TRANSIT SAFETY CULTURE: FROM AMBIGUITY TO AGILITY THROUGH REAL TALK.
TRANSIT SAFETY CULTURE: FROM AMBIGUITY TO AGILITY THROUGH REAL TALK
BY
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LEVERN MCELVEEN
Introduction
Real Talk: Race and Diversity in the Airforce
I watched with great intensity the segment on 60 Minutes, aired Sunday, August 22, 2021, titled "Real Talk, Race, and Diversity in the United States Airforce.?I am somewhat concern and will explore further why the term (Equity) was omitted from the Airforce title. ?It is difficult to discuss race and diversity and miss the term equity because equity is good business. After watching the show, I reviewed the online accounts of Real Talk.?Real Talk allowed African Americans and people of color from all ranks of the air force to be heard, discuss their pains, hurts, experiences, and suffrages openly from the overt acts of racism during their careers.?Their collective expertise brought recollections of my personal experience in the transit industry during my 45-year career.
Cohen’s (2021) article "Black Airmen Talk Race in the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Anthony J. Cotton is tired of being tired” summarized the overall statements given by African Americans in the Airforce, the voices of African Americans and people of color experiences in the S.W. Airforce. Cohens cites Cotton, the first?Black three-star deputy commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, has seen police lights flash in his rearview mirror, has needed to convince people he was a wing commander, and has been told not to park in his spot among spaces reserved for base leadership.?He has explained to others, over and over, what it's like to be Black in America. He wants people to listen. He wants them to get uncomfortable. He wants them to act.
?"Here I am as a lieutenant general in the United States Air Force, but … I have a common bond," he says. "When I see what happened to Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rashard Brooks—and the list goes on and on—it's visceral to me," he said, running through the recent history of Black Americans killed. "That could be my son. That could be my daughter. That could be me." As civil unrest swept the nation following the death of George Floyd in May, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, Black Airmen are wrestling with their reality in an Air Force that still suffers from its racial blind spots and systemic discrimination.
?A dozen Black Airmen—including current and former officers, enlisted members, and civilians—shared their experience with Air Force Magazine in June, describing how race has influenced their lives and careers and how the Air Force still needs to evolve.?Being Black in the Air Force, they said, can mean straddling the line between being respected and suspected. They described constantly moderating themselves to meet the expectations of others and embracing the nation's needs despite feeling uncertain the nation they protect embraces them in return.
?While some praised understanding and diverse leaders throughout their careers, others said they struggled to find a place among unwelcoming colleagues and commanders. They could feel included at work but face racial slurs and suspicion from their communities and neighbors. Some said they never felt passed over for promotion or otherwise slighted by the Air Force bureaucracy, but most pointed to racist comments, insensitive jokes, and other forms of discrimination as far back as their earliest days in Basic Military Training.
?The Airmen interviewed joined the service because they wanted a meaningful job or grew up in a military family. Some sought educational benefits or travel opportunities. For Master Sgt. Cederic Hill, a space operator at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., it was a chance for change he couldn't get at home.
"I've been called every name in the book you can think of," he said of growing up in a primarily white area outside Atlanta. "I've had bottles thrown at me as I walked down the street. My next-door neighbor, his uncle … was a Grand Dragon in the [Ku Klux] Klan. I didn't feel like I was part of the nation."
?When Hill joined the Air Force, he gained opportunities and a sense of acceptance he hadn't experienced in Georgia. But he still faced frustrations and fears, often as the only Black man in his workplace. One supervisor dubbed him "Token" and called him "the whitest Black person he knows," words that cut at his sense of belonging in his workplace and the Black community.
?Tech. Sgt. Miles Starr, noncommissioned officer in charge of retention at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, said she has been mocked, ignored, and called “Aunt Jemima” at work since joining the Air Force in 2003.?
?Master Sgt. Michael Feggans, superintendent of the 71st Healthcare Operations Squadron at Vance Air Force Base, Okla., said superiors may demeaningly address Black Airmen as “boy.” One suggested he go back to bagging groceries. Staff Sgt. Phillip Felton, who works in explosive ordnance disposal at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., said he was once told: “I think you’re a [N-word], but it’s not a bad thing.” Sometimes the speaker doesn’t understand how hurtful such comments can be. Other times, problems are more deeply ingrained.
