In this short video, Mike Domitrz reflects on a recent 90‑minute panel he hosted with four Black leaders discussing race, and extracts three core lessons about using one’s voice without fear. He explains that fear of saying the wrong thing often stems from ego and a lack of trust in the listener, rather than a genuine concern for harm. He argues that true communication requires trusting the audience to understand one’s intent and avoiding self‑censorship. Domitrz also stresses that speaking should be guided by love, kindness, and respect—not by a need to be right or by blunt efficiency that causes pain. He differentiates between the voices of those without power, who need empathy, and those in positions of authority, who must be mindful of how their words affect the marginalized. He concludes by urging listeners to pause, examine their motives, and lead with love and respect in all communications.
Chapters
Well, hello. I promised to do 30 videos in 30 days, and we are on day 3 of doing 30 videos in 30 days. And if you saw maybe an hour ago or so, it sends out a little post saying here's what Mike's going to talk about. And it said I was going to talk about sharing your voice and how to use your voice in work. And I do a lot of work with the military and helping trainers, educators On using their voice. Well, we're changing that topic. And we're going to talk about voice, but in a different way. We're going to talk about sharing our voice without fear. And the reason I'm going to talk about this is something that occurred yesterday. Yesterday, I hosted a discussion with 4 amazing individuals, 4 wonderful human beings. And we talked about a lot of what's happening in the world right now. And in that process, I wanted to be very transparent, and I shared, hey, before I reached out to you— now, this panel was 4 individuals who are Black individuals, and we were going to talk about race in our country. And I was very intentional about— I wanted 4 Black individuals to have this conversation with. And I sent out a message saying, I'm looking to put together a panel of all Black individuals to have this conversation with. Now, I knew at that moment I was also going to do a panel somewhere down the line of all white individuals, and then potentially do a panel of bringing people together and having these conversations. I wanted this to be very transparent, and I told the 4 when we were live talking— somebody was saying, look how few people are really speaking out besides, uh, repeating posts or memes of other people. They're not really expressing their feelings necessarily. Because they're afraid of saying the wrong thing, and it's not that they don't care; they're afraid to say the wrong thing. And I spoke up in that moment, and I said, "I have to admit, before I sent each of you the message I sent you asking you to be on today, I was afraid that maybe the way I was approaching this was wrong. I could say something wrong, and I would never want to do harm." And the panelists, which is Karen and Quinn and Karen and Tony. Taught me an amazing lesson, an amazing lesson in that moment. So if you didn't get to watch that whole 90-minute video yesterday, and they're brilliant throughout it, I do really, really recommend if you get a chance, go back in my timeline, go to YouTube, our YouTube page, youtube.com/centerforrespect. I think the title says Racism and Being White because I was the host, uh, and the, the 90 minutes that they do there is just incredible. This is going to be a short video today. But I am watching, by the way. Whenever I do these videos, I can see your comments. So please comment, because if you have questions, I want to bring you into this conversation. I can do that with technology now. We can do that. But what they taught me was the following, and I don't think I'll ever forget this. I hope I never forget this lesson. I believe it was Tony who actually said it during yesterday's talk. The idea that I would fear how I word something Would mean that I don't trust the person I'm sending it to to understand what my intentions were, what I was trying to say, what what I was trying to communicate. And I realized in that moment that when we stop ourselves from saying something that we want to say but we're afraid of how those will judge us. It's not necessarily about us not wanting to do harm. It's about us not being courageous enough to be judged. It's not necessarily about not wanting to hurt another human being. It is often more about our ego. I don't want to say the wrong thing and do anything that I didn't mean to say, I didn't mean to do. Well, that's about reputation and ego. Potentially more than it is doing harm to another person. And so if we are sitting back here and saying, I'm not going to express myself, what's, what's happening in the world right now? I strongly believe there's 2 reasons we don't do that. And I'm grateful for yesterday's panel because they helped me have this realization. Now, the second part I'm going to say, the panel did not have anything to say with this. Come to me, uh, in just in the last few hours, actually, really just sitting here and talking, it's come to my mind. But I believe there's 2 reasons. The one is the belief that I'm a big strong believer in, that when you speak words, you don't speak words to do harm. You speak words to educate, to communicate a message, but they should not be to communicate harm. So if you're going to speak words that you knowingly know could commit harm, like you could think about and go, could this commit harm? Could this do harm to others? Don't speak those words. Choose other words. If you're speaking words that are going, well, this isn't— this shouldn't do harm, uh, unless somebody were to misinterpret it, miss— and you can't find a better way to say it and you still don't say it, it means you're not trusting the receiver and you need to stop doing that. Trust the person you're sending it to. Trust the people you're putting out to the world to trust. They know your intention. Right. This is really, really important because if you don't speak with trust, you're always