecked. When you have that, there's a problem. It's complicated and nuanced, but it's still a problem. What I've found over the years I've been doing the work is that when people feel powerless, disrespected, and excluded from decision-making, it's very difficult to journey toward mission. 

What's the remedy? Let me say that I don't believe any person's work is above critique, including my own, but I do believe and encourage people to use that framework for what it is, but direct the heat of our collective fire for white supremacy, which we're all trying to disrupt. 

Let's direct our fire where it should be, in my opinion, which is directly at white supremacy. I can't say that anymore strongly. Thus, we're all trying to pull that down. We're all trying to disrupt that. We're all trying to dismantle it. Let's direct our fire there.

I got this wonderful advice from a pastor in my church before I went to graduate school. Yeah, I was so nervous about graduate school, because I was so worried that it was going to change the person that I am at my core.  My pastor said, “Joanna, you're going to hear many different things that may challenge what you believe.” He said, “Treat it like you do eating fish. You eat the fish. You toss the bones.” At my big age now, I would add interrogate all of the things and keep what's true and toss what it isn't. 

Pivoting a little bit away from Okun's work, specifically and along a similar vein, there have been so many recent articles critical of DEI. Again, no one's approach or no one's work is above critique, including the critiques. Are there problematic elements of our industry? Yes. Should those be rooted out? Yes. Has it been commodified and in some cases commercialized? Yes. Are some of us influencers and not really about the business of organizational transformation? Yes. 

I'm not one to gatekeep, just to be clear. But my question is, even in that context, does tearing down the field move us closer to disrupting white supremacy? Yes or no? I don't know.  If you have 40 consultants, chances are you'll have 40 different frameworks. That's how saturated our industry is. For me though, it's not about tearing down someone else's framework, rather it's asking myself and my prospective clients, is my framework for this particular client going to get them where they need to be in the next stage of their journey? That's what I care about. 

I want to pivot a little bit from pressure and the pressures that I just talked about, which included political pressure, structural challenges, retrenchment, and then internally how we use each other's work, particularly at Tema Okun's work. I now want to talk about the role DEI plays in the workplace. As I noticed in season two, episode eight, DEI serves an important function inside institutions. Those who hate equity know that. 

I want all of us, or rather my hope, is for all of us who do this work to not turn on the field itself, but rather stay focused on what our shared goal is, which is the disruption of white supremacy, and the way it lives in institutions, and oppresses in institutions, and demoralizes in institutions, and minimizes in institutions, and stifles voice in institutions, not just by race, but by gender, by age, by ability, by size, by name the isms, name the differences in identity in the way people show up at work. Because what that tells me is that just because we take away the function doesn't change the oppression that occurs in institutions. In fact, I would say, the opposite is true. 

One of my favorite quotes is by Victor Ray, who writes that organizations are not race-neutral. They are a microcosm of the society that we live in. I think that's so true, and it's more true, at least for me, every day. This is why our work matters so much, in my opinion. Also, why it's being targeted. 

This is a podcast that always focuses on the practical. I want to leave you with two thoughts. If you're writing an article, I want you to take a minute and look at who is your target? Is it the field or is it a white supremacy? So many of us right now are sounding the alarm, because there are fires all around. I want to encourage all of us to make sure that we're turning our own fire out and not scorching our own field. 

This podcast has been on my heart and in my mind for a really long time. I feel so strongly about the work that we do as DEI practitioners. I felt it necessary to make this episode and to encourage all of us to continue to turn our fire toward the disruption and the dismantling of white supremacy. Take the best of care, until next time.

[OUTRO]

[0:14:16] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time, take care

[END]

S2, Ep 8: Turning the Fire Inward, Part 1 for Progressives

SEASON 2, EPISODE 8

Turning the Fire Inward, Part 1 for Progressives

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott. You are listening to the Race in the Workplace podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a Racial Equity Consultant and Founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered through sustainable, step-by-step changes.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:38] JSS: Hi, it's Joanna Shoffner Scott here. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you are listening. Before I dig into the podcast this week, I want to give a special shout-out to Tamaira B, who gave the podcast five stars on Apple Podcasts. Regarding episode four, Tamaira says, “Thank you, Dr. Shoffner Scott. I really enjoyed how Sheri Brady, talked about what equity really looks like and the need to redefine what an expert is.” Thank you, Tamira. I so appreciate you listening.

This week's podcast is called Turning the Fire Inward for Progressives. I want to speak specifically to leaders of progressive and progressive-leaning organizations about what to do when internal dynamics slow down your work in such a way that you are unable to be effective in fulfilling your mission. These thoughts have been on my mind for some time, and I'm finally ready to share them.

Okay, I'm going to organize this conversation into two parts. The first part is the larger ecosystem. The second is the organizational impact. The first part is big umbrella. The second part is more specific to progressive organizations. Shout out to Annie McKay for guidance on the framing of how I talk about this.

All right, I want to start with framing the current context. First of all, I got to say, it certainly feels like DEI is a target. I'm saying that as a practitioner, totally feeling that. At the time I'm recording this podcast, which is late May of 2023, it marks three years since the murder of George Floyd, yet we are in the middle of a full-blown backpedal from many of the gains made from the protests, the advocacy, and the commitments made in 2020. It's disheartening in so many ways, not surprising but disheartening.

There have been so many stories in the news lately. Let me just walk you through just a few of them. By that, I mean recent news stories questioning the advocacy of DEI training, for an example. There was a piece in the New York Times that mentioned this. I'll link to it in the show notes. Other proclamations that “DEI is dead.” There have been a few articles specific to Virginia prompted by the actions of Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran and won on an anti-CRT platform. CRT is Critical Race Theory. There's been a documented pullback in corporate commitments. I'll link to a piece that I've referenced before from Essence Magazine on that.

I'm hearing anecdotally that there's been a bit of a pullback in philanthropy as well. As I said, not surprising, but certainly disheartening. Saying all of that, as I've said many times. I started in this work before it was an industry as big as it is now. There have always been foundations that believe very much in racial equity and commit their dollars accordingly. Similarly, there have always been organizations that are deeply committed to the work. Yes, it's disheartening, but I always hold on to hope that there are people in the progressive ecosystem that deeply believe in this work.

We are in a moment where DEI is a target similar to the way CRT was targeted for public ridicule. In my opinion, there is a belief among those who hate equity, and I'm going to say it that strongly and hate what it can create in our society, that there's a belief that destroying this particular industry that many of us work in will destroy progressive spaces. I don't know if that's true, it's just my opinion, and I'm entitled to it.

I think that there's something here to grapple with. I think the attack on DEI like the attack on CRT is intentional. I think it's a moment. I was talking to colleagues the other day about this and saying that so many of us, and when I mean us, I mean those of us who do equity work more broadly, whether it's racial, gender, LGBTQIA+, whatever type of equity that you do, a lot of us are ringing the alarm right now. A lot of us are seeing big problems in our world, problems inside organizations that aren't being resolved, and as a result, paralyzing progressive organizations that should be front and center in some of these more public fights.

I'll unpack this more as I go, but you all, that's what's been on my mind lately. As I'm recording this podcast, legislation recently passed in Florida that strips DEI out of higher education as an effort to, and I quote, “Return to colorblind equality.”

Let's unpack the framing here. In my opinion, this framing sets up the argument that somehow DEI is responsible for inequity. I'll say that again. The dominant narrative that I perceive is that somehow DEI as a workplace structure creates inequity between people. Very problematic.

Now let's talk about the other part of the narrative, the return to colorblind equality. When I initially read that you all, I almost fell out of my chair in such a problematic frame, but it sounds good. People who hate equity and want our multiracial society to return to wider times in the past put a lot of weight on equality. I mean, equality is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Recently, I did an interview for a blog called How Stuff Works on the differences between equity and equality. I'll link to it in the show notes. I remember making the point.

Let's say we set equity to the side for just a second. We don't even have colorblind equality in our society right now, nor have we ever. Yet, equality is one of our national values, but in no way are people in similar situations treated the same way across identities, across race, across the board. That doesn't happen. There's a big difference between the national narrative and the actual everyday life of people of a variety of identities or differences in identity. In my opinion, equality in and of itself is yet another unrealized ideal, and to espouse to it is moving the goalpost again towards something that I believe very much hides whiteness.

The framing of the anti-DEI sentiment is problematic and bullshit, if I can be that direct, but it sounds good. This is the current context or at least part of it, that progressive organizations are currently working in, in addition to burnout COVID, and fatigue. There's a lot going on in the environment around progressive organizations.

