Reflections and resources from a People leader who is still learning.

It wasn’t easy leading these last couple of weeks. It wasn’t easy being human these last couple of weeks. I can imagine it was especially not easy being black these last couple of weeks.

We have been living through a pandemic for the last three months and then within these past couple of weeks, we have been facing a range of extremely complicated and painful emotions with racism in our country with higher visibility than ever. This has long been going on and it's finally being widely noticed and acknowledged. 

And we’ve all been affected and are coping in different ways. 

As a People/HR leader, I wanted to recap some thoughts and I invite you to share what you’ve learned or seen, share best practices, share new ideas, and correct me if you want to.

Diversity Expert Guidance and Amplifying Black Voices. 

I am a People leader and am learning about diversity, inclusion, belonging and equity in my career. I am not an expert in this area and recognize the importance of tapping those experts.. In April, we started working with Kumea Gooden-Shorter because our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging team felt like we needed expertise. None of us felt qualified enough to move this in the right direction.

It took us awhile to find the right person, partly because COVID took over our lives and made us pause on it, partly because we thought it was important to have a person of color consult with us, and partly because we needed to find someone who would understand our culture (small and growing, nimble, forward thinking). 

Enter Kumea with Gooden-Shorter Consulting. She immediately recommended we add the word Equity to our team name, and so we upgraded the team to the name of D.I.B.E. - Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging & Equity. Kumea is working with us on creating a purpose statement for the team with definitions for each of these words and what they mean for Corner Alliance’s culture, and we’ll be setting goals for ourselves.

Our first initiative is having a Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging & Equity Awareness Training at the end of this month.

Internally Focused. 

We have remained internally focused for the most part on this. It was more important for us to know how our employees were doing and for them to hear how they felt than to put out a statement that could have been trite or didn’t ring true with our employees. 

• Coffee & Conversation. Last Monday, we organized a Coffee & Conversation gathering for Tuesday morning. I knew I was feeling the heaviness from the prior weekend, I couldn’t imagine what my black colleagues might be feeling (Dear White People: Your Black Colleagues Aren’t Ok). And I knew our non-black colleagues were also not ok.
• I’m really glad that we had the participation we did at our Coffee & Conversation. I’m glad so many of our team members felt comfortable sharing. And I'm glad some of them showed up even though they didn’t share, whether it was to hear what others were feeling and/or to be supportive. 
• My take is that most of it was helpful even if some of it was awkward or uncomfortable. Some of our leadership team is vocal, some aren’t. Our Leadership Team is all white and we’re still learning how to best lead and learning how to be allies for our colleagues. “What I know for sure” - to quote Oprah - is that from what I know of our colleagues, people’s intentions were and are in the right place with caring for others and wanting to get this right. 
• Resources & Energy. Last Monday, we assembled an Anti-Racism & Allyship document to organize resources in one place. The book list alone was impressive. There was a lot of energy around it and I’m excited that two of our team members quickly organized a book club on So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. I know I felt a lot more comfortable speaking up after I read this book, even though I have a long way to go. We also encouraged people to buy it from black-owned bookstores before they expensed it and shared these resources: 47 Black Owned Bookstores Across the Country that You Can Support and 12 Black-Owned Bookstores You Can Support Right Now.
• Our Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity team. We recognize that this team is foundational to our diversity efforts and will exist well past the current events in the nation. We came together in January as a team and have approximately 40% participation. 
• The team chose to meet this week to follow-up on last week’s events to provide guidance on how to progress. We had a rich discussion and the team is making recommendations on what we can and should do next.  
• We had already scheduled a Diversity Awareness Training for later this month, working with the previously mentioned Kumea Shorter-Good. I’m looking forward to learning more through the training and working directly with her.
• We appreciate the diversity team. We don’t have an in-house expert and we feel that having a team of diverse perspectives will help to shape our company’s direction with equality. It’s one of the ways in which employees can live out the company’s commitments, with the most obvious one being our Thrive commitment: to make a positive impact on the company’s culture. An example of this is during our annual All Hands event earlier this year, we introduced the team and the initiative with a reflective exercise on employees’ experiences with Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging.
• We invite participation either as ongoing or popping in and out as they wish. The more voices and perspectives the better.

Doing Something vs Getting it Right. 

I know I want to show up even though that makes me vulnerable and afraid I’m not always going to get it right. That sentiment was echoed by a lot of our people within Corner Alliance and in my personal and professional networks. The main similarities are: 

1. wanting to be educated, 
2. wanting to be corrected, 
3. wanting to show up despite fears and because we care. 

Our People. 

I’m so impressed with how many of our people are leading across the company right now. The energy is palpable. I love that before I can even start to formulate an idea, some of them are stepping forward with a plan already in place where I can say “go for it” - and thank YOU for that energy and leadership. It means more than you can know, especially at a time like this.

To People Managers.

• Check In With Your People On This. It takes vulnerability, it takes listening, and it takes empathy. And it’s also not easy so here are some of my suggested quick tips:
• The question: Asking “how are you, really?” goes a long way. Leave space for 5 or 10 mins or longer to actively listen. You could go even further and say “how are you feeling on a scale from 1-10 right now?” listen for the answer and follow-up with “what would make it a 10 right now?” And right now, that follow-up question may be tough, and my guess is that I don’t think anyone can feel a 10 right now. Asking the question is still impactful.
• Listening: Listening means no interruptions. It means letting the person get it all out. And there may be a lot.
• Empathizing: This may be the hardest part. Brene Brown has probably the best four minute explanation on empathy - what it is and what it isn’t. 
• DO respond with “that must be hard” or “I’m sorry that you are facing that/feeling that way/going through that.”
• DO NOT say “yeah, I know, my experience has been this”or “my neighbor went through something similar.” This is about them and their feelings, no one else’s.
• Non-verbal Check In: You can also check-in with your people in email, messaging or text with a simple “I’m thinking of you and no need to respond.” The “no need to respond” is important - don’t put the burden on them. Your intention is to reach out with support, not add something to their plate.
• Non-Answers: It’s also completely ok if someone says they don’t want to talk about it. Maybe they’d rather keep that in their personal life and just talk “work” at work. Whatever their reasons it’s always ok. What’s less ok (right now) is not asking.

Taking Care of You.

I told our people that if they need time, take it. I know I’m going to. I encouraged them to seek mental health help if they need it, and shared our employee assistance program information that provides several (How many?) free mental health appointments.

This is an especially tough time. I say that from a place of privilege. I don’t have the words to express how hard this must be for our black colleagues. 

I want to end with the optimism that I’ve seen in people showing up and coming together with peace, love and support. I want to end with an acknowledgement that this has been hard, it always has been, and it’s been amplified these past couple of weeks. I want to end with hope that it will get better and that we will get through it. 

Let’s get through it together.