Co-creating inclusion — Blog — Co-Creating Inclusion

There is always grief and trauma around us, at a local, national and global scale. Organizations often grapple with acknowledgements - what events should be acknowledged, and how can you possibly cover them all?

We’ve been talking about this at Co-Creating Inclusion as well, and have been considering the idea of a “grief acknowledgement.” We may not be able to acknowledge every single thing that is going on, but we can acknowledge that we are all likely struggling with varying degrees of grief and trauma, including secondary trauma.

Involuntary childlessness

My sister wrote this heartbreaking yet beautiful article for the Wall Street Journal.

This is a tender topic for me as well so please, no advice, thanks. Shared experiences from your own perspective are invited.

Grieving is necessary for change

A few months ago I wrote about how every memory hurts and everyone is traumatized.

Every memory still hurts.

And what I along with our team at Co-Creating Inclusion have been exploring is how grief is necessary for change.

The ability to grieve, then, is a rarely articulated leadership skill, if we are aspiring for creativity, innovation and transformation towards equity, inclusion, justice and liberation.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickAugust 11, 2024#grief, #traumainformed, #wildedgeofsorry

Diversity should not be your first or only metric of success

We’ve been talking about this for years actually. In fact, one of our running “jokes” is that organizations often come to us thinking we are “D consultants” and forgetting the “E” and the “E” or any of the other letters that might be included like “J” or “B.”

The fact is, this field did start out with “diversity consultants” so it is not entirely surprising those expectations linger.

We now make it a practice of being very explicit up front that this is NOT who we are.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickJune 16, 2024

Four principles for trauma-informed communication

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how everyone is traumatized.

To be human is to be, to some degree, traumatized - that has not changed.

Nor has the fact that marginalized communities have long been living with the impact of intergenerational, historical and systemic as well as individual trauma.

What has changed is that we have ALL - globally - been through the collective trauma of the pandemic at a scale unprecedented in the span of our careers.

For leaders, this means understanding, expecting and accounting for the fact that we and our workforce, while not all equally traumatized, are all traumatized.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickMay 19, 2024

The “no work” work retreat - how it went

Last week I shared about some of the planning and lead-up into our No Work Work Retreat. Today I want to talk about how it actually went.

First of all, I want to note that we weren't calling it a No Work Work Retreat before the retreat. This was more something that only started to come to my awareness in the last few days before the retreat, and it wasn’t until afterwards that I reflected on the experience of the retreat and the feedback from the team and I realized how radical it was.

What was important and radical was that we, CCI, paid not just for that time for people to rest and recover, but we also took care of expenses and logistics in order for us to do no work.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickMay 12, 2024

The “no work” work retreat - planning

Last week, I talked about vacationing and how our team retreat set me up for one of the best vacations I’ve ever had.

So, about that retreat - the “no work” work retreat. How did we plan it?

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickMay 5, 2024

What does vacationing have to do with DEI?

There are hard things going on in the world right now (when are there not?) which makes rest and recuperation more important than ever, especially for those of us actively working towards equity, inclusion, justice and healing.

I’ve been thinking about this as I just got back from a week’s vacation and I think I’ve discovered the secret to vacationing, at least for me right now.

And by “discovered” what I mean is that we have intentionally planned and designed and iterated on this over many years.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickApril 28, 2024

Acceptance is not endorsement

We’ve been talking and thinking a lot about change recently, both within the team at CCI and with our clients. DEI is, to us, inherently about change, not for the sake of change, but in order to shift towards equity and inclusion.

Change work, however, by necessity involves grief work, which by necessity involves acceptance work.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickMarch 10, 2024#acceptance, #change, #grief

Transparency can create more trust than it prevents

People and orgs tend to shy away from transparency out of fear of opening themselves up for critique or creating distrust.

However, what I've experienced and observed is that lack of transparency itself creates more distrust than it prevents. People tend to have a sense for when they are being lied to, gaslit, or handled, even if they can't necessarily put a finger on it.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickMarch 4, 2024

Goals we can control

Try this - think about three things that would make the rest of your day great. Jot them down on a piece of paper or a note on your phone or computer.

Now, take a look at them and consider, how many of the things you wrote down are completely within your control?