All right, I want to pivot just a little bit. I've titled this episode, Turning the Fire Inward, and here's what I mean by that. Instead, of working on a shared organizational mission, people have turned the fire that they have toward that mission inward and toward each other. I think this is what we're seeing in so many progressive spaces.

Last year, I read an Intercept article that was circulating called, “Elephant in the Zoom: Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History.” I read this last year. When I first read it, I thought, “Okay, yeah. I can see some of that for sure, 100%.” But in prepping for this podcast, because I knew I wanted to talk about Turning the Fire Inward, I reread that article and I have a little bit of a different perspective. Here we are as a society for those who identify as progressives, it's a moment. I mean, for real. It's a moment. As I said earlier, so many of us are ringing the alarm right now.

All right. What is the root of what we're seeing in progressive spaces or this disappearance? It's almost a fading back if you will. What's happening? Many progressive organizations tend to be white-led, not always Black, and leaders of color experience these dynamics too. With big public missions, but inside lives all the isms that run unchecked.

When you have that, there's a problem. It's complicated and nuanced, but it's still a problem. What I've found over the years I've been doing the work is that when people feel powerless, disrespected, and excluded from decision-making, it's very difficult to journey toward mission. Without question, staff will either call you out or they will call you in, or both. A lot of what is reflected in that, “Elephant in the Zoom” article is the way people are being treated inside organizations.

I want to be clear, this is not just, “Oh, those pesky kids. Oh, it's those this generation or that generation.” No. People are naming deep structural and persistent problems that have gone unchecked for a long time. How is that powerlessness being dealt with and addressed? Are you asking Black women to do deeply serious, intense, emotionally taxing work, but at the same time, people touching their hair in the office? I mean, come on, you all, come on. As a leader, have you only been willing to name the racism, but not disrupt it, not stop it?

That disingenuous disconnect is what has given so much fodder to those who hate equity, in my opinion. I think people who leave progressive organizations got to get real and got to get real, real quick about equity and what it's going to look like in your organizations. You can't hold on to old organizational norms that get in the way of fulfilling your mission at this important moment in history. For some of you all listening, your organizations were founded for this moment, but where are you? Where are you? I think folks are stuck. In a lot of places, status quo is what's keeping you stuck.

All right, I want to talk about how it plays out in organizations. How do these patterns play out in organizations? Going from the macro now to the micro.

If you are leading a progressive organization, I want you to turn the volume up, because I think this is an important part to pay attention to. My colleague, Eileen Garcia, wrote a blog post recently called, “The Backlash to Workplace DEI.” Very thoughtful article. I'll link to it in the show notes. There are gems in that writing and I will discuss a few of them now.

Eileen's piece names that while the industry of DEI is relatively new, the work of racial equity is not and has been going on for a very, very long time. While it's had different names, abolition, civil rights, anti-racism, whatever you call it, it's been going on for as long as inequity has been going on. It has been about addressing oppression created by systemic wrongs. We all know the inequity in this country has been going on for well before the founding. Quite a long time.

Eileen also notes that the public statements from organizations around the murder of George Floyd were everywhere, and they were. They were everywhere. Everybody was making a statement. Everyone was making a commitment. We also saw the commodification of DEI. In some ways, as Eileen notes, that was helpful and useful. That racism wasn't just something to talk about, but rather both the non-profit and for-profit sectors felt the pressure to address it. They addressed it by investing in consultants and in-house professionals who could create systems to address inequities in a range of workplace practices, including those types of culture. That was directly from Eileen's piece.

This is really the crux of it, right here. I'm going to read this part as well. While investing in organizational culture was not new, centering bias in the discussion felt radically different. Moving culture conversations into this sphere of DEI was an acknowledgment of the elephant in the room of much of the previous organizational culture work. More than a ping-pong table and casual Fridays, organizations seeking positive culture must understand their power dynamics, create true inclusion, and enact policies that counteract bias in workplace rewards and punishments. That's it, right there. Over the last few years, it has almost felt mainstream for organizations to set out and do that. But for many who began these efforts, setting out on the path was as far as they were willing to go on the journey.

When I read this for the first time, you all, those words let off the screen at me for Eileen's work. The focus on racial equity in this experience within an organization's cultural context, that's the new part. Progressive organizations like many other types of organizations have challenges. As long as you have people with different backgrounds coming together to work on something shared, you're going to have conflict. Particularly, if you have no policies, practices, or protocols to help manage those interactions. That's a given that's going to happen. What DEI did was name what was already there. DEI doesn't create inequity, it names it. This naming dynamic is playing out in organizations and movements and in schools.

Now, when you couple this with generational differences within progressive spaces, that adds a whole other layer. In the past, I think people suffered through non-profit spaces. I know I have, and accepted that if you're working in a non-profit, there's a certain amount of implicit bias, there's a certain amount of racism that you have to deal with in order to do the work that you love. Now, people are no longer willing to live with all of those isms as they pursue work that matters to them. For most people when an organization's values don't line up with their own values, that's the automatic deal breaker, people are out.

These generational differences name a structural issue. To Eileen's point, to stop at merely naming and starting the journey, that's as far as some people are willing to go. That's status quo right there, but guess what? This isn't a moment for that. This is a moment where more is needed and many progressive organizations aren't up to it. That's just the truth. Now, does that mean you have to stay in that place? Absolutely not. Because I deeply believe every day is an opportunity to make different, more equitable choices in the work that you do.

All right, so now what? I've talked about what I see as the paralysis in progressive spaces that is caused by unresolved isms that have been named, but not much else has happened. That's playing out inside organizations, so people are again, turning the fire inward. That's the context. We also have a DEI, anti-DEI, if you will, environment around us. That's also part of the context. We also have fatigue. We've got people retiring. We've got COVID. That's also part of the context. There's a lot going on in the progressive ecosystem.

Then you've got many of these things also happening inside organizations. Then you've got people who are leading organizations who feel very stuck and who are blaming generational challenges on what's happening. It's not in the people. It's not in the people. It's in the structures that have been allowed to persist. That are playing out in organizations all over the country, progressive organizations all over the country. Okay, because this is a podcast that always focus on the practical. I want to leave you with some things that I think you can do.

Moving through this moment will not be easy, but can help you get unstuck. If you are a president, vice president, executive director, or a person with power and you recognize your organization and what I'm saying, here's what you need to do. This is my opinion. First thing, spring into action and decide whether or not you're going to go beyond naming to actually do something about the isms that people are experiencing inside your organization. Be honest, if your response is, this is as far as I'm willing to go, everything's great. It's X people who are causing problems, best of luck because your organization will remain where is and will continue to spin out.

This is why I emphasize internal equity first before doing external work, because if you move forward with the external promises, external commitments, and all of that stuff first, your internal processes, operations, and organizational climate will remain problematic. That disconnect is not sustainable for an organization that wants to effectively live into a mission. It never has been, never will be. So, if this is you, and this is your organization, you got to move past naming. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. Will it make you more effective? Yes. Let me also say that doesn't mean creating a new diversity initiative. What it means is making a commitment to do your work differently.

The second thing that I want you to do is to accept that most workplaces have a generational divide. They do. That makes it even more important to revisit organizational values and communicate clear expectations because people have different expectations of work, you have to create a shared expectation of what work is at your organization and you have to be consistent. As a leader, you can't complain. It just that expects too much from work when you describe employees as family, employees aren't family. Times have shifted and so our management has to shift too.

Okay, the third thing. I think that the failure in progressive spaces to address racism, that it so aptly names, is in part giving fodder to those who despise equity and are working to return us to whiter times. The failure to acknowledge our own complicitness gives power to those arguments. We need everybody pulling on the arc to bend it. I talk about this in episode five, When Fatigue Sets In.

We need everybody in the fight. We need everybody's contribution to uphold our democracy. We are in a moment, friends. We are in a moment and many progressive organizations haven't necessarily lived into it. However, I believe deeply that there is always the opportunity with each passing day to do things differently. To admit, yes, we created this mess. This was not our greatest moment, but we're going to pivot. We need our advocacy organizations. We need all of you because there is real danger and real harm happening right now. All right, thank you for letting me say all that. Until next time, take the best of care.

[OUTRO]

[0:20:55] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional. Who can use these strategies in their work? My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time, take care.