?Black Airmen described being discouraged from applying for jobs that wouldn't be welcomed or repeatedly skipped over for professional opportunities and awards. They spoke of leaving bases that proved toxic environments and feeling like their chain of command wouldn't take discrimination reports seriously. Tech. Sgt. Myeshia Tucker, an intelligence analyst at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, began basic training with short, natural hair that rolled into tight curls against her scalp. Although she was in line with service dress regulations, a white male instructor told her it was "unprofessional," she said and sent her to the salon to get it straightened.
Then, when her natural curls returned in the Texas humidity, Tucker was reprimanded. Another time, a supervisor told her she received a coveted opportunity only because "they can't turn down a Black female." And in still another incident, a colleague joked that the quality of a critical briefing she was preparing wouldn't matter because she was a Black woman. "Even when I did well, it was so discounted," she said. "I was told that I got it because I was a Black woman, and they needed to diversify. … That's a trend I noticed early on."
?Some Black Airmen say they face more discrimination when stationed in the United States than when serving overseas. One even said that Black service members deployed overseas sometimes worry more about family back home than they do about their own lives in combat zones. The race-relations chasm between military and civilian life can seem just as wide. Hill said there's more accountability and teamwork in the military than in a civilian community, which helps ensure people are treated fairly.
?Feggans said carrying a military ID card can provide a level of protection that a driver’s license does not.?"My military ID has helped get me out of many incidents that never should have happened," he said, such as "getting pulled over with my friends and me, being told that you're in the wrong neighborhood, being accused of having guns and drugs in your vehicle, asking, 'How can you afford such a nice luxury car?' ?It's almost liked my background, and everything changes as soon as they see my military ID."
?According to a 30-year veteran that will remain anonymous, “The military has led the way in building a diverse organization; however, it has a long way to go in dismantling systemic practices, policies, and procedures that prevent true equity and inclusion. I am glad to see more and more of our Black General Officers (GO) speaking out on this issue. For a long time, many Black GOs remained silent on the issue of racism in the ranks or spoke of a military that had achieved meritocracy.?There is much work to be done within the military ranks; however, the problems are much bigger than the military. Throughout history, no change has occurred within the military without the demand coming from civilian leaders on Capitol Hill or in the White House.”
Real Talk: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Transit Industry
The transit industry needs to evolve. The time has come for the transit industry leaders to have an honest talk about race, racism, white supremacy, diversity, equity, inclusion, mental health, and wellness, to understand the real hurts, pains, and suffrages frontline employees (largely African Americans) have experienced across the industry as a primary strategy to address ambiguity and move to agility.?Transit industry leaders can use the Airforce Real Talk model to seek understanding, capture various data sets about norms, behaviors, and attitudes, and create safety culture sustainability.?Transit industry leaders should hold this Real Talk to have challenging dialogues about leading through uncertainties, volatility, complexity, and ambiguity and address the many challenges facing today's transit industry.
?The purpose of the Real Talk first is to allow frontline workers, middle-managers, and other transit employees to share their stories of racial diversity, equity, and inclusion issues that have plagued the industry for decades, like the Black Airmen. ?Secondly, transit leaders need to motivate employees at all levels to action during pandemic and post-pandemic to achieve transit agility. Third, the Real Talk conversation will provide the transit industry leaders with facts about their vulnerabilities.?The Real Talk will provide transit leaders the model and the opportunity to develop and implement a sustainable transit safety culture that considers diversity, equity, inclusion, learning-centric culture, mental health and wellness culture, and all the other components of a sustainable safety culture, including service delivery.
?The transit industry must redefine itself and stop believing that the workplace environment is OK.?Transit leaders must ask themselves what we can do together (collective responsibility) better than divided in the transit industry to achieve social responsibility? Today’s transit environment needs to be agile and flexible, and the process must begin with transit leaders having a better understanding of transit employees' values, attitudes, behavior, and norms.?The agile transit systems will require a new way of thinking at the local, state, and federal levels.?Agility is the new efficiency.?Transit leaders may not predict the future—but that doesn't mean they can't prepare for it so that transit systems are not left unprepared.?
?The transit industry has a social responsibility to the community it serves. The transit industry must act in the best interests of its environment and society.?To achieve social responsibility in transit, transit leaders must develop successful teams to be socially responsible. The transit industry cannot have successful teams unless diversity, equity and inclusion, mental health, wellness, belonging, and psychological safety are addressed. In general, social responsibility is more effective when transit systems take on the challenges voluntarily, instead of being required by the government through regulation or employee and citizen activism.
