“Humans are made for collaborating,” the authors write, “Yet over time, humans created so many conveniences that we can now survive without each other.” I would offer that this is not the case in most parts of the world and certainly not in working class and poor communities in the economic North where survival is still very much linked to relationships and collaborations with other humans in strong clan, tribal, family or community networks. Nonetheless, for those of us with access to economic resources, their point is well-taken: we have “advanced” ourselves into isolation.

The first element of a strong collaboration, and the focus of this first book blog, is complementary strengths.  The authors debunk the myth of the “polymath”–a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas, otherwise known as the “Renaissance Man.”  This is a pervasive notion and supports the strong US emphasis on individualism, individual accomplishment and the Hero story.  Wagner and Muller write, “Few ideas so widely accepted are so demonstrably wrong [as the 'polymath.']“  Yet shoring up this myth reinforces values and beliefs that are not only deeply held and defended but also structurally supported and institutionally enforced by dominant culture in the US.

According to the Power of 2, in order to develop strong partnerships in life or at work, we would need to accept that while excellent in some areas we are also limited in others–the way any person’s skills and expertise are partial to the experiences, training and education they have received.  As they write, “So admit it: You stink at some things. You have blind spots, weaknesses….  Your strengths are stronger and your weaknesses weaker than you realize. You need help. You are also precisely the help someone else needs.” And this is why they make the case for true collaborators to actively seek a partner who is different from us.  In other words, we all need diversity to perform at our best.

I recently asked a client who has a very homogeneous workforce of largely white men if he thought it was a problem that his department lacked diversity. He thought about if for a while and then said, “No.”  He argued that they were still able to do excellent work, despite the lack of employees with different strengths or ways of thinking. Therefore, he concluded, no problem.  Wagner and Muller would disagree on the level of individual collaboration, contribution and excellence. “It’s a fallacy that…[you] alone will be anywhere as powerful as the two combined.” And I would also disagree, and even extend their argument to support the importance of having a diverse workplace.  It is also a fallacy, in my view, for any one group to imagine themselves to be as powerful, excellent, brilliant, or cutting-edge as two (or more) different groups collaborating and working together.

Wagner and Muller caution that seeking and acknowledging complimentary strengths means seeing your partner’s contribution of equal value to your own. In other words: ego and dominance must be checked at the door.  This is an important, yet difficult, diversity lesson when the groups we belong to (men, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, Christian, etc.) are in the position of dominance because of institutional validation for our way of thinking and acting.  It’s easy to get caught up into believing our complimentary strength really is the “better” strength in the partnership–and they wouldn’t make it without us.  According to Wagner and Muller, they wouldn’t. But neither would we.  It’s the interdependency of the complimentary strengths that allows each contributor in the partnership to shine. Therefore, to encourage true equity and peerness of both sets of strengths in any partnership, in other words to see them equally important, individuals and organizations will have to both closely examine and interrupt policies and attitudes that would seek to promote one strength over another. Failing to acknowledge that the partnership’s success is based in the diversity of the partnership itself will continue to invalidate and undermine true collaboration.

What are the strengths you bring to a collaborative partnership? What are your weaknesses?  Who would you need to seek out as a partner to compliment your strengths? What stops you?  How will you check your ego and dominance so that it doesn’t interfere with the partnership? Or conversely, how will you interrupt attempting to “adapt” yourself to mimic the dominant strengths you see around you at work and instead assert the value of what your bring as complimentary and essential to any successful collaboration?  How will you interrupt organizational dominance to ensure complimentary strengths are recognized, rewarded, and sought after?

By the end of June you can pick up a copy of this book or audio book through our website resources page (15% of all purchases are donated to a non-profit) or follow along using the audio podcasts adapted for the book.  Click here for the link to this chapter or here for a list of all the adapted podcast chapters.  Read (or listen) along with us and share you comments on this book blog!

Self-awareness is not a destination, it’s a process.

Not everything about who we are and how we show up in the world is obvious to us.  Without an intentional practice of self-reflection, we can be oblivious to how we impact those around us. Our best intentions don’t always create the best impacts. People in our lives give us information about how our actions affect them. Sometimes this information is delivered via thoughtful and insightful feedforward. [Author's note: I use the concept of "feedforward" to mean a practice of offering information or observations in a meaningful and compassionate way that moves a person forward on their path (rather than "feedback" which can sometimes set us back, especially if it is masked as "constructive criticism"--an oxymoron, in my opinion).] Sometimes we get this information through other people’s reactions (which we may need to interpret or seek to understand our role in co-creating) to our behaviors and attitudes. Cultural competence requires developing a practice of self-exploration. We cultivate a curiosity about who we are, what we bring to situations, and how our behaviors co-create the outcomes we experience.