[END]

S2, Ep 7: The 3 Key Considerations to Make Before Conducting a Racial Equity Audit

Make it stand out

SEASON 2, EPISODE 7

The 3 Key Considerations to Make Before Conducting a Racial Equity Audit

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00] JSS: Hi, it's Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you're listening. This season of the podcast is about leadership. I've invited guests to join me to talk about their leadership experiences, either in leading change themselves or moving organizational leaders toward change. In this episode, I want to talk about racial equity assessments or also called equity audits. I'll explore when to use them, when not to, and what to do with the information they produce. All right, let's get into it.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:40] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott. You are listening to the Race in the Workplace podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a Racial Equity Consultant and Founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered through sustainable, step-by-step changes.

Hi, it's Joanna Shoffner Scott here, and I am the host of The Race in the Workplace Podcast. I'd like to talk about equity assessments or audits in this week's episode. I have referred to the process using either term, and for clarity, I am referring to the measurement tools used to assess different aspects of organizations or companies, and from the data collected from these processes, one can draw specific conclusions about the experiences or the practices of organizations.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, the demand for racial equity audits has grown in the past couple of years with an expectation of continued growth. In my own practice, I've also seen an uptick in requests for assessments, so that tracks with my experience, as well. When we're trying to position assessments in our thinking, think about it as holding up a mirror to your organization, okay?

All right, so let's dig into it. Also, I have a little bit of a cold that I'm hoping won't impact the sound too badly. Stay with me, you all, stay with me. Okay, so digging into assessments, my firm uses a pretty standard process when we do this type of work for a client. It includes surveys, focus groups, and one-to-one interviews, all as ways to collect data and to center the staff and employee voice. That's a critical part of this whole process for me is to be sure that if we are asking staff and employees to spend their time filling out a survey or participating in a focus group or an interview, there is a payoff for that in the sense that their voices will be heard. That's important to me.

In my opinion, assessments can offer a tremendous amount of information about the real goings on inside organizations because organizations tend to be one way on paper, but in real-time, in real life, they actually function in a very different way. Using these kinds of tools can help bridge the disconnect between those two.

Okay, so I want to talk about when to use assessments, when not to, and what to do with the data, okay? All right, so first of all, I think assessments can be a strong addition to any part of an organization's racial equity journey. I don't think there's a particular time that is better than other times to do this type of analysis. What matters is that there is a plan for what to do with the results, such that if there is a curiosity about differences in staff experience, then an assessment or audit can't answer those questions.

In my experience, there is a gap between how leaders view an organization or company and how staff views their experiences within that organization or company. There's often a disconnect. Now many things feed into it, into the disconnect, for example, differences in power, privilege, role, and longevity, all of those play a factor in the disconnect, in the existence of a disconnect. Assessments can help unpack some of those dynamics and really pinpoint where the difference and experience is happening.

Truthfully, organizational experiences are rarely the same. Even when there is a shared appreciation for the mission and values of an organization or a company, there can be differences and experience both by identity and of course by individuals. Doing these kinds of audits can help you tease that out. If you are leading, an organization can help you tease that out a little bit so you can understand, as I said, the exact point where differences are happening.

I would say if you're curious about differences in the staff experience, that's the moment to do an assessment, but only if, hear me good you all, only if there is a willingness and a commitment to take action on the results. I cannot emphasize that enough. I'll say it again, if you're curious about differences in staff experience, that's the moment to do an assessment only if there is a willingness and a commitment to take action on the results. Critically important. I'll unpack that further as we go along. That's key.

All right, here's an example. You're an HR executive for a mid-sized company with a dedicated chief DEI officer. You've heard complaints from Black staff about being treated differently by startup managers when they request time off. Maybe there's pushback or a really specific request to adhere to the written policies, for example, that may not exist for other groups of people. I've seen this happen.

Let's say HR executive, you're hearing these things. You're hearing these complaints or staff are coming to you directly with these kinds of complaints. This is a place where an assessment can help clarify the problem. For one, it might be more widespread than you initially thought and this is an instance where I would recommend adding a policy practice review to the assessment. In this case, the company may have written policies that are not being implemented equitably. This happens all the time. Remember what I said at the top of the pod that there's a way that organizations and companies function the way they're supposed to function that's written on paper. Then there's a way that they actually function, which is everyday life. That happens all the time, because often what's written is not what's practiced.

In this example, my wonder would be, where do you have established, written, clearly-defined policies within your company with supportive systems? Think about that for a second. I'll say it again, where do you have established, written, clearly-defined policies in your company with supportive systems? By “supportive systems”, I mean the processes and tools that enable a policy to be implemented.

For example, if you have a policy that requires staff to request leave at least two weeks before the leave date, what's the system that enables them to do that? Is it a Google spreadsheet? Is it an online benefits manager? Is it the company payroll system? How are people able to meet the requirements of that policy and get their leave approved in a timely way if we're staying with this example? Those connected processes and tools make up supportive systems and does that information live in a public place that's easily accessible?

All right, I asked this question about documented processes because anywhere you don't have documented processes are areas in your company where bias will thrive. If you don't have written processes, or written policy, bias will thrive. That could be why, if we're going all the way back to the example, that could be why Black staff were experiencing a difference in requesting leave. This is where an assessment could be really helpful in terms of shedding light on what's really happening. Remember, holding up that mirror. In this example, a review of what's actually happening versus what's supposed to happen may uncover the source of the difference in experience. It could also be that a different data collection strategy may be necessary.

Surveys, in this case, may not be enough. Focus groups may be helpful here. People may feel more comfortable talking to another person about their experiences. Some people absolutely are more comfortable talking to a person. Other people are more comfortable filling out a survey and leaving comments. I think the best blend is both, but that's part of when we join this type of analysis, understanding that people will engage the instrument itself very differently. Again, only do this assessment if there is a commitment to taking action on the results.

Moving on to when not to do a racial equity assessment or racial equity audit. If the executive leadership is ambivalent about the process and certainly addressing the findings, then I would not recommend doing it. I would say take a hard pass and here's why. There's no coming back from an assessment that falls flat where nothing happens afterwards. It feels like a waste of time and it's very demoralizing. I would say this outcome should be avoided at all costs if possible. At this point, the staff knows, the leaders know, the consultants know, and the data confirms where the problems actually are, and taking no action will create a difficult to near possible recovery. There is no coming back from it.

Let me give a concrete example. It's like spending money and time to do a compensation study to determine if there are pay inequities within your organization or company. The executive leadership finds after some analysis and data collection by a consultant that there are wage gaps by role, but does not adjust salaries or pay in any way. Basically, does nothing. It's hard to come back from that because in that example, everybody's salaries are the same and now there's a well-known gap in earnings, nothing happens. That's something I would encourage people to avoid if possible.

Recently, I had a prospective client approach to firm about doing a rather large assessment of their equity practices. This particular situation involved a large department in a very big organization. I pressed the commitment of the executive team. As we proceeded through the discovery process, the prospective client discovers that the buy-in isn't there. The resources were there, the buy-in was not. I suggested not moving forward. I made that suggestion, not because I didn't want them as a client, of course they did, but I knew that if the executive leadership team wasn't fully bought into the process, then I could imagine also a lack of buy-in on the back end when the recommendations and the findings were ready that would devastate staff who were working so hard to make this happen.

That's the other thing, people lots of times will put a lot of hope into an assessment that the changes that they're looking for will happen. As an executive, you have to know that going into these kinds of processes and handle that with great care. This is an example of when not moving forward, is the best decision in my opinion. This is not advice, but in my opinion, because doing so can damage staff morale and can it damage existing relationships.

In this case, the time, in my opinion, is better spent educating and building support for a future assessment. I think the timing was just not right there. Those resources would have been better spent just building the buy-in and the goodwill around that piece of work. With the understanding, yes, it's disappointing, but it's better to know and have clarity about the commitment at the beginning than it is to address the heartbreak at the end.

Okay, so my last point for executive leadership, you've got to know what you're going to do with the findings. A typical organizational assessment service from Stamey Street includes reviewing critical documents. It can include a policy and practice review, staff survey, and a report. Then depending on the needs of the client, we may add focus groups or one-to-one interviews. It depends on what the client chooses, but our team provides actionable data that guides the organization's equity path moving forward.

I like to do audits personally at the beginning of an engagement because the data from the process can help shape the rest of the engagement. It's incredibly powerful. One, if the timing's right. Two, if the willingness to commit to taking action is there. Think about it like this. For me, once I know the specific pain points in an organization, I can direct particular solutions to help. At this point, we're not guessing anymore. We know where the challenges are, but therein lies the caveat to these kinds of assessments. It's knowing what the challenges are and not doing anything, as I've noted earlier.