?Transit leaders must create teams with resilient minds. English (2021) cites that when ambiguity is encountered in work, the efforts can damage performance.?A resilient mind can respond to fast or disruptive changes that cannot be avoided.?Building mind resilience helps transit employees adapt, manage stress, and handle challenges with agility and a growth mindset.?English recommended transit leaders take these action steps to cultivate resilient minds:
?1.??????Create psychological safety: Keep individuals in productive, creative mode and out of reactive stress-based responses like a fight, flight, or freeze.
2.??????Train for emotional intelligence: Provide training on skills that brings self-awareness to employees, allowing them to recognize their emotions in themselves as others as they arrive.
3.??????Foster Curiosity: Curiosity is one of the best ways to shift people from stress and fear-based responses to the productive frontal lobe of the brain.
4.??????Pay attention to clear communication: Reducing the unnecessary ambiguity that results from unclear communication and confusion will decrease the overall load of ambiguity employees have to manage.
?Hocking (2019) cites how transit leaders can aid their workforces during times of great upheaval??Learning agility is frequently defined as the willingness and ability to learn from experience and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions. Sona Sheratt cites Bob Eichinger to give four critical components of successful behavior in these first-time scenarios:
?1.??????Results agility—achieves results under challenging conditions; has authority and capability to stimulate others to perform.
2.??????Mental agility—reflects about challenging dilemmas to uncover solutions, comfortable with complexity and ambiguity.
3.??????People agility—has a high degree of self-awareness and self-management, can flexibly accommodate a diversity of behaviors and styles, and is resilient and constructive under pressure.
4.??????Change agility—enjoys experimenting with innovative conc3epts, welcomes new responsibility and unfamiliar challenges.
?Fostering these behaviors will allow employees to navigate ambiguity and uncertainty with assuredness and aplomb.?However, employees must be able to share their personal stories and experiences through the Real Talk process.
?Moreno (2017) cites that the proper response to disruption is agility.?More than simply a single process or methodology, transit system agility is the ability to:
1.??????Adjust strategies continuously.
2.??????Empower employees to make critical decisions on challenging projects.
3.??????Respond to ambiguity and uncertainty with flexibility and speed; and
4.??????View unanticipated change as an opportunity for transportation.
?Moore cites that deeply entrenched transit practices and processes can discourage employees from offering new ideas and challenging the status quo. Reticent transit leaders can cling to legacy systems that hamper data collection and analysis of agile performance.?And lack of support for agile initiatives among employees can create pockets of cultural resistance across the transit system. He cites three facets of culture that must adapt to enable agility:
People management. Agility asks many employees, from working in small, iterative teams to being accountable for project successes—and failures.
Procedural overhaul.?When Fujitsu, for instance, rolled out its IoT division, modeled after a Silicon Valley startup, it had to change legal and commercial processes. A company that used to spend six months hammering out a contract that was inches thick had to give employees the ability to contract on their smartphones in a matter of hours.
A new mindset. Agile culture demands a less hierarchical leadership in which team members take ownership of smaller, more agile projects.
Transit systems are missing a massive opportunity by overlooking the employees' power to shape and influence an agile-friendly culture in the transit industry. The transit C-suite needs to lead here. However, transit leaders need to know their leadership styles: the evangelist, the change management chief, the role model, and the auditor (who manages risks). Cultural change must begin at the top—in the C-suite, down to the middle-managers—and then permeate the rank and file. In other words, the transit system must get on board for cultural change to occur.
Transit leaders must understand the current mindset of employees and must work to across the industry to correct the fatal flaw mindset to build a sustainable transit safety culture. 1. Transit employees have no respect for the mission – if you can’t buy it, you can’t sell it – is the work something employees can be proud of? 2. Transit employees have no respect for the leadership – transit employees do not perceive leaders are practicing what they preach in terms of honesty, workplace ethics, fairness, decorum, etc., and 3. Transit employees have no respect for colleagues and general workplace principles – can the employees speak of their role with pride in making the system or the world a better place, or is the employee bitter about how their principles are degraded, but they need the job?
