238: 5 Re-Orienting Inquiries for Revolutionary Times

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello friends. Happy Pride Month. Sending love to all of you who celebrate, which should and could be all of us. I know that there's so much going on right now, but I wanted to give a special shout out. Pride is a big deal and I know that it's a little harder to celebrate when we're not necessarily in the same community side by side in person because of the pandemic. I also want to honor that Today is Juneteenth. This is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. This is according to juneteenth.com dating back to 1865. It was on June 19 that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. The website continues. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which had become official January 1, 1863. The emancipation proclamation had little impact on Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new executive order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865 and the arrival of General Granger's regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the the resistance. Happy Pride. Happy Juneteenth. It's also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Celiberation Day. In honor of Juneteenth and Pride, I want to share today five Reorienting Questions for Revolutionary Times in honor of Juneteenth and Pride, Today I'm sharing five reorienting inquiries for Revolutionary Times.

2020 has been quite a year. It is clearly a pivotal moment in time for the world. This episode is going to be short but hopefully powerful. I'm still in deep listening mode, processing, trying to wake up to the racism around me, within me, starting to have conversations. It's going to be a long road. It's going to be an ongoing journey and something that I want to integrate for from the inside out in myself personally and then in my business and outward into the communities that I serve. So I thought today, rather than sharing information or even action steps, because I'm making a point not to do my default thing, which is jump into action. I even heard recently on a podcast that when we're in fight or flight, one coping mechanism is exactly that. It's like frantic action. This came from authors that I'm going to have on the show of a book called the Beauty of Conflict, and they have their own podcast of the same name, the Beauty of Conflict. So again, rather than rushing into action or even telling you all the things that I'm brainstorming or might do, those will happen down the road. I'd like to share with you some of the inquiries that have been shaping my thinking and my deep reflection. This episode builds on number 173 beautiful questions for Challenging times with Steve Morris, and Most recently, episode 234, Black Lives Matter. Listening, learning, growing and acting. As Steve shared in episode 173 a beautiful question is one that reorients your life trajectory. It comes from David White, who says that a beautiful question is one that can't be answered with a strategic mind. It's a lived question, a question we experience, one that can reorient our trajectory or our horizon, taking us from one side of attention or perception and into a reorienting possibility question. I just love that a beautiful question is one that reorients your life trajectory. I know that 2020 is asking all of us to ask these beautiful questions of our lives, of our communities, of our society, to reorient our trajectory. We don't know how that trajectory will be reoriented, but we can see that there is no normal to go back to. I heard this in a conversation on My Friend Tour, Michael Bungay Stanier's podcast, his very first guest, the first episode of the show. We will get through this, she said. There's no bouncing back. Resilience isn't about bouncing back. It's more like bouncing forward. And that's true of this pandemic. We're not going back. There's no normal. As much as some of us wish we could go back to the way things were, wasn't it nice when we could go to restaurants and movies and hug people we don't know. But we can reorient ourselves and we can look to bounce forward. We can absolutely see that the protests around the world are asking us to reorient ourselves, to reorient our lives, to wake up, to listen, to pay more attention and to get involved, to take action to right so many of the systematic wrongs in our country.

Also to reorient our own position. If you're white like I am, it's to say, how am I complicit? How am I part of these systems? Knowingly or unknowingly? I am so grateful for the explosion of content and thought provoking pieces online, in social media, in mainstream media, asking us and teaching us how we can do things differently.

These five inquiries really had me pause, reflect deeply and start to live into the answers. The first one comes from Henna Inam, who was my guest in episode 226, Wired for Disruption. She told me about a book from Strategic Coach called who do you want to be a hero to?

I invite you to think about that during this time. Who do you want to be a hero to?

I'll put the link to that book in the show notes.

The second question how do you want to look back on this moment in history? What would make you proud to tell your children or grandchildren?

I was inspired by Joanne in the Momentum community to talk to my mom and grandma. She had had conversations with her mom. Both of them lived through the Civil Rights movement. Her mom had been around for many other tumultuous times in her country. And so I asked my mom and grandmother as well, my grandmother who lived through World War II, my mom who was at Berkeley in the late 1960s while protesting the Vietnam War. And they both said, we agree. Silence is violence right now. This is not a time to stay quiet. You have to use your voice to create change.