All of that said, I encourage executive leaders that if you're working with a consultant to perform an equity audit or an organizational assessment, only do so if you're prepared to implement the recommendations. Now, that doesn't mean you have to commit to implementing every single recommendation site unseen. What I'm saying here is, is that not necessarily to, I'm not asking leaders to commit fully to a set of recommendations before the report is ready or before the findings are ready, but rather commit to taking an action to address the needs that emerge from the data collection process. Okay, that's probably the best way I could say that.

All right, what does that mean? What does it mean to implement the findings? I want to walk you through three actions. One is to implement a plan. Two is sequence the action. Three is manage expectations. I'll unpack these one by one.

When I say implement a plan, what I mean is to take whatever the written product of your assessment is and do something with it. It's up to the executive leadership to make time to work on the plan. As I noted, an organizational assessment from Stamey Street will include a plan.

Now we're at this place where sequencing matters at this point too, because you'll want to start with the area most important to staff. I would bet that issue, whatever it is, the most important one is absolutely going to show up in the assessment. I don't even – I have no doubt about that. It's also important to acknowledge that in most organizations, people's plates are full. What will come off people's plates so that this work can go on? There's nothing organic here. There must be an intention and there must be time committed or it won't work. That's my first meaning. When I lift it up, what does it mean to implement the findings? The first step in implementing the findings is to implement a plan. I hope that's clear.

Number two is to sequence the action. Start with the most important issue, as I just said, what is it that the staff are most concerned with? Start there. Doing so will demonstrate that the executive leadership is serious about staff concerns. As I said earlier, it places a certain amount of honor and respect on the feedback of staff that they've taken their time to participate in this process and that that time is being respected and honored.

The third thing to do around implementing findings is to manage the expectations around the pace of change. Many times, staff want their concerns addressed right now. Today, right now, and understandably so, understandably so, but there are usually many considerations that influence the pace of change. There are staff time, resources, and existing commitments. Leaders need to manage the expectations around change and a way that helps people understand that change isn't going to happen overnight. The implementation of any recommended results from an audit is not going to be overnight, but there will be steady work done and progress made. That's important to keep in mind.

As I close out the episode, I want to share that I have seen these assessments go well, meaning racial equity was centered in the process from the beginning, with commitments to taking the recommendation seriously and dedicated staff time to work on post-assessment planning. This is one of the best possible outcomes.

As I wrap up this episode, I want to leave you with an encouragement. It is so important to honor staff voice in these types of processes that it is a risk to be honest, and it's time-consuming to participate in whatever the data collection tool is, and if you ask a question of staff, be prepared to handle the response. If you have the power to address someone's issue and resolve it, then do it, okay?

I wanted to share a little bit of my thoughts about racial equity assessments and equity audits. I hope if you are considering this type of assessment for your organization that, you will keep these thoughts in mind. Until next time, take care.

[OUTRO]

[0:21:05] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time, take care.

[END]

S2, Ep 6: Let’s Talk Leadership Transitions with Annie McKay

Race in the Workplace Podcast
Season 2, Episode 6

SEASON 2 EPISODE 6

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott. You are listening to the Race in the Workplace podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a racial equity consultant and the founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered through sustainable, step-by-step changes.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:38] JSS: Hi, it's Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you're listening. This season of the podcast is about leadership. I've invited guests to join me to talk about their leadership experiences, either in leading change or moving leaders through change. I am so looking forward to the conversation today. My friend and colleague, Annie McKay, is coming back on the podcast.

Annie was my guest for episode 10, where we discussed teams and racial equity readiness. That episode was the most downloaded episode of my first season. After that episode, I knew that I wanted to have Annie back to talk about leadership transitions. A little about Annie, their work focuses on supporting organizations and networks seeking to center racial justice. It was during Annie's time working in organizations and leadership roles that they became familiar with the importance of all the steps that are needed to be ready for organizational change and then attending to the needs of team members when moving through change. That is a little bit about Annie and their work.

This episode of the podcast, we are talking about leadership transitions. We're talking about it from the perspective of what an organization needs and should be thinking of when there is a leader who is departing the organization and when they are just beginning to search for a new leader to enter the organization. That is the context that we're talking about. I hope that you enjoy our conversation.

Hi, Annie. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited that you came back and I'm looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have today.

[0:02:34] AM: Any day with you, Joanna, on the podcast is a good day, so I'm really happy to be here.

[0:02:38] JSS: Oh, you're so kind. Can you introduce yourself and share a little bit about yourself and about the work that you do?

[0:02:47] AM: Name, Annie McKay, pronouns, they, them. I'm a white, gay, trans, non-binary human. I'm a social worker who grew up in the rural Midwest. I am now mid-Atlantic-based. About the work I do, well, for starters, I get to work with brilliant people like Dr. Joanna Shoffner Scott and the rest of the Stamey Street crew to support teams along their race equity journeys. I'm particularly focused on the conditions needed for transformation, or as we often talk about, Joanna, the air quotes, “feelings” of the work, and finding the past through the feelings and not just around them because the dream we're after is both head and heart work like we always talk about.

[0:03:25] JSS: I'm so glad you shared that. For folks who may not know, Annie was my guest on episode 10 of the podcast. I'll link to it in the show notes. On that episode, we talked about team dynamics. That was the most downloaded episode of season one was our conversation. After that, I knew I wanted to have Annie back to talk about Leadership Transition. You're right, it is head and heart work. I'm warming up to the heart, warming up to the heart, because it's the head for me, but I'm warming up to the heart.

I'm excited about this conversation. For folks who haven't listened to that episode 10, I'll link to it in the show notes as I've said, but in that episode, Annie talks more about their journey and I will link to it there so you can go back and listen to that. We're just going to dive in, because that's what we do here.

[0:04:19] AM: Absolutely.

[0:04:20] JSS: I want to talk about leadership transitions. We seem to be in a season of executive transitions where people who have led organizations for a long time, long times are leaving, even folks who I would call mid-range like, leading from five to 10 years or also leaving. We'd love to know what trends and patterns are you seeing as people are transitioning out of organizations?

[0:04:46] AM: Yeah. You know, Joanna, I think this is such an important topic to explore because it's the mashup of a number of conditions that we've talked about, right? I'm seeing that the pandemic stripped the tread off the tires of a lot of leaders, and the capacity and fortitude and courage to pursue radical transformation took hits too. At the same time of that exhaustion and fatigue, I was also encountering teams who were demanding more, insisting that organizations' proclamations around race equity were operationalized, right? Insisting on better ways of working, insisting on rectifying harmful organizational practices and ways of being.

I don't mean to suggest that all of this just suddenly sprouted in the last three years, but it certainly has accelerated, and with those conditions, you have organizations bringing new leaders into environments with a lot of pent-up demands and frustrations and needs. It is a crash-up of sorts that needs to be attended to in a much different way.

[0:05:43] JSS: Yeah. I think that's true. I also think that when there's a new leader that comes into an organization, sometimes the expectations are so high for that person. That person could be thinking, “I just got my dream job.” Now there’s, like, all of these expectations that are really disappointments from the last leader that are laid at the feet of the new leader. I'm just wondering what you think about that.

[0:06:11] AM: Yeah. I mean, I think that that's some of the stuff that's servicing, right? When I say this pent-up demand is – and also, there may not be knowledge of the pent-up demand because – and we'll get into this, but the folks who are typically responsible for managing or overseeing the process and the transition are so far removed from the day-to-day and the people who make the magic happen, right?

[0:06:31] JSS: Yes.

[0:06:32] AM: They don't have an awareness of the conditions inside as we often talk about inside the container, right? Inside the team. What some of those things are that we need to tell incoming leaders about, right, in full transparency and honesty and think about that as a bi-directional process, right, that we're interviewing. I use the global “we”, but that you're interviewing people to step into an organization and you're also able to convey to them the real conditions that exist because otherwise, it's a significant and serious setup as we have seen time and time again.

[0:07:02] JSS: Yes. I know we'll get into this about search firms too, but it's so important to think through those different steps of the search. Okay. I don't want to get ahead of myself because I'm excited for this part of the conversation, but in your opinion, how is the leadership context racial? Like, how has that become a racialized process?

