Unspoken Truths and Black Women in Leadership: Cutting Through Bias with Transformative Tools

Throughout over fifteen years in education, I have observed the invisible, yet extremely powerful beliefs, practices, and expectations that:

1. Undermine equity initiatives for Black children,?
2. Compromise multi-million dollar investments in the implementation of HQIM, and?
3. Detract from the leadership of Black women uniquely positioned to create equitable academic outcomes.?

To counteract its effects, I have crafted, refined and developed “Our Shared Agreements” over many? years of? practice. These five agreements enhance the ability of school and district leaders and their teams to build their capacity to confront, understand, own, and ultimately act on unspoken truths about the outcomes their institutions produce. These agreements facilitate paradigm shifts that allow transformational action to protect access for all children through a collective interrogation of the institution's policies, resource allocation, leadership, professional development, and accountability measures.

In my various experiences with coaching, training and consulting for school and district leaders, I’ve found that many Black women have had a bold vision of what they knew was possible for all Black children in their school systems. They simply could not conceive of how to walk their teams or their system in the journey towards that vision. However, “Our Shared Agreements” takes the unspoken truths with the power to undermine the fruition of that vision and transforms them into the fertile ground where transformational action to protect access for all children can take root.?

Below are “Our Shared Agreements”. I’m curious - which of these agreements resonates with you the most and why? And even more importantly, how might the embodiment of Our Shared Agreements with your school and district leadership teams transform your ability to create equitable academic outcomes??

AGREEMENT #1: ALL BLACK CHILDREN CAN LEARN: All Black children, children in Special Education, and children learning English, can learn and think on grade level.?

• Problem: Using student outcomes as proof of what students have the ability to do.? Using data to reinforce bias and false narratives about Black children.
• Traditional Solution: Calling people racist is ineffective and doesn’t build capacity. Additionally, in a cultural context of backlash against backlash, it often positions the person calling out the racist beliefs, words, actions, or outcomes as the villain.?
• Unique Challenge for Black Women:?Being cast as the villain is particularly easy for Black women, who often have to navigate or dodge the angry Black woman troupe, even when they have legitimate reasons to be angry, like racist outcomes, for example.?
• Impact on Black Women’s Leadership: This reaction to Black Women in Leadership constricts their instructional power and locus of control, when their attempt to speak truth to power and call attention to the actions and outcomes that reproduce inequity for Black children is dismissed, tolerated, or subversively rejected.?
• How Shared Agreement “All Black Children Can Learn” Creates An Opening: Reframes student outcomes to focus on adult actions that produced them. Shifts the conversation to focus on actions within the locus of control of teachers, leaders, and the school system itself. Cuts through the impact of bias by explicitly assuming that because all Black children can learn, any outcomes that are contrary are a result of adult actions.?
• What It Looks Like In Action: Deescalate ideological tensions during data analysis around student outcomes by explicitly naming and norming the premise with which all instructional decisions are made. For example “The data is showing us that Black students disproportionately did not master X. Since we know all Black children can learn X, we need to 1. figure out which of our instructional actions and decisions led to this result. 2. Make an adjustment to that type of instructional action and decision making moving forward.”
• Opportunity for Black Women Leaders: Effectively disrupt the impact of bias towards Black children without becoming the focal point as a villain or “angry Black woman”.

AGREEMENT #2: COURAGEOUS HONESTY: Courageous honesty about where we are will not break us, it will empower us to see better and do better.?

