Let's Get REAL: Introducing Racial Equity for Adaptive Leaders | S3, Ep 3

Let's Get REAL: Introducing Racial Equity for Adaptive Leaders | S3, Ep 3

In this episode of the Race in the Workplace Podcast, host Joanna Shoffner Scott shares a discussion with Anthony Armstrong, founder and lead consultant at Make Communities, to explore the intricacies of adaptive versus technical leadership strategies, especially concerning racial equity and its role in practice transformation in nonprofit organizations. The discussion explores the realities of imperfection, the importance of psychological safety for making mistakes, and the need for continuous growth and adaptation in leadership roles. Together, they discuss how leaders can navigate the complex relationship between personal commitment and practical implementation to foster real, equitable change within their organizations.

Here are three summary points for Episode 3 of the Race in the Workplace Podcast:

1. Personal Growth and Navigating Resistance: The episode underscores the importance of self-reflection, vulnerability, and continual learning in leadership. Leaders must navigate identity issues, manage resistance, and set realistic expectations for transformational change. The discussion also touches on the need for a growth mindset and the acceptance of mistakes as part of the journey toward achieving organizational equity goals.
   
   
2. Generational and Equity Challenges for Leaders: The episode explores how nonprofit leaders grapple with managing cross-generational teams, shifting philanthropic commitments, and equity challenges. Both Joanna and Anthony emphasize the importance of creating psychologically safe environments where admitting "I don't know" is normalized, facilitating personal and organizational growth.
   
   
3. The Role of Boards and Leadership Support: This episode unpacks the ways boards play a crucial role in supporting nonprofit leaders. It highlights the necessity for boards to invest in coaching resources, support equity initiatives, and foster environments that allow leaders to admit gaps in knowledge and experience.

Resources

Learn more about the 6P+ Racial Equity Framework

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About Your Host

Dr. Joanna Shoffner Scott is an organizational development consultant who helps leaders of nonprofits, philanthropies, and businesses create workplaces that work for everyone. 

Transcript

[00:00:02]JSS: This is Joanna Shoffner Scott. You are listening to the Race in the Workplace Podcast, a show for organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity play out in workplaces and workspaces. I am an organizational development consultant and Founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group. I help nonprofits, philanthropies, and private businesses create equitable organizations that work for everyone. My hope for this podcast is that it helps you identify practical, sustainable actions to shift your organization from being colorblind to equity-centered. 

[EPISODE]

[00:00:43] JSS: Today on the pod, I am bringing you a conversation between my colleague, Anthony Armstrong, and I where we talk about a podcast series that we've been planning called Let's Get Real: Racial Equity for Adaptive Leaders. Anthony has been on this podcast before, and I've been on his pod, White People Make Everything About Race. We've collaborated for a number of years, so it's always fun to get on the mic and mix it up with Anthony. 

Each episode of the series will feature a conversation where Anthony and I unpack the challenges, opportunities, and the ever-changing landscape for leaders who want to build equitable organizations. You’ll hear more in the episode, but I thought you'd be interested in hearing these conversations not only about the challenges and opportunities that this moment presents, but hearing those from our different perspectives. I imagine that it would be sort of like a sneak peek into our Zoom meetings while we're navigating the complexities of client work. 

Just to give you a little bit of a preview, in this episode, we will talk about the generational and equity challenges for leaders. That goes a little bit deeper into how leaders and nonprofits grapple with managing across generational teams and as well as the challenges of implementing equity, as well as the shifts in philanthropic commitments that so many nonprofits are experiencing right now. 

We'll also talk about the role of boards and how boards can support leaders. We'll talk about that. We'll also talk about the need for and space for personal growth, as well as navigating resistance. We'll talk about the importance of self-reflection and vulnerability and continued learning in leadership and how to navigate all of those things when sometimes there's real resistance to transformational change. 

I'm excited to share the first episode of Let's Get Real, and I hope that you find it helpful. Again, hearing insights from Anthony and from myself, I think it's a rich conversation, given our identities and our lived experiences and our work experiences. I'm super excited for this. We will pick up the conversation with an introduction from Anthony. 