[0:07:20] AM: Yeah. I mean, I think this part is just like the central piece of the conversation. As I watched historically, white-led organizations undertake race equity journeys in a lot of the networks that you and I have traveled in, and white leaders moving on, stepping aside, stepping down, retiring, or being encouraged to pursue other interests. In many of those instances, they were replaced by leaders of color. Now these leaders of color and in the majority of my experiences, Black women and Black people assigned female at birth they're looked to and expected to immediately tackle and rectify those pent-up demands, frustrations, and needs as I mentioned before, right?

In addition to those conditions, there's these outsized expectations. There's less grace afforded to leaders of color, boards, partners, and funders may have had little knowledge as we were talking about of the challenges that existed under the previous leader. Then when they surface with the new leader — and they will, right, they will, this stuff will come up — it's often assigned to that new leader and that new leader of color, creating gross inaccuracies in the narrative around leadership transition and leaders of color.

Yeah. I was just going to say one other thing. I could see like you're chomping at a bit – but Joanna and I, we love this conversation. I know that we're both a big fan of Building Movement Project and their work. And I would lift up, as you know, we were just talking about this, the research Race to Lead, and it lays bare the realities of the obstacles and the opportunities in addressing the racial leadership gap in nonprofits.

[0:08:55] JSS: I will drop any links that we mentioned into the show notes. I also use the Race to Lead work and appreciate the building movement project. I just want to pause for us to unpack what you just said because I don't think that boards who are doing the hiring or even the leader who's leaving, right, and they're transitioning out, I think everyone thinks this is an opportunity, this is a moment, to bring in a person of color. Like, this is our moment. Often there's organizations I don't have the infrastructure to support that leader and don't know it until the leader comes.

[0:09:33] AM: Yeah.

[0:09:33] JSS: I see that too in my practice. When we think about – and certainly in our shared work – then when we think about what do leaders need, I know we're going to talk about that like, what do leaders need and why aren't there the same levels of grace allowed, right? Now here's this leader, so let's say we're talking about a white-identified leader who's transitioning out and maybe they've been there for like 28 years. Now there's a new Black woman or other woman of color or other person of color. Now they have to fix everything in those 28 years in three and a half weeks. I mean, how have you seen that play out in your work?

[0:10:17] AM: Well, I mean, I think you saying it's the identification of “the moment” and to your point, boards or communities see those transitions as “the moment.” Joanna, we both know “the moment” should have started two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, right? The readying – and I know we're going to talk about this – but setting up the conditions for the next person to not have to tackle all of the things that weren't previously tackled in 28 years. Performance issues, and staff dynamics, and inequitable hiring practices, right, and no employee hand, I mean, even the list goes on.

The moment, and I think that that's where as we get into this, the step that a board or a search firm should take or a board with a search firm should take is recognizing that if your moment is just starting right now like when the transition is announced, you got some catch-up work to do because you need to create the conditions that are optimal for the success of that new leader. That means getting real clear on what wasn't addressed, and what will need to be, and what the support and help is to do that.

[0:11:24] JSS: I love that. That's the truest thing ever. I love what you said about if your moment is just starting now, so whenever the exiting leader, the outgoing leader has made their intentions known, if that's the start of your moment, it's too late.

[0:11:41] AM: Yeah.

[0:11:42] JSS: Not that you can't still do great work. I shouldn't say too late. You have catch-up work to do as to underscore your point, because there is a lot of work to do within that organization to get it ready, because I was just sure from my own experience, as a Black woman who has managed teams, that's I believe that not everybody can take direction for a Black woman. I believe that deeply. Then that sets up that person for a challenging onboarding into that organization when we ignore those racialized dynamics.

I mean, there are gender dynamics, too, just like some men can take direction from people who aren't also men. That's true too. Not every person, you all, but I'm just saying. I think like ignoring that those identity factors, they matter, and they matter in the context of the organization, and that there's work people can do to get ready for that.

[0:12:42] AM: Yeah. We should certainly stick a pen and explore further what you were saying about people not being able to take direction or work for Black women because we're going to talk about readying staff, but just that altruistic notion that people approach these leadership transitions with. I think in that, so white-led boards or predominantly white boards want to sit with the – “We don't see color, so we don't need to consider those.” The implications of different leadership and people not responding or taking direction from Black women. I think that that's some of that vibe that's existing in that, right? You absolutely have to explore all of those pieces.

The other thing I'll say, Joanna, is that when we said the moment should have started before and you got catch-up work to do, we know that transitions happen in a variety of ways. Sometimes there's a longer notice like maybe a year. Sometimes they're abrupt and real short. Neither one is a reason not to do the things that we're talking about. Something could be abrupt and short, and you can still center equity. You can still take into account these considerations. You can still create the conditions for thriving and success. I just really want to say that.

[0:13:50] JSS: I'm glad you did. Even more so, it's important because if there's been an abrupt departure, an even bigger opportunity to be sure that whoever the next leader is, is that they're set up for success, even more so. You teased up, and I want to bring us on into it. What do you think the role is of the board? Like, what do you think the board's role is in planning for a transition and in supporting a new leader?

[0:14:21] AM: How much time?

[0:14:22] JSS: I know, right?

[0:14:25] AM: I mean, we know the boards play a critical role, and the nature of their position is they're typically removed, rightfully so. I had a board previously. They were typically removed from the day-to-day, from the culture, from team dynamics, from all those things that we were describing. If a board is removed from the day-to-day, a search firm is going to be even farther removed from those elements. It's really important that there is a connection to and an understanding of the team dynamics, strengths, and opportunities.

Boards also have the opportunity to center race equity in the process, top to bottom, full stop. That is their responsibility. It is not to abdicate that. If you do hire a firm and expect them to center race equity, that's your role board. Also, as I mentioned like just to ensure that any firm that's being used is also centering equity and holding them accountable to that throughout the process.

Then I think the other thing that we've talked about is, I think boards and search firms feel like the finish line is getting the new leader in the seat. We know that that's not the finish line. The finish line is ensuring that there are supports after the person is in the chair. That's key to that strong start and not running a new leader out the door. What I mean supports through the finish line I'm not talking about a month or two months, I'm talking about an eye on support for a full 12 months for the new leader and the team. It's really important to see that through.

[0:15:46] JSS: Yes. You all can't see us, but I'm nodding. Yes, because there's so much there that I want to explore further. Absolutely, when – and this is something I would share with any organization and any leader who is thinking about transitioning out and certainly any board of directors or board chair who will be leading a search, that is to center equity, as Annie said. You do that from the very beginning. Before you even hire a firm, before you even write a job description, you have to decide that you're going to do this process; this process is going to operate from a place of equity. What that does is that changes many of the subsequent conversations and the “how” in terms of the search.

I think sometimes leaders, board chairs for sure, don't always know that they can do that. They don't know how much control of the process they really have. Sometimes they don't always know the right questions to ask when vetting a firm, when working with the firm, and when you get a pool of candidates created by the firm.

[0:17:02] AM: I think we often talk about debrief process. I also think like throughout this, there's an opportunity for the board not just to ram the train through but to pause at every stop and do a check. We've talked about this from centering equity; we've used a hypothetical before in a different situation where if you start with a large pool that includes Black women, and in the second round, every Black woman is no longer in the pool that moves forward, a clue, Sherlock to stop and debrief what's happening, because something's gone on in your process. We just also bringing in the board's responsibility to debrief throughout the way. Again, not just turn it over to a firm, but to stay actively involved in that.

[0:17:50] JSS: Yes. The other piece of that that I wanted to pick up from what you shared was the support for the team and the support for the new leader well into the search. I agree. I think you're right. I think people think that once the person is hired and onboarded, it's done like, here's the organization, best wishes, then it's in your fruit basket. Have a great run, right?

[0:18:16] AM: That's right.

[0:18:16] JSS: Really, there's so many issues. I think an organization doesn't truly become the new person’s. I think it's at least 24 months.

[0:18:26] AM: Yup.

[0:18:26] JSS: At least two years, at least, because you're still very much in that first year. You're dealing with the structure of the other person bill – or didn't, you're dealing with the problems they created – I mean, you're dealing with the things they couldn't resolve like, it's not your organization, new leader. I think that coaching, having that support for a full calendar year to help the new leaders sort through all of those things that they may have been gifted, inherited if you will. Then that support for the team. Talk a little bit more about the support for the team like, how do you think that having that support for a year for the team? What do you think that can produce?

[0:19:10] AM: I think it can support right sizing and managing expectations on the team. Earlier, I was talking about this pent-up demand frustration harm. We've seen in instances where a team very much wanted the new Black female leader and even team members of color, right, then to your earlier point about people taking direction from Black women, but all of that pent-up frustration is now landing on the desk of the new leader. Staff may have been asking for it for years before, and now they're demanding it, because they see someone like them who can deliver on the things and who is invested in delivering on it.