Employees are needed at all levels of transit to recognize their strategic roles and untapped potential to address ambiguity and move toward agility. However, transit leaders must earn their trust and respect. Transit leadership must provide the employees at all levels with the time, resources, and attention needed to support efforts to bring about agility transformation. Once empowered by such transit leaders, employees can act with greater agility, encourage a more flexible culture, reinvent project management teams and methodologies, and strive for better transit outcomes.
Transit leaders need to hold this Real Talk to identify frontline employees' day-to-day operations challenges and anxieties. For example, the transit industry has a $100 Billion State of Good Repairs needs.?What does this mean for people that don't know transit operations??It means that every day, frontline employees are operating with defective equipment.?It means buses are breaking down and can't get across the line.?It means passengers waiting on the buses are late getting to their destination: jobs, schools, appointments, and let's not forget health treatment, such as dialysis.?Passengers are irate with the operators, and operators are angry with passengers.?In many cases, these are Black-on-Black confrontations brought on by actions and behaviors, neither created.
?Given the current state of the transit industry, I am personally recommending transit leaders at all levels to conduct a Real Talk with transit industry employees, which consisting mainly of African Americans and people of color on the frontline.?As an experienced transit professional, I would love to offer my consultant service and be involved with this Real Talk to help provide the guidance on how, exactly, to ascertain frontline employees, middle-managers, and others real concerns.?I am requesting to participate because I know the transit operations languages, and I understand their experiences in the workplace, having been involved in six National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigations and conducting safety audits across the industry.?For example, I participated in the NTSB investigation of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Red Line accident on June 9, 2009, where nine people died and 80 plus injuries.?Employees felt grief, pain, anxieties, and severe emotional trauma.
?Transit Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity
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?According to Pamela Meyer's article Leading Through Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, And Ambiguity (VUCA) cites "The Agility Shift starts with expanding our understanding of what it means to be a leader.?When things are changing rapidly, there is no time to run every challenge or opportunity through the chain of command.?Meyer describes the Agility shift as anyone who spots a challenge or opportunity and effectively responds. This definition expands the understanding of leadership from the command-and-control model of yesterday to one focused on communication, collaboration, and coordination.?No longer is leadership designated by your title, compensation package, or place in the org chart.
?Myers argues that a mindset shift is needed.?In stable contexts, transit leaders can rely on the tried-and-true practices of planning and analysis.?When the future, not to mention the present, is uncertain and unpredictable, transit leaders must make a mindset shift toward preparing and enter a state of readiness. Myers urges, as I have argued, that transit leaders need to develop and implement a sustainable safety culture to face ambiguity and agility during uncertainties.?Transit best practices can be placed into two key interdependent categories: 1) Employees and talent development strategies, and 2) Systems and processes.?They are interdependent because you can have the best systems and processes in the world, and if you have not developed your employees to make the necessary mindset and skillset shift, transit leaders will be disappointed in their performance when it counts most.
Westfall (2019) asked, as transit leaders, do you set the tone for your systems? Do you have a clearly stated zero-tolerance policy against racism, sexual misconduct, and discrimination??I know that most transit leaders will say, yes, we have these policies in place.?The real question is, are the policies being enforced, and how will frontline employees describe the enforcement??Transit systems operate in a political environment. Hiring in a transit environment is very political and has had a severe impact on the transit workplace.??
Politics drive many decisions in the transit systems without regard for diversity, equity, inclusion, mental health, wellness, belonging, and psychological safety. Employees are aware of the political practices; therefore, they don't see a reason to develop the safety mindset and skillset needed to achieve agility. Therefore, safety suffers. Transit leaders need to hold this Real Talk in the transit industry to hear transit employees' stories of how they feel, what they're feeling, and the pains and sufferings they have encountered from this political environment.?As the saying goes,?"What you allow is what will continue."?Marginalizing others is easy today - teamwork only comes with clear guidance from the top (Westfall, 2019). Does everyone know where you, the transit leader stand, and why?
The great coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, famously kept racism out of the locker room—as he led the Packers to world championships during the 1960s. He refused to frequent restaurants and hotels that treated anyone differently due to their skin color. Lombardi, the namesake of the Super Bowl Trophy, coached the first openly gay player in the NFL, David Kopay (he came out after his NFL career had ended). Beyond Lombardi's moral motivations, we know that he wanted to win beyond Lombardi's moral motivations, so he fostered an environment that created more excellent teamwork, support, and productivity (Westfall, 2019). Do transit leaders support a win-win teamwork effort?
