How To Be An Ally

Hello everyone. This is a bonus episode of the No Ego Podcast. I trust that if you're one of my fans, you are heartbroken about the events of the past few days. I know that I certainly am not only heartbroken for what has happened this week, but also for what my friends and colleagues have been enduring for lifetimes. Due to the racism in our country and in our communities and in our hearts and even in our own minds. While the murder of George Floyd is a horrendous act, we can now see that it isn't an outlier, that it isn't some officers doing something unexpected or egregious. It's a horrifying example of a reality that has been normalized. It's become a normalized experience for so many in our country for all the time our country's been in existence. And it wasn't that this was just some crazy event that happened that we can all see clearly is wrong. It's just that this event was caught on tape and it's been played so many times that those of us That don't live it daily can no longer ignore the reality of what we have built, what we've benefited from, what we've supported by our silence and by our neutrality. As a woman who identifies as white, it's a mandatory next step in my own evolution. So yeah, I, I just said that this egregious act is a result of a system that we've allowed, that I've allowed and benefited from in ways I'm embarrassed to say I didn't completely see until now. You know, sure, I valued equality for most of my life, but that's just not enough for me right now. I need to live my true values out loud. Until this past weekend, I was working to bring you the most relevant support I could to help you thrive during a world health crisis. I pivoted from traditional leadership topics and reality-based leadership to how to lead in unprecedented times, and I was preaching that I want people to be impacted in a good way, to be evolved by, impacted but not traumatized By the pandemic, but then a true trauma happened. And I've been watching— we're all so traumatized because we're all in touch with this reality at one time. It's opened up what some are saying is a larger virus, one that's certainly more pervasive and centuries old, and that's racism. To that end, I am now committing to bring you resources that I hope will help you as you self-reflect on our part, on your part in this current situation. It's time that we self-reflect. It's also time that we make amends for what we are discovering about ourselves and for the mistakes that you and I have made in the past in that. We no doubt will be making on the daily as we learn and grow and get vulnerable. And this stuff is messy. I want us to be great. I want us to all evolve. And I want to give you resources for ways that you can move beyond neutrality. I mean, neutrality kills. It's like we've got to We can't just be neutral. We've got to move into a response of being obviously to the world identifiably anti-racist. We need to stand firmly in a position of anti-racism. I'm not here to change your politics. I'm here to call you to humanity. I committed long ago never to use this platform for politics. That's not a contract you signed up for when you signed up to follow me. You signed up for help in leadership and help in living a more evolved life. But this is so far beyond politics. It's not about the how or whether the means are the right ones. It's no time to intellectualize at this time. To get really simple about this, killing Black people is, is wrong, and we need to find our part in this. So to that end, I am committed to bring you resources that I hope will help you as you self-reflect on your part in the current situation and you work to make amends for what you discover about yourself and for the mistakes that You have made and that you'll be making. It's just so important that I do what I can to bring my own learning to you and resources to you to help you learn. So I personally commit to listen, to learn, to self-reflect, to make amends, to pass the microphone, to be vulnerable, to speak up. And to use my platform in part to help all of us build the world that I, I dream about. I'm confident in a world that exists. It's a world beyond judgment and racism and all that is ego. So I'm committed to move beyond fear that I'll say or do the wrong thing, or simply, you know, be well-intentioned but harm anyway. I, I commit to owning the harm regardless of my intention. And I welcome the feedback. I welcome the additional perspectives that will help me do better next time and refine my way in the world. I, I welcome all of us coming together and sharing the most helpful things. It's going to be messy, and I'm game. So to begin, I'm starting with those I treasure personally and who helped me on the journey to own my own part and to step up and move through the world more skillfully in my pursuit to build a better place. So today I'm bringing you a bonus episode. I am bringing you the podcast with Sarah Morgan that I recorded last year. Sarah's a dear friend, a brilliant colleague, and we're talking about how to be an ally, and that is a worthy, worthy focus today. So So I will be highlighting her work in this bonus episode of this podcast. I will also be highlighting a blog she wrote this week in my social that is on making amends so that we can heal relationships if we can just own our part in this daily lived experience for people of color. whether they're Black, brown, Indigenous. I want us all to learn to be better allies. I want us all to learn to make good amends because we can't go on to work together to plan what's next if we can't stop and acknowledge what is. And so that's why I'm starting with Sarah's great work. On how you can become a better ally, and how you can get fluent in the amends that we will need to make, that I will be making. And I promise you, I will keep supplementing my work with the work of others to help us on on the way. Sarah's good stuff. I'm so grateful for her. I'm so grateful that she's willing to. Teach me, even though it is not her responsibility. It is mine. My evolution is my own responsibility. She is kind and lovely and willing, and for that I appreciate her. And I hope that you really take in what she has to say and put it into practice. Don't don't check out of this. Stay in. It's hard. As Glennon Doyle says, we can do hard things. It's, it's hard. And know that if you identify as white, this isn't up to people who identify as Black to do all the heavy lifting. This is for us to do our own work. And so know that my heart is open. I care about you, and I'll do my best to help. And I will keep asking How can I help? So I'll bring other resources to help. In the meantime, remember my 2 mantras: love wins. People are hurting right now. Respond with big love, not intellect, not judgment, not your opinion on the methods, just big love. And evolve yourself. This is big. You will need to go deep. It will take a while. I appreciate that those of you that are tuned in are probably doing a lot of self-reflection. That is our main way to bypass ego. As you know, I usually end each podcast with an assignment. I do in the podcast where we're playing with Sarah as well. But I want to give you a bigger assignment. I would like to call you all to greatness and, uh, and really ponder. This is your assignment for self-reflection. Ponder this: how can I move from heartbreak about recent events to become an ally and advocate for what has been going on for centuries? How can I move from what is heartbreak of recent events to really becoming an ally and advocating against what has been going on for centuries? This isn't about last week. This is about what we're seeing right in front of us about the lived experiences of lots of our teammates, colleagues, friends, and family. So be well, enjoy my conversation with Sarah. I'll bring you more. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your role play. I'm Cy Wakeman. Welcome listeners to a bonus edition, the first ever bonus edition of the No Ego Podcast. I just couldn't wait to get this information to you.