Now I have to say my grandma is very progressive. She's always been so understanding of me. My mom raised us in San Francisco, very progressive city. It was inspiring to hear them both say, because they're not on social media, they didn't grow up on social media. And it was very inspiring to hear them say, you have to take sides now. You know, we've seen the events of history and we see the leadership that we have now. This is needed now more than ever. And I didn't necessarily expect that. I didn't expect that they would both say, yes, you must take a side. You must be vocal. This is what this moment in history demands of us. Even my husband Michael, who was born under bombs in Beirut during the Lebanese war, has lived through several wars and revolutions since, including one that's going on as we speak. His country is in tremendous pain and revolution now, and he said the same thing. You can't sit here and stand idly by while your country is in revolution.

Right when the George Floyd video was released, Michael saw it and he said, this is a crucifixion. This is a wake up call. Right before I went to record this episode, I heard Marie Forleo share in her recent podcast a quote related to this inquiry from Dr. Ibram Kendi in his book how to Be an Anti Racist that has quickly skyrocketed to the top of the charts these last few weeks. The way Kendi puts it, he says, the question for each of us is what side of history will we stand on?

Listeners, I encourage you, don't be on the wrong side of history. This is a powerful moment that we see so many people and companies using their voices to publicly state where they stand and specifically to say emphatically, black Lives Matter.

Now, of course, some are doing this earlier in the process than later. Some are doing this with more grace, some are doing this with more awkwardness, some are doing this with more authenticity, others with less. But I see a lot of people trying, and I know that the words mean nothing without action behind it. But this is very powerful for me when I don't feel that courageous around speaking about these issues because I feel very unskilled. So that's something for me to work on. But what gives me courage is to say I don't want to look back on this time and say that I did nothing at all. The third inquiry comes from Pivot Insider Kelsey, and that's my monthly Q and A call for supporters of the Pivot podcast. So if you want to join us there, it's pivotmethod.com Insider Kelsey asked that before we post something or reply in comments or interact publicly to ask who is that serving? So as you think about creating content or companies sending a message to their community, think about who is it serving? Where we get into performative allyship and virtue signaling is where you put a message out to show that you've put a message out and that it doesn't go any deeper than that, and that there's no real deep inquiry or call to change within yourself or with others. So if you're posting or commenting just to release a pressure valve within yourself, and that's where it stops, who is that serving? Is it truly serving the black indigenous people of color communities as a true ally? Or is it serving you and releasing some pressure, in which case maybe you don't want to say anything at all if it's not truly serving in a way that we can be most helpful as allies and as leaders within these movements. To just pose to Black Square and not do any inquiry or any self reflection or take any ownership for one's peace or part of society and the systems we live in is not enough. It really only just serves the person who posts it to say, okay, I did something. And we've seen this critique for many years. Even things like the Ice Bucket Challenge. If all you do is dump ice, a bucket of ice on your friend's head, are you really helping als? Are you really contributing in ways that can make a difference within that community and that desire to find a cure? Inquiry number four who is missing from your community? What are your blind spots? This comes from Tara McMullen in her what Works podcast in conversation with Whole 30s Melissa Urban and Dr. Carrie Foley on her team. It's from episode 266 on building an Inclusive Community. And I want to give a special thank you to my friend Sarah who passed along the link to this one. To repeat the question, who is missing from your community? The example that melissa shared around hole 30 was that when she looked, she saw that her community was mostly white and specifically mostly white women. So she realized that even though her intentions were in the right place, something needed to change. If you look at your communities or friendship circles, either that you've created or that you're a part of, and everybody has exactly the same background, maybe there's something going on, maybe there's something that you can investigate. This is where unconscious biases may be coming into play or unconsciously creating a community that's not welcoming to people who aren't just like you.