• Problem: It’s scary to talk about inequitable academic outcomes because it can expose adults at the table of a Black child’s education (their teachers, school leaders and system leaders) as “not good enough”, “a part of the problem” or even worse “racist”.?
• Traditional Solution: Identify rationales for inequitable academic outcomes outside of the table’s locus of control. Reframing inequitable academic outcomes as “good” for Black children in this zip code and for Black children with pre-existing skill gaps. This results in underutilized power to transform outcomes for Black children.
• Unique Challenge for Black Women: Avoidance is silencing, yet does not shift expectations for Black women in leadership to get results and transform their schools and school systems.?
• Impact on Black Women’s Leadership: Severely diminishes ability of Black women leaders to build capacity to address problems they are effectively restricted from explicitly identifying.
• How Shared Agreement “Courageous Honesty” Creates An Opening: Lowers the stakes by removing educator and leader value and worth from problem analysis. Connects educators and leaders to an expanded locus of control. Gives educators and leaders permission to speak to the previously taboo barriers to action that creates access to grade level content. Acknowledgement of truth softens resistance, engages stakeholders in meaningful change and increases purposeful support.?
• What It Looks Like In Action: Analyzing data about HQIM Implementation against research-based best practices and concisely, transparently naming what’s going on without value judgments. For example: Black student outcomes are stagnant after several years of HQIM Implementation. Teachers offer remediation in response to student misconceptions. Teachers attend BOY curriculum training and weekly PLCs. With these truth statements, leaders are empowered to ask different questions about things they can change in their locus of control, like:?
• Opportunity for Black Women Leaders: Reframe the problem of inequitable academic outcomes as within your team’s locus of control. Cultivate ownership by collectively revealing empowering truths that evokes questioning and curiosity about possible action moving forward.

AGREEMENT #3: WE ARE THE ONES. THIS IS THE TABLE: We have inherited, and by nature of our roles, are maintaining, an education system that produces unjust, inequitable, and racist outcomes. We did not create it, yet we are responsible for changing those outcomes. We are the ones. This is the table.?

• Problem: Acknowledging our roles in the education system that produces inequitable outcomes is an ideological hot potato. Overwhelm and disillusionment restrict vision for what is possible, due to all-powerful invisible actor that cannot be seen, engaged with or held accountable.
• Traditional Solution: Talking about the system like we are not a part of it. Deflection to intentions and external factors when discussing or analyzing inequitable outcomes.
• Unique Challenge for Black Women: Positions Black women leaders as villains or “angry” Black women for calling attention to obvious truths about impact some may be unwilling to accept.?
• Impact on Black Women’s Leadership: Restricts Black women leaders from owning their instructional power and from holding educators and leaders accountable to meaningful disruption within their locus of control.?
• How Shared Agreement “We Are The Ones. This Is The Table” Creates An Opening: Puts all cards on the table by transparently naming uncomfortable truths about outcomes and the relationship each specific role has in creating them. Gives leaders permission to own the ability to disrupt racist outcomes they are best positioned to change by nature of that same role.?
• What It Looks Like In Action: Explicitly naming which leaders have the decision making power to hold critical stakeholders accountable to specific actions within change efforts. Articulating the resources leaders need to build stakeholder capacity to sustain actions for change. Assessing resource allocation and policy alignment with change efforts. Determining high-leverage priority area to engineer alignment of resource allocation and policy with change efforts.
• Opportunity for Black Women Leaders: Protect your social capital and transform “because I said so” accountability culture. Create permission for leaders who “get it” to take vision-aligned action and hold others accountable to vision-aligned action by leveraging the insights and planning that came from collective acknowledgment and ownership.?

AGREEMENT #4: ACCOUNTABLE TO IMPACT: To create change, we must be accountable to impact, not intent.?