Here’s a personal example from my own life: I pride myself on being highly efficient.  It’s a set of skills I learned early in life and I received a high level of external affirmation for this way of being in the world. Efficiency skills helped me in myriad ways, including being organized and “getting a lot done.” Despite being aware of how much I value and strive to be efficient, I was less aware of how this attitude and my behaviors impacted those around me. I assumed that others would find my efficiency useful and a benefit in most every situation.  Sometimes this was true, but not always.

Once I noticed that my efficiency wasn’t always needed, I started to tune into the reactions of others and my own internal clues after interactions with others. The first thing I noted was how others often felt intimidated and subsequently hesitant to sign on for a task because they feared not living up to my efficiency standards. They were concerned, rightly so, that I would become frustrated and impatient. This led to a second realization–that my drive to be efficient diminished opportunities for me to be present with myself, others, and the moment.

My self-awareness journey started with acknowledging my efficiency skills, but it didn’t stop there. Rather than remain defended and hold tight to the idea that my way was the “right” one, I chose to examine, question, and eventually shift my internal drive to be efficient. I feared that by being less “efficient,” I would lose the approval and perceived value I mistakenly thought efficiency earned me. By releasing this fear, I noticed an unexpected outcome:  by being less efficient, people began to value and include me for being me-instead of what I could do for them.

This process moved me from focusing on others and their perceived “inefficiency” to examining my behaviors, attitudes, and biases. By turning my attention towards self, my increased internal awareness moved me to a place where I could compassionately, and even dispassionately at times, think about others and where they might struggle or be limited by being less than optimally organized. This process of self investigation lays the important foundation for being an effective ally. However if we start by wanting to be an ally before we’ve really developed a practice of self-awareness we are doomed to act from wanting to “fix” or “save” others (read: make them be like us)–a perspective of paternalism, condescension and dominance.

The same trap exists on an organizational level.  When an organization focuses its effort outside of itself (for example: How can we better serve our “diverse” customers–without first seeking to care and serve co-workers better? How can we increase our recruitment of women–without first exploring the roles and attitudes men carry in the organization? What approach would appeal to low-income communities–without first exploring the embedded class assumptions in the current approach? How can we use some new tool to work with children–without first asking and understanding how we can use this tool with our peer group of teachers?) there is the danger that organizational patterns and policies will go unexamined and unchallenged.  The focus is on “them” rather than “us”–without an acknowledgement that “us” is the only part of the equation we have any real influence over.

An all-too-common example plays out in the “Diversity Flavor of the Month” scenario.  This is when a new diversity program is rolled out every few months, leading to a buildup of employee cynicism. Furthermore, the group that is supposed to benefit from the program sees the program as a “check the box”-type effort rather than one which requires organizational cultural changes.  The diversity program comes across more as an attempt to win recognition rather than a system-wide commitment to inclusion. Efforts such as these lack the organizational self-awareness and reflective practice that leads to lasting, effective change.

What are some of your personal patterns or behaviors that co-create outcomes that reinforce dominance, paternalism and condescension?  Why are these behaviors so defended within you? What would it take for you to let them go? How would your view of yourself change if you did? I remember listening to a client express genuine confusion about why they seemed unable to attract or retain a diverse range of clients and employees. I gently suggested that the barrier to inclusion wasn’t about the other group at all–but rather within them. This was a perspective they clearly had not considered before. Have you?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSUw9SaPLmA

My father has diabetes as a complication from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease; my mother was diagnosed with diabetes in her late 60s but was able to reverse her diagnose through regular exercise and Weight Watchers; when I was 10 years old my grandfather’s leg was amputated after gangrene set in after third-degree burns from sleeping with a heating pad (he couldn’t feel the heat or the burning since his circulation was so poor by then). Type II Diabetes (also called “Adult Onset,” although it is increasingly diagnosed in children) is a pandemic in my family, and especially in my Mexican and Puerto Rican communities. When I was a little girl, I was told this disease is genetic and that I could expect to get it when I got older. Not a question of if, but of when. No information about what causes it. No information about how to live differently to interrupt its course. Just a fact. My destiny.

I have come to understand this disease as one of classism. It’s poor people who marketed to and sold cheap mineral- and vitamin-deficient foods. It’s poor people who do not have access to affordable, organic produce. It’s poor people who are marketed to and sold high-processed, high-sugar foods as a way to numb to our emotions and the injustice of classism. The effects of diabetes are slow and insidious. It’s the socially-acceptable way for us to self-destruct. And then we are targeted and blamed for being fat. And yet it is not only reversible--it is completely avoidable.

