Behind the Scenes on our Anti-Racism Journey (Part III)

There is something powerful about having someone from outside your organization become deeply embedded for a season. Through fresh eyes, sometimes an outsider can help put language to things that have been going on for a while, which your internal team hasn’t been able to name. This happened to our team last month when our DEI consultant, Erin Yoshimura (of Empowerful Changes), called us nice. Nice doesn’t sound so bad, but in the context of our DEI work, being nice maybe isn’t the greatest thing to be.

There’s an underlying sense of politeness, agreeableness, and ultimately, pleasantness to niceness, which, as it turns out for the Uncharted team, is getting in the way of realness. And it’s not just something that’s related to our DEI work: it’s something that we’ve identified as endemic in our organizational culture. At a leadership level, it’s an issue that has been vexing us for several years, but Erin put her finger on it and named it for us.

Nice also carries with it an upholding of cultural norms, and sometimes — frequently — those norms are white supremacy norms. Think about the instances in which we’re told something’s ‘not nice’ as a reason not to talk about it, not to ask questions, not to upset people or the status quo. “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” It’s a tough habit to break, but one we must break so that we can get beyond what’s nice to move towards what truly matters. Being nice isn’t all bad, but being clear in hard moments is certainly more kind.

The ability to move beyond nice and grow in our ability to have hard conversations is directly connected to the pace and progress of becoming an anti-racist organization. And that is why this week, we’d like to invite you into this part of our journey, and even more so learn from each of you how to grow in our ability to have hard conversations.

Breaking Down Nice

For the most part, Unchies (as we internally, affectionately call ourselves) are a group of deeply thoughtful, incredibly kind, and also deeply people-pleasing individuals. Most of the team identifies as conflict-avoidant, and for those who don’t, it is a cultural tide that can be difficult to counteract.

Reflecting on the past year at Uncharted, some team members shared that there are some benefits to the niceness. Often, when we hit a difficult situation, our team has an all-hands-on-deck approach toward solutions. This can appear to be a prime example of sacrifice and team togetherness. However, we sometimes miss the step in actually addressing where someone may have been responsible for the situation. One team member shared, “When hard things happen, we tend to pull together to say, ‘This is really hard,’ rather than, ‘Hey, you aren’t pulling your weight on this project.’”

For those who are willing to take on conflict, it can be an isolating experience: they can be left wondering if they’re the only one with divergent opinions or feeling pressure to play the role of contrarian because no one else will.

Others on the team have described the lack of critical feedback or hard conversations as a disservice to their professional development. Addy Bateman, a Program Associate, reflected, “The past year, 2020, was madness — bringing up harsh feedback didn’t feel like a priority. I’ve received minimal feedback on how I can get better. I asked for it directly and got it, but it never seemed expected of anyone to give. You have to go out and search for it. I think we could grow in this unsolicited feedback. From managers to employees, even just peers to each other.”

Hard conversations are hard because they matter. There is risk in confronting someone about a place they’re falling short — whether it’s about their behavior, actions, language, or something else. We can give ourselves the short-term gift of comfort, but without hard conversations, we miss the opportunity to do our future selves a favor (and at Uncharted, fall short on living out one of our values: take the long view) by addressing the root causes of an issue. In fact, we actually cause ourselves more long-term pain when we spend our energy trying to go around an issue rather than address it head-on.

The key question is: If we don’t step into hard conversations around our basic work, how can we do it around DEI and anti-racism work?

Impacts on our anti-racism journey

At first blush, it can seem like there haven’t been major negative consequences of us NOT having hard conversations. We have been able to continue to coexist in our nice, White normed, safe space, which sometimes prevents us from seeing the cost of avoiding these hard conversations. When we slow down and reflect on this, though — the cost is everything.

The SURJ article we shared a few weeks ago outlined how a fear of open conflict is one component of White supremacy culture showing up in workplace culture. It looks like:

• People in power are scared of conflict and try to ignore it or run from it.
• When someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than looking at the issue that is actually causing the problem.
• Emphasis on being polite.
• Equating the raising of difficult issues with being impolite, rude, or out of line.

There is nowhere this has been more clear in our organization than in our avoidance of hard conversations. We perpetuate White supremacy culture when we continue to allow these behaviors or even celebrate them as being “professional” in our worst moments.

Additionally, when talking to the team, we uncovered ways that imposter syndrome plays directly into our anti-racism journey and growth. Imposter syndrome runs as deeply through the team as conflict avoidance. We’re more hesitant than confident in what we know, and we hold things loosely (which can be a good thing), but it also means that we’re quick to back down and be deferential.