[00:03:13] AA: Hi, everyone. I'm Anthony Armstrong. I'm Founder and Lead Consultant at Make Communities where I help build capacity for personal, organizational, and societal change. I do that with an intentional equity focus and a growth-minded systems-oriented approach. Together, we created this series that we're calling Racial Equity for Adaptive Leaders. 

[00:03:31] JSS: We hope it prepares your heart and your organization for transformational change. 

[00:03:36] AA: This joint series that we're kicking off, you brought this idea to me first. So I really would like to turn it over to you, Joanna, to talk about why this makes sense in this moment and why we want to have a bunch of conversations together that we can share with other folks. 

[00:03:51] JSS: What made me kind of kick this idea around is I feel like it's very similar to why we built out the 6P+ Racial Equity Framework, and that is just seeing the same problems over and over or the same set of circumstances over and over. I was seeing that so many leaders of different kinds of organizations were coming into engagements, consulting engagements, and not fully understanding both what it means to lead from an equity perspective or lead from an equity framework, and certainly not understanding what it takes to build an equitable organization. 

I thought you and I both have practices, and we serve many of the same type of clients. But we would see things very differently in terms of some of those challenges, and I thought it could be an interesting set of conversations that could be helpful to leaders who might be just in different parts of the journey. 

[00:04:53] AA: Joanna, you and I have both said more than once that we view ourselves as reluctant consultants. It wasn't the path that we had set out for ourselves. We were both within organizations, had been in various aspects of nonprofits. We've seen the way things work from the inside, so to speak. I think the longer that I have the role that I have being a consultant that's brought in to help organizations through their journey, the more I see the value in that perspective of being able to see into multiple organizations at once, being able to take that 30,000-foot view which I'll speak for myself here. 

When I was inside of an organization, it was much more difficult for me to see that 30,000-foot view to be able to step back and say where are these threads leading to, where are they coming from, and are there patterns here. I think when you're within a single organization, it's really tough to see those patterns. It's really tough to look beyond sometimes the personalities and the dynamics that we have as individuals with each other to recognize the way that things might be showing up, the way those things are baked into the history of an organization, the way those things might be baked into the org chart, the way that those things are racialized. 

I think that our shared work in this space over the course of the last 10 years now or so, I know I've learned a lot from you, while you are able to decode those pieces. I'm hoping that I bring a perspective that's helpful to you in diagnosing those and also being able to name those for clients. I don't think that we often work with leaders who don't want to do the right thing, so to speak, who don't believe that this is the right thing to do. 

But I think along the lines of what you were talking about, knowing what that is or knowing what that actually requires, that's often where we find the disconnect. I think it can be destabilizing for leaders, particularly if they've been in an organization for a while to look back on what they've done all in good faith and have that moment of was that not the right thing, or am I contributing to this in a way that I didn't know that I was. 

At the same time, I think it's really important for leaders to be able to not get hung up on that because, again, I'll speak for me, if I get defensive about the way I have been doing things, that doesn't create the space for me to do things in a different way, right? It really requires having that growth mindset and mentality. I think often as leaders we are put in a position where we kind of want to be infallible. We kind of don't want to expose those cracks in our understanding because there might be sort of a cultural implication that that makes us weaker or unqualified. Or that calls into question our authority, our ability. I think that just runs counter to what we're trying to do when we are working towards equity within our organization. 

Yes, I agree with your perspective on why this is important. Hopefully, we can add something to the conversation where folks get a chance to use these conversations as a mirror to the way that they're working and what they want to accomplish. 

[00:08:00] JSS: Yes. I mean, so much of what you said really resonates with me because I think that so often, at least recently in my own practice, I'm just hearing so much about leaders just being really concerned about their legacy. To your point around leadership, leaders who've been in place for a long time, transitioning out, what is that going to look like? What is their mark? How are they leaving the organization? Is it better than when they started? Real deep questions around mission and purpose. 

To your point, I think that when leadership doesn't move the equity questions forward that that can call some really important personal considerations into question. Am I not with it enough? Does that make me racist? Is that – those kinds of like why didn't I know this, why didn't I know it sooner. All those kinds of questions which I think do run counter and sometimes can help people or contribute to people getting stuck. 

