Getting honest and uncomfortable

Recently the extended corporate leadership team at Birmingham City Council spent an afternoon discussing race and racism facilitated by the excellent Nathan Dennis and Sabrina Dennis.

This may not seem like much but take a moment to acknowledge that this is over 30 senior officers taking several hours away from fighting the cost of living crisis, balancing the budget and battling the BAU email avalanche to sit down and have an honest and uncomfortable conversation about something that didn't involve a balance sheet.

As you read this be compassionate, these were people coming together to be open and to learn, how many senior leaders actually take the time to recognise their gaps and put in the time and leg work to be better in terms of diversity and inclusion? Having worked in several large organisations before this is the first time I have seen this level of bravery and honesty in getting into uncomfortable space and starting the journey so openly. It wasn't perfect and we still have far to go but it was a very bold and brave start.

The session started out with a bit of music and some fist bumping engagement alongside a positive catch phrase. I was reflecting afterwards about why start such a serious topic with such an upbeat vibe. I'm sure Nathan and Sabrina have some science behind it but for me it helped get people moving and engaging, it shook up the normal status quo of the traditional leadership business meeting and set the energy in the room to be something different.

There was then a short overview of some of the history and context of racism in the UK and in Birmingham from Nathan and Sabrina. They talked about what it truly means to be anti-racist and step in to challenge when as a bystander you see discrimination happening and acknowledged that this was the start of a journey of change (the lack of bystander intervention training in this and other areas is something I may write about another time - how many of us truly feel able to intervene with strangers?). So this is where the uncomfortable bit started to emerge as clear differences in awareness and understanding started to emerge.

For some of us the cruel reality of racism and hate is something we are well aware of, from the high publicised death of George Floyd to the almost weekly murder of Black and Latino trans women in the United States, these stories and realities are part of our social media and the conversations in our social networks, but this is not the case for everyone and wasn't for everyone in the room.

It is easy to forget how much the digital algorithms edit out and play into a 'group think' view of the world. Everyday these algorithms curate content based on our likes, how long we spend reading something, what links we click and create a world that feeds our interests and shapes our world view. The recent coroners judgement in the Molly Russell case is testament to the potential fatal impact of this manipulation of our virtual influences and how limited the protections or social conscience in this space seems to be. So although it may be shocking it is a reality that for some these murders, assaults, abuse and harassment are largely invisible in their daily information feeds and so some are truly not aware.

Some in the room had noted these things at the time they happened but moved on, noting it and then moving on. In the 24/7 media world today's atrocity becomes tomorrow's chip paper, or in today's digital world moves off the first page of Google. When you see the timeline of the deaths before and after George Floyd set out visually there is a stronger resonance of the reality of racism. Sadly the same would be true if timelines were laid out for the murder, assault and abuse of LGBT+ people, how many of you reading this remember Matthew Sheppard , a young gay man beaten up and strung up on a barb wire fence to die, or the abusive care and murder of disabled people in Winterbourne View Care Home, but those are discussions for another article. In today's world we now routinely see death and horrendous stories through the daily media, in the last 24hrs I have read about a woman who beheaded an elderly friend to gain her money, another who got friends to ram a spurned ex of her mother into a tree killing both him and his friend and multiple pictures and stories about the horrors of the war and conflict in Ukraine and the rising tensions in East Africa. It is sadly easy to understand how we are becoming numb to cruelty and to hate and simple noting it and moving on.

So as we started our journey together we recognised and acknowledge that not everyone was in the same place and not everyone came from the same understanding, awareness or knowledge and that is okay. Creating the safety for the space to get uncomfortable needs time to baseline some of the difference in the room and start to open up the conversation about these difference and this was a good way to start.

Nathan and Sabrina have a very unique model for training on racism and it focuses around a tool called the Game. Now this might come across as a bit of a sales pitch for them, frankly they are good enough to sell themselves, but I wanted to share the experience of being taken through it because it did open up the honest uncomfortable conversations that are so important in moving us forward. The Game is based around a kind of snakes and ladder board where teams compete to move forward rolling a dice and answering questions. I won't give all of it away but hopefully enough to give you a bit of a sense of the space which we got into.

The questions is the bit where it got honest and uncomfortable in a really good way....that and the deeply competitive nature of some of our senior leaders!

