The four levels of everything
A big aha moment early on in my DEI journey was learning about the four levels of oppression from Desiree Lynn Adaway and her team in their course, Diversity is an Asset (they don’t offer this course anymore).
The four levels are:
Internalized
Interpersonal
Institutional
Ideological or systemic
Desiree explained that while, especially when we have power and privilege, it’s the internalized and interpersonal we might focus on, as a Black woman, it was the institutional and systemic levels that she encountered every day and that might literally kill her.
This explained and continues to explain so much to me about why the focus on the individual and interpersonal feels to me pathologically obsessive and entirely missing the point.
Systems of oppression can be completely invisible to us when they do not impede on our freedom and ease of access.
As we talked about last week - it’s not enough to “not be racist” at the internal and interpersonal level because the institutional and systemic levels would still exist.
It’s not that the internalized and interpersonal don’t matter - institutional and systemic oppression gets enacted through individuals after all.
It’s that we have to be considering all four levels at the same time, and that they are all interconnected.
There’s a lot more to say about the four levels of oppression. My favorite resource is a simple three page PDF titled “The Four I’s of Oppression” from the Colorado Funders for Inclusiveness and Equity.
The point I want to make today though is that I have found it incredibly helpful to think of the four levels of oppression as the four levels of everything.
In particular, I’ve found it helpful to think of these levels as the four levels where we can have an impact and create change.
This doesn’t mean we should all necessarily be trying to work all four levels at once, although I do think we should try and consider all four levels at once.
However, one of the things that can be useful to figure out is where we personally are best suited to make the most impact.
Some people are really good at driving change at the internalized level - think therapists, coaches and an entire industry built around “self-help” and personal development. There is talk about mindset, behavior, and cognitive development. This is the “hearts and minds” level.
Others focus on the interpersonal - couples therapists, mediators, and you could probably include lawyers, HR folks and others who focus on how people treat each other, what their interactions are like etc.
At the institutional or organizational level you’re looking at team or workplace culture, policies, practices, values, beliefs, and hierarchy or structure. This is the level that leaders and management are generally tasked with shepherding, along with consultants for whom the organization is the client - so most of them, including DEI and organizational development consultants. Institutional change can be driven both from within and outside the institution.
At the ideological or systemic level, we’re talking about coalitions across industries or issues, or about those who are drive change by creating mass movements that demand it. The protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 for example created an ideological shift that we are still seeing play out today. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, many of the conversations that are happening at the institutional, interpersonal and internalized level are tangibly different - at least that is my experience, although I know it is not everyone’s. Whether we’ll see systemic level changes in policy perhaps feels more tenuous or dubious but systemic change takes time and perhaps it is too early to tell.
Me? Well, in my long and winding personal and professional journey and career path, a very helpful discovery was that I am most energized and can be most effective at driving change at the organizational level.
When I first started coaching, which is a very prevalent business model especially for online businesses, I loved it and thought that I would perhaps build a private coaching practice working with individuals... but it only took a few months, maybe even just weeks actually of trying that for my energy around it to flatline. It was kind of baffling to be honest because when I was in coaching sessions, I felt like I was truly in my element, but as a business model, the thought of driving change, one person at a time, without access to the organizations and institutions within which they had to function, felt daunting and draining to me. There is nothing inherently wrong with working privately with individuals. I do think our culture overemphasizes this level but I recognize that for some, this is where they are truly in their element.
At the same time, I know people who either aspire and intentionally work to build mass movements from day one or it happens organically - they do something, and maybe it goes viral or takes on a momentum of its own. And by the way, sometimes these are mass movements for individual or institutional change, but either way, I’m not that person either. I’m not drawn to or energized by it.
The moment when I realized that my entire career as an architect was spent driving change at the organizational level - and that this was actually something I loved - was a game changer. When I thought about serving 6 organizational clients at $30K instead 60 private clients at $3K... well it was one of those “exhaling with relief I didn’t even know I needed” moments. I even remember exactly where I was - I was with my family and we were pulling into the parking lot of a large retail store in the suburbs (which is in itself somewhat memorable given that it is not a typical occurrence for us, but we were on the way to visit family).
It hasn’t been a straight line since then, there have certainly been ups and downs, but through those ups and downs, this clarity has given me fuel for direction and momentum.
Today, the 1:1 DEI coaching that we do within organizations is some of the most impactful work that we do. Sometimes we will only be coaching the CEO or Executive Director, but most often that is either as a pre-cursor or follow-up to working more widely with the organization. Other times we’ll be working with the senior management or leadership or with a DEI facilitators group or DEI workgroup - we’ll do individual sessions but we’ll also meet with the group.
Yes I do believe you can drive organizational change by working with individuals, but I know that I personally am most effective, and my team is most effective, when we have access to conversations at the org level.
This doesn’t mean all staff have to be involved. It’s great when there can be an all staff component and this usually accelerates change but not every organization is ready for it or has the budget for it. But working with teams that have the ability to have org wide impact, and working with them not just individually but as a team means that we can directly impact systems thinking in alignment with an overall strategic vision while supporting the development of the team’s culture and internal DEI capacity.
Whenever we’ve tried to only work at the group level, we invariably end up adding in 1:1 work. And whenever we’ve tried to only work at the 1:1 level, we’ve invariably ended up recommending some org level work as well. When we don’t do both, we invariably get sucked into doing invisible work in order to try and compensate.
Knowing how we best create change is key to delivering value and making an impact.
It’s also important for mitigating burnout, which often can arise from getting dragged into ways of working that make it harder or more costly in terms of time and psychological energy.
At what level are you best energized to create change? What are the ways in which your day-to-day tasks and responsibilities are aligned with that, and what adjustments could bring you into better alignment? Is your team being deployed to their best advantage? How are they being drained and how are they being energized?
Self-coaching for DEI Advocates and Leaders
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