I've recorded my podcast for this month, but I was reading a blog by one of my favorite bloggers and podcasters, Sarah Morgan, and I loved it so much. I'm like, we have got to get you on, Sarah, and bring this blog to the masses. And welcome back. You've been here before. Thank you. I brought you on before because not only have we been colleagues for years, but you just practice great HR. You, right now, I know that you're head of HR at a retail services org, but you and I practice very similarly. And you've been somebody that I reach out to and pick the brain of often. about HR stuff, but I love that you're so willing to teach me about life and living an evolved life. It's wonderful to have you back in this encore and bonus edition. So we'll get to all the cool stuff you do later, but tell me about your new blogging and podcast. You're going after it on helping all of us move through and be better allies.

Yeah. So this is kind of an evolution, a labor of love, a call to what I've started to coin as workplace activism that happened with me a couple of years ago. Mm-hmm. After the murder of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman, I really felt a need for us to create better dialogue in our workplaces about how we handle these kinds of issues, because stuff like this keeps happening in our world. You know, the shootings of unarmed Black men, the issues going on in our politics, the mass shootings around the country. And there just is no good way, you know, for us— we're dealing with this, some of us on very personal levels, dealing with this kind of stuff. And there just was no good way for us to have these conversations at work. And I just really wanted to start to shed a light on that and hopefully do a better job at guiding leaders in how to have those conversations. And then at the same time, I was dealing with my own personal tragedy with the loss of my dad and finding myself in a, in a Real spiral of grief, not knowing how to deal with that with my team and with my colleagues at work, and them to the same extent not knowing how to deal with me. And so it just became important to me at that point to say, we, we suck at dealing with— Dealing with people at these difficult crossroads, whether it's what's going on in the world or what's going on with individuals. And I wanted to start to push more conversation surrounding that. And so that's where I started to make that pivot. It started with— and we talked about before on your show— the Black Blogs Matter Challenge, where I was having conversations surrounding my experiences as a Black woman in corporate America and the experiences of just living as Black in America and how that impacts the work that I do. And that evolved into me blogging about things like what was going on in Charlottesville and how we in our workplaces can, can talk about that more openly and what leaders can do to better support people. And I talk about domestic violence and the impact of that in the workplace and toxic work environments and all of those things. And so now I'm still keeping going with the Black Blogs Matter Challenge. It's in its third year. And one of the things that I talked about most recently is allyship. And that was the post that caught your attention. And when you reached out to me and said, okay, this is it, we got to have you back on the show. And I'm so glad to be back.

I love it. I love it. And I, when I started catching on to your Black Blogs Matter, like I would read them, but I didn't get until I was a little bit into it, like what the real project was. And it was a challenge and it was getting, you know, like a lot of people writing about their experience. For me, it was like my My first decision was I'm going to sit back, shut up, and just learn. And so it's hard for me. It was hard for me even to comment.

Right.

