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’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.
Read MorePeople 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.
Read MoreTry 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?
Read MorePeople 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.
Read MoreAt 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?
Read MoreFeelings. 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?
Read MoreOne 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.
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 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.
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