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickFebruary 25, 2024#needs, #systems, #goals, #atomichabits

Patience as a catalyst for change

People often think that DEI work is about race - at its most demonized, the misconception is that it’s about making white people believe they and the US are inherently racist. At its best it is often thought to be about how to hire more Black and other people of color so that the staff is more reflective of the communities they serve.

It is absolutely not the former, and the latter is only a very small part.

I’m not even sure I knew it when I started out, but what I’ve come to find is that, for me at least, DEI work is about healing - healing from the trauma and harm of systems of oppression.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickFebruary 22, 2024#change, #patience

Creating psychological safety for ourselves

At Co-Creating Inclusion, one of the questions we constantly ask ourselves, each other, and our clients is - do you have what you need to do your best work?

Psychological safety is a key factor.

This doesn’t mean we can’t do really great work without it - let’s face it, workplaces are typically not psychologically safe for most.

But the cost of doing work without psychological safety is significant, both to employees and the organizations they work for. I often think of the lost untapped potential that impacts us all.

But what can folks do if they identify that they are lacking in psychological safety?

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickFebruary 11, 2024#psychologicalsafety, #agency, #personalsafetyplan

What do feelings have to do with DEI?

Feelings. Complicated. Messy. Awkward. Inconvenient. Subjective. Unprofessional.

One of the things we find ourselves doing as a result is creating space for feelings in our DEI work. And then people comment on what an awkward transition that is coming in from other workspaces.

The point is not that DEI spaces are spaces where you can have your feelings. What do feelings even have to do with DEI?

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickJanuary 21, 2024#feelings, #mindfulness, #selfregulation

Work and life, an integration

One of the things I’ve found so fascinating about parenting is how relevant the lessons learned are to work life and vice versa. I love being able to bring all aspects of my identify and self to all aspects of my life.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickDecember 3, 2023#schools, #education, #worklifeintegration

Functioning systems can surprisingly contribute to inclusion and accessibility

We are only seven days into my oldest child’s first year in high school so it’s early days but so far the experience of going from both my kids only ever being at schools with no more than a few hundred kids, my oldest child’s middle school having only 60 students, to a school with several thousand kids has been really fascinating.

My assumption was that it would be impersonal, overwhelming, and bureaucratic. I assumed my child would get lost in the system. How would he learn to navigate coming from a middle school that pretty much required no executive functioning skills?

Fast forward a year and yes I know we are only seven days in but so far I have been really impressed with the school for reasons I was not expecting at all.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickSeptember 17, 2023#systemsofoppression, #systems, #schools, #operations

Dreaming beyond what is currently possible

Summer is my favorite season, even in NYC where it can (and increasingly so it seems) be blazingly and uncomfortably hot and humid.

Ok, I don’t love that part.

But the spirit of summer holds so much appeal to me.

Summer for me is a time for self-reflection, curiosity and integration.

It’s also a time for dreaming.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickSeptember 10, 2023#dreaming, #imagination, #summerDEI

The opportunity to walk the walk with new team members

Just a few weeks ago, we welcomed Lori Press to our team as our new Administrative Coordinator. This is an exciting evolution for the CCI team as it’s a new role, and will free me and the rest of the team up to do more of the strategic level work that will help keep us on a path towards increased impact for our clients as well as for us.

It has been important to us however that we bring someone onto the team who isn’t just here to support us, but that is someone we can support in their career and professional development as well as with a supportive work environment in general, something that was clear was not the norm for many of the candidates for this position.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickAugust 6, 2023#recruiting, #hiring, #onboarding

The importance of integration time

As you may have heard us speak about before, every year CCI takes the month of August as a pause from external client meetings, facilitation and coaching for our own strategic planning, professional development and self-care.

This year my intention is to not have to do any work at all for my two week vacation at the end of August.

Co-creating inclusionAlethea FitzpatrickJuly 30, 2023#integration, #summer

Pay differentials at CCI

When Co-Creating Inclusion first started, as is often typical for small businesses in the early days, I started my salary out low and built a team of independent contractors.

After the first year, we had the ability to bring on our first employee (other than myself) and the year after that, we did our first pay equity audit, benchmarked our salaries to the market, and were even able to provide some back pay to cover some of the difference between what we had been paying ourselves and market rates.

Creating an equitable and transparent pay structure has been a priority for us ever since. After all, it’s not really DEI work if we participate in the extraction of our own labor in a way that exacerbates systemic inequities and does not support our needs.

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