6-9-2016
Abstract
In this essay I document my capstone change project, in which I apply models, tools, techniques, and philosophies learned while enrolled in Antioch Seattle’s Graduate program in Leadership and Change. Included are the lessons learned and insights gained from my practical application and personal reflection.
Note: Except for those instances where individuals have made explicit their gender preference, the gender neutral singular pronoun “they” has been used throughout the essay. I have endeavored to creatively minimize the jarring effect of using the singular “they”.
I also use the term “minoritized” rather than the customary “minority”, to remind myself that there is a devaluing process going on. In much the same way as “enslaved Africans” is more indicative of context and process than simply “African slaves”. The use of “minoritized” and “enslaved” leads us to ask who or what is enslaving or minoratizing?
Change Project Summary
In my capstone change project, I aimed to facilitate the formation of an Equity and Inclusion (E & I) workgroup for four programs of a mid-sized non- profit. Along the way I have utilized a number of concepts, models, and personal experiences from my time enrolled in Antioch University Seattle’s Graduate Program in Leadership and Change(GLC). The project also gave me numerous insights into concepts and models; deepened my understanding of Complex Adaptive Systems; and the role of conflict in social change and personal growth.
Background
The service oriented Organization I worked with on the change project is a venerable institution dedicated to an underserved population in the Pacific Northwest of USA. The organization is over forty years old; comprised of approximately 270 employees, 8,000 volunteers; and spread across nine locations county wide. Most of the employees work out of either the downtown offices or the warehouse with the remainder stationed at six community centers.
In order to better serve the organization’s culturally and racially diverse client base, the organization begin an E & I program (originally Cultural Competency). Since its inception nearly a decade ago, I had watched as the E & I program grew in complexity, and sophistication. It earliest phase was to create a common language for exploring oppression. Initially this was done through mandatory 3 hour trainings for all employees every year. The early trainings were led by Dr. Leticia Nieto , and while it focused on race primarily, Dr. Nieto presented to us an overarching framework and language to explore the psychology of oppression in all its manifestations
Beyond the mandatory trainings, is where we saw the growing sophistication and complexity of the E & I program. At the time of this writing there are many voluntary E & I meetings each month: Conversations on Race, HR E & I Workgroup, and half a dozen affiliation groups (people of Color, LGTBQ+, White Allyship Group, etc.) Each of these groups works to examine the workings of systemic oppressions, the organizations own institutionalizations of oppression, and most challenging, the deeply held personal mental models which perpetuate them. However, all this sophistication was limited to the downtown offices. Meanwhile, outside the downtown office, the mandatory trainings have been met with resistance.
This resistance comes from both the detractors and supporters of the E & I program. The detractor’s arguments take two forms: the common inequity denial response of “I treat everyone the same” which is to be expected; and more significantly, “We work every day in the field with diverse people, how dare you come down here and say we are racist? You have no idea what we experience each day.” The supporters, on the other hand, say the trainings are too academic, redundant, and offer little practical value. This multi fold resistance was central in my mind as I began to design my change project.
My role
I was in a unique situation within the organization. In my work I had a lot of contact with warehouse employees, but as I wasn’t a direct representative of management. I was also one of the few employees from the warehouse who actively participated in the downtown E & I groups. This participation allowed me to develop relationships with upper management. I was an unusual bridge of sorts. I was both a supporter of the E & I program and yet far enough from authority to have frank conversations with employees who work in direct service. It is important to note that my role was in facilitating the program’s development; assessment and recommendations would be my emphasis. I would not be facilitating E & I trainings.
The Project
My intention in this project has been to facilitate the development of a voluntary Equity & Inclusion (E & I) program tailored by the warehouse community and their needs. In order to ensure the program’s sustainability, I intended to maximize participant involvement in its design. It is with this in mind that I have endeavored to refer to my capstone project as our project
I began our project in the fall of 2015. The first few months were dedicated to many interviews. There were several purposes to these interviews: to gather information about how the E & I program was being received by employees; to get the blessings of all those who could stall the project; and to solicit any insights from the managers and supervisors.