I think helping staff to understand that those things aren't all going to happen simultaneously, right, and affording new leaders the grace and the space to bring these pieces together, particularly when you have a new leader who was interviewed and was not aware of any of these conditions, right? Probably from their own lived experience, has some hunches, but may not be fully aware of the turmoil that exists within, or as you were saying the gifts that are being given in like, if those are gifts, I don't want them. I think though much of the focus throughout the whole process, even earlier on, often leaves staff completely out. In this, we have to also think about how we center them in the supports.

[0:20:33] JSS: I love that. I think that the piece I definitely want to underscore is the managing expectations, because I've seen that too. I mean, I've seen the new person comes in. It's a person of color. Everybody's excited. Then the expectations, I just mount and mount and mount. This person is like, still trying to figure out where the bathroom is, right? Meanwhile, there's all these expectations and they themselves, the new person as a leader, hasn't even figured out what their own vision for the organization is. They're just trying to sort it out. I do think that that's a real gift to be able to help staff work through it. Also, manage their expectations, but also still hear them.

[0:21:21] AM: That's right.

[0:21:21] JSS: The feelings are big party work. Still hear them in terms of, yes, we know, we hear you, but this person literally just got here. Let's help them, but also, we know that your needs are important too. I know that's a tightrope. That's tough to walk. That's a tough space.

[0:21:37] AM: Yeah. I think for anybody listening to this, whose organization has already undergone the transition, it's like, it’s not too late. Yeah, because we know a lot of really powerful leaders who were onboarded during the earlier parts of the pandemic, right, when everything was still virtual. In the way that that also then adds a nuance onto the transition pieces and the challenges, some of these new leaders that we know and have worked with, they didn't get to see their teams in person for 12, 18, 24 months, right, after becoming hired. That also has an impact. If you were a board member who has supported a transition recently, now's the time to check in with that new leader and say, “I may have learned a few things. How are you doing?”

[0:22:28] JSS: That is wonderful. That's a gift. It really is, because sometimes that can be a lonely space. It can be a very lonely space. I love that idea of that check-in like, “How's it going?” Because I think that is a moment too for that new leader to say there was a whole bunch of stuff going on or here's where I need your support, which is the most productive piece of that.

[0:22:54] AM: Right, because we know that historically white-led organizations that those white-identified leaders could fail up and do no wrong. We know that when new leaders of color are new to organizations, I don't mean they're new to leadership, but when new leaders of color, and specifically Black women and Black people assigned female birth come in, they don't have the grace. There isn’t a fail that – and they also don't only don't have the grace, but there isn't the space to be able to say, “Hang on a second, I could use some support.”

[0:23:22] JSS: Yes.

[0:23:23] AM: Expectations that we place on the shoulders of those new leaders, much different.

[0:23:28] JSS: In this work, I have to say this. In this work that we do where we're centering racial equity, the credit is not the same. The expectation is not the same. There's an expectation that you're a Black leader coming to organization, you know this. When they're white counterparts, even if they did take up the work, the credit for it is very different. The way it's approached is very different. That’s, I think something to keep in mind too, when leadership is shifting too is the give to your point earlier, give space and grace, because that person is probably coming into that organization with the understanding like, here I am. I'm a Black woman, I'm leading this organization. If I get this wrong, they will never have another Black leader ever in the history of this organization. That is an incredible weight to carry.

[0:24:21] AM: We talked earlier, and I mentioned just briefly the creation of gross inaccuracies and narratives around leadership, transition, and leaders of color like, all of that gets fed into with these early conditions that we're talking about.

[0:24:32] JSS: Let's pivot to one of my favorite parts, which is the doing. Is there a way that we can prepare an organization for leadership transition? Then what does that look like? What does the honorarium to that look like?

[0:24:44] AM: Yeah. I mean, this is what you and I have been discussing and responding to, right, and some of our work together in the last two years. Again, we have come after transitions. We've been through the middle of transitions. We have a lot of different experiences at Stamey Street with this body of work. It came into such clear focus, right, with the concentration of the turnover in the last few years, and how we're structuring, right, like how we're thinking about our supportive services. It's approaching it in three phases, right? It's the staff input and inclusion. Those are two different things.

Input, inclusion two different things, right? Because oftentimes, we will turn to staff and say, “What is it that you want?” We'll take that and say, “It's like we do with community, honestly, in policy advocacy.” We said, “Cool, we got it. We'll see you on the other side.” Then this inclusion looks like both gathering input and then keeping staff looped in throughout the process. I think assessing the conditions, right? All of that is part of phase one.

Again, I want to emphasize that whether it's a short timeline that you have or an abrupt timeline, or a longer one, all of these things are still possible to do. Then I think it's also determining like what clear and consistent steps look like for the process. That's phase two, right? Like, how are we going to center equity, and what it's going to look like through that process? Then the third phase, right, as we talk about that faux finish line, but it's through the finish line and looking at it beyond. Three phases overall, but the on-ramp, right, really being exploring water staff input and inclusion look like, what are the conditions within the container, and how are we going to center equity from the start? That's all key in phase one.

[0:26:24] JSS: Oh, I love that. This is something that Annie and I have been talking about a lot. We are offering an executive leadership transition support-like coaching service. If you are listening and you are a board chair, or you are an executive director, and you know you're going to be transitioning out in the next six months or so, you can go to my website, stameystreet.com, and book a 30-minute appointment to talk with us about your transition. We want to see you all win.

Part of that is see you all be successful and see your transition out be successful, the new leader transition in be successful. The part that I love about this is that with intention, that can happen. As long as we build in that intentionality and all the phases that Annie described, and we approach this both the exit and the entry with intentionality, that can really change the leadership experience of the new person, whoever's coming into the organization. That will lead to better sustainability.

[0:27:36] AM: Yeah. I mean, I'm just sitting here, sitting in that, and again, you can't see, but I was pausing because Joanna, the world that you and I are after, right, and are inspiring to, we can't leave any talent on the sidelines. We can't; we also can't be consumed with unnecessary stuff. I think about this, and you're chewing up the energy, the talent, the brilliance of new leaders and new leaders of color, attending to all these other things that could have been attended to previously. We need all of that brilliance and that energy and that shine pushing forward and not trying to rectify what was behind them and what they weren't responsible for.

[0:28:17] JSS: Yes. Yes. I just got a visual about the talent being chewed up. I love how you always say how the tires, the trick gets ripped off the tires as leaders come into organizations and are dealing with things that are important, but may not be like that first reflection of their own vision, right? What a precious gift to give someone the time to be able to think about what their vision is for that new, for that place, that place that they're in, new to them, but not new to everyone else. I think people deserve that.

[0:28:54] AM: Yeah.

[0:28:54] JSS: I think people deserve that. We have to talk about the feels. How can organizations manage the feelings? Like how can they get prepared? I'll just share, I remember earlier in my career, my boss at the time, who was a mentor and is still a good friend, shared that he was leaving, and I was in a, I was just in shambles because I adored this person and learned so much from him. How can we help prepare people for the feelings around the transition?

[0:29:30] AM: Yeah. I mean, transparency and involvement are key, right? I'm going to say that again, real slow. Transparency and involvement. I know that you and I are huge fans of Vu Le’s Nonprofit AF blog post. He has an exceptional piece on this very topic. He so poignantly offers if you want staff not to hate board members guts, don't just superficially involve staff, but talk about authentic collaboration and sharing of power, right? That right there is a game changer. That is not how one transitions have been managed, but also just buy that. It's going to take into account the feelings that are swirling inside that container and keep a focus on them, right? Keep them in view as you're moving through this process.

Clearly communicating what staff can expect, and when following through with that, I've seen organizations gather; this is why I said input and inclusion are two different things. I've seen organizations gather input from staff only to return six months later announcing a new leader, never has – staff updated in between that creates a tremendous amount of anxiety. That is so unnecessary because change already creates anxiety. What can we do to minimize that?

I think. Also, I've talked about this, but tapping the very people who make the magic happen every day will ensure that you have the best understanding not only of what's needed but being able to authentically communicate to new leaders what they're walking into. I have, I mean, 201, right? Folks who are even internally promoted or internal candidates have every one of them have experienced some surprise that they weren't made aware of. Sometimes it's budgetary considerations like, “Oh, by the way. Half of your funding is going away.” Other times it's, “Your staff are about to unionize.” To be clear, both of us are supporters of unionizing; that's not the issue here that we're talking about, right? That's really important.

