The Power of Discomfort: Why Embracing Hard Conversations is Key to Building Stronger Social & Climate Justice Movements

As a coach and consultant who focuses a lot of work on building “soft skills” (think feedback, management, team culture, etc.), I have been struck by how resistant many people in climate and social justice spaces are to being uncomfortable.??

This shows up as folks being unwilling to or squirmy about making space for emotion in the workplace. I see it in the deep challenge that most organizations have with giving and receiving feedback, or making space for having hard conversations. And most recently, it showed up as many of us not being willing to squarely face the possibility of Donald Trump winning the election, and preparing contingency plans accordingly.?

A colleague of mine shared an illustrative example about this a day after the election.?

Just a few weeks ago I was asked by a foundation to facilitate a planning session for their staff to look at priorities and budgets for a Harris vs Trump outcome. Their team was shockingly resistant to looking at the Trump outcome. We spent over 5 hours scoping needs for a Harris Presidency, and just 1.5 hours thinking through the Trump outcome. And those 1.5 hours were painful; the team was so distraught and dysregulated in even thinking through the Trump scenario that their work was “okay” at best.??

Our ability to show up as the creative, incisively strategic, and intersectional movement builders that we need to be at this time is directly related to our capacity to sit with our discomfort, to metabolize our pain and grief, and to connect with ourselves and each other in deeper ways.?

And given that the next four years will present us with heaps of bad news—policies that make our stomachs churn and executive orders that break our hearts—we must learn to work with and through our discomfort so that we can bring forward the clear-eyed, grounded, and connected leadership and strategy that can meet the moment we are in.?

The health of our organizations and our ability to create and implement effective strategies are both directly tied to our ability to skillfully work with discomfort.?

First, let’s dig a bit deeper into how this plays out internally.?

Progressive organizations are understandably and rightly concerned about creating work cultures that feel safe. This desire is borne of good intention.

And yet, all too often, we conflate “safety” with “comfort”, leading to situations where hard conversations or real debates and disagreements get swept under the rug.

This avoidance ultimately erodes the strength of our teams and institutions.?

• I’ve encountered some organizations where senior leaders’ responses to feedback and critique were so defensive that over half a year later, members of the organization are unwilling to share honestly with their managers and leadership how they feel about their work. Trust is corroding on a number of teams in that organization, and in parallel, a sense of burnout is increasing.?
• Conversely, I’ve seen a number of instances where staff with less positional power have been invited to share feedback with senior leadership as a way to ensure their views and perspectives were integrated into organizational decision-making. In some cases, this invitation is met with a response along the lines of,? “I don’t feel comfortable talking about this because of your positional power,” which effectively ends the dialogue.? While the tables are turned in terms of who has positional power, the result is the same: degrading trust, and less energy and excitement for those doing the work.?
• This dynamic plays out horizontally as well —? when folks opt to harbor a resentment or a hurt quietly rather than engaging in a “clear the air” conversation with colleagues directly. Eventually, all parties sense that someone has withdrawn, or isn’t as trusting, and others start to pull back in response.?

Being in these conversations is hard because emotions are often heightened.?

Receiving and giving feedback almost always triggers some sort of reactivity. And more often than not, the issues that need to be grappled with aren’t cut and dry.?

Interpersonal dynamics and relationships are complex. They require nuance, deep listening, and an ability to hold perspectives beyond one’s own.?

And this can be …. well,? uncomfortable.?

But if we don’t commit to doing this hard work, our relationships with our colleagues will suffer, the strengths of our teams will suffer, and our ability to conceive of and execute hard-hitting strategies for the just world we’re fighting for will suffer.

Discomfort has a lot to offer us when it comes to designing strategy, running campaigns, and building movements.

As the great thinker, writer, and civil rights activist James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”?

We must grow our capacity to look at things directly and clearly in order to create grounded, holistic, informed strategy. Our strategy must be centered in what is. Not in how we want things to be. And not in the doom-spiraling that can take us over when we feel awash in hopelessness or despair.?

This requires asking hard questions and facing uncomfortable truths together.?

I recently heard an interview with Alicia Garza (co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement) speak about strategy—and her insights are instructive:?

“To get to strategy, you have to have an accurate analysis of where we are and who we are.? Often our strategy, if it exists, is not grounded. It’s grounded in a place of vision, but not where we are.?

…. We have some trauma around assessing our actual power. It doesn’t make us feel good. And so we have a tendency to overstate [our power].?

When we don’t have an accurate power analysis we are missing the opportunity to build the kinds of movements that our people deserve; we’re missing the opportunity to be the practitioners that our people deserve; we’re missing the opportunity to get into the windows of opportunity that lie right in front of us.”?

This assessment process will be uncomfortable—and we may be tempted to check out, to paint a rosier picture than reality, or to engage in a doom-spiral. However, none of those behaviors support our ability to create a truly grounded strategy.?

Only by learning to engage with the painful, but grounded, political reality before us, and by reflecting honestly and candidly about the effectiveness of our strategies, our partnerships, our theories of change, will we be able to create the powerful, creative,? intersectional movements that this moment requires.?

This might mean re-thinking the campaign you built, or re-examining one of your beloved colleague’s roles. It might mean giving up something you’re really good at, and stepping into something new.?

The one thing we can be certain of is that doing more of the same won’t get us anywhere.