Because I just thought, I'm going to shut up and learn. And I have this desire to be a better ally. And, but my question, I think you and I have talked about personally, was just like, I don't know how. And then I saw that and I'm like, that is such a good list of that. But I want to back up for one minute because I love your courage. And when you say, you know, we really suck at dialogue, it is a painful place for me to be. when things are happening in our nation and things are happening in people's personal life. And I'm even a therapist, but at work, it's a painful place to be, to want to lean towards somebody, to want to lean in, to want to reach towards somebody and know that whether it's my unconscious bias or just my own stupid blindside, it's like wanting to speak, but knowing that I definitely could make things worse than better. Like—

Mm-hmm.

That is so messy that I think at times, um, I feel sad for myself. I choose silence and just hope that somebody picks up on, you know, that I care about them and I'm an ally. And, and, and so what I love about what you do is you're like, oh no, we are talking about it. And, and that's been so wonderful. I appreciate that, that you're willing to bring this up to the workplace. Cause too many times we go, you know what? That's stuff outside of work. And I'm like, no,

no,

that's stuff that is work. No. It is.

I mean, we bring that, we bring that with us to work every single day. When you yourself personally have experienced something or when something has happened, you know, we— like I said in the intro, I'm a human resources practitioner. I'm the head of human resources for a retail services organization. When the shootings happened at Walmart a couple of weeks ago—

Oh my gosh.

I am a— again, we work in retail spaces. Walmart is one of our clients. And we had to have conversation with our client about active shooter drills, how our employees were going to participate in that, what was going to be the messaging for them. So this absolutely impacts workplace.

And I love that you've coined this term I just love about workplace activism. And that's messy too, right? It's like, you don't want to impose your views on another, you want to be respectful. But for me, activism is the willingness to have dialogue with other willing people about, You know, this happened, now what? Like, how do we, you know, what's next? How do we move forward? And so—

Yeah, I agree. And I think for me, it's, we give a lot of lip service to inclusive workplaces. We give a lot of lip service to the importance of work-life balance, work-life integration, you know, whatever iteration of that phrase that we're on these days. But then it's about walking the talk. And what I want to make sure that I do in the work that in my organization where I serve and in the organizations that I work with and the leaders that I work with is let's delve into the difficult pieces so that we can be intentional and honest about how we're going to walk this talk. It's very easy to say Oh, yes, we want to have, you know, unlimited PTO as a benefit. That's all fun and games until people want to take a month off. And then you're like, whoa, wait a second.

Yeah.

We like, we want to like unlimited, but not really. And we can't, you know, we can't have that. And it's like, yeah, we want to hire people who are diverse. And then you bring people into the organization, you haven't laid that groundwork of inclusion before they get there. And you microaggress them. To, to the point where they leave and then you're mad at them.

Yeah. And then blame them.

Yeah. Like the audacity of them to not want to come to work and be abused every day. Like, who, like, why, why wouldn't you want to do that knowing that you didn't do your work? And so I just really wanted something that encapsulated those things so that we could really commit to fully to this idea of having workplaces that are responsible and ethical. And then also having workplaces that really live up to the values that they espouse. And for me, that's what this workplace activism element is all about.

It's all about. And what I love is that you talk about what to do. And so many things in my experience of the D&I space were a list of things not to do. And it's like, for me, it led to a little bit more silence and a little less interaction because there was just the over- rotation on the list of what not to do. I'm like, well, I was looking for a list of like then what to do. And, and you brought it in this blog and we will link to the blog of— and I can't remember what the title was. To me, it was like how to actually be an ally.

Yeah, it's called What's in an Ally. And so what the, the thought process is that we have this tendency and marginalized people, whether, you know, people of color, Women and, you know, the disabled, the LGBTQ community, like we all have, we have this almost sense of desperation of wanting the power majority to see us and understand us, that we've become willing to accept any little glimpse of that as, all right, this is my ally and they understand my plight and my pain. And then we don't hold those individuals accountable for the places that they fall short. And so I wanted to write this post as like a way to check those of us in marginalized places to require more of those who we put labels on as allies. And what happened when I wrote it was that I found people who were in power majority positions had that— had similar reactions to yours in that, oh, this gives me an actual formula of something that I can follow, a list of things. To do versus this litany of things not to do that we've been feeding people for so long. And that litany of like, don't do this, don't say that, don't behave this way, it has not served us well at all. The way to handle difficult moments and difficult conversations is not through avoidance. And that's what we have come— you know, that's the place that we've come to. And then we put diverse people together and then we act surprised that they can't navigate these situations themselves, that no one knows what to say. So I put together this list of what I call the 5 A's of allyship to help all of us, you know, to look at our blind spots and to look at the places where, you know, we're doing well when we're placing that label of ally on someone who's supposed to be helping, you know, a marginalized group. And are you okay if I walk through those?