I hope that we can shed some light on how to get unstuck if you're stuck and also shed some light on what doing this work entail. I also hope we can sprinkle in a little bit of the joy that can come from leading in a way that aligns with your personal mission, vision, values for your life as a leader but also for the organization that you lead. 

[00:09:39] AA: As someone who is white-identified, this work for me ultimately made me feel more connected to my place not just within the work but within the world. But that required letting go of a lot of things that I maybe didn't even want to acknowledge that I was holding on to. It required a good deal of vulnerability and still requires that vulnerability. 

I think for leaders who are driving this change, particularly for folks who are white-identified like me, this work requires us to let go of notions of perfectionism. It requires us to let go of notions that we're always going to be right, that we're always going to have the answer, or that we're going to get it right the first time. It requires us to think about, yes, our organization. But we also have to think about ourselves within that organization and even what our leadership within these initiatives means. 

Leadership doesn't always mean calling the shots. Leadership doesn't always mean making decisions. Sometimes, what's required of leadership is to let go. Sometimes, what's required of leadership is to be intentional about leveraging the power that you have within an organization to create space for other folks to share that power. That means letting go of control. Particularly, if you're somebody, again, who's been in an organization for a long time or maybe has built an organization, that notion of letting go of control, I've seen it be very scary, and I've seen people get stuck there. I think if we're really trying to live into our values. If we're trying to work authentically towards those things that we say we care about, it's absolutely necessary. 

[00:11:18] JSS: I think that's really powerful, and I think that there's also this question. What does it mean to lead an organization if you're not white-identified. I'm showing up as a black woman, and what does that mean? How do you lead in a way that isn't all-consuming, and you have challenges that are so different from your counterparts to work through? How do you do that in a way that respects your humanity? 

I hope that we have time and can get as we think through what our series is going to be that we can make space to talk about that because I do think a lot of the leadership frameworks don't necessarily take the nuances of identity into consideration. I hope we can sort of touch on that. 

[00:12:05] AA: I know we've talked about this before. It's not just how you show up within your identity, but it's also the expectations that are placed on you because of your identity. Particularly, I know you've spoken on your podcast before about leaders of color who come into an organization, and the expectation is that they'll fix everything, and they'll fix it by Wednesday, right?

[00:12:27] JSS: Yes. Close the business. 

[00:12:29] AA: Right. But then I think there's an additional dimension on top of that that we've discussed about. You and I are intentional about how we show up within our identities and when something that I say might resonate or be respected in a way that it wouldn't be if you had said it. I wish that it weren't like that, but we're realistic that it often is like that. When you're the leader and you see these dynamics developing around you, where is your voice? Or how is your ability to name those? Or are you being put in a position where you have to navigate those in silence?

[00:13:08] JSS: Are you asking me?

[00:13:10] AA: I was raising it rhetorically. I mean, we're only 10 minutes in here. We don’t have to –

[00:13:18] JSS: I know. I’m like, “Whoa.” 

[00:13:19] AA: Solve that one just yet. 

[00:13:20] JSS: I know. I know. Yes. No, for real. No, for sure. Since we're speaking rhetorically, I would also say that I think there are cross-generational differences, too, around what is expected of leaders as they are managing a mix of generations within the workspace. 

[00:13:43] AA: I think that's heightening, right? I think that we're seeing that more and more, even in the last couple of years. Maybe that was inevitable with the demographic shifts in the workplace and all the articles and all the research about this being the first time that five generations are in the workplace at the same time. But I also think that it's fed by the last eight years and the different conditions, expectations that people have generationally for how workspace should function, what the workspace should bring. Also, I think differential histories around loyalty to or from an organization, which has certainly changed and continues to change in the face of AI and all these other trends. 

[00:14:34] JSS: No, for sure. I think those things are all contributing to what is a challenging, even in the best of times landscape for leaders of organizations today. Certainly, in a nonprofit space because then you have shifting philanthropic commitments. You've got these generational challenges. At the same time, you're being asked to do more with less, are asked to be more civic-minded which may run counter to mission, vision, purpose. 

It's a curious, curious landscape that leaders are working in. I think then when you incorporate the equity pieces to that and how important they are, that adds to all of the things that leaders are working through in their every day. 