The four programs I worked with were the community centers, transportation, food delivery, and repair service. The community centers were scattered around the region, while the other three programs were based out of one large warehouse. Communications with the community centers proved to be challenging and I would ultimately limit my efforts to the warehouse programs, where I met with greater receptivity and resources.
During the winter I gathered together the supporters of E & I in the warehouse into a planning committee. Together we designed the facilitation for the first meeting of the Warehouse E & I Workgroup (WE&IW). Also during this time we formalized the communication process with upper management. We would submit plans for facilitations to the Director of Organizational Development (DoOD) and the Chief Operations Officer (COO) for their feedback. A report would also be provided each month as a project as a whole and the regular Warehouse E & I meetings. Due to the delicate nature of E & I conversations, privacy and confidentiality were paramount. As the warehouse didn’t have such a space, we secured a nearby meeting space with a neighboring business.
March saw the first WE&IW meeting. Among the topics/concerns the group raised were several they felt we could tackle: the need for conflict education and some sort of healing at the end of mandatory trainings. We continued exploring these topics in our second meeting. I asked the group if they had ever experienced “healing” after some sort of rupture or conflict. The stories that were told and the subject matter that followed made me suspect that there might be a need for supporting the group members in their current challenges. While the larger E & I issues brought up in the early meetings were still important, there was perhaps a greater immediate need felt in the group.
I saw that need as a result of the E & I trainings. The trainings have brought to the fore, the systemic oppressive social behaviors and had emboldened the minoritized employees to engage in conflict. The state of these conflicts pointed to the need for staff development. Conflict engagement, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal communications are all areas the staff desperately needed in order to effectively engage inequity.
The uncovering of this deeper need came at an intriguing time. The COO had recently announced their retirement. They were seen by many as the heart and soul of the organization. They were the common connector, walking the hallways, empathically caring for people, and supporting them as they can. For the Warehouse in particular, their departure posed the question, “How can we meet our need for empathy and care for ourselves?” Although the WE&IW was still in its formative phase (discovering who they are, what needs are prevalent, and how they want to work together), I had a glimmer of a hope that they could take that role.
At the time of this writing we approach the last meeting in which I will be the main spearheading agent. The planning committee members have been allotted approximately 5 hours a month each in paid time to organize the WE&IW meetings. There may still be push back from supervisors, but at least now we can begin distributing responsibilities.
Design Concepts:
As I alluded to earlier, the resistance I found in employees to the yearly trainings weighed heavily on me as I thought about how to facilitate the creation of an ongoing conversation about, race, culture, class, and conflict. In order to get the support of the resistors, the project would need to do more than allow their input, but be largely dictated by their involvement in the process. I learned early in Methods for Sustainable Change, that people support that which they create. A successful E & I project for the warehouse would look very different from both the yearly trainings and the downtown conversations. As a collaborative project the outcome couldn’t be the purpose of the design; it would emerge from the needs and circumstances of the community.
From my first contact with the Director of Organizational Development (DoOD), collaboration was central to my process. I asked them what needs of the organization they were aware of; thus even before the project took form I was engaged in discovery and inquiry. This collaborative attitude continued as I carefully crossed several organizational boundaries between programs and hierarchy. I interviewed everyone in the organization who could halt or hinder the project. Asking about their concerns and hopes for the project, allowed for them to feel like a part of its creation, and assure them that their input is valued. This care for the invisible boundaries in a system was first covered informally in Systemic Approaches to Leadership, as a student reflected on their blunder trespassing carelessly into other departments.
A significant amount of my design work went into the facilitation of the first Warehouse E & I Workgroup session. Four principles influenced my design and implementation:
- The small group is the unit of social change.
- Group vision is the basis for collective commitment.
- Participants are creative, resourceful and whole.
- “Equity cannot be taught, only demonstrated.” Ron Harris-White (from personal interview.)