When connected with the two following dynamics about race, this imposter syndrome creates hesitancy about when and how to speak up on anti-racism. First, Whiteness, White supremacy, and our country’s racial history are considered taboo in White culture, which means White people don’t have extensive practice engaging with or experience speaking about it. The cultural message is not to talk about it and you won’t get in trouble. We are products of this environment. Second, for many of us who are new to this work, we are afraid of making mistakes, or doing or saying something wrong, or not feeling like we know enough to have the authority or skills to have hard conversations around race. Compounded, the effects of these dynamics have frequently resulted in a dominant culture at Uncharted that prizes silence and a go-along-get-along attitude over one in which hard conversations, healthy disagreement, and celebration of mistakes as learning opportunities are more highly valued. We are looking for strong models of White allyship, supporting our BIPOC staff, and stepping into brave spaces.

Addy reflected, “In the DEI spaces we’ve built, I have heard a lot from half the organization and very little from the other half. Can we call out that we haven’t heard from someone in a while? Especially if people of color in the group don’t want to share, I don’t want to put them in a hard place.” Addy described that throughout anti-racism work, she has learned enough to be aware of the ways that BIPOC individuals have been unfairly relied upon in DEI conversations. This knowledge, at times, has left her wondering if it’s okay to ask other BIPOC staff about sharing their experiences and tiptoeing past difficult conversations. This is likely to cause a hard moment with the potential for an incredible upside in regards to hearing diverse opinions, including team members who have valuable insights, and ultimately, growing in our anti-racism journey.

Growing in Bravery

Internally, we have found a few ways to step into brave, hard spaces together. In early 2020, we were in the midst of major organizational change, which meant pretty intense team meetings almost every Wednesday. Trying to adjust to a new Zoom reality from fully remote work while delivering difficult news to the team was a tremendous challenge and required new ways of fostering space for feedback. We knew people had questions about the changes, but no one was asking them aloud, so we created a Google form with the ability to submit anonymously. Addy, a new member and junior of the team, shared, “The anonymous feedback form was such a helpful tool, especially because we hit such rocky roads in Spring 2020. I wasn’t comfortable yet to ask a direct question, and it was a small godsend to get my questions answered without feeling out there. I was able to voice fears without having to be the owner.” This might be seen as an imperfect system or even a crutch to having hard conversations, but we found that by answering each question live with the team in the meeting and following up with additional details in Slack, we were able to build trust with the team.

We’ve also learned from those on the team who are stronger in providing difficult feedback and bringing up hard conversations. Like many startups, we have been trying to implement OKRs internally with mixed success and growing team frustration. Anthony Verducci, our Marketing Manager, finally wrote an email directly to our Banks, our CEO, and Nicole, our Director of People and Partnerships, spelling out all the research he’d done around OKRs, and ultimately why we were failing as an organization at implementing this process. When we discussed this moment with Anthony, he said while he has had several managers during his tenure at Uncharted, he’s always felt really comfortable giving feedback to anyone in the organization. “I don’t think of the title or seniority level, but instead, I think about how much I care about this program is successful and what changes need to be made to get there. I think more about who is the right person or decision-maker in this and share that feedback.” He mentioned that part of what built the confidence in leading up to difficult feedback is that when he reported to our CEO, they always saved time at the end of a bilateral feedback meeting. This created an ongoing, safe space to share hard things rather than letting them accrue over time. This gave him the confidence that even at the most senior levels of the organization, the feedback was welcome.

We see these feedback loops in other places in the organization as well. Adrienne Russman, our Director of Government and Community Relations, has started wrapping up meetings that she leads by asking the participants to rate the meeting on a 10-point scale, asking for feedback on how to make it better. We know there are many other ways to do this so people feel empowered to share their opinions regularly, and we plan to explore these spaces.

The key antidote to the fear of open conflict is celebrating moments and creating space for dynamic dialogue. Sometimes, that has meant creating systems where people can start to share hard questions and dissenting opinions like an anonymous Google form. It’s been telling the team that Anthony’s email about OKRs was the correction we needed at a leadership level to make a process that would move us forward. We must call out the moments that people will step into dynamic dialogue and hard conversations as a model of success, rather than dissent from professionalism.

Many times it feels like our educational system missed an opportunity to set us up better for success in our professional and personal lives. We’ve found ourselves wishing someone spent as much time teaching us to listen well, or show up and have difficult conversations, or understand what it means to be able to be brave in moments of pain as they did on how to craft the perfect 5-paragraph essay. In lieu of that happening, how can we create the conditions in our organizations now where we can grow in these areas, helping develop more anti-racist individuals who lead more anti-racist organizations? How can we practice together the brave moments, the honest moments, the hard moments? As Brene Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” And while clear is kind, it’s also often hard. Let’s learn and grow in this together.