[00:15:28] AA: You shared an article with me within the last few months about declining interest in leadership, particularly declining interest in nonprofit leadership. I don't know that we're helping that trend with this way that we're getting kicked off today in naming all these challenges that seem to be building and compounding each other. 

But I do think that part of what we see is that often leaders feel isolated and alone, particularly in this journey. Even if they have the support of their boards or if the staff is asking for this, I think that sense of isolation is real, and it can make decision-making or championing these efforts even more challenging in part because the cadence or the pace or the goal setting is going to be something that's really difficult to find any sort of unanimity around to both bring folks along who might not be there or might be worried about how this will affect our public perception or how this will affect our funding source. 

Then having people saying we can't continue to just sit in our hands on this and say we'll work it out eventually. Managing people who – even if your entire organization, to a person in your organization, everyone has a deep commitment to equity, managing that timeline and those expectations is another challenge that we often see leaders are facing. That puts them in a tricky spot because whether you're ahead of the curve on timeline and behind the curve on timeline, it can – I think we've seen leaders who've had their commitments questioned, even if that commitment is real and lasting. 

[00:17:04] JSS: I'm hearing what you're saying and trying to think about like if we zoom out, our work is focused on the structural, right? If we zoom out and think what are those contextual factors in the instance of nonprofit leaders that can help that be a more like a softer place? What comes to mind is the role of philanthropy and how philanthropy shifts and changes based on what different foundations are interested in supporting. 

I remember when I was doing child advocacy work. I used to do work around child poverty, and I remember feeling so frustrated because there were times where I would say to my colleagues like we can't solve child poverty in a grant cycle or the presence of project-based funding where nonprofits aren't necessarily getting a lot of general operating support. So how does that shape the type of issues you take on, the type of projects you take on? 

Some of it I think, there are elements that are certainly beyond the leader's control. I mean, if you're doing policy work, you're operating in a system that you have very little control over. I just wonder if there's a way to kind of zoom out a little. I also think I would say one more thing that I think overall I don't think that boards support leaders enough. I think boards can do a better job at providing resources to executive leaders for coaching and other kinds of supports to make that an easier place.

[00:18:49] AA: I think that boards of directors also struggle with what it means to support inequity initiative in practice, rather than name. What does it mean to talk about your work through that lens? What does it mean to have the ability and willingness to have those challenging conversations? Not just internally when you're in sort of the board bubble but also out in the community. What does it mean to bring folks along and to stand up for your commitment and your position?

I think that, yes, boards need to provide support for leadership when they're on course to become more equitable organizations. But they also need to invest in themselves. That is a challenge we've seen since the pandemic started in 2020, where getting the energy and attention of board members has become even more challenging than it was back in the before times. How we're reaching board members, how we're coming to consensus, how we're building a strong board and not just filling the minimum number of seats we need in order to meet our legal requirements is also compounded within this. 

[00:19:57] JSS: I think that's right, and I also think – I mean, we say this all the time when we're doing work together with boards, but they need their own space to kind of figure this out, too. I do think that's an important element that's missing is I do think it is how to support an executive leader. But I also think, to your point, it is how do they – a lot of times. Not always because I have seen really activist boards before. But I do think it is figuring out what is their role. What do we do with all this? What does it mean, and how do we see ourselves in that work? I think there's usually a good bit of work to do in that space, so I want to give benefit of the doubt that I don't necessarily think it's with an ill intent. But it's probably more from a not knowing. 

[00:20:44] AA: I think that that can be compounded with that dynamic we talked about earlier when it comes to staff leadership of admitting that you don't know can be quite uncomfortable when you're at the top of the organizational pyramid. 

[00:21:00] JSS: Anthony, I remember talking about this on your podcast. I feel like not admitting when you don't know something just has a chokehold on people. I just don't understand it. I just feel like it's freeing to say I just don't know, or I just have to ask, or I have to find somebody who knows. I don't know. I feel like that piece of it I think can hold people back so much. But, I mean, I think it's so freeing. But I don't know. I think you're right, but I also think that can really get in the way. 

[00:21:35] AA: Yes.