Heather McGhee (2021) cites, as she traveled the country researching her book, titled The Sum of Us, McGhee found the answer. People in power turned white, Black, and brown people against one another, telling them that one group's success would come at the expense of another. As a result, white people stopped supporting the government programs that enabled their prosperity when access was expanded to Black people. In California, voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, limiting property-tax increases, so they wouldn't have to pay for "other people's children" and immigrants from Mexico. A 2017 union drive at a Nissan plant in Mississippi was gaining steam until many white workers pulled their support, more comfortable seeing themselves allied with white management than with Black co-workers.
This pattern ends up hurting everyone, as Black families become the canaries in the coal mine, hurt by destructive policies that soon entrap the rest of America. Years after California voted to lower property taxes, funding had plummeted for all public schools, and tuition for state colleges and universities had risen fourfold. Black and white workers at Nissan and other nonunionized places make less than their unionized counterparts.
In a Progressive Rail Blog, dated August 25, 2021, titled Santa Clara VTA close to resuming light-rail service, the article cites that The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is making progress on its plan to restart light-rail operations, suspended since a fatal shooting occurred in May at the Guadalupe Light Rail Yard in San Jose, California.?On May 26, a VTA employee opened gunfire on co-workers at the Guadalupe Light Rail Yard.?Nine VTA employees were killed. The shooter died by suicide. VTA employees are still feeling the traumatic experience, and they're looking to transit leaders to hold this Real Talk, which allows employees to be heard.
Finally, transit employees’ mental health and wellness programs have often viewed transit leaders, state officials, and federal officials as a nice extra, not a strategic imperative. According to Leonard L. Berry of Texas A&M University, Mirabito, Baylor University, and Baun, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the data demonstrate otherwise. Their research shows that the return on investment (ROI) on a comprehensive, well-run employee wellness program is impressive, sometimes as high as six to one. The researchers point out that employers cannot merely offer workers a few passes to a fitness center and nutrition information in the cafeteria to achieve those results. They must take mental health and wellness seriously and measure the productivity result.?Why is this not being done? In my opinion, lack of a federal mandate, a lack of accountability, and the fact that frontline workers are African Americans and people of color.
Transit leaders must hold these Real Talk conversations to address volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and agility. The volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are actual experiences experienced by transit frontline workers and other workers in transit daily.?The Real Talk idea is intended to prescribe the issues and opportunities that are most pressing to transit leaders.?This idea will help get the conversation started and lead to thoughtful strategic and tactical approaches that build competence, capacity, and confidence for employees to effectively lead through the period of ambiguity and pave the path toward agility.
Ambiguity And Agility
Uncertainty can be one of the most significant opportunities for the transit industry to address ambiguity and pave the path to agility.?But only if transit leaders do the work to understand it--get their teams engaged in driving it--and have a strong strategy in place to capitalize on it more deeply. ?Transit leaders, this is your job right now. To dig deep, show up, and help your team develop the skills and strategies they need to care for themselves, push through the challenges, and build resilience.?
When the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and racial unrest from the killing of George Floyd crisis started, transit leaders should have asked themselves questions like when uncertainty hits, am I someone who runs to the sound of the gunfire and actions? Or do I sit back and take more of a wait-and-see approach? Many transit leaders took the latter position; they sat back and took a wait-and-see approach because media reports cited those hundreds of transit workers died and thousands contracted the virus. Surveys have revealed that more than 74% of responders said they took a wait-and-see approach. Many of them shared that they were unsure of what to do or how to move forward (Myers, 2021).?
Transit leaders, this is where you come in. Creating a sense of calm for your transit system, and more importantly, helping employees find the path forward, cope with the stress they are feeling, and help them build the inner strength they need to bounce back and push through the challenges. For transit leaders, this is not to surrender. It's all about finding serenity—what can we change, what must we accept. Transit leaders must first address ambiguity and agility.?Ambiguity is a robust learning environment.?
As transit systems’ leaders create shared interpretations of a nebulous future, they are forced to construct meaning relevant to all the functions within the system.?In doing this, transformation occurs, and transit leaders can no longer see themselves operating as an isolated function--the future as unknowable--or their actions reduced to a single path upon which they stumbled blindly forward.?Contained within the transit system diverse perspectives, a wide range of expertise can be found in the employees and varied contributions to the transit systems service and service delivery outcomes.
