We write weekly on the issues that are top of mind for us as we do the work of driving equity, shifting culture and co-creating inclusion with our clients. To receive these posts via email, join our free weekly email series, Self-coaching for DEI advocates and leaders.
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.
Read MoreJust 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.
Read MoreAs 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.
Read MoreWhen 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.
Read MoreOne of the communication strategies we talk about in our DEI workshops with organizational clients is what we like to call the “tell me more” strategy - in other words, leaning into curiosity in order to de-escalate a situation and foster an environment and culture where difficult conversations across difference can take place.
While it is not always the right strategy, particularly if hearing more from someone is likely to only cause more harm (you actually have to genuinely be ready to hear more) it can even be a strategy for responding to aggressions, micro or otherwise.
Read MoreWe’ve talked before about what can happen when trauma and power intersect and the things you can do in the moment to prevent yourself from causing harm by reacting in trauma when you align with power.
This is one of the reasons why self-reflection is critical in DEI work.
However, it’s critical for various reasons no matter how we align with contextual power and privilege.
Read MoreLast week Malaika, Danae and I were in Seattle to meet with a client and to do our first in-person facilitation with an org client since late February 2020.
I am loathe to say that in person is categorically better - our team was built as a remote team since before the pandemic and we have not found it to be a barrier to building trust and collaboration, although I recognize that is easier when you have a small team that has always worked remotely.
And yet… there is something very powerful about the embodied experience of being together in physical space. Conversation flows a little easier. There is no fumbling for the mute button. You can ready full body language. There is a shared physical experience, even if it’s just being in the same space.
Read MoreI am excited to announce that Co-Creating Inclusion is expanding and we are recruiting for an Administrative Coordinator (remote) to help support our amazing team in the impactful DEI consulting work we do for our clients.
Do you know someone who is detail-oriented, thrives on structure and optimization, and who loves to improve internal systems, structures, and processes?
Please pass along the job posting and share widely among your networks - we would love to get your referrals and recommendations!
View the job posting here or on LinkedIn.
Read MoreAs a former architect, some of the most engaging and enriching educational experiences I ever had were in my design studio classes in architecture school. “Project-based learning” is a concept people are more familiar with now - in fact, my kids have been in schools with project-based learning since kindergarten - but for me it was a revelation that my actual academic courses could be more interesting than extra-curriculars.
Read MoreAs DEI consultants at CCI, we are very clear that we are not HR. We are equally clear that DEI and HR need to closely collaborate - it is critical that DEI be integrated into HR practices, just as it is critical for DEI to consider the role that HR plays within the organization when it comes to creating a culture of equity, inclusion and belonging where diversity can thrive.
What we have found though is that HR is often seen as and therefore functions as the culture keepers, in other words, responsible, to varying degrees, for culture.
Read MoreSomething that happens so often that we generally accept and take it for granted is the way that accountability rolls downwards.
What do we mean by that?
What we mean is that individuals in an organization are often held accountable for things they don’t actually have any ability or power to control and should really be the responsibility of those further up the organizational hierarchy.
Read MoreI never thought that so much of the work I would do as a DEI consultant would be about giving and receiving feedback - mostly about receiving it and, by extension, inviting it.
But it turns out that a big part of co-creating inclusion is about getting feedback from those who are impacted by decisions in order to make better decisions.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, we started what has turned into a four part blog post series on hiring an internal DEI leader and/or consultant.
Today, we are closing out the series by discussing the process of hiring an internal DEI leader, assuming your organization has considered some of the questions we’ve already raised about the stage of DEI organizational development you’re in, and whether it’s the right time to hire an internal DEI leader.
Read MoreMore often than not, especially for small to mid-sized organizations, DEI is considered to be part of the HR function and initial DEI efforts are lead by HR.
In fact, it is often, although not always, HR that reach out to us about hiring us as DEI consultants, and we have worked successfully with many of our clients this way.
However, we are increasingly of the belief that DEI should not be conflated with HR and that it is beneficial to have DEI as a separate function from HR.
Read MoreAt Co-Creating Inclusion, we often talk about how we believe the process of creating inclusion should itself be inclusive - it’s in our name!
This is no less true even during the process of hiring a DEI consultant.
We have found that organizations often default to standard processes for “vendor procurement” that replicate existing power structures of “the client’s needs come first” and assumes a more transactional relationship where a client outlines a scope of work and then has vendors bid competitively on it.
No more.
Read MoreA question that often comes up is - when should organization hire an internal DEI leader as a full-time employee? The answer to that question, as to most questions is… it depends. And there is no right answer.
However, at CCI we do have some recommendations.
Read MoreSomething that people often find unexpected about DEI work is that sooooooo much of it is about feedback.
And one of the things we have come to say with quite a bit of frequency, thanks to Malaika, is that feedback is a gift, even if you don’t like the wrapping paper.
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much there is that goes unspoken. It comes up a lot in our DEI work with client organizations. When things go unspoken, we rely on socialization for a common understanding. We also rely on a homogenous or dominant culture where everyone is socialized into the same norms. If you don’t understand or follow the unspoken norms, you’re excluded. A lot of the work of assimilation, that is, of fitting into a dominant culture, is figuring out the unspoken norms.
And when norms are unspoken, it is much easier for them to become invisible, unchallenged, and unchanging.
Read MoreSummer vacation already seems like a far away dream, but having gone into August with the intention of vacationing differently, I wanted to make sure I reported back before it receded into the distance altogether.
Read MoreEvery year at Co-Creating Inclusion, we take the month of August as a break from external meetings and facilitation in order to prioritize our own strategic planning, professional development and self-care. We do the same for the last week of every month (February, April, June, October and December). We also tried to hold Wednesdays and Fridays from 9am-2pm EDT as “slack and meeting free time” although we do make exceptions when needed.
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