[00:21:35] JSS: That's me trying to do deep spreadsheet analysis. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to call you and ask you to do it. I mean, it's just not what I do. It's what you do. I think that goes back to the idea of what you talked about about perfectionism and acknowledging that. Maybe that's just the way I view leadership, but I don't know. I just don't think the leader has to know everything. I think you've got to know what you don't know and then hire people who know that thing. But that's just how I perceive it in my Gen X self. I don't know. 

It causes problems, though, because that's a place people get stuck, especially in this equity space. When staff are just begging for more or they're calling different questions about processes and maybe the leader has no idea how to fix these things. That can create a lot of challenges that are unforced. 

[00:22:35] AA: When I look back at doing this work explicitly and intentionally, equity work explicitly and intentionally. For me, throughout my career, I have always aspired to make opportunity more equitable. I've always aspired to make communities places where your ZIP code doesn't determine your outcomes. But it wasn't until I stepped outside of the organization and started working with you, Joanna, and other folks who I've learned so much from that I gained a real sense of how to do that work equitably because that matters. You can be deeply committed to equity. It can be one of your core personal values. It was for me, but that doesn't mean I know how to carry that out. It doesn't mean I have the knowledge base or the mechanism. 

You can be an expert and very skilled and talented at your job. You can be very committed to equity, and those things don't necessarily lead to an equitable approach to your position or to your responsibilities. But I think even for folks who hold that or maybe especially for folks who hold equity as a close personal value, that makes it more challenging, right? Because if we name ourselves as someone who's not only not racist but who's committed to racial justice, someone who's committed to equity, then I think when we claim that as an identity, we can excuse ourselves from examining our actions and asking if we're actually living into that value. 

It’s a real challenge to admit that you don't know, you're not sure, you haven't done it in this way before. But, ultimately, how can we expect to see change within our organizations if we're not willing to change our own practices, our own outlook, our own perspective?

[00:24:30] JSS: As you were talking, I was thinking about the confidence continuum that we use in 6P+. Just as you were talking about that piece of your own journey, I was thinking about how one moves between those different phases of that continuum. We can link to it in the show notes for folks that may not know what we're talking about. 

I was listening to what you were saying, and I wonder if this is something we experience differently cross identity like you and I. What I was so struck by was, for me, I feel like if I don't know, to me, that's freeing. It's like, “I don't know. I'll ask somebody.” There's privilege in that, too, because I am not a leader of a big organization. I am an outsider. I'm an outside consultant, and people hire me to help them through a thing, right? Help them through this journey. As we think of that continuum, I don't have as much personally. There's not as much risk to me to say I don't know. Does that make sense? 

I'm not going to lose a grant because I don't know something, right? Or take the risk of someone not believing I don't belong because I don't know. There's privilege in that, too. I just kind of want to name that. I don't know. I think we could probably talk about that more, but I just wanted to kind of name that as you were talking. 

[00:25:56] AA: Having that ability to say that you don't know requires a form of psychological safety. This is something also that I think you've introduced me to quite a bit. How do we create environments where people have the ability to say they don't know? Are we perpetuating an environment where people are afraid to admit that they have room to grow or that they don't know everything?

That's a cultural piece, right? As leaders of organizations, we can't make the culture be what we want it to be overnight. But how do we continue to open up that space, so our culture can be that place where people feel welcome to say that they know or they don't know or that maybe even together we don't have it figured out yet?

[00:26:35] JSS: Or along similar lines, maybe not or but and/or, what happens if you make a mistake? I just had a conversation with someone recently about this that we know, and I think it's important message for leaders going back to that point that you made for leaders who have a deep personal value around equity, like who – I mean, we know people like that, and we have worked with people like that who have a deep personal commitment that the ability to make a mistake, that this journey is not a linear one, and our personal journeys aren't linear, and organizational journeys aren't linear either. That – I don't know. 

I think it's better to try and make a mistake, learn from it, and keep going than not try. I think that goes back to pushing back against the perfectionism that if we don't, that causes analysis paralysis inevitably of our next move has to be the right one. It has to be the perfect one. It has to be the best one. It has to be. Sometimes, it's not like that. Sometimes, it's just like let's try it. But I think that requires both psychological safety, as you mentioned. Also, we have to build that into our culture that it's okay to make a mistake, and part of that is how do you respond when someone does make a mistake. 