Ambiguity allows transit leaders to interpret the uncertainties, finding meaning and just enough structure in the immediate situation so that transit employees can act with authenticity.?Transit leaders with an agility mindset will understand that reality is socially constructed; it's there to interpret and create.?In the transit industry uncertainty world, the ambiguity and agility dynamic are central to strategy and planning.?If transit leaders don’t like their options, they need more diversity to generate ambiguity.?Reducing ambiguity focuses on meaning so that transit leaders act with intention. Agility ensures resilient, adaptable action by constantly adding just enough ambiguity to the mix (Mase, 2011).??
Ambiguity is characterized by a lack of information and precedent, making predicting the impact of actions a challenge.?For example, not knowing African Americans and people of color feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and norms. Ambiguity is about creating clarity, re-engaging and recommitting to transit purpose; understanding and prioritizing user needs, practicing rapid prototyping to fail faster and learn quicker, experimenting and piloting to discover what you don’t know, and making time to learn the lessons from experience and carry them forward (Myers, 2021).
The good news is that the transit industry is not where it was, but it is not where it ought to be.?Transit leaders have built new muscles, perhaps without even realizing it. The problem is that transit leaders have become comfortable with being uncomfortable. However, today, transit leaders are at a crossroads where the world's ambiguity tests their agility. And their response can be nothing short of addressing ambiguity. Transit leaders must learn when they don't know what to do amid circumstances and challenges they’ve never seen before. The transit industry is in a state of transition—and maybe always will be.
Facing?aggressive ambiguity, the transit industry desperately needs a new target operating model – a joyfully asymmetric one. Here, there is a deliberate shift towards 'pull' from the inside, provoked, and initiated by disgruntled employees in emergent roles outside the traditional functional model.?These employees are courageous advocates of?better service delivery, diversity, equity, and inclusion, a sense of belonging and psychological safety who will create constant tension from within, and whose sole aim is to cause sustainable movements for change, even if the end game isn’t always crystal clear. Transit leaders, please be aware.?It is taking place in front of your face.
The traditional transit leaders might see these employees as nuisances, and the C-Suite immune system would defend against them. A typical defense will be that managers, with clenched fists, demand that these upstarts prove the benefits of 'their' change and show a precise, day-by-day plan to execute before it even gets a fair hearing. Even worse, employees may be told; we don't do it like that here. ?Yet success for these employees requires the transit system to see them as on the same side, which is precisely where their alliances must lie, and this is a crucial objective for transit leaders of the agile transit systems.
Agile transit leaders will see it differently. Ambiguity equals opportunity. When something unpredictable happens, the Agile leaders think about what could be and embraces it as an option. Whole strategies form readily discarded should a better one emerges. The embracement of ambiguity fosters an environment filled with high energy because employees are energized when they use creativity and their strengths rather than solving problems. Change is treated with an open mind and enthusiasm.
The path to agility is in the mindset of the employees--where they develop a?Can Be?attitude. And it starts with you: the transit leader. This is your opportunity to be?the leader that:
Traditional transit leaders tentatively sponsored change resulting from ambiguity because it has risk. And when failure resulting from taking a risk is rewarded with a sullied reputation beyond repair, then it’s no wonder that agility is such a challenge and why so many transit leaders don't achieve it. Agility, and the nurturing of ambiguity, must start from the top. The whole paradigm of 'success' needs re-thinking now.
In his Harvard Business Review article titled Grooming Leaders to Handle ambiguity, Scott Anthony challenges the traditional view of performance management: Shifting from size-matters to ambiguity-matters development requires rethinking other vital assumptions. Most companies, for example, look to what a manager has achieved to assess their performance. But in ambiguous circumstances with uncertain outcomes, you need to look at how a manager has acted. Sometimes you can do everything right, and forces beyond your control lead to "failure." I have the perfect suggestion to assist the transit industry in ambiguity and agility tolerance and recommendation to challenge the future of uncertainties. I'll write more about this topic in a future post.
