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]