• Problem: Discussing problems and outcomes within the locus of control of a peer, direct report, or supervisor becomes challenging when acknowledgement of the issue is perceived as a personal attack on their character or intentions.? Intent is ideological quicksand, that puts identity and worthiness on the table, and takes personal and collective power off the table. This is because disagreement around intent can lead to lots of hurt feelings, activated people, and deadlocked resistance to change.
• Traditional Solution: To deflect this perceived slight and manage the discomfort this evokes, it is commonplace for many individuals and workplace cultures to evade this conflict by requiring the person who experienced and/or called out the harm to focus on the intentions of the person being called in, instead of the problem.
• Unique Challenge for Black Women: Good intentions become a proxy for being received, valued, and understood as a good person. This often deflects away time, attention, energy and resources from the initial problem that needed solving. For Black women in leadership, this can often mean being presented with an impossible choice - participate in the good intentions dance to maintain false safety or pursue a focus on impact with the blowback that comes with a perceived personal attack.??
• Impact on Black Women’s Leadership: The unspoken effect of focusing on intentions makes the person who names the problem the new problem that needs to be dealt with. This effectively completely shifts attention and efforts from the inequitable outcomes and the ability to address them and towards the person that is “disrupting the peace”. The preexisting archetype of the angry Black woman makes this deflection particularly easy to engage around Black women leaders.?
• How Shared Agreement “Accountable to Impact” Creates An Opening: Cuts through the disempowering effect of intentions. Explicitly names the goal is owning our locus of control when tackling change - big and small. Removes the invisible and immeasurable barrier that all leaders of any organization have no control over - another human's intentions. Build the organizational muscle to confront the challenging outcomes we’ve signed up to dismantle, by detaching our perceived value from the outcomes of the system we are trying to transform.
• What It Looks Like In Action: When analyzing data from student outcomes or change efforts, focus on investigating the observable action. Use this language to make connections between the specific instructional decisions and policies that created these outcomes. Explicitly name that our outcomes have nothing to do with our intentions, but with the actions we took. Analyzing our actions will shed light on the extent to which our actions aligned with our intentions.
• Opportunity for Black Women Leaders: Sidestep the ideological quicksand of intent by taking it off the table and framing analysis work as an investigation into our actions, not our intentions nor our worthiness.?

AGREEMENT #5: DISCOMFORT IS NOT HARM: Discomfort is not harm. If making ourselves uncomfortable will help us create equitable outcomes for Black children, children in Special Education, and children learning English, then we have to make ourselves uncomfortable to create equitable outcomes for each and every single child.?

• Problem: Discomfort is a powerful, sometimes invisible, force that has the ability to shut down change efforts in its tracks. As a society, we equate discomfort with harm, and through micro and macro efforts, avoid discomfort at all costs. As a result, as individuals and institutions, we miss opportunities to learn from what the discomfort is masking - our power to create change and the beliefs that undermine that same power.?
• Traditional Solution: Those with power or privilege within school systems can functionally opt out of a change effort due to discomfort or inconvenience that change effort might create.?
• Unique Challenge for Black Women: Discomfort trumps data and effectively outsources the power and the opportunity to change outcomes for Black students to omnipresent, intangible stakeholders like “the system”, despite the awkward reality of our own roles in maintaining it.?
• Impact on Black Women’s Leadership: This can limit impact for Black women in leadership who leverage evidence-based decision making from a classroom level (with data on disciplinary measures for Black students) to a system level (with data on the percentages of Black and multilingual students locked into Special Education) to facilitate change.?
• How Shared Agreement “Discomfort Is Not Harm” Creates An Opening: Normalizes the presence and potency of discomfort, while diffusing its power to undermine change. Builds a new association with radical transformation by explicitly reminding people that discomfort is a signal that we are in the exact right place. Sets expectations that as champions for equity, you and your team are removing what has been comfortable to the status quo, which will continue to be uncomfortable - until we get comfortable with what creating equitable outcomes requires of us.?
• What It Looks Like In Action: Establishing this Shared Agreement as a team norm for deep analysis and idea generation work around organizational issues that have been historically “sticky”. Collectively discuss the impact of choosing to embrace the Shared Agreement Discomfort is Not Harm on your team’s ability to tackle critical issues.?
• Opportunity for Black Women Leaders: Make visible unspoken entitlement to comfort and create collective consciousness on its impact on your team's ability to sustain transformational change. Give Black Women Leaders permission to not take care of the discomfort of those resistant to change. Create spaciousness for your leadership, without the stress and anxiety of managing other people’s discomfort.??

What did you think? Which of these agreements resonates with you the most and why? And even more importantly, how might the embodiment of Our Shared Agreements with your school and district leadership teams transform your ability to create equitable academic outcomes??

If you are a Black women in school or district leadership, with a bold vision of what you know is possible for all Black children in their school or district, and need support with figuring out how to walk your team or your system in the journey towards that vision, then learn more about the Equitable Outcomes Collective, designed especially for you, here .