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.
We know there's a lot going on right now and something that has been coming up in our coaching sessions with executives, leaders and staff is stress and burnout. We’ve written about burnout before, deep into the worst of the pandemic, and revisited over a year later, the strategies (and science) are just as relevant today, even if our stressors have shifted.
Read MoreThe obvious microaggressions are easy to spot. The anger flares inside immediately and past similar incidents rise to the surface unbidden.
It’s painful but it’s clear cut.
It’s the subtler ones that eat at you, almost on a time delayed extended release. At first you’re annoyed but not that bothered. But then it slowly sinks in. It feels familiar but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You’re irked, but you’re also irked at yourself for being irked.
Read MoreThe devastation I have been feeling at a cellular level in my body this week is a recall of my personal journey of grief as I realized that aligning with whiteness (as a system, not a people) was not going to keep me safe, and that any privileges I gained by aligning with whiteness were not for my benefit but for the purposes of oppressing others.
Read MoreMy heart and mind and entire body really is heavy from the past few days of news about the horrifying attacks in Israel, the impacts, and the ripple effect of shock, grief and trauma even for those not directly impacted.
It feels out of my lane yet also very relevant to the work I do.
For now I am reading, listening, learning, and engaging in conversation where I can.
Here’s what I know: anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arabism are all pillars of white supremacy. If destroying one pillar depends on fortifying another, white supremacy prevails.
Read MoreEarlier this year, we did a deep dive into people pleasing, and how people pleasing should not consistently traumatize the people you are trying to please.
We did several group sessions on people pleasing, and it seemed to open people up to thinking about people pleasing and its adverse impacts in new ways.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that people pleasing goes away overnight.
These patterns and habits are deeply ingrained in us, and are often rooted in strategies developed to respond to childhood trauma or harm.
Read MoreA question that comes up from time to time in our work is some variation on whether an issue we have raised is “DEI” or if it is “organizational management”.
It’s a curious question, especially when it only ever seems to come from white or white appearing men about our work as women and gender-expansive people of color.
Read MoreWe 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.
Read MoreSummer 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 has been particularly striking to me recently in our work is how white people often have a hard time understanding what they have to gain from dismantling white supremacy.
There’s a certain approach to DEI that is about white people recognizing their privilege and that they need to give it up in order to “do the right thing.”
Often white folks have no idea what they themselves have given up or how they have been harmed in aligning with whiteness.
Read MoreWe talked a few weeks ago about people pleasing, and we’ve been talking on the CCI team about how this leads to folks trying to make friends and develop “personal relationships” in the workplace.
We want to work with people that we like, right?
And so it makes sense that we would hire people that we like, right?
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.
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