The first principle comes from Peter Block. Throughout the early design phase Block’s words resounded in my mind, “How we structure the gathering is as worthy of attention as grasping the nature of a problem or focusing on the solutions that we seek” (2008, p. 25). Accordingly, how a group motivated by a more equitable future comes together, must in its own structure and process aspire toward equity. In essence the future is created by our current dynamics. Our ability to affect the future relies on how we can adopt our current dynamics to better meet our vision. So, despite my desire to “accomplish” something tangible, I designed the session to be primarily group inquiry and discovery, and minimalized my facilitation toward that end.
The second principle I utilized in designing the first session I learned through reading Peter Senge (1990). Senge points out that an organization’s vision is usually only the vision of a few at best. As such, it can only be met with compliance from most of the employees who don’t actually share it. However, if we allow individuals to formulate their own personal vision, and find how those visions can come together, the “group vision” that results can be immensely powerful.
Attempting to harness this “group vision”, I started the first session with the question, “Why is E & I work important to you personally?” I have continued this visioning in the meetings with our introduction sequence: each person introduces themselves and answers a question such as “What are your hopes for this group?”, or “When will you know our work is done?”
The third and fourth principles are closely related but deserve separate treatment. While they didn’t play a role in designing the actual structure of the facilitation, they instead were what I meditated on to prepare myself for the implementation. They were my framework for how to interact with participants: treating self as a designed element.
I first heard the phrase “creative, resourceful and whole” from my wife. As a preschool teacher it was her mantra when trying to understand a child’s behavior. Later, my understanding of this principle was deepened by my work in Coaching. Creating a productive relationship with a coachee means learning to change how we see their potential. Our dominant culture tends to view people as victims, aggressors, damaged or ill. Accordingly, in order to help them we must protect, punish, fix or heal. All the power in this dynamic rests with the fixer, which leaves the fixee forever needing rescuing. In Coaching we learned that our goal is to help people to become more resilient and to develop their own capacity to engage challenges. Thus we have to see them as creative and capable from the start. It’s a trust in them and their capabilities, that many have rarely been given.
Parallel to this concept of wholeness and capability is the last principle. While one can teach about systemic oppression just like sociology or history, the actual equity, that is treating another’s reality-despite its contradictions to our own- as equal to our own, is profoundly difficult. However, when demonstrated, it can be in stark contrast to the dominant culture. It often takes the form of a question, for how else can we come to appreciate another’s reality unless we openly and humbly inquire of another’s experience.
These two principles helped me to stay focused on inquiry. Our dominant culture values telling over asking (Schein, 2013, p. 58), so I knew my default was to tell, fix, and inform. Holding onto genuine curiosity, especially in uncertainty, or when I think reassurance was needed, was challenging. Setting my intention prior to facilitations, and reflecting on them afterward, helped me to learn where my habits were, and how they inhibit participants from fully collaborating. My fear was that participants would end up relying on me as the facilitator if I did more telling than asking. I saw this focus on inquiry as modeling equity within our group.
Insights
The insights I have garnered from my involvement in our project fall in to two categories: Failures and Speculations. In my failures I have had direct experience with how my plans met with the real world and did not produce the results I had sought. They are perhaps the most useful in that they provided me with an opportunity not only to reflect on my plan, but in the thinking that produced the plan. Speculations on the other hand, while exciting in their potentials, are far from tested. It is challenging for me to admit that while these speculations feel like I have expanded my understanding of social dynamics, they are fundamentally untested. They are speculations based on a synthesis of readings and observations, and therefor need to be held with a warry eye to confirmation bias.
Failures
My first real failure in our project was in how I engaged with the Community Centers. I interviewed the Director of Community Development (DoCD) extensively about the different centers and which might have the resources and inclination needed for our project. Together we crafted a communication to all the center directors briefly outlining the aims of our project and asking for an interview. My mistake was in assuming that interviewing DoCD was enough assessment. In Communication Design, we learned that first and foremost to understand our audience. The DoCD seemed very insightful about the centers, and from her, I felt I had a good sense of each center. In the end, I received only a single response and even that never panned out to an interview.