I am. I am. I just want to just comment and affirm because it was a big call out for me that they— and people read about this in the blog, but it was like calling people to greatness and not just settling for the fact that you know, we're going to settle for crumbs because you're not somebody who's actively, you know, um, discriminating. And so therefore, you know, you're doing no major harm. We'll let you hang around. And I loved the call-out to it where that's not enough to be an evolved, um, employee and leader at work or home. Like, it's not— that is survival, not evolution. And so I just, I love the call-out to that where I think a lot of people do kind of just settle for mediocrity because it's like, oh my gosh, well, at least it's not horrible. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, let's call us up and get good at this. And so, yeah, walk me through them. They're great. They're the 5 A's. I love it.

Yeah. The first of the A's is academics. And so that is really understanding the history and the complexity of the issues of Supremacy and privilege. And these are complex issues. There are— there's an individual element to it. There's our own personal bias and our own— to some, you know, everybody, I think, has something, has that ism, whether it's, you know, racism, sexism, the isms and the bias, you know, homophobia, xenophobia, like you pick what it is. We all have some We're all somewhere on that spectrum and recognizing that there are individual components, which I think is what we end up focusing on. And then we lose sight of the fact that these are systemic issues as well. And we have to understand the history of that. It is always amazing to me when we talk about things like the Tulsa, Oklahoma bombings, that there are people who have gone— who go their whole lives and have gone through history courses and have never still never heard, you know, of a lot of these events in our history and a lot of these— and a lot of the people, a lot of the policies and the things that have taken place. And we're not talking about, you know, hundreds of years ago. We're talking about the 1980s. Like, we're not talking about, you know, times— you know, we're thinking of times gone by. We're talking about the Reagan era. You know, we're talking about— in some cases, we're talking about the Clinton era. Like, we're not talking about— Hundreds and hundreds of years ago. We're talking about things that were happening fairly recently in history. But because our educational system has kind of watered a lot of that down, if you don't do that history and study for yourself, you really don't understand what it is and you don't understand the complexities of it. So that academic piece is the first thing, is to, to take some time to do some study of the history beyond just what it is that you're fed and peel back into You know, the layers of what else was going on and just get curious about who's driving that narrative and what it's saying. And I think that, you know, we have to do a better job of that.

And I think it's amazing. And my assignment to people is like, whether it's in your book clubs that you're already part of or, you know, do a Google search on what are the core pieces of literature and core historical, you know, YouTube footage, whatever it is like. Do some research and just figure out what some of those core pieces are and sources where you can get better information.

One of the things I remember, I had an excellent high school history teacher. And one of the things that I— and I didn't realize it at the time because I was a kid. And of course, we have no appreciation for that kind of stuff in our youth. But I look at it now and I'm like, oh, wow, this dude, he did us well. So shout out to Mr. Quinlan because he took good care of us. We had our history textbook, but then he also supplemented our history textbook with what was going on with every marginalized group of that era. So we may have been learning about, um, the Revolutionary War, just as an example, but we talked about Native Americans, we talked about Black people, we talked about Hispanics, we talked about Asians. Like, we made sure that we covered every other group, that it wasn't just about us. We talked about what was going on in the other parts of the world. So we were constantly seeing like the full perspective of what was happening. And so I think we have to— I was conditioned to do that young. And I think we have to kind of recondition ourselves again to get curious about those sorts of things like, okay, this is the main narrative, but what was going on with other people? And there's so much. There are so many resources out there available to us. Like you said, a simple Google search will bring a lot of that right to your fingertips. But if there's a period in history that you're curious about or a particular topic that you want to know about, then you've got to do that work to dig into that and start to understand those complexities. And then the next thing I would say is developing that awareness. And those two kind of go hand in hand. Once you realize the history and complexity of the systemic issues, then you start to see that all around you. And you start to realize that you can change hearts and minds on an individual level. But if you don't approach the systemic issues as well, then we're never going to make, you know, but so much progress. And so you, you'll start to pick apart those complexities of privilege and the spectrum of supremacy and the spectrum of patriarchy that, that it's not— Yeah. You know, you don't have to be a member of the KKK to be somewhere on the spectrum of racist. And you don't have to be someone who wants to, you know, tether women to the stove to be someone who is sexist. There is— there's a spectrum in all of that. And so you start to, you know, realize that. You start to realize that there are several different categories and ways that you can be privileged. That privilege is complex and that it falls into, you know, are you white? Are you male? Are you heterosexual? Are you cisgendered? Do you have an able body? Do you have an able mind? Are you Christian? Are you young? Are you educated? Are you wealthy? You know, those are kind of those. And there are more, but those are like the 10 bedrocks of it. And the more of those 10 fingers that you can hold up to say that that's me, The more privilege that you have and the more privilege that you have, the more responsibility that you have to slow yourself down and be more intentional in how you look at things. Because it's very easy for your thoughts to be— to lean towards privilege and for you to push people out and not be considerate of the differences in their needs because the lens in which you're looking through is one that just has it easier than some of the other people that are out there.