speaking from a place of fear. And here comes the more interesting part, is if I would without hesitation send that same message to someone I know well and know there's no way that that would be misinterpreted, but over here I won't send it and I won't engage this person because I'm afraid of what it could do there, that is all about the other person and how I'm viewing them. Think about that. If I'd send it to my friend and know it wouldn't do harm, it's because I trust my friend. But if I think, well, I'm not going to say it over here because they could do harm, what you're really saying is you don't trust the human beings out there on the other side of this conversation, whatever it is conversation you're having. And you must trust if you want to make a difference. You must trust the other people out there instead of censoring your voice. And then there's the second reason. The second reason you wouldn't share your voice in this case, because we're talking about 2 reasons, right? One is you don't trust the receiver, which is really unfair to the receiver, the person you're sending the message to. But the only other reason that would be logical for why you're not sharing is you know that your comments are not leading with love. They're not leading with respect. They're leading with an opinion that That you believe is right, but that's incredibly different than kind. That's incredibly different than loving, than respectful. I went to a program years ago, and it was a self-development program, and we were there for three days. It was a landmark moment in my life, and that was a hint, by the way. So for those who know the program, and I remember people getting up there and they were sharing their stories of struggles they had with people in their life. And the person would say, well, do you want to be right or do you want to be— and it could be something else. And I thought, as they kept saying it throughout the day, so do you want to be right or do you want to have a relationship? Do you want to be right or do you want to— and we get so caught up in wanting to be right that we're not willing to listen to others. We don't lead with love. We don't lead with respect. And so what you're telling me is, well, I'm not putting my words out to the world Because my words are about me being right, not necessarily loving, kind, or respectful. And you know they're harmful. So what I'd rather have you do is instead of stop saying to yourself, I'm not going to put my voice out to the world, I want to invite you to look in the mirror and say, why is your voice caught on right? Why doesn't your voice in those moments go Why could this not be leading with love? Maybe there's a way I could think differently about what I'm about to say. Like, I can think differently so that if whatever I put out to the world, it is leading with love, it is leading with respect. By the way, that when you say lead with love or lead with respect, it doesn't mean everything's foo-foo and everything's positivity. It means that you lead with intention of kindness. And I really like that word because I know people that will say, well, the loving thing to do is to be tough and hard on someone. And but they won't say that same word with kindness because it doesn't add up. Right. And so people will use words like, well, I'm going to lead with love and they do horrible things or they treat people horribly because they think tough love. Right. They'll use that language. Tough love is what that needs versus kindness. And I know because I Many times in my life have led with bluntness. Like, well, I'm going to get to the point, I'm going to be blunt. And I had to evaluate that a few years back and go, what am I doing? I'm not in the argument where I'm going to save time and get right to it at the cost of what, right? When I talk with corporate audiences, I always say that, look, when pain is caused, efficiency is lost. So if you're thinking, well, I'm just going to be blunt to get right to the point here at the cost of doing pain to others, There's no efficiency in your bluntness. It's just uncaring. It's caught on what you think you need to do versus what is actually the right thing to put out to the world. So I want to invite all of us right now when we're sharing with the world to pause and say to ourselves, am I caught on yelling out to the world right now that I want them to know this is right and this is wrong? Or am I engaging? Am I leading with kindness? Am I leading with love? If something's happening in the news and I think, how could that person do that? Or how How could people say, how could those people, which obviously has its plenty of problems in and of its own statement, but how could people do that? Pause and actually ask yourself, what would it take for somebody to do that so that I can understand why somebody is angry with what's happening, why somebody is hurt to the point they made these choices in their moment of anger or hurt? To try to understand. Now, let me be clear. I, when I make that reference, I'm talking to when people don't have power, when people don't have a voice, and they're trying to figure out ways to express. I am not referring to when people are in positions of power and abusing that position of power. Those are differences, and they're huge, huge differences. So all I'm going to ask, I'm going to wrap up today. I said we're going to keep today short. It's a weekend. I'm asking you to lead with love with your words. And lead with kindness in that love. Lead with respect in that love. Try to understand that when people are not in a position of power, try to understand what that could potentially feel like, even though you're not going to be able to know it if you're not one of those individuals who is not in a position of power. If, if you have given power based on how our culture views power and authority, if you have that, then it's about trying to figure out those who don't. how they could view the world. But— and that's what we want to do. Understand empathy. Lead with kindness. Hope you're able to have a weekend full of kindness. Thank you for joining me.