There's even a movement in the speaking industry for things like virtual summits or panels, that it's not only the responsibility of the organizers to create diverse inclusive events, both participants and speakers, but that actually speakers are now starting to look at a lineup. And if they're not diverse, if the speaking lineup is not diverse, they might actually not participate, even if they're in the majority. So it would be the case that, let's say, a lot of conferences have majority white male speakers, unless it's a conference for women. Well, even a white man looking at that lineup, if he's being a true ally, could say this is not a diverse lineup. And I'd like to recommend that you put someone else in my place. We see Alexis Ohanian step down from the board of Reddit, the company he co founded, saying, I strongly recommend that you replace my board seat with a black board member, which Reddit actually did. So that's a great example of actually stepping aside and creating that diversity that he cares so much about. We're seeing the important work of putting our money where our mouth is. And even within the podcast community, I'm seeing a call for if you're doing a panel in another country, make sure that one of the panelists is from that country, or if you do a panel in another city, make sure one of the panelists is from that city. So if you're having a panel at a conference in Houston, make sure that the speakers on that panel are not just from New York, San Francisco and la.

We can all do better at looking at who is missing in our community, both as organizers and participants.

The fifth inquiry is who can I proactively include and what questions are not being asked? Just recently I was honored to be interviewed for a CNBC article about college graduates who have lost internships due to COVID 19 I'll put the link to this in the show notes Even though the reporter didn't explicitly asked, I said, by the way, to have an internship, especially an unpaid one, or to pitch project based work that isn't paid is in its itself a tremendous privilege. Some people have to work to support themselves and maybe even their families during the summer. So highlighting this notion of invisible privilege that not everybody has the luxury of choosing some highfalutin internship with someone they really admire if that person needs a job, any job, to pay the bills and they're not being supported by other family members.

So it's inserting talking points and it's inserting questions and context around privilege and who's benefiting and who isn't into a conversation even when not being asked.

For me, I just proactively offered up what advice would I give to somebody who does have to work and earn a living over the summer? And how can I be more inclusive when answering that question?

The second part of this who else can you proactively include? After we finish the interview, I asked the reporter if she needed any more sources and she said yes, actually, I'd love to talk to a few more college students if you know anyone. So I took a beat, probably longer than usual, to rather than going to just whoever first came to mind, I also considered how can I incorporate more diversity in terms of who I'm even recommending, and I took extra time to really deeply reflect on that and think, who can I recommend that might be from the black Indigenous people of color communities or LGBTQIA women, where I'm inherently creating diversity based on who I'm recommending and offering the privilege of my position of being an author that a reporter can find and reach out to to help lift as we climb. As Marisol on my team shared with us a momentum this week, this notion of how can we lift as we climb so not just focusing on ourselves and whatever privileges and benefits that each of us can leverage to move ahead in our career. You know, I don't even love thinking of career in terms of linear concepts like moving ahead or even the word success, but how can we lift as we climb? How can we help lift each other up, lift other voices?

I really encourage you to pick even just one of these inquiries to sit with this week or even this month as you start to live in into the answers. Remember that a beautiful question is inherently one that you cannot answer in the moment. It's not just this quick flash of a yes or no or quick response. It needs to be lived. So to summarize, who do you want to be a hero to?

How do you want to look back on how you responded at this moment in history? What type of participation and change would make you proud?

Who is that serving? Whether it's a post, a comment, an email, a text, who is missing from your community? Who can you proactively include? And finally, what questions aren't being asked? What might be some of your own blind spots?

I hope you find these helpful. And perhaps there's another beautiful question, a reorienting question that I haven't even shared yet that you, if you tune in, get quiet and listen to, your own intuition will come to you as you immerse yourself in media and conversations. In the week ahead, pay attention. Put out the meta inquiry of what is the reorienting question that will most benefit me and others and serve the highest good? During this time, they can actually start to rewire you from the inside out in a way that supports love and justice and freedom for all.

Thank you so much everybody. Thank you for being here listening. Thank you for your patience with me and Grace as I do this work myself from the inside out. And I would love to hear what beautiful questions you do come up with or that are resonating with you most at this time. Leave me a voice note@pivotmethod.com ask and I would love to share it back out on the Pivot Podcast with listeners if you're open to it. Thank you again everybody and I really appreciate you being here. May you all have a beautiful rest of your day.

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Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.