And that's so well said, because the more of those that I am, the more suspicious I need to be of my own thinking and my view of the world. And, you know, it's just so— it was so well said. And on the academic piece, one of the things is it's like, you know, don't turn to somebody and say, what should I read? Like, be self-sufficient. This information is out there. And the more Privileged you are, you know, all of this really is another form of dismantling the ego so that we can move beyond ego and actually have some pretty cool dialogue. So academics awareness, but I'm sorry to interrupt. It was just so well said that the more you are of those things, the more fingers you have up at the big 10, like, that should make you even more suspicious of your view of the world or what How you think.

Agreed. Yes, agreed. And then the next thing is, is taking action, deciding where in the work of equity, inclusion, and justice that you want to, you know, make your mark. Because once you do that research and once you start to become— woke is the word that we tend to use most often— to those things, you You see these injustices everywhere, and it's natural for you to say, I want to do something to stop that. But we can't do everything. And so for me, I've decided my primary avenue is going to be workplaces because I have children. I dabble in education, and I donate my time and money to various causes as I can. But workplace advocacy is, is my primary avenue. And you've got to decide what that means, you know, for you. And then the other piece of action is finding ways to remove yourself from environments that are not actively working to eradicate these privileges from their processes. If you work in an environment that is all male, all white, all heterosexual, so on and so forth, and they have no desire, they don't recognize that that is problematic for the success of their business. They don't recognize that that is problematic, you know, for their view of the world. And they're not willing to entertain conversation or do anything to move away from that, you've got to say, okay, this is not an environment where I am willing to be. And that, I think, is the hardest— that's the hardest bridge for people to be willing to cross. It's the hardest boundary for folks to set up, because once you cultivate that sense of awareness, you really become very much in tune to how unaware Other people are. And it's hard. It's hard to say to your friend of many, many years or your family member that, you know what, I got to limit my time with you because I'm on this trajectory and you're— I can't take you with me. That's hard.

It is hard. And for me, in doing that and taking these risks, it's like you put yourself in a place where you're going to be potentially marginalized, right? And give up your own privilege to do that. It's like, yeah, I just, I have so many experiences coming to mind where it's like, either I've regretted staying silent or staying involved in something longer than I wanted to, or, you know, just how scary it really is to just say, you know what, that's just not a conversation I'm willing to participate in, you know, with a family member. Yeah. So you can't wake up without taking action. But it's like—

And that action piece, I think, is the piece that takes people the most amount of time. And we've got to be forgiving of ourselves. We learn these backwards systems over years and years, decades and decades. And so we can't expect to just snap a finger and for Yeah. All of that to immediately go away. So it takes time. But I think the more that you involve yourself in whatever your chosen area of activism, that, that dissonance between who you are in this environment and who you are when you're around these people who don't share those views, the space between those two places gets Louder and louder, and you start to realize that there's just like a moral imperative to make that shift. And once you hit that, there's just really no— there's no turning back from that. And when it comes to the workplace, it's difficult because we all have bills to pay. And so you can't necessarily immediately quit your job. I can remember working for an organization years back that had what I felt was way too rigid of standards surrounding background checks that I did not think was necessary for the nature of the positions. And we were just really unwilling to entertain people with certain criminal backgrounds. We were checking credit as well and making you know, some choices with employees about whether or not they could be promoted, you know, based on their credit score. And I just thought that was ridiculous. But leadership was not willing to go there with me. And the first thing that I did was I started volunteering at a local organization that helps people who have come out of prison to transition back into finding a job. And I worked with people on their resumes and I worked with them on their interview skills and I helped them, you know, to find work. I couldn't do that in my own organization, but in my, you know, in my Saturday mornings, I could certainly go and spend a few hours helping someone that I couldn't help in my day job to be able to do that. And then at the same time, I dusted off your resume and started looking for another place to work. Yeah. And that takes time. You know, it's not like you dust the resume off and you go somewhere and you immediately have another job. But I made the decision that I was not OK with this, that this did not align with who I was and how I wanted to operate and what I wanted my professional legacy to be. And so I found other outlets to give me balance while I figured out my next move.

Which is so well said, because I think sometimes what— right before we become a victim again, that we can't do anything about it, We lose that piece of innovation that said, well, my current reality may be that I'm not willing to endure a total risk of, you know, I quit based on this, but I can always do something. There's always something I can do that makes movement towards a better day tomorrow. There's just always something I can do.