I think that's the piece that I would love leaders to take away from the series is that I think it's better to try and acknowledge you might make a mistake. You may not get it right the first time. I think about the first training I ever did. Oh, my gosh, those poor people. Or, you know, I just think that we have to allow room for people to grow. Part of that might be you make a mistake, or part of that might be you don't know something. I think we got to allow that. There's no – or I think that also respects humanity. We all make mistakes. We all – but it's like how are you trying to live your life? You know what I mean? In a personal context, how are you trying to live your life?

I think – I hope leaders take that away from this that, yes, there are elements of this that are hard, and a lot of it is holding a premiere to yourself, and a lot of it is difficult conversations. It might be making decisions people don't like, all of that. But there's also, I feel, the opportunity for great joy in knowing, you know what, but we're trying.

[00:29:00] AA: Yes. We've got to own the gap, right? We've got to own the gap between what our aspirations are and where we are today. If we can't acknowledge that gap, there's no way we can close it, so you've got to own it. You’ve got to own it. 

[00:29:12] JSS: Be gentle with one another. Be gentle with yourself and be gentle with one another because there's no perfect organization. There's no perfect leader. There's no perfectly written mission. There's no – you know what I mean. There's the gap, but also be gentle with each other and with ourselves as we try to navigate. It's hard. It's tough. But I think to your point, when we started this conversation, I think there's a level of freedom that's within that. 

I would like people to take away from this set of conversations that we're having. I would like people to know that they're not alone, that there are other people who lead organizations of all kinds and people who lead teams. People are struggling around the same thing. A lot of people are really struggling around cross-generational leadership. People are struggling with that. I'd like people to know that they're not alone. 

I'd also like people to know that there are some questions to ask in the context of looking at your own leadership and your board's leadership that maybe you aren't getting the resources you need. Maybe you don't know that there are some things you should be asking. I'd like to kind of lift up some issues that maybe aren't top of mind. I feel like in nonprofits, at least, there are certain things that are top of mind like fundraising. But there might be other things that I hope this series will shed some light on that are not top of mind but are still important, both in terms of equity but also in terms of sustainability. 

[00:30:47] AA: As we continue to go through this series, you've given us really concrete things that you want folks to walk away with. We want to talk more about how that technical work isn't enough, right? That you have to aspire for transformation and plan for transformation. We want folks to think about their timing, right? What's driving this now? Who's committed? What are those cautions that are out there? Some of which we've just named. Then how do you identify conditions that you're needed for traction, so this doesn't become something that falls off the table when it gets tough or when another priority emerges?

We want to definitely talk about what it means to do this in an intentional way, but I think we also want to continue to set expectations for folks, right? We've talked about what it means to expect real change. We want to talk about what real resistance looks like, where that comes from, how we handle that, how we manage that. When setbacks and mistakes happen, how do we deal with that? Where does that come into our ability to pivot? How does that something that we deal with in order to keep people around our shared efforts? What does it mean when things start getting uncomfortable? That resistance or folks who maybe remain quiet or folks who are not happy with the pace of change, what if that leads to staff turnover? What are the implications there? 

Continue to talk about our own personal growth and development throughout. There's a lot of different topics that we want to continue to talk about through this series and continue to provide some practical examples for folks, so hopefully they can see their experiences reflected. Or maybe when things emerge that weren't top of mind, they can and think, okay, this isn't – as you said, Joanna, you're not alone in this work. This isn't the first time that someone's had to deal with challenges and complications when they're trying to make their organizations more equitable. 

[00:32:40] JSS: While we we're unpacking so many of the realities of what it means to build an equitable organization, I never want to forget the joy and the joy that comes from moving in alignment between the personal and the systemic, the organizational. I don't know. I'm thinking about a leader I worked with who was thrilled that their executive team stayed intact through a really painful transition. That sparks joy, so I just want to make sure that we're also lifting the joy and doing the work. 

Cue Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, although we don't have the budget to ask for a sample —

[END OF EPISODE]

[00:33:22] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and share it with a friend who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it. Until next time, take care.

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