10 lessons on social change from training 5,500 people

In 2023 I had the privilege of training over 5,500 individuals on how our relationships with ourselves and others radically evolve when we change our stories and practices of power, self-worth, and leadership through my company The New Quo. I did this through online courses, public speaking, facilitated sessions, and consulting. Here’s 10 major lessons I picked up along this journey in 2023:?

1. People are desperate for more empathy and curiosity in their lives: our hyper individualized society and emotionally bereft institutions are crusty and dusty and creating voids in how people connect. People deeply crave being seen, heard, and affirmed, and many people do not trust those in power around them to care about their physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing - with rightful cause. Compassionate empathy is a muscle that can be built and requires folks to step beyond their own inner angst and fears to care about the experiences and needs of others, and to build reciprocal relationships that aren’t transactional, controlling, or exploitative.?
2. Joy, authenticity, and humor is a critical tool for tough topics: I received feedback time and again after my sessions that individuals who were weary of learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion topics because of the negative feelings they associate with it (shame, blame, guilt, apathy, anger, emotional labor with no return etc), were delightfully surprised how these topics can actually be a way to create more connection, understanding, trust, and even joy with those around them. How we teach and speak on these topics makes all the difference to how they are digested and acted upon.?
3. Care matters more than just culture: Care requires seeing people as full human beings, not just a cog in the wheel of a machine to bop around and use. Care means paying people above a fair wage, equitable treatment, not communicating in stereotypes and slander, reducing microaggressions, expansive parental leave, insurance coverage, and bereavement policies, creating sustainable hours, measuring feedback on culture and acting on feedback, measuring the social impacts of business design and processes, being accountable to harms and making genuine change to address them, and continued on the job training and development. One training on bias and one party celebrating Black History Month is not going to cut it.?
4. Social change is an inside job: The only thing you can fully control is yourself. Social change starts with self-insight, becoming aware of your biases and how your choices (what you create, how you treat people, what you do and don’t pay attention to) affect others, how you contribute to (even unintentionally) supporting oppressive ideology and practices, and pushing yourself to learn what you don’t know, especially when it comes to social issues and how they impact yourself, the people around you, and beyond. As some older elders said at some point in history “know thyself.”
5. Social responsibility and social justice can’t be delegated away: Amplifying the expertise and voices of others is important on social issues, but taking no accountability to learn, form informed opinions and ideas, and make informed decisions, is a cop out. If you’re in a position of formalized authority where your decisions have a direct impact on others, you cannot delegate that responsibility away out of fear when you’re confronted with a social issue, it only makes things worse.?
6. The ability to innovate goes only as far as empathy and compassion goes: a shallow relationship to empathy and compassion for others, creates shallow, self-serving ideas, and a lack of solutions to long term problems.?
7. Compartmentalizing the social from the personal is a fool's errand: The world is a hot doo doo pile mess right now. Pretending that isn’t the case when folks are at work is not only infuriating, it breeds distrust. Creating spaces for folks to grieve, find help and support, and just acknowledging their pain is so key to a group functioning in a healthy way.?
8. Actions matter more than words when it comes to social impact: Creating something new in the world isn’t enough to make a genuine impact, deeply understanding the social, political, environmental impacts of what you are creating, actually does.?
9. Inequitable power is maintained through denial of issues, deflection, gaslighting, comforting perpetrators and punishing victims, and revising history: self explanatory.?
10. Cultural competency is a skill that will make or break your organization: understanding the unique political, cultural, social, economical challenges others face is a superpower skill, creating an ability to build trusting, healthy relationships with anyone. Folks with high cultural competency also tend to have the most fulfilling and rewarding experiences within their professional and personal lives, and those with low competency live with a ton of fear, paranoia, and isolation as the main motivator of their day to day experiences.?

As I step into 2024, I can see how many cross roads we're running into: dissolution and rightful anger at injustices, a demand of new norms and changes with antiquated systems that were never designed to serve or care for us all, and a backlash of fear and violence against change and difference. Social change is a step ladder with steps forwards and steps backwards, but we always have the ability to radically imagine a better future built on us all growing, evolving, and becoming better to ourselves and one another.