SAFE Conversations: How to Break the Silence & Share Your Voice During These Times

In the wake of a summer rife with the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police and the ensuing social unrest as calls for justice fell on deaf ears, managers and leaders continue to struggle with what to say to their colleagues.

As our nation continue to reckon with its legacy of racism and violence against Black bodies, Executives and Leaders must meet the needs of this moment and have crucial conversations with their teams and colleagues. As a manager or executive, there are conversations that you may have refrained from having with your employees, and there are emotions that you may have never fully expressed at work. Now more than ever, you have a responsibility to speak up.

As Ben & Jerry’s puts it, “Silence is NOT an option.” As a leader, when you are silent you are saying to your team members, your colleagues and their families, your community, and your company that you don’t care. Even if that is the furthest thing from the truth, your silence sends a message that these issues are not worth your time.

Frequently, we are silent because we don’t know how or where to start a difficult conversation; we remain silent to be safe and maintain professionalism.

 How to Break the Silence and Share Your Executive Voice During These Times

In order to lead effectively, your sales team needs to hear from you. At CGI, I coach my clients on how to create a SAFE space with the four pillars of critical DE&I conversations every executive and leader needs to have in order to successfully connect with your team on these challenging topics.

 SAFE Conversations

-     Stance—Let your team know where you stand. If you have zero tolerance for racism and bias in your company, then say so. Look at your hiring, promoting, and key account assignment practices and evaluate whether or not these practices are aligned with your stance.

-     Acknowledge the connection between our country’s brutal history and its impact on the present and Appreciate that a Black or brown person’s experience outside the workplace may be different from your own.

-     Feelings—Use mindful techniques to accept your emotions. Identify, label and observe them with patience, not judgement. Let go of the need to control and allow yourself to be vulnerable and share your emotions.

-     Empathy—Harness authentic empathy and ask powerful questions to better understand your team members’ needs. Connect with them, actively listen and remain curious about team members’ experiences, especially when they differ from your own.

In these conversations, I challenge my clients to be aware of the amount of space they occupy. How many minutes of the conversation are you filling with your own voice, and how much space are you creating for others to speak up and share their experience? Of the four pillars of SAFE conversations, executives should only dominate the conversation when sharing your stance. As the leader of your company, it is imperative that your team clearly understand your position on these issues, as well as how company policies are structured to reflect those values. For the rest of the conversation, I invite you actively listen and engage with empathetic curiosity.

The next pillar has two parts. First, acknowledge how our brutal history has a downstream implication across businesses, executives, and the sales profession—workplace discrimination, the pay gap, and hiring practices that systemically disadvantage Black sales professionals. In addition to abstract issues, consider the representation of Black people in sales leadership roles in your company and more covert expressions of racism, like microaggressions. Then, appreciate that when you walk into a store, your experience may be different than mine.

For many of my clients, the second part of this pillar can be challenging. It can be hard to imagine that two people walking into a Target, for example, can have such varied experiences. Let me share an anecdote from a recent outing with my husband.

One of our favorite date nights is enjoying the changing colors of the fall foliage while riding on our Honda ST1300 motorcycle. One night during a ride, we stopped at a Target to get a snack. Walking into the store, I looked like anyone who had spent the day riding on the back of a motorcycle: dressed in black from head to toe, complete with black leather riding boots and a bulky, armor-padded black jacket with reflective yellow panels. I topped off my look with a black baseball cap to hide my helmet hair.

While I stood in the grocery section and looked at the kombucha bottles, a man walked up to me and asked, “Do you work here?” I glanced at the middle-aged white man, chuckled to myself, and ignored him, assuming he must be kidding.

When I didn’t respond, he got a little louder and demanded, “I said, do you work here?” Doing my best to have a sense of humor, I smiled and responded, “Do you work here?”

At this he got visibly annoyed and repeated himself again, loudly and firmly, “Do you work here?” I responded calmly, “Do you work here?”

Finally, I stopped mocking him and walked away, chuckling to myself and shaking my head.

If you’ve ever shopped at Target, you may have noticed, like me, that Target employees are required to wear khaki pants or skirts with a red shirt. The shirt can be a polo shirt, a T-shirt or a sweater; the only requirement is that the shirt be entirely red with a Target name badge. In fact, this has been the store uniform for so long that last year when employees were allowed to start wearing jeans in addition to the standard khaki bottoms, Target Corporate generated a press release to mark the occasion.