Agreed. And so it takes time. It takes time to be able to remove yourself from that environment. You know, you can't necessarily cut off all your family members, you know, that, like, that may not be possible, but you can definitely mute them on your timelines on social media.

Yeah.

You can definitely, you know, limit the number of interactions that you have. So there are healthy ways that you can set boundaries and limits that still are authentic, you know, and help you stay aligned and in integrity with yourself. Without completely abandoning, you know, that relationship. And when it comes to work, you know, you don't have to say, okay, they're not going to do this thing. You know, they're not— they don't care about diversity. They don't care about what's going on in the world. So I have to quit and be unemployed. No, you can search for another job and still do what you have to do in this workplace. You know, you do the best you can with what you have until the next opportunity comes along. And then you take that extra time that you have to, again, donate some time or donate some money to that cause that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. So I think that's a happy medium to get you moving in the right direction.

And I love that you're willing to, you know, help people with progress, not perfection. I would go back to saying That we also have to do a reality check. I know for myself to make sure that it's not my ego telling me that's too risky to keep myself protected. So, I mean, I just think that's such an individual piece of soul searching for everyone to ask themselves once you're starting to have this awareness, you know, am I really living up to what I believe and my own integrity? And are there ways I could live more fully into that?

Yeah. And that's really important. And for me, as I, you know, this phase of my career is really focused on what I want my legacy to be, you know, what I want people to say about me when I'm not in the room, and when I'm not around, more so than what's happening when I'm in the room. And I just definitely want, you know, those things to say that, that I am a person who speaks up readily for the, for those in the margins, one, and two, that I'm bringing practical, actionable, measurable solutions alongside of that. And that takes time and personal work. And I think we all have the capacity to be able to do that. And when it comes to these particular topics, inclusion, you know, starts at the top, certainly, but it also starts with you and your commitment to being a safe space for people, your commitment to, as a leader, making sure that there's representation in the places where you have authority and influence to make that happen. And we don't give enough credence, you know, to that in these conversations to make— to let people know that it does not— you know, again, there's systemic change that needs to happen. But those systemic changes start with individuals standing up and saying, this isn't acceptable to me, and then figuring out what it is that they can do right where they are with what they have to make a difference.

Awesome stuff. What's the 4th one?

So the 4th one is avoid, and that is really avoiding centering yourself and passing the mic to others. People with— those of us with privilege, And again, we all have privilege in some capacity. We talked about that big 10. We tend to be the folks that are in power. We tend to be the folks who get the opportunities to speak, that get the opportunities to have say, a seat at the table, a voice, you know, in the microphone. And we have to make sure that we are passing those opportunities, that passing that microphone, creating opportunities for other people to have representation, to speak in their own voice about what it is that they need. And that for us as leaders and managers should come way easier than what it seems to, because we speak so often about the importance of, you know, getting feedback from the employees and giving the opportunity, you know, surveys and all these kinds of things that we do. To find out what people think about their working environments. But we fail, you know, to do that from a diversity and inclusion lens. So that should be one of the easiest things is, you know, representation is butts in seats. If you're looking around and there's no visual representation of difference, then that should be an easy marker. So that, you know, that avoiding centering privilege and moving toward passing the mic and making sure that there's representation should be the easiest of the 4. And then the last one, which to me is my favorite one, but seems to be the most difficult, is apologize. You know, one of the things that you have said over and over again is that I know I'm going to screw this up, but only daily. Yeah. You know, we are, we are going to screw up when it comes to this because Because it's not something that we are familiar and comfortable with. We don't do it often enough to be good at it. And so we're going to say the wrong thing. We're going to do the wrong thing. We're going to have good intentions. And the outcomes and the impacts of those intentions are not always going to land where we want them to. And we've got to own that and we've got to apologize fully, you know, and we have this tendency to say, oh, I'm sorry. You know, we focus on our own intentions, whereas other people are looking at the impact. And we've got to be willing to not do that when it comes to these sorts of issues. If you caused harm to someone, whether it be intentional or unintentional, hopefully unintentional harm, then you've got to be willing to say, I messed this up and I apologize. And then you've got to do better. But we so quickly want to, you know, skate past that and say, well, I didn't mean to do that, or I didn't mean to say that, or I— It didn't come out, you know, I didn't mean it that way. It doesn't matter how you meant it. You know, the impact is what the impact is. And now you've got to own that. And you have to do better with that. And I think that's just an area where we fall down because— and I think it's from people not wanting to be labeled. You say something and suddenly someone wants to label you a racist or a sexist or whatever, a homophobic, you know, they want to label you those things and you're afraid. of taking that label on. And so you rebel, you know, against being called that thing. But if you said it, you said it. If you did it, you did it. And if that was the way that it was received, whether you intended it that way or not, you just have a responsibility to, to own that and to, to fix it. And that fixing it means apologizing sincerely and then taking the steps that are necessary to