Despite no longer being poor, the effects of being raised poor and having parents who grew up in poverty under the full weight of classism, I still struggle to make choices that will support my health and longevity. To not choose food to numb, especially ones high in fat and sugar, I have to notice my emotions, perhaps anger or sadness. As the video highlights, without addressing the emotional components of what underpins food addictions, the struggle is fierce and I would dare argue virtually unwinnable. I will continue to share my insights and thoughts on wellness as a social justice issue--and as a personal act of transformation and human liberation. I hope you will join in the discussion…and find support to keep making choices that treat you as the precious being you are.

“Hello, Nanci. Thanks so much for the pictures and great article. I really took it to heart. Since the training the biggest difference I’m noticing is that people are talking about things. It’s not always nice stuff. Sometimes it’s expressing feeling hurt by a supervisor’s treatment or the way someone addressed them. Instead of just stuffing things under the rug people are opening up and talking a lot more. The break room is just louder and more vibrant. It seems like people have held back a lot of hurt feelings over the years and now feel like they can talk about them. It’s very different with all these new voices of people who used to be pretty silent. Thank you so much.”

Having more authentic conversations, even though they bring up thoughts and feelings that can be hard to hear or challenging to have, are a sign of success. Sometimes organizations are confused by this turn of events. Organizations assume that if no one’s talking about these issues, then everything is going fine. Quite the contrary–if you create enough safety, more and more conversations will happen, and more issues will come into the light; the silences are be broken. And that is a good thing. The question: do you have the organizational capacity to handle these conversations? Skills building for effective conversations as well as a framework with which to “hold” them is essential if the organization and individuals will move through them, toward true alliances and cultural competency.

Feel free to follow along on their site or check out the repostings on this blog.

This year the focus is on racism and sports. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, “We must push for all sports organizations to adopt stringent anti-discrimination policies, as well as frameworks for punishing the perpetrators of racist incidents and justice for the victims [both inside and outside of the stadium].” The sports industry, like any institution, has perpetuated institutional racism and is used to reinforce “race-based” prejudices (often in the guise of nationalism in international sporting events). A brilliant example of how sports can be used to structurally and emotionally interrupt racist divisions, can be seen in the 2009 film Invictus.  This film tells the inspiring true story of how newly-elected President Nelson Mandela seeks to unite his still racially and economically divided country in the wake of apartheid by joining forces with Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks, as they make their historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match.

Marking this day in the US, over 700 organizations from across the country are supporting the “March for America” campaign. Thousands are expected to march at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, March 21st to demand immigration reform. For more information about the march visit Reform Immigration For America.

You can find more information about the international call to action at Human Rights Education Associate.  Some tools featured on this site that you can use to bring about an end to racism include learning activities for use with young people to explore the issue of discrimination, developed by Amnesty International; the international basis for intercultural education including anti-racist and human rights education, to increase awareness and use of international human rights treaties to shape international human rights standards into reality; and anti-slavery fact sheets, that present simple, easy-to-use information on past slavery, present-day slavery and bonded labor.

How will you celebrate your life as a woman?  The lives of women you are close with?  What do you cherish about being female?

I recently visited my father’s youngest sister, who is now in her early 70s.  Despite societal expectations and barriers of gender and class, she has created an independent life for herself that continues to inspire me.  She lives in her own cement house, built on the same site in Aguada, Puerto Rico that my Mama Minga had her wooden home (before Hurricane George had its way with it).

My grandmother, Mama Minga, had the foresight to purchase a plot of land with the settlement from her husband’s accidental death in 1936.  She left that land to her five youngest children–my aunt being the only girl in that bunch.  To make ends meet after her husband died, Mama Minga would bring in piece work (small articles to be sewn by hand for the US garment industry that paid pennies per piece of work) for her and the youngest to sew.

My aunt further developed her skills as a seamstress. Eventually she got a job at a JCPenny’s clothing factory, which supported herself and her son.  Her eyes still sparkle with pride when she talks about the lingerie she made day after day.  The factory moved overseas 13 years ago (for a cheaper labor pool) and she’s lives off her monthly social security check.  You can tell she’s glad to not work in the factory anymore (“I haven’t been sick a day since I stopped working there,” she tells me.  “Too much stress.”).  Now her days are her own and she sews for pleasure.