I suspect I would have gotten better response had I asked for an interview assessing E & I in the centers, rather than laying out a “project”. Starting off with pure inquiry offers several advantages: I get firsthand information about the centers and their capacity for change; questions may stir new ways of thinking about E & I work; and interviewing may resulting in an increased desire for change later on. As most of the centers were strapped for resources, I doubt any would have participated in our project without some sort of outside assistance. However, interviews could have sparked the recognition of the need for some sort of project in the future, when resources would allow.
Similar to how I engaged with the centers, I also over relied on the hierarchy for information in the warehouse. While it was necessary to get the blessings and input of all those who could throw a wrench in to the pie, it was not enough information to get a whole sense of the warehouse and its dynamics. I assumed that since I worked in the warehouse I was privy to the dynamics there and that informal conversations were enough. As I began work with the Planning Committee, I became much more aware of the ongoing tensions in the warehouse, and the lack of resources staff had to engage in conflict.
As the project continued, and my involvement with several people of color deepened, I began to see the informal coalitions around E & I: those who suffer from inequity and their allies; those, mostly silent, who deny racial inequity; and the majority who have adopted the language and voice support only to ensure continued ease of employment. All this observation though is coming through somewhat biased vectors: the members of the WE&IW. I had intended to foster the WE&IW as a place for the champions of E & I to support each other’s learning and in turn the organizations. In succeeding, I inadvertently sided entirely with one side of a quiet conflict. This conflict between the outright detractors and supporters is what interests me most currently. Had I done extensive interviews among the warehouse staff I may have seen it earlier, and if I want to understand it better I will need to do so.
If I had started our project in the warehouse by interviewing staff on all sides of the conflict, perhaps a different project altogether would have resulted. A much more complex approach for certain, but it might have actively involved dissenters. Had dissenters been interviewed and felt heard in the process, they might be more open to actual dialog. It is important to emphasize though that treating all sides equally would only have perpetuated the status quo. Because minoritized views are so unfamiliar to the dominant cultures narrative, a greater amount of time is necessary in order to conveying them (Wing, 2008).
Speculations
Many of my insights into social change have been in thinking about our E & I program as it stands currently. As groundbreaking as the E & I program has been, there are many fronts it has yet to address. Its approach has been predominantly a rationalistic approach: provide all the pertinent information, and people will take the right actions. To bring our E & I work into a more holistic practice, there seems to me several avenues that provide exciting possibilities.
One model that has been central to my understanding of organizational change has been the theory of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). CAS is a theoretical explanation for how natural systems not only persist, but adapt and thrive despite an unpredictable environment and an absence any centralized control. Examples of CAS can be seen everywhere in the natural world. A classic example is in the European honey bee. The behavior of a hive cannot be predicted by any single element, but emerges from the complex relationships between the bees themselves and their environment: in other words, they self-organize. Likewise, human social systems are very difficult to predict or control precisely because of their level of complexity.
How can our organization learn from and perhaps emulate the self-organizing systems found in nature? CAS explains the dynamics within a self-organizing system by breaking it down into three conditions necessary for self-organization. First, it must have a boundary; some way of saying me and not me. Second, there must be significant differences between elements within that boundary. And thirdly, those significant differences become the tension through which transformative exchanges happen (2001,Olson and Eoyang , p.11).
In a human social system, these significant differences can be values, interests, cultural, racial, ethnic, economic, psychological, etc. The unharmonious tensions between these differences contain huge creative potential. They are like the genetic diversity within a species, which allows the species to survive and thrive in a changing environment. In order to harmonize these differences individuals and organizations must change or transform how they function and how they see the world. It’s this process by which something new and vital can be created in our organizations. However many organizations tend to “smooth over” or “get past” differences, not bring them to the surface and engage them directly and creatively.