We've talked about the feelings don't stop when someone's hired. You may be thinking that, oh, staff are going to be relieved once a new leader is in place. Nope. Like we said earlier, you got to run through the finish line and with feelings; that means attending to them for a solid year with both staff and that new leader, right? It's blending those pieces together. I'll talk a little bit more in the last piece, but ignore feelings around transition at your own peril.

[0:31:57] JSS: Well, that's heavy. That's heavy. I think that's right, though. The thing as you as you were talking, the thing that I said, it's heavy, but it's also true. As you were talking, I was thinking that the beauty of having some support during this process also means that there's support in helping people manage the feelings that doesn't rest with the newly transitioned in leader.

[0:32:25] AM: That's right.

[0:32:26] JSS: Right? That they themselves will have feelings about all this. It's important to hold multiple things at the same time when there's been that transition, especially if it's a long-standing leader or what I call a midterm like that for 10 years, person who's transitioning out.

[0:32:43] AM: Yeah, Joanne. I think this is the other thing that we've talked about and how Stamey Street can be positioned and how you should have a support positioned is that you think about the bridge between the previous leader and the new leader, right? The old container and the new container. Stamey Street serving as a bridge to understand the conditions that were present before, because you don't always have an overlap of leaders. Even if you do, that doesn't necessarily mean that an understanding is conveyed about what a new leader is walking into.

Having someone in terms of that support through the finish line, making sure that whatever support is there for that new leader in the team also was involved earlier on and understood the conditions that existed before, right? That's going to be really important to helping to support and manage feelings throughout, because staff who you suddenly show up with a new leader, there's not trust built there. The staff may not understand the role in that case of Stamey Street to support them, so just something else for boards to be thinking about is the consistency of the support before the new leader and after the new leader.

[0:33:46] JSS: Yeah. I think that's such an important piece of the puzzle and such an important element that can lead to a successful, not just hire, but a person who stays, which we ultimately, I think that's what success is, is that the part it's a good fit in the person stays. I want to ask as our time is wrapping up, what are some of the growth opportunities that you see in organizations who are in this place of transition? Because we've talked about things that are to be aware of. I think this is a growth edge. What are the – user words? What do you see as some of the growth opportunities?

[0:34:28] AM: Yeah. I think picking up from some things that we sprinkled out through our conversation as the good and great, Maya Angelou, still good and great. My Angelou instructs us, chance to know better, do better. If you're using a search firm, don't abdicate the responsibility of centering race equity. Well, I'm speaking of board here. The board, that is your role. I don't, I was about to say, I don't care and that's a little too strong. Look, kick the tires on whatever a search firm's race equity practice is and inquire about it, interrogate it, because we know that people can slap words up and not actually operationalize those things.

Broaden your thinking; we are so stuck in white-determined standards and qualifications, so for example, instead of insisting that candidates in a pool have formal degrees for roles that aren't specialized. Clue, let you in on a little secret, ED roles aren't specialized in this case, right? They're not doctors or lawyers or accountants, just to name a few. And consider others, right, in different standards of qualifications like, “Oh, I don't know. Lived experience or direct experience by being affected by systemic injustice and racism.” Right?

I mean, we're joking, but seriously, Joanna, I mean, that you walk in to lead an organization if you – a child advocacy organization, and if you were a Black child who grew up in the child welfare system, and then was system involved in some of their ways, you got real knowledge of the things that need to be addressed. It doesn't take a degree to do that, right? Then I think the last thing I'd say is acknowledging and unpacking your biases about leadership. If you don't, it's going to be a barrier to bringing in powerful transformative leaders.

[0:36:09] JSS: Yes. I love all of those nuggets, because it's so true in terms of how we think about and how we measure people's leadership. Like people, in the example that you gave for a child advocacy organization, someone who comes from community who can organize people. That is its own skill set. It took me a long time to realize that. It wasn't until I met real organizers. I was like, “Oh, this is a real thing, like just because that's not my thing.” As our time is wrapping up, we could talk for another hour, but I know we can't. If you had space to give your clients one piece of advice about a leadership transition that's upcoming, what would it be? Even that you yourself have gone through this.

[0:36:54] AM: I have.

[0:36:54] JSS: What would it be?

[0:36:56] AM: I'm going to come back to the strong statement that I made earlier, which is, again, we talk about this being both head and heart work. If you ignore the heart or the feelings at your own peril, not everyone in an organization will have feelings about different parts of an equity journey, board governance, for example. Your staff may not be real keened in on the board governance and equity structure, but absolutely everyone will have feelings about change.

Now they may not be challenging feelings, but there will be feelings there. They don't stop just because you actually have the transition. The feelings piece, I think, is certainly there's the process, elements that we're talking to about strengthening, but the feelings have been entirely neglected in so many of these examples that we've seen and have seen how that has either really diminished the capacity of new leaders or sent them out the door in a much better time frame than they otherwise would have been.

[0:37:52] JSS: Yes. Yes. Yes. All the yeses to that. If people want to connect with you in your work, where can they find you?

[0:37:59] AM: Well, you can see my picture in my bio on Stamey Street's website, but my good friend, colleague, and mentor sent me into the land of LinkedIn, that's annie-mckay-ks.

[0:38:12] JSS: Well, thank you for coming on the podcast again, Annie.

[OUTRO]

[0:38:16] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time. Take care.

[END]

S2, Ep 5: When Fatigue Sets in

Race in the Workplace Podcast
Season 2, Episode 5

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott, and you are listening to the Race in the Workplace Podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a racial equity consultant and Founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered through sustainable step-by-step changes.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:39] JSS: Hi. It's Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you're listening. As a reminder, this second season of the podcast will focus on leadership and the opportunities, strengths, and challenges to maintaining racial equity as a practice.

In this week's episode of Race in the Workplace, I want to talk about tiredness, time, and takeaways. This episode is for executive directors, HR directors, chief DEI officers, and folks who don't have DEI in your title, but you're doing work that reflects those same expectations. This week, I want to talk about two things. I want to talk about time, I want to talk about tiredness, and I will leave you with three takeaways.

Let me start with the tired. I had a conversation with someone who named being tired as part of our conversation. We were talking, and the person just said, “You know, I'm tired. And I know other folks are just exhausted right now.” My thought around that is so many people doing advocacy-centered work, DEI work, leading organizations, and managing boards of directors are just wiped out. This state of fatigue really resonated with me because I'm tired too. So I want to say upfront I don't have a magic remedy in this episode. I only want to give you some words of encouragement.

I think of the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, speaking about the economic conditions and obstacles to voting in Mississippi that she encountered when she said, “We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.” That resonates with me so much, as does her activism. She's a person in history that I look to for inspiration often, and that resonates with me being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Between the everyday news cycle, my personal life, work, and COVID, it's exhausting right now.

Related to COVID, some of us are past it. Some of us are still very much in it. Some of us have long COVID. Some of us are sick. There’s suffering and struggle that is coming at all of us from various sources. I also think that we as a society are operating from a place of trauma because of the pandemic itself and the shifts in life from pre-March 2020 to now. I don't think we're really over that as a society. I think on top of everything else and the every day that I just mentioned, I believe people are navigating the world from a place of unwellness, and that's just my opinion.

In this conversation I was having with a colleague, I started thinking about being tired and what does that mean. So as I think that through, and I've been sitting with that for a little while now, I think that there are different kinds of tired when you're doing DEI work and specifically my work around racial equity.

I think there is exhaustion that is caused by unsupport, under support, undercompensation, and being undermined — so those three unders. Unsupported, people can feel unsupported, and that causes you to be exhausted, undercompensated, and undermined, being undermined at work.

I think those things, when they are present, can create a very deep sense of fatigue. I've been there. I felt that way before. So what is it when I say people are unsupported or undersupported and undermined? What does that mean? Well, it means that you're not being supported by the organization that you're working in. When an organization has asked you to do something, particularly DEI-related work or from a racial equity perspective, when an organization has asked you to do something to make it better, you try to do that.

Still, you're not getting supported, and you're undermined every step of the way; that's tiring. It's exhausting.

In the first episode of this podcast, I asked a question. How do you know when it's time to leave your DEI gig? I'll link to it in the show notes. But that fatigue is what I was getting at in that episode.