And I, I love that you included this one. And, you know, just to be a good person, a good leader, a good colleague, like, we've got to get— this is a work skill we could get a lot better in, is this whole apology and amends-making. And, and one of the exercises we do is just get people comfortable with every piece of feedback is True, meaning we have people write down what's the worst thing somebody could accuse you of being. And we put these in a bucket, and then you have to randomly draw one out. And you have to find ways that that's true. Like, I am a racist, I am homophobic, I am— and, you know, it's so easy to defend against it, which is ego stuff. But if you can get to the point that you are willing to get vulnerable, and you show your bias, you You show your blind side, you show, you know, you show, you know, a hidden belief or something that wasn't very flattering about yourself. It's like the ability to say, yes, I am, and I'm working on it, is so important. And as a therapist, like, we would forget this. But in marriage, you got to teach people how to apologize. And, you know, just to put it out there, the steps I ran. One. Apologies are clean. They aren't like, when you made me feel mad, I did this. They're like, I did this, I own it. And then you got to show some insight. Like, I've considered the impact this had on you and quit justifying and defending your intent. Like, that's the cop-out is I didn't mean to. Well, you did. And it's like, I gave this some reflection and I have come to realize this insight about what this impacted you. And then a lot of times instead of saying, you know, so here's what I'm going to do to make it up to you, pass the microphone, ask them, what could I do to make this up to you? And then act on that. And, um, that's hard. I, I know this stuff and I, you know, my ego overtakes and I just, it feels so vulnerable and so messy when you're kind of outed. And it's so frustrating to be outed for something that I might not ever be able to perfect. I can only— progress on because all the conditioning I've had in my own experiences growing up, it's like so frustrating for us achievers to have something vulnerable like that, that I think it's just always going to be some work in progress.

Yeah. And I think we've got to accept that it's always going to be a work in progress. I make mistakes and I'm someone who, you know, lives in this space quite a bit, but I still have my own biases that I have to confront and that I have to do active work on. So I, you know, nobody has it 100% right. But what we can do is admit where we're not doing so well. And instead, bias is not one of those areas. It's not, it's not Excel, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have people at work who are like, I'm not good at Excel, so I'm just gonna delegate that. You can't be like, I'm a racist, so I'm just going— but I'm just handing that off to somebody. Like, you can't delegate that. Like, that's— it's not one of those areas of weakness.

It's not, because it's personal evolution.

And it's something that you have to absolutely do work on and get You know, you got to really get intimate and curious about that.

In a way, it's deep work.

It is, it is deep work. It's hard, emotional work. A lot of it is going to tie back to things that you were taught by your, you know, your parents and your family and your upbringing, and the things that you were exposed to. But you got to be willing to do that work. There are a couple of great resources that I would recommend to the listeners. One, there's a book that came out fairly recently by an author. Her name is Mary Frances Winters, called You Can't Talk About That at Work. And it actually is a guide on how to have difficult conversations surrounding things like race and gender and politics and stuff like that in the workplace. And she is a fantastic, fantastic DEI consultant who does a lot of great work out of the Atlanta area. And I would encourage you guys to connect with the Winters Group. That's the name of her company. But she does a great job and her book is new. And then the second one is called Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad, S-A-A-D. She has a great podcast also called The Ancestors. The Good Ancestors Podcast. And she was featured, I believe it was in Vanity Fair. Her— the book is available for preorder, but there is actually a workbook on her website that you can download that goes through a lot of questions that cause you to do some confrontation on your bias and the way that you see things. And it is super duper expansive. I went through the challenge and learned some things about myself. Yeah. That I was surprised, you know, to know because of the question prompts. And it's almost like a journal of your bias. Really, really good, deep work. And those are 2 resources that I would definitely recommend to people who are wanting to get on the path of this work and understanding how this stuff is impacting them and then starting to do the work of dismantling all of that.

I love it. I love it. Because so many of us, I find myself, I'll speak for myself, are in conversations about what we're not loving about what's going on in our nation right now or in our work. But in my conversations, it's so easy to focus on what other people aren't doing. Like, because there's some people that are pretty obviously horrible at this, like completely uninvolved. And that just takes the focus off of where I can evolve. And so I love That you help me bring the focus back to me and my self-reflection. And we'll mention these resources as well for people to have a place to go out to. I appreciate you making the recommendations and giving us a list, like, you know, increase your knowledge.