The E & I program as it stands works well in bringing forth significant differences. In so doing it has empowered minoritized employees to speak out creating conflict and tensions. If these conflicts are between individuals, the organizational system as it is works to a degree. Where the conflict involves positional power dynamics, the system tends toward conflict management via de-escalation and conciliation. Conflict aversion, such as this, while capable of alleviating the symptoms of a conflict do not address the structural elements which lie behind the conflict.
As an example, say a manager and supervisor decide to create a new lead position, and after considering their current employees select one for the promotion. This is fully in the domain of the manager’s authority. If however the new lead is the best friend of the supervisor and like them and the manager, also white, this can seem to people of color on the team like racism and nepotism. The team, “trained” in Equity and Inclusion, protest vociferously. Is the resultant conflict because of a racial preference? That is the interpretation of his team, who has a long, historically informed narrative about racial favoritism in promotions.
On a structural level, we can also see this conflict, as the result of the norm of unilateral positional power in conflict with an espoused value of equity and inclusion. It’s at this level of discourse that transformative exchanges are possible for the organization. At this level, we can begin to see that the “who and how” of decision making can be more important than what decisions are actually made. If our hypothetical team had the capacity, or at least the coaching, to fully engage this conflict to find its structural sources, the manager might see their limits and how impossible an equitable, inclusive, and unilateral decision is. From that point, new processes could be discussed, and entirely new power relationships formed.
Transformative exchanges though, are not assured, just because we can surface differences. Once those significant differences are out in the open the community needs the capacity to engage them creatively. Critical to developing this creative capacity is Emotional Intelligence (EQ). EQ, unlike IQ, can be developed through a number of techniques (Miyashiro, 2011) (Kegan & Lahey, 2001). For me, Rosenberg’s approach has been invaluable in personal and professional relationships. It has given me the tools to not only identify my emotions, but more importantly the needs that lie behind them. At the depth of needs is where I can empathize with myself and others, and a whole new area of creativity and vulnerable humanity open up (Rosenberg & Rosenberg, 2003).
It is with this understanding of CAS that I see new possibilities for E & I work. While educating people about the nature of systemic oppression is central to its pedagogy, developing the capacity of people to engage in conflict with emotional intelligence creatively first would in my thinking, not only speed the overall process, but reduce the amount of factionalization to the overall organization.
Another significant difference, and perhaps the most contentious, that has arisen as a result of the E & I training is between those working toward social justice and the deniers of social injustice. The “color blind” abdication of any personal responsibility is, I suspect, far more prevalent, than surface observation would indicate. I would guess that at least a third of the organization falls into this “informal coalition” (Rogers, 2008). As this informal coalition is representative of our larger dominant culture, the significant difference between these two groups is perhaps the most profound and therefor the most promising, from a CAS standpoint. However, I have yet to see this conflict engaged with any sort of empathy or creativity. For the most part, race deniers stay quiet during trainings, as they know they are on the weak end of the power dynamic.
I gained a greater sense of empathy for race deniers when I challenged myself to design an intervention with one. “M” as I’ll call them, is a large imposing Caucasian who vocally protests that they have any “privilege”, and that the E & I trainings are oppressive to them. M works in an office of mainly people of color, for whom this behavior is unsettling. What could I achieve in an intervention? Without any positional power over M, I couldn’t force any change in their behavior. Even if I did, this would only hide the conflict. If I wanted to change M views, pointing out where they are wrong also would not likely produce any “success”. The E & I program has already done a great job of rationally laying out the facts supporting the presence of inequity in our society. If I wanted M to listen to me openly, I had to first demonstrate my own openness to them. I found a great amount of internal resistance to the idea of listening openly to M’s views. Worst of this was, “What if M should convince me?”
If M were to convince me that racial inequity didn’t exist, there would be significant social repercussions for me. I would find my views in opposition to my wife’s, my friends and much of the upper management in my organization. I would need to silence my views, and face alienation from my progressive community. Putting myself in M’s shoes gave me a new sense of the resistance many show to the E & I program. We are asking a great deal for the dissenters to change their views, and we must approach them with empathy and openness.