I think there's also tiredness from the weight of the work. So the other kind of tiredness I want to talk about is a broader fatigue that is from our work and our world. Recently, I was talking to another colleague and just checking in with them. This person used to do child advocacy work like me. So we connect on that. We've known each other for years. For folks who may not know, my background is in public policy. I’ve worked in that space for years in a number of roles.

So my colleague and I were talking and just saying, “Gosh, it is so tough to do that work now because child advocates are fighting so hard to protect the gains made over the last 20 years for children and families, and it’s such a hard place.”

And I would imagine advocacy in other areas is the same. I know that child advocacy space because that's the space I'm from. But I would imagine other types of advocacy as well. Whether you're doing climate change or education policy, whatever your topic is, it's a challenging climate right now to do that kind of work. I think partly because we are in a total onslaught against experts, which makes the core tenet of advocacy — education, more complicated, and even exhausting.

We're in this moment where whether you kind of know what you're talking about or not, everybody's opinion matters the same. Now, I'm not talking about community engagement because that's a key piece of the work. But I'm talking about when it comes to the specifics and the mechanics of public policy. That is a highly technical area. People are fighting daily to have their voices heard and to advocate on behalf of vulnerable populations and vulnerable communities. It's tough. It's tiring, so I get that.

But as I promised, I'm recording this episode not to complain but to encourage. I want to share with you the perspective of a dear friend of mine. My friend, Jen, has a deep and demonstrated commitment to anti-racism in her life and work. She always centers issues of equity. I learned a lot from her. She approaches both anti-racism and equity from a place of theology, which is important to the story, and I also find it inspiring. So we talk about the work of justice and equity all the time.

I remember raising this issue with her from the perspective of being tired. I remember saying, “Geez, Jen. It seems like there's always one struggle or another, all of the time.” I was referencing Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote about the arc of the moral universe. The quote is, and I'll link to it in the show notes, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I remember asking Jen, “Does it then, though? Does it,” and just talking that through as two friends who care about this work.

But what's interesting is she approaches history from a very, very long arc.

She told me, “People think the arc of history is short. They think about it in the context of their own life, as defined by this day, this month, or this calendar year. When in reality, the arc of history is actually quite long. It's very long. And that we, as people who are on this planet, in this space, at this time, have one tiny space on this huge arc.”

I remember saying, “Well, how do we bend it? How do we make it right?” I remember her saying, “We can't possibly bend the whole arc of history in our lifetimes. But what we can do is pull it in the way that we can in the spaces that we're in. If we're all doing that together, then collectively we bend the arc.”

I sat with that for a long time, and she was clear that we may never see the full arc bend. Here I am at my big age. I'm slowly accepting that but also accepting that I can do my part to make my contribution. I remember that perspective giving me so much encouragement, like whenever I'm really tired physically or really tired of the work or tired of just the conversations that I have to have to do my work effectively or when I just don't want to do anything, I think about this conversation that I had with my friend.

I want to say that I am all about big systemic change. Like I'm with it, but I also know that I can only control what I can control, and I can only do what I can do in the spaces I'm in. So I just wanted to say that.

The other thing that Jen talks about all the time is being present and doing our own work in our own spaces whenever we can. That’s important to me too, is how I can do my part. How can I do that in community with other people to pull in such a way that the arc bends? I'm deeply committed to that, not just as an idea but as a way of living my life, and I do live my life that way.

For me, it's all of us working together toward a shared outcome, which I hope and aspire to a more just world, a more equitable society, where people are treated fairly, no matter how they present, and people can navigate public space equitably in the same way. So when I think about that, I think, “Wow, okay. I'm going to put a little asterisk here.” I don't always call the question every single time and every single space. So there's some nuance here, right? I do it a lot of the time. But sometimes, I don't. Sometimes, I don't feel like it, and I don't feel obligated in every space and at every time.

Shout out to my dear colleague, Paola Maranan, formerly of the Children's Alliance, who I learned that term called the question from years ago. It means asking hard questions, even if you don't know the answer. So I share all of that as an encouragement for tired folks, and I include myself in that number. I think that there is a need for rejuvenation, whatever that looks like for you. Whether it's sleep, it’s healthier eating, it’s movement, it’s ice cream, it’s spending time with your friends, do those things that bring you joy, and do those things that make you smile.

If we borrow from Jen’s perspective, this is long work, and we need everyone in it. So that means you got to take care of yourself to be in it. I think we all need time to step away, to reflect, rest and rejuvenate our bodies and minds for the work ahead. So I want to offer this episode as an encouragement because I see folks are tired. Another thing too, I'm just going to keep it real, folks are tired of the bullshit too. This is a nice segue into this piece I want to talk about about time before I share takeaways.

All right, let's talk about time. Privilege shapes how we see and experience time. So for leaders, executive directors, and others who are still playing around with equity, people are tired of that too. So for those of us who experienced marginalization in our society, in our targets of violence, time means a lot. The stakes are quite high for us. Executive directors and boards, y'all got to get clear about the work you will do and how. I think be honest.

I tell prospective clients who come to my firm for help, to be honest about what you can commit to and what you can't. Be honest when you can't fully commit to showing up in the work for marginalized people. We already see it, like we already know. We just need you, as our organizational leaders to be honest about it. Because I always say this work takes at a minimum, courage and willingness, and both of those are free.

We have different perspectives on time and, in my opinion, based on our connectedness to marginalization. So what does that mean? That means, for me, as a black woman, I don't feel like I have a whole lot of time to mess around with these topics and these issues because my rights can disappear just like that, like with a snap of a finger. So I confront those issues around justice and rights and legislative issues, those kinds of things with a sense of urgency. So that means I am looking to organizational leaders, nonprofit leaders, philanthropic leaders, and government leaders. Step up and into leading this work quickly and expeditiously. Because we all don't have the same kind of time. I don't see time in the same way, and I don't necessarily mean in terms of justice, given what I just said about the arc of history being long. But I mean in terms of danger.

I wrote a blog called The Safety of the Journey, and I'll link to it in the show notes, that lifts the experiences of trans people and anti-trans legislative actions happening in this space. Trans people need the rest of us to support them right now. So as a group, they're experiencing vulnerability and physical danger. So there's no luxury of analysis paralysis. The luxury of sitting with and thinking with and thoughts and prayers, that's not what we need right now. That's a group of folks who need people to take action to protect them right now.

Going back to leaders of all types of organizations, I want to let you know that we don't see time in the same way based on how dangerous the environment is for us right now. So, yes, while I'm tired, I also recognize that time is important and that I don't have time to play around when it comes to doing my part to bending that arc. I think sometimes, these differences in the everyday live reality of people creates tension in organizations around how fast things move. We don't experience time the same way because we're not in the same danger.

All right. So as my time wraps up with y'all today, I want to talk about takeaways. I'm a person that always gives people practical things to do.

So I want to pivot to the takeaways.

1. Takeaway number one, what kind of tired are you? Be honest with yourself. You don't have to share with me, but be honest with yourself. Are you tired because you're unsupported, you're undersupported, you're under-compensated, or you're being undermined at work? What kind of tired are you? Because from there, decide what you can do to move forward. That might mean you're not at that same organization anymore, and that's just the reality of it.

2. Takeaway number two, what can you do right now in the space that you're in to bend that arc to speak up for someone else, to name an inequity when you see it? It doesn't have to be every single space you're in. I'm not asking you to do that. What about one space? Let's start there. For folks like me who do this work, who always speak up, how can we encourage someone else so that we can give ourselves some space? So for me, that's what this podcast episode is. It's about trying to help you see a little bit of how I cope, and maybe some of what I share can help you too.
   
   

3. Takeaway number three, I would also say for those of us who are more experienced in this space to think about how we can better care for ourselves and also encourage others in the work.

Someone just told me this week, “We are who we've been waiting for. No Calvary is coming. We are the Calvary. So how can we contribute where we are?” I've seen different attributions of this quote, including Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., but that's right. We are who we're waiting for. Nobody is coming to all of a sudden make the world that we're living in better. It's up to us to make the world that we're living in better.

All right, off the soapbox now. I hope these thoughts help you. This is a little bit different than a normal podcast. But I feel it's important to acknowledge not only the tools, the policies, the practices, and all the things I usually talk about but also the context of the moment we're currently in. It's also important to name and plan for when we get tired and acknowledge and call the question when we see time differently because we do experience time differently because the urgency is different. Our connection to danger is different. All right. Remember to rest, reflect, and rejuvenate. Until next time, take care.

[OUTRO]

[00:18:16] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time, take care.

[END]

Blog Post Title Three

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Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.