Equity, inclusion, belonging
Evolving our thinking and changing our mental models, as the old ones fail us.
Dearest friends:
Tense times continue in our wider world. We send out our intentions for peace and take actions to work for peaceful resolutions of all types of conflict: international, intercultural, interpersonal, and internal.
This past week, I was honored to be part of a team at my university tasked with recommending a person to hire for an open leadership position. We conducted a round of interviews via videoconferencing. A major theme in our organization is increasing our understanding, capacity, and actions supporting equity, inclusion, and belonging. So of course we asked each candidate about their experiences and expertise in these areas.
It was eye-opening for me, as a white woman of privilege, to listen to the answers. Too many made me cringe as I listened along with my fellow team members. I was not cringing in judgment of the candidates’ answers - they were all well-intentioned, thoughtful folk - so much as recognizing my own ongoing limitations in these areas.
We heard examples that limited equity, inclusion, and belonging to areas for reading and training: “I read books and take training for myself, but of course I can’t require anyone else to do so.” We heard arguments of adjacency: “I’ve lived in Black neighborhoods and was shocked at how they were treated” (from a white person) or “I’ve traveled a great deal and appreciated all the different cultures.” Lots of language about “at risk” and “poor” and “marginal” people, and “our” obligation to “help them.”
A few - a very few- candidates linked their beliefs and values to actions they had taken to increase equity, inclusion, and belonging. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who could describe the most actual work undertaken had experienced exclusion, as women, immigrants, and/or folk living inside not-white skins.
I wondered how I would answer the questions we were asking, how I could challenge myself to go beyond adjacency, reading, and learning, to move from belief to demonstrable action. Here is a snapshot of my evolving thinking; I would love to learn from you in your replies.
Equity: I have all too few examples of how I go beyond recognition of systemic barriers to actively dismantle them and the benefits I receive from them.
Inclusion: I am too often unaware of how my voice - even when I’m saying the “right” things - dominates the space available. I need to step back, listen, make space for other voices that have not benefited from the privilege of being asked to speak.
Belonging: To actively work for belonging, I must make my valuing of each person visible to that person in a way that is meaningful for that person.
In contrast to our candidate interviews, I listened to another one: this conversation with Trabian Shorters about his insights on cultural change and the role of “asset framing.” Asset-framing is Mr. Shorters’ term for a process of training ourselves in the cognitive skill of narrative-changing. By framing one another first in terms of aspirations and contributions, rather than deficits or marginalization, our cognitive patterns shift. Our “mental models” transform away from fear and dehumanization, toward engagement and understanding.
I hope you’ll take the time to listen to or read the entire piece, as I found it to be transformative. Here is a short excerpt, lightly edited for print:
We have reached a point where our normal set … of cultural and governmental organizational systems, they clearly aren’t adapting fast enough for the realities that we’re encountering…. it’s pretty clear, whether it’s pandemic or economic collapse or whatever has happened in the last year, there’s always something that’s proving that we’re not keeping up. And so the reality that we are all, no matter what your race or gender or background, the reality that we’re all dealing with is, the ways that we’ve done things — the culture — the ways we’ve survived must adapt. The transferable set of beliefs and behaviors, the ones we have, are not (serving) us, right? So we must adapt.
…if we’re going to change our culture, we have to change our narrative. That’s what it comes down to. We have to change the mental models that our brains are using to make sense of the world, because the ones we have right now, they’re failing us — dramatically, you know.
https://onbeing.org/programs/trabian-shorters-a-cognitive-skill-to-magnify-humanity/
All the candidates for the leadership position, as well as my colleagues on the interview team, offered me the gift of an opportunity to engage in this skill, to reveal the mental models that operate in my nervous system without my conscious awareness, and in that revelation, to recognize I can change them.
For that, I am deeply grateful, as I am for your company on this journey.