Critical Race Theory and Real Talk
Critical Race Theory is misunderstood by many to believe that it is solely about introducing slavery into the classroom across America.?However, critical race theory is much more.?Critical Race Theory is about people of conscience standing and taking positions on racial injustice in America. Fundamental ideas of race combine progressive political struggles for racial justice with critiques of the conventional legal and scholarly norms viewed as part of the illegitimate hierarchies that need to be changed. Scholars, most of whom are themselves persons of color, challenge how race and racial power are constructed by law and culture. One key focus of critical race theorists is a regime of white supremacy and privilege maintained despite the rule of law and the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws (The Bridge, 2021).
Critical race theory is an outgrowth of the European Marxist critical theory, and critical race theory is an academic movement that seeks to link racism, race, and power.?Unlike the Civil Rights movement, which sought to work within the structures of American democracy, critical race theorists challenge the very foundation of the liberal order, such as rationalism, constitutional law, and legal reasoning.?Critical race theorists argue that American social life, political structures, and economic systems are founded upon race, which is a social construct.?Systemic racism, in the eyes of critical race theorists, stems from the dominance of race in American life. Essential theorists of race and anti-racist advocates argue that because race is a predominant part of American life, racism itself has become internalized into the American conscience.?Because of this, they say that there have been significantly different legal and economic outcomes between other racial groups (Critical Race Theory, 2021).
As I listen to the multiple episodes of the Airforce conversations, I agree with critical race theorists and the many feminists that law itself is not a neutral tool but part of the problem; essential scholars of race identify inadequacies of conventional civil rights litigation. However, critical race theorists fault critical legal scholars for failing to develop much to attract people of color and for neglecting the transformative potential of rights discourse in social movements, regardless of the internal incoherence or indeterminacy of rights themselves.?
According to critical race theory, the fundamental question in this context is, where are the transit leaders on the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in the transit industry? Where are the Governors and Secretaries of Transportation on the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity challenging frontline workers in transit systems today??The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) leaders on the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity mental health and wellness issues? Finally, where are the African American transit leaders, state leaders, and federal leaders on mental health and wellness in the transit industry?
Summary
More than 70 years after the armed services were integrated, it is still a fact of life in the U.S. Airforce that African Americans are more likely to be disciplined and less likely to be promoted than Whites. As media reports cite, even the most successful Black officers routinely feel the sting of racial bias while large segments of the rank and file believe the system is stacked against them. The U.S. Airforce has made attempts to deal with inequality before, but this time it's happening under the eye of Lloyd Austin, this country's first African American secretary of defense, a former soldier who experienced discrimination first-hand.?Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin cites, it doesn't change-- as you climb the ladder. You still get the doubts. There will always be people, because of what you look like, that will question your qualifications. Lloyd Austin climbed every rung in the Army, starting at West Point - and rising to four-star general - many times breaking barriers as the first African American ever to hold the job.
Like many other industries, the transit industry is in a state of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Fear of the unknown is a natural emotion that is part of the human experience.?However, when ambiguity is encountered in the work environment, the effect can damage employees' performance. When transit leaders find themselves in a state of not knowing, it tends to be uncomfortable.?It can be excruciating. And, frontline employees are afraid, in pain, hurting, and suffering.
?The real challenge in the transit industry is that transit leadership has not provided the leadership that encourages resilient minds.?It is essential for transit leaders to pay attention to the work environment and provide the needed skills, training, conversations, and the Real Talk to help transit employees during this period of extreme uncertainties.?Transit leaders know that several hundred workers have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of workers contracted the virus. Nine employees were shot and killed at the Santa Clara VTA in California.?Transit leaders must address Mental health and wellness in the transit industry.
?Race, diversity, equity, inclusion are still significant factors impacting the transit industry workplace environment. The transit industry must confront this actual bias now to address transit social responsibility.?Transit leaders must understand that frontline workers need leadership and direction now, more than ever.?Transit leaders at every level must get involved and begin to challenge the transit industry against volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Transit leaders can start this process by holding Real Talk.
REFERENCES
?Anthony, S., (2010), Grooming Leaders to Handle Ambiguity, Harvard Business Review, https://www.hbr.org.
?Cohen, R. (2020), Black Airmen Talk Race in the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Anthony J.
Cotton is tired of being tired, Black Airmen Talk Race in the Air Force - Air Force Magazine.
?English, L. (2021) Why Ambiguity Leads to Lower Workforce Performance, https://www.mequilibrium.com/resources/why-ambiguity-leads-to-lower-workforce-performance/
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