Building Inclusive Cultures from the Inside Out
Date: June 15, 2023
This moment in time continues to call all of us to deepen our commitments, capacities, and will to advance equity, inclusion, accessibility, anti-racism and belonging efforts. To continue to challenge, disrupt and dismantle the systems of oppression that continue to harm and hold back so many who are striving to work in the full service of their gifts, to contribute, and to shape our communities, our workplaces, and board rooms.
We’ve got some amazing initiatives unfolding in Canada right now that are intended to systemically shift and transform cultures, like The 50-30 Challenge and the BlackNorth Initiative.
As a long-time equity, inclusion and belonging practitioner, both in career, and most recently, as a consultant in the space, I have come to appreciate how important it is to build a foundation for this work before you even begin the work of building and advancing inequity, inclusion and belonging action-plan.
I like to compare it to the practice of running a marathon. If running the marathon is the action plan that a company, community, or group is going to follow to achieve the culture, practice, and policy change they are looking for to create an inclusive, accountable, and harm-free culture, then the work I am talking about is preparation and training.
In the spirit of full transparency, I have never run a marathon, and I am really leaning on wisdom I have learned from people in my life who have run marathons or competed in triathlons.
Preparing to engage in deep and impactful equity work requires three strong pre-conditions or capacities:
A strong accountability practice, within each team member, and as a collective team.
A culture and organizational container that is resourced and resources each team member to show up as their best self and in active commitment to the equity work needed to create an inclusive culture.
A strong capacity to respond more meaningfully to conflict and difference.
A high level of social capital.
It’s important to not only work to build these capacities within the organization, but to start with building these capacities within each leader within the organization. And while I am actually referring to every team member within an organization (I believe that each of us has circles of influence within an organization and the capacity to shape meaningful change), I am ALSO referring to every leader in a hierarchy and the importance of having deep equity and inclusion capacity so that you can actually create a high-trust organization where all staff members, from office reception all the way up to the CEO’s office, every team member feels like their belonging, dignity, and safety needs (Staci Haines, Author of The Politics of Trauma) are being honoured and met.
No one, regardless of their identities, is outside of this consideration. It’s important to remember that unless we’re working towards a universal experience of inclusion that is accessible to every human in your organization, movement, or container within which you are doing your work, we are not truly working towards equity, inclusion, justice or belonging. Let’s take a look at each of the four pillars I named.
Building Accountability Practice.
Leaning on the profoundly transformative work of Mia Mingus, amongst others, I want to share a quote that I often include in teachings and capacity-building spaces I hold for clients:
“True accountability is not only apologizing, understanding the impact your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behaviour so that the harm does not happen again.”
– Mia Mingus, Disability Justice Advocate
Source: Mariame Kabe, Transformative Justice Movement
When we are accountable leaders and team members, we let our team know that when we cause harm, for whatever reason, and whether intentional or not, we remain committed to repairing harm. In this way we support teams to foster a strong sense of psychological safety.
Use the questions below to reflect on the current state of accountability within your organization and within yourself:
What is the culture and practice of accountability in your organization?
What is your personal commitment to and practice of accountability?
What conversations are you having around accountability within the organization?
How are you building accountability practice capacity, policy structures, and expectations within the organization?
2. Resourcing Ourselves and Our Team for Equity Work
“Doing equity work can be incredibly fulfilling; it can also be physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting. This type of work requires a high level of empathy, emotional engagement, and energy.”
– Leena Sharma Seth, Founder, Mending the Chasm
I’m inviting you to go beyond the traditional idea of resourcing, to think beyond budget and time constraints, to expand your thinking, especially in the context of equity and belonging work, to include each team members and teams feeling emotionally resourced, spiritually resourced, physical resourced, and mentally resourced to engage in the very difficult work that comes with the culture change work that is equity, inclusion and belonging work.
A definition of resourcing is below:
When we are talking about resources, we are talking about the tools that we can call on when things are difficult - this can be any source of grounding, flow, settling, courage, commitment, resilience, or affirming energy.
- Resmaa Menakem, The Quaking of America
When we build our capacity to process and to tend to ourselves when we are triggered or upset by something we experience, as well as building our capacity to hold space for those who are triggered, this practice helps us to build the resilience and strength needed to hold the charge that comes with difficult conversations that happen in equity work.
Especially for those of us who are in bodies that are racialized, disabled, queer, for example, the weight of the emotional labour that comes with doing equity work is much heavier than it is for those who are dominant culture (white, male, able-bodied, cisgender, etc.). It’s not reasonable to assume that every person who is racialized, for example, is a racial justice and anti-oppression expert. While there is deep lived experience, one must also have the skills and practices needed to shift and transform cultures.
Some questions you can reflect on to understand the ways your organization is prioritizing team and individual well being include:
What are the ways that your organization centers and prioritizes wellbeing for staff and teams, especially when news of hate crimes come from the media?
What healing and centering resources are available for staff?
How does your organization's culture and practice support employees and teams to do equity work in a way that does not trigger, create undue emotional labour, and centres wellbeing?
3. Deepening our Capacity to Engage Meaningfully Across Difference.
"Conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen." - Kazu Haga, Finding Our Way Podcast with Prentis Hemphill, Season 2: Episode 7
Let’s face it, conflict is a part of life. It’s been said that, next to public speaking, conflict is something many of us fear most. Learning to respond to conflict in a way that creates conditions for us to respond from our best self, transforms the conflict, and that leverages the generative qualities that are inherent in conflict is a super power, frankly, in equity, justice and belonging work.
"Conflict transformation pursues the development of change processes which explicitly focus on creating positives from the difficult or negative. It encourages greater understanding of underlying relational and structural patterns while building creative solutions that improve relationships." - John Paul Lederach
This view holds that conflict is normal in human relationships, and conflict is an engine of change.
Learning how to engage more meaningfully with difference, across difference and most importantly, in the words of Mia McKenzie, to build solidarity across difference, is what conflict transformation is about.
Learning how to become more aware of and to process our triggers so that we can be more present in conflict situations is a practice that makes conflict transformation possible.
Some questions we can ask to support our capacity to be more curious about difference are below:
What responses or activations do I notice in my body when I am experiencing differences in approach, opinion, and practice?
What are some practices I can use to settle myself when I feel triggered?
How might time, space, and reflection support a better resolution of this conflict?
4. Fostering a Social Capital Abundant Culture
"Social Capital features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.”
- Robert Putnam, Author of Bowling Alone, 1995
I understand social capital in a similar way to Putnam and believe that social capital includes mutual alignment around shared purpose, shared definition of a challenge, and a commitment to working together, in a trust-filled way, to address challenges.
"[Culture] change happens at the speed of trust."
- Stephen Covey, Author, Speed of Trust
Any deep culture change initiative often requires the participation and engagement of every team member in an organization. Trust is a critical precondition for this work.
For this last of the three critical muscles and practices, I invite the following set of questions:
How have we earned the trust and the right to engage in equity work at our organization?
What historical and contextual harm do we need to address and take accountability for that has not yet happened?
How are we facilitating the fostering and strengthening of relationships between team members?
How are we building the capacities of our team members to engage meaningfully with difference, to engage meaningfully across difference, and in the words of Mia Mackenzie, to build solidarity across difference?
There are no shortage of powerful resources, books, frameworks and toolkits out there to support you in your work to build cultures that are more healing centred, equitable, inclusive and belonging-abundant and I encourage you to explore these resources and to use them to inform your organization’s approach and plans, as well as your own personal approach and ambitions with respect to strengthening your equity, inclusion and belonging capacity. Just remember to include a focus on accountability, resourcing, and the state of social capital in your organization.