Might it be possible, to create an arena in which to safely hold and explore this enduring conflict. Could representatives from each side come together with the intention of deepening our understanding of each other, knowing full well that neither side are likely to change their views. In my Conflict Engagement course we covered briefly the work of Virginia Satir. Satir uses the term “honoring” in an unusual, but provocative way. In their work, to honor oneself or another is to assume the capacity for change: to see myself as growing and learning and to see my opposition as also growing and learning.
In our White Allyship group, where we explore how we can act as allies with the oppressed in our communities, so often is lamented the frustration with our color blind relatives. Could this arena be the basis for discovering and modelling how to creatively engage in what may be the most intractable conflict of our nation?
Moving forward
As I move forward in my new career as an OD practitioner, I look back at my intentions for attending the Center for Creative Change. As a Quaker I had developed a deep love of collaboration and a profound respect for Quakerly patience in the face irreconcilable differences. Following my passion for consensual collaboration, I have pursued it in many different fields: business, religion, community, and the arts. In each I saw consensual collaboration as a viable and just form of organizational governance. “How to bring such a radical approach to governance to other organizations?” was what brought me to thinking about organizational change.
My work at Antioch has given me an even deeper appreciation of the collaborative process. That understanding colors all the models I immediately carry forward from Antioch. It should be of no surprise that many of the models, tools and techniques I developed insights about in my change project are also the ones I have become most passionate about. CAS has provided me with a valuable overarching framework to understand how many of these tools and techniques work to help groups become more resilient and just.
There is though one model of organizational change, not directly a part of my change project. I hadn’t been too inclined toward the Lean model of continuous improvement. It’s popularity in the corporate world, and the frustration of nurses at Group Health, led me to believe it to be just another “productivity” tool. I have recently learned that production is only half of the Lean model. The other half is about relationship and management and prescribes a more radical employee empowerment approach (which is probably why it isn’t emphasized). Professionally, being Lean certified would be beneficial, but more importantly it may offer a framework through which to bring C3 thinking into corporations and organizations.
What’s next
The biggest “next” for me is developing a career in which I can bring my learnings at Antioch to bear on communities and organizations. In particular, developing neighborhood community has been an interest for several years. Whether the work is through the City Seattle’s various planning departments, the Department of Neighborhoods, or health insurance companies, I believe there is great interest in and potential for place-based community development.
On a personal level, there are several avenues of study I am intrigued to continue in. Perhaps the most important is focusing on developing my own EQ through Non-Violent Communication (Rosenberg & Rosenberg, 2003). Fortunately I already have connections with some NVC practitioners whom I respect. Paired with the NVC work I am fascinated by conflict engagement, and would like to continue my studies through conflict resolution training.
On a group level I have several plans. First and perhaps foremost is continuing to learn in community. The C3 Community of Practice (C3COP) started as a student change project almost a year ago. I hope to step up after graduation to help host and organize gatherings. We alumni have so much to learn from each other, that it would be an unthinkable loss never to see them or faculty again. One important topic I believe the group could be instrumental in tackling is how to frame C3 thinking in ways the dominant cultures can see value in. Secondly, I hope to delve deeper into Ecstatic Singing, a collaborative improvisational art form. In particular, I would love to see Ecstatic Singing brought to social change events. The art form is so fun, infectious, and welcoming to all, it could be a powerful tool for animating social change.
Lastly, on a community level, I will rejoin my wife’s effort in develop our neighborhood relationships; this means parties, and gatherings, and –eventually-children. My wife is perhaps more intentional than I, in that she’s been using a form of interviewing akin to Appreciative Inquiry. I see my approach as complementary to hers in that I am more inclined to gatherings and celebrations. On a larger level though, I would also like to start gatherings of neighborhood activists. Every year there are nine other block parties around our own neighborhood. Who organizes those? What are their visions for their neighborhood? What can we learn from each other, and what might we create together? Perhaps we could be a community of practice for neighborhood building, or as my wife prefers “neighboring”.
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