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We have talked on this blog about lip service as the gap between intention and action. As the old adage says, actions speak louder than words.
However, there's another gap we also need to talk about, which is the gap between actions and results.
Read MoreI've been thinking a lot about capacity lately.
After all, it's February, which is usually my hardest month anyway, and we are almost a year into the pandemic here in the US.
I'm hitting a wall, and I know many others are too.
Capacity to me is different to productivity. Productivity is doing more. Capacity can be about doing the same amount of work, but at a lower cost, without expending as much energy.
Read MoreA friend shared a link to Gabrielle Union-Wade's Instagram post of an interview with Venus Williams at age 14.
Says Gabrielle:
Speaking up for yourself, for a cause you believe in, for your co-workers, for what's fair and just, or even for your children can be scary. The fear of backlash, the fear of being labeled "difficult" or "aggressive" or being othered is ever present and real.
Read MoreI read a very helpful article this morning: Teacher Demoralization Isn't the Same as Teacher Burnout.
Says the article: "It is worth distinguishing teacher demoralization from burnout. Teachers' ongoing value conflicts with the work (demoralization) cannot be solved by the more familiar refrain for teachers to practice self-care in order to avoid exhaustion (burnout). Demoralization occurs when teachers cannot reap the moral rewards that they previously were able to access in their work. It happens when teachers are consistently thwarted in their ability to enact the values that brought them to the profession." (my emphasis)
Read MoreI'll admit that, up until recently, I had thought more of lip service as saying something when you don't actually mean it.
What we're seeing is a kind of lip service where the organization or person may actually genuinely mean what they say, or think that they do, but when it comes to taking action, especially actions that come with some sort of cost, they balk.
It's the gap between intention and action that we have long seen, recognized, identified, and named, but only recently have I started to connect that to lip service.
Read MoreCalls for unity and healing land as violence at worst, and spiritual bypassing at best, to those most impacted by the last four years and the last four centuries of oppression if there isn't first radical truth telling, acknowledgement, and justice.
Read MoreWhite supremacy (not far-right extremist groups but the mainstream system embedded in every aspect of our systems and culture here in the US and across the globe) deeply entrenched in people and organizations that are supposed to be there to help, that are the "well-intentioned" ones - I've come to expect it, yet it still cuts deep, so maybe I'm not as prepared as I tell myself I am.
Or maybe the day it doesn't cut deep is the day I lose touch with my own humanity - I don't know. It's a fine line.
Read MoreOne of the things we've seen at some of our client organizations as well as the communities we are part of, well-intentioned progress towards making decisions that are grounded in equity fall short when there is a continued reliance on top-down hierarchies, paternalism and lack of transparency that still doesn't include those most impacted.
What often ends up happening is that you end up with even more people not feeling heard.
Those who are aligned with power and privilege feel confused and threatened because a different kind of decision making is taking place that doesn't center them, but has not been explained - this often weaponizes equity as the reason no one gets what they need.
And those whose needs are supposedly being prioritized don't experience it that way either, because they weren't given a voice in the process, and they have no reason to trust that their needs are being considered at all.
Read MoreOne of the things that often happens when you open up the space for difficult conversations about racism and other form of systemic oppression that might be underlying the challenges and harm experienced by the most impacted in a community or organization is that it gets messy. It feels uncomfortable. It is often intensely painful.
Read MoreWhen you come to learn the truth about this country, even just a little bit more than what we are typically taught or lead to believe, when you come to understand how systemic racism and white supremacy were a founding principle of this country, built into every aspect of its systems and institutions in ways that are still very much alive, present, yet invisible to so many of us today, Trump no longer is an aberration. It's the system working exactly as designed in ways that we all can't help but be complicit with, whether with our intention or consent or not.
Read MoreEmotional exhaustion and burnout is real and has a disproportionate impact on women, BIPOC and others who face systemic challenges.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever felt more emotionally exhausted, and getting more sleep doesn't help.
So it was that Brene Brown's podcast interview with authors of the book "Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle" resonated deeply and also provided insights and practical strategies for dealing with stress, even when we have no control over the stressors.
Read more about my takeaways, then go listen to the podcast episode, then go read the book!
Read MoreThe data shows that low-income, Black and Latinx families are the least in favor of re-opening schools. They place a higher priority on not dying (ie containing the virus) than on restarting the economy or getting their kids out of their hair so they can get work done more peacefully at home (which is the priority for many white and more privileged parents who are otherwise shielded from the worst effects of the virus).
As Jen Roesch argues in her article "If Opening Schools Is About Equity, Why Aren’t We Listening to Those Most Impacted?", instead of forcing students back to school, we should support them and their families to learn at home.
How are you approaching fall school reopening decisions for your family, if you have school age kids? What is your company or organization doing to support working parents? How can you advocate for working parents, especially those who face the most systemic challenges?
Read MoreAs many families grapple between choices of in-person, hybrid, or remote learning, I wanted to share some different articles that have helped me clarify my thinking.
Even if you are not a parent or caregiver, this is an important conversation to be aware of and part of - not only do you likely have friends, family and colleagues who are grappling with these issues, but these are community and systemic issues that impact us all.
Employers have a role too because they have the ability to mitigate the impossible math of working from home full time while your kids are at home full time trying to get an education, and that, as always, disproportionately impacts those already most impacted including BIPOC, low income, and essential worker families and especially the women in those families.
For those who hastily proclaimed that Black Lives Matter these past couple of months, it's time to act like they do.
Read MoreOne of the things I've been thinking about is how we can create space to show up in our full humanity.
Sometimes what this means is being able to take off our hat as whatever role we are playing - professional or personal - and allow more of ourselves and our humanness in.
In other words, letting ourselves, and each other, just BE can actually be quite revolutionary.
Read MoreOne of the things we've all had the chance to both watch and experience lately is how to practice diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on social media. Some companies have been doing it well... others, not so much.
I recently got the chance to speak with social media strategist Andréa Jones about how to share on social media with transparency and accountability so as to lower the cost of speaking up and create safety within our communities. Although Andréa's podcast speaks mostly to digital business owners, the conversation we had can be applied to any business or organization.
Read MoreWe need white people to stop asking for "respect" and "kindness", and for "judgement free" space, and to be assumed to have "good intentions."
We need white people to stop saying they didn't mean to cause harm.
Because you may not have intended it, but the harm you cause is not an accident.
Read MoreBy Malaika Aaron-Bishop
Two marches. Two rallies. One drum circle.
A Black woman in a white, lace frock with long diaphanous sleeves carries a megaphone. The dress is at once delicate and commanding. Impractical? Maybe. But still deeply appropriate. She paces, making eye contact with each person and bellows with the ease of any general: "We are crying out as mothers and grandmothers saying... we shall not be stopped, Amen!?"
Crowd: "Amen!"
Woman: "Alright! Forward ever! Backward never!"
One of the things I've realized that I can do as a DEI consultant, along with my team at Co-Creating Inclusion, is to lower the cost of speaking up.
And now what we're seeing across the country and even across the world, despite my misgivings about a "woke wave", is a systemic and cultural lowering of the cost of speaking up.
Read MoreHow I'm shoring up my boundaries so I don't get drowned by the "woke wave' and how I have to remind myself that I don't have the inside track on the right way to do things.
Read MoreBLACK LIVES MATTER
We say this because the US was founded on the principle that they didn't, and that principle is still at the bedrock of every institution today.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade. Ahmaud Arbery. And all the countless others, these only being the latest.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
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