Maybe this man had never been to a Target before and isn’t familiar with their iconic store uniform. Perhaps, he has a rare form of color blindness that makes black clothing look red. Or, maybe, this white man looked at me and only saw a Black woman. He didn’t notice what I was or wasn’t wearing. He just assumed that, as a Black woman in a Target on a predominately white side of town, I must be an employee.

If you are not a Black or brown person, you have to appreciate that your experience will be different from mine as a Black woman when you leave home or work.

The ability to recognize and appreciate how your experience differs from the experiences of your employees of color is critical for transforming how you address issues of race, power, and privilege in your company. The acknowledge + appreciate pillar is arguably the most important of the SAFE framework and may be one of the harder ones to master. Reading about my experience in Target may have been challenging, or may have even struck a nerve, and that’s okay. Appreciating your blind spots can be uncomfortable, but it’s crucial to your ability to successfully lead your team.

The third pillar is about turning inward and connecting to your feelings. Think about the first time you saw the George Floyd video — what did you feel? I was horrified, nauseated, angry, and then incredibly sad. Do you have a son? A father? A husband? An uncle? A brother? Now imagine watching them slowly suffocate under the weight of a police officer’s knee on their neck for stealing a pack of cigarettes. Now, pause — what are you feeling? You’re probably feeling how many of your Black and brown colleagues felt watching the George Floyd video.

The fourth and final pillar is empathy. “I” is the worst word you can use when being empathetic. Early in my sales career, I was trained in the Feel, Felt, Found method of empathy: “I know you feel; I have felt the same way, and I have found that (insert solution).” Real empathy is about presence, connection and heart. Today I would call it the Presence, Connection, Heart method. Be present with me and my feelings, and connect with me, heart to heart.

Mastering SAFE Conversations

A 2016 Harvard Business Review study by Frank Dobbin, PhD, professor of sociology at Harvard University, and Alexandra Kalev, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University, found that there are limits to the efficacy of workplace diversity trainings. “It turns out that while people are easily taught to respond correctly to a questionnaire about bias, they soon forget the right answers . . . The positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two.” Additionally, they found that “force-feeding” employees diversity training prevents progress.

Instructional design and adult learning principles advise that as learners we have to be in a state of developing expertise for these trainings to be truly impactful. In practice, this looks like:

·     Learning from experience and reflection, which leads to mastery

·     Strengthening skills and knowledge transfer through increased effort and exposure to new information

·     Viewing failure as a badge of effort, and when learning is hard, understanding that you’re doing important work

·     Understanding that learning is enduring when the abstract is made concrete and personal

·     Recognizing that making mistakes is a constructive part of learning. Failures are our lessons along the path to mastery

·     Embracing that failure is an essential experience on the path to mastery

Adapted from Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Brown, Peter C., Roediger III, Henry L., McDaniel, Mark A.)

To learn more about SAFE conversations and how to use them effectively to connect with your sales team, I invite you to connect with me to learn more. With over 20 years of experience in enterprise sales, my mission is simple: to amplify the careers of my clients through executive coaching and career training using strength-based techniques and the power of a growth mindset. Our personalized approach centers your development and will help you cultivate the confidence and skills you need to break the silence and share your executive voice during these challenging times.

References:

Humana Office of Inclusion & Diversity. Retrieved from https://docushare-web.apps.cf.humana.com/Marketing/docushare-app?file=4077749 

Five to Nine (2019, May 1). Creating Brave Conversations About Diversity and Inclusion at Work. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@info_37650/creating-brave-conversations-about-diversity-and-inclusion-at-work-3a13180bb89d

Allen, T. (2020, June 4). 5 Conversations Credible Leaders Must Have In This Moment. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/terinaallen/2020/06/04/george-floyd-and-racism-5-conversations-credible-leaders-must-have-in-this-moment/?sh=e9117d4686c0

Karanja, F., Bostic, R., DaCrema, D., Pacheco, G. (2020, October 29). Starting Conversations toward Inclusion. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420311442

Miller, B. (2020, July 23). A Conversation on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Partnership with NEW Atlanta. Retrieved from https://clarkstonconsulting.com/insights/a-conversation-on-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-partnership-with-new-atlanta/

Oguntimein, J. (2020, August 5). Promoting Diversity and Inclusion Through Conversation. Retrieved from https://www.fmpconsulting.com/promoting-diversity-and-inclusion-through-conversation/