Although she sews most everything–clothing, curtains, etc.–she has a special place in her heart for making dolls. Treasured patterns of small girls, precisely cut, and lovingly wrapped in paper and plastic and stored in boxes are carefully removed for me to see.  Each pattern has a story.  “I made this one for my granddaughter, Nicole, when she was little.”  “When I was six, my mother made me a Victorian doll just like this one.” “I sold this one for $20.”

Each doll connects her to other girls and women in her life.

She’s now making one for me.

While the statements, “be who you are” or “stay true to yourself,” sound simple, they are surprisingly challenging to live up to. This is especially true in a society that explicitly values and rewards particular groups and ways of “being” over others.

Many of us purposely change how we present ourselves in work environments to be seen as more credible or to advance our projects in our organizations. On some level, this strategy makes sense as we need political support and buy-in to be effective in our jobs. However, some of these decisions —how we dress and talk, how much we reveal about our personal lives, core values and beliefs, and how we live—have become so familiar and reinforced by co-workers and society that the connection with our authentic selves begins to unravel. We lose sight of who we really are.

I recently led a workshop where a participant insisted I couldn’t be Latina because I was so “articulate.” I grew up in a household where my parents spoke Spanish to each other, but spoke to us children in English because they didn’t want us to speak with an accent. I watched my father and grandparents be “stigmatized” as uneducated or less intelligent because English was clearly not their native tongue.

I learned as a very young person that English was the language of power and access. I excelled at it, especially verbally. I knew that skillfully commanding English would bring recognition for being smart, because I would sound smart. Yet, I’m most “at home” in Spanglish. My tone softens, as does my heart, when those melodic syllables roll off my tongue. For the most part, I don’t reveal that part of me in work settings. I remain wary of both the stigma and its possible “exclusionary” effect on non-Spanish speakers, even when I translate what I say. I worry that I may offend someone in power and as a result lose a contract or client, or worse, my credibility.

When I hold back from speaking in my more familiar tongue, I have already lost credibility because I contradict my value of being authentic. In order to come more in alignment with my value, sometimes it’s enough for me to be open about how higher education and especially my decision to adopt “very formally educated” English impacted me. Other times, it makes sense to slip into Spanglish and share this aspect of myself. The outcome is two-fold:  I bring more of myself to whatever I am doing, and this benefits everyone around me. Another outcome is that by being more authentic I invite others to do the same.

I recently asked workshop participants to do an activity in their first language.  The resistance from a small group of immigrants was palpable. The room filled with nervous chatter, anxious clarifying questions, uncomfortable shifting in chairs, and even visible upset at me for making such a request. After the exercise, several of these participants shared with me, one-on-one, how powerful it was to be able to speak their own languages at work. They cried about how hard it was to speak only English and how doing so led them to forget certain words in their birth language. The grief was evident. As I walked through the lunch area after the session, the participants volunteered to teach me “thank you” and “good-bye” in Romanian, Tibetan, Arabic, and Eritrean, just to name a few. The participants felt safe enough to be more authentic in the workplace and the trust increased for everyone.

Being authentic means being willing to be all of who you are. The truth is, being less of who we are impacts our organizational effectiveness. It takes effort—more energy, more resources, more time—to be less of myself since my brain is preoccupied with what and how much to change or hold back. If you are part of a group that has institutional power—English dominant, male, white, Christian, heterosexual, etc.—you are especially poised to create more safety for others. You can do this by engaging your access and credibility to model authenticity and insist on a workplace that actively counteracts pressures to assimilate.

Where have you changed who you are in order to fit in or gain more acceptance?  What can you do to be more authentic in the workplace? How would this increase the trust level and allow others to be more authentic? How would this impact diversity and increase inclusion where you work? I forward to reading your thoughts and responding to your comments!

With provocative chapter titles such as “I’m Not White” and “I’m Not A Racist,” Kivel engages his readers and acknowledges the social context that makes people shy away from identifying as “white.”  He validates that for many of his readers, there is a strong desire to individualize their identities and distance themselves from the associations that come with that label. He goes on to illuminate how the tendency to focus solely on personal prejudice can impede efforts to dismantle racism in the greater context: the “institutional nature of [centuries of white racism] is more entrenched than racial prejudice. In fact, it is barely touched by changes in individual white consciousness.”

While shifts in individual white consciousness are necessary for racial justice, Kivel also provides strategies and suggestions to take the next steps towards combating institutional racism. He explores initiatives such as Affirmative Action, redistribution of economic resources, investment in communities of color, and supporting democratic, anti-racist multiculturalism. The revised edition includes an updated bibliography and the more current topics of anti-Arab prejudice and how the U.S.’s health care system perpetuates racial inequalities—an especially timely issue.