Questions start seemingly easy, things like 'What is British Culture?' start out as relatively innocent but as the teams start to discuss with each other and shape their answer there were moments of difference coming through. Whether it's fish and chips on a wet Sunday afternoon or a colonial history that underpins our current multi-cultural present, these are all views and interpretations that started to open us up to each others different ways of seeing the world.

But as the Game progresses and through the slightly random impact of the dice rolling the questions start to open up more discussion and start to take the teams into spaces where the reality of racism and how to counter and challenge racism start to come through. Questions like 'In an interview for a customer service role the top scoring candidate has a thick African accent and had to be asked multiple times to repeat their answers, would you appoint them?'. Sounds simple enough, but then the discussion starts and people start to explore their honest truth. As it is a customer service role would this be a barrier? isn't communication skills a core bit of the job description? is the failure to understand or listen a failing of us as a panel? given the diverse nature of our city don't we want people with diverse accents? are there risks if the individual can't be clearly understood? These were honest questions and comments and what was great is that we felt able to talk about them and use the game's starting point to really unpack some of our perceptions, our own values and concerns. For the record we all decided to appoint but we varied in how we would or wouldn't raise the issue in feedback to the candidate. For each question there was a potential model answer and points to be scored for reflecting the model answer, but the reality is that there are legal positions on some questions but in many there is diversity in the answers and the value comes from seeing and hearing that and the conversations that came through.

I won't spoil Nathan Dennis and Sabrina's work in any more detail, so if you want to know more then contact them directly. I have no vested interest in their company btw, it's just a good organisation doing good work, hence sharing my experience of being in their hands.

What struck me from the session, and the feedback I had from some of my staff who were part of it but in different teams to me, was the honest and uncomfortable conversations and how valuable that is for leaders and leadership teams. During the Covid pandemic one of the things that stood out was leaders who were honest about how difficult it was to lead during this time and the personal burdens and challenges, but also how rarely leaders really talked honestly about this even in these extreme circumstances.

It also highlights the importance of talking about personal context and social context for our leadership and taking time to explore this both internally and with others. In 2016 I remember how after the violent and fatal attack at Pulse nightclub in Florida I had to explain how this was resonating with me as a gay man and across the community, this was a killing in one of the spaces in which we could be our authentic selves, explaining this context led to a different framing of the response within our organisation and from leaders in the organisation. We don't know what we don't know and taking time to educate ourselves and understand the context of how someone else is reacting to the same event or incident can be a powerful exercise. Unpacking this is uncomfortable as it requires personal insight and reflection from more than one person but the benefits are potentially bold and brilliant.

Taking time out to really get into this kind of space is a luxury in today's world of every minute on technology and the daily pressures and anxieties of both work and home life but it is really valuable. The conversations opened up understanding of each other which is something that there has been limited time for in a big extended leadership group where there has also be a fair bit of churn. It wasn't without risk and some left the event carrying some self-reflection burdens and concerns that needed to be addressed in line management conversations and discussions outside the room. Following the event I had several conversations with participants where they reflected on the conversations and shared their personal learning and asked for help or advice in how to move it forward.

These were big conversations and although we had several hours, this ideally would take a day and be in a much smaller group, so it only scratched the surface of what is possible in this kind of space. The facilitators focused on applause for honest and acknowledging stepping into the uncomfortable and this kind of reward and recognition is really important for moving through this space as a group. They also thought about how to wind it down and bring us out and back into the 'normal' to move forward. This demonstrated for me the value and the possibility of getting into this kind of honest uncomfortable space relatively quickly and also how to exit it safely.

Getting into this space reflects the leadership of our Chief Executive Deborah Cadman OBE DL BSc MSc MA and the rest of the corporate leadership team being brave enough to be vulnerable and open with their direct reports and with external facilitators. We talk about honest and open leadership but being really honest about what you don't know or what you really think about a scenario or a question with people you manage every day isn't that easy when you are in these social issue spaces. I'm grateful I was a part of it.

This was the start of the journey but I can already see in the conversations that have followed that it has had an impact and the conversations we are having now are moving us forward step by step towards a better and more inclusive way of leading and serving.

There is still much more work to do but we have intentionally started with a stronger foot moving forward and that is always a good way to start a journey and even better to be doing it with colleagues alongside us.

I hope in sharing this experience others will reflect on how we can all go further in our deeper understanding of diversity and inclusion and our own leadership in this space.