Yeah, we got to start somewhere. We got to start somewhere. And there, you know, We— it's, it's easy to tell people to Google search, but there's, you know, there's bad information out there on Google too. So at least if you—

That's true. That's a good point. The reason I say that is because there was one thing I've learned recently, and a lot of times I'm like, okay, well, teach me. And the person's like, you know, that even pisses me off because it's not my job. But your history teacher should have had us like— and I'm like, that's what it's like. I just keep screwing this thing up. But I tell you, after I pick my ego up, I'm like, That was another good lesson. Like, you know, and so I'm always just grateful when someone has good resources and knowing that I also have to strive for self-sufficiency because it's my deficit, not somebody else's. Um, and so I'm just walking, walking that line as well. And I think that's the other thing too, is, is once you have gone into, you know, as you said, the academic portion and the raising your awareness, you get to be a better consumer too of what is on Google and Facebook. And just, you know, you can just see how easily we're played, whether it's from media or, I mean, just all the places that the information is, you know, turned or painted or is coming from a source that isn't aware of kind of its own bias. So,

yeah, I think that anytime you run into a source that either doesn't, you know, highlight its own bias, that isn't willing to give you additional resources to find out more information on that, or whoever presents, you know, their perspective as like the be-all ends-all, you can pretty much trash that. You know, like if there was like a 1, 2, 3 of things that you could do, that would be it. Like anytime that a resource is pretending to be The master of what we know are super complex issues, you know that that's not something that you can rely upon. And when it comes to that personal work, anything that makes you feel either that this work is easy, because it's not, or that makes you feel like this is something that you can do in a short period of time, Or that allows you to believe that there's no personal accountability element into it, that you don't have control over, you know, the way that you show up and the impact that you have. That's another resource that you can trash because there are— again, there's an individual aspect to this and there is a systemic aspect to this. And until— and we've got to attack both. And to some extent, we've got to attack both at the same time. It's like if you're trying to get into shape, you've got to exercise and you've got to eat right. You know, you can't just do one without the other and expect to have optimal results. So if we want optimal results in improving our diversity, our inclusion, our equity, then we've got to approach it both as individuals and both at a high level.

I love that. I love that. And this is complex and there aren't, you know, ready-made easy answers, but there are simple steps Each one of us can take to just, you know, get better and better and better. And, you know, we've got to solve some things through our systems and through the way we vote. And, um, but we've got to solve some of this through our own evolution, our own personal evolution. And that's, that's the part I can, um, really grab onto for listeners is to say, you know, I challenge listeners, um, all the time, like, like self-reflection, move past your ego, find ways that believing your own thinking is limiting your life. Mm-hmm. And what we can bring to the world. And this is another way that it's another whole genre of self-reflection that I would just invite people to get really, really focused on, because I think our responsibility as people who are working in business, not-for-profits, leaders, employees, like it is our job as a core being fit for duty to come to work and work with diverse folks, is that we can do better. And be better and at least have some decent dialogue around how we can keep that improvement going. So that's why I wanted to kind of— not kind of, but call kind of an emergency, like, come back to the podcast. Thank you. Because I really want to get people's eyes on your blog. I want people to tune into the Black Blogs Matter project. You've got just an amazing podcast for leadership and HR, Buzz on HR. And I love the podcast. You're just 10 episodes into Leading in Color, folks. Leading in Color podcast, 10 episodes in and you have 1,000 down. I'm like, what? Yeah, so that's because it's a good podcast and I'm a few of those downloads. So, um,

I appreciate it. Keep coming back.

Absolutely. Sarah, I value your friendship. I value being a great colleague. To me, and I value your courage and your care, that you care about this enough to get into this workplace activism. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Anything else you want to share or call people's attention to or offer out there?

I also want to make sure that I highlight my website, buzzaroonyllc.com. I do a monthly newsletter called 8 on the 8th. I try not to inundate people with more email, but it usually gives a summary of like what I'm reading and what I'm listening to surrounding all of these topics. And I try to incorporate some funny stuff in there and some, some practical advice. I try to make sure above all things, the advice that I'm giving is practical. So I definitely— Buzza Rooney LLC is the best place to connect with me, all of the, all of my websites and for all of the brands, both The podcast, the blog, what I'm doing with Black Blogs Matter, all of that is listed there. If anyone has questions or wants to see like where I'm speaking and what I'm speaking about, you know, all of that is the best way to connect with me. So I want to make sure to include that plug in there as well.

Perfect. Or bring you in as a speaker or a consultant in some of these things. So

I'm down with it.

Okay. Well, I again appreciate you being willing to take the time. And I look forward to our next conversation.

Thank you so much for having me back on the show. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk with the guests about— or talk with the listeners about this topic.

Thank you. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place.

I'm Sy Wakeman.