This book is an engaging guide to identifying the social, political, and economic context in which institutional racism is grounded. Subscribe to the LJS blog feed to read more reflections about this book. We hope you’ll add your voice to the discussion!

Last month I asked you to identify what would need to change to have the life you want by creating a “Changes List.”  Some of you might have things like:  “don’t take on more work projects until I cross some off my list” or “spend more time with my family.”  Some of you might have things like:  “change my job,” “have a child,” or “move from my current home or apartment.”  For some of you the changes might seem relatively small, while for others the changes could feel like they would send shockwaves throughout your life—and the lives of those closest to you.  Notice if the changes feel large or small. Of course, bigger changes will require more resource—financial, emotional, and planning, etc.  In the end though, it’s not the size of the change that matters; it’s your capacity to make the change happen. And building that capacity is what this process is about!

The second tool (which is a companion to the second step) involves categorizing your “Change List” into three “Change Arenas.”  Below I will briefly define how I use the terms “attitude,” “responsibility,” and “expectation” and give some examples of each.  As you review your list and read this article, begin to put marks by each item to indicate which category you think best describes your change.

By “attitudes” I mean beliefs that you hold about yourself that contribute to the current situation of misalignment.  These attitudes will need to change in order to create something different.  For example, an attitude on my “Change List” is to let go of the idea that if someone needs me, it’s my duty to be available to them.  This attitude—both of responding to others’ needs and this being a way to uphold my sense of “duty”—keeps me stuck.  I continue to respond to others’ needs (feeling more resentful along the way) and even as “duty” overrides my own priorities, I find myself unable to say “no.”  What attitudes are on your “Change List?” What would happen if you changed this belief? Even though we know these attitudes need to change to create change, they can be ingrained, almost inherent to us, that change feels impossible.

The second “Change Arena” is “responsibilities:” actions you take that, with diminished choice, feel more like duty and obligation.  Responsibilities are part of how we spend our lives: benign actions that enhance the functioning of our lives.  In themselves, they can be interesting and even fun!  When these responsibilities no longer align with our priorities or larger sense of purpose, they can feel like more like obligation—serving the needs of others, but not ours. Discerning the difference between a “responsibility” and an “obligation” is mostly about rigidity.  For example, I have a responsibility to pay my mortgage.  It turns into an obligation when I can only imagine doing it by staying at a job I hate or when I feel like it’s up to me, and me alone, and there isn’t any help. My responsibility can be met in any number of creative ways: I could rent out my home and move in with friends or family temporarily; I could get a roommate to help reduce the financial strain; I could sell my home; etc.  To be truly open to other creative ways to meet our responsibilities, we’ll usually bump up against preciously-defended attitudes.  For example, yours might be “I’m independent and self-sufficient and I don’t need help from anyone.”  That certainly makes imagining moving in with friends or family, even temporarily, seem undoable.  As you categorize your change list, you’ll find these three “Change Arenas” end up supporting each other to keep the status quo intact.

And the final change arena is “expectations:” what others think or believe about you.  These can be even more compelling than what we believe about ourselves—especially if these expectations are supported by society.  Of course, these expectations may or may not be true, but we have internalized them so they are now ours and feel true, regardless.  One of my priorities is to write a book.  Staying in the daily structure of my current life wouldn’t support me to carve out time to focus on that goal.  One item on my change list was to move somewhere else temporarily—which would mean not living with my partner (his job does not have that kind of flexibility).  An expectation that also showed up on my Change List is “a good partner shares the daily responsibilities of life together.” Of course, living somewhere else would prevent me from contributing to those daily responsibilities.  Making this change brought me up against the external images of how a partnership is “supposed” to be.  I didn’t have a model for partners living a part—although I know this is not uncommon.  This expectation needed to change in order to continue to see my value as a partner—even if I were to live somewhere else.  Of course, it also challenged my own attitude to respond to others’ needs.  If I weren’t physically there, I couldn’t respond to my partners’ needs.  What are some expectations you would have to question in order to have the life you want?  How much of these expectations are really yours that you project onto others?  How much of these expectations are really from others? From society?

Take out another piece of paper.  Put three columns on it.  Label the first one “Attitude,” the second one “Responsibility,” and the third one “Expectation.”   As you look at your list of changes, rewrite your change list so that each item is now in one of the three columns.  Which attitudes and responsibilities (or responsibilities and expectations or attitudes and expectations) reinforce each other, keeping the other in place and therefore more difficult to change?  What patterns or trends do you notice?  If you could distill one or two core themes of change, what would they be?  Share your insights with a friend or write them in a journal—or both.  Keep your lists handy because next month we’ll explore the third step in the process!