“What will empower leaders and employees to keep the conversation going and have authentic, connected, and transformative conversations about racial justice at work?” is a question that I am perpetually preoccupied with as a DEIJ facilitator, coach, and consultant. It’s a question that keeps me up late at night, especially in these current times where that level and depth of conversation and dialogue seem so far off.
In my work, I find that many are afraid to say the wrong thing or fall into the habit of going through the motions of a reporting out on their project plan or ticking off items from a checklist … so much so that nothing much beyond facts and data get communicated. This fear is keeping us quiet. Pile on the abundance of online posts that turn into debates and shouting matches, the number of companies that have recently put their DEIJ work on hold or deprioritized their investment in it, and the increase in layoffs that disproportionately impact BIPOC employees and those working in the DEIJ space. All of these things ultimately silence us and keeps us in a state of avoidance around having long overdue conversations about racial equity and justice in the workplace.
Silence is something that I’ve long been interested in and have explored often through my work in this space. The more I turn towards this particular manifestation of silence, the more I notice that our current paradigms of interacting and communicating are rooted in those aspects of white supremacy culture that keep us silent around our emotions and the emotional aspects of our lived experiences.
It would be easy to accept defeat or give up on this part of the conversation because “we’re not ready,” “we don’t have the budget,” “nobody listens.” It’s also easy to place more emphasis on concepts, facts, and figures because we are afraid that things will get “too intense” or “risky” when emotions enter the conversation. However, unless we become willing to examine how these dynamics and values shows up in our exchanges and turn towards tending to the heart/emotional spaces — especially when DEIJ is a focus — we will continue to overlook and silence ourselves. In my experience, this space is essential and critical to our ability to reimagine and create racial equity and justice at work. Going to the heart/emotional space is an imperative, one that is just as important, and perhaps even more important than solely focusing on fact, figures, rational, and logical data. In practice, this means that leaders and employees must learn to:
Acknowledge, unpack, and navigate the emotions that arise in themselves and in others.
Emotions are everywhere. To no one’s surprise, we all have them. They play a key role in our experience of our own humanity and how we experience the humanity of others. Even if we are unaware or underplay their significance, emotions drive our behavior and interactions.
To fully understand how oppression and racial injustice impact our workplaces, we must go beyond rational understandings to acknowledge that hurt at the heart level, where our emotions live. This tender spot is ultimately home to the cradle and core of our humanity. As such, it is just as important to have the opportunity and/or space to acknowledge and communicate what brings me joy as much as it is to convey what brings me pain.
Not convinced? Pause for a minute and reflect or journal about the following two questions:
- What happens to our own humanity, the humanity of our colleagues, and ultimately our company-wide racial justice initiatives, when both BIPOC and white leaders or employees override their emotional realities or don’t feel safe expressing their emotions around all-too-common scenarios that affect the most marginalized members of our workplace communities?
- What is lost in our progress towards racial equity and justice when we don’t equip our workforce with the skillset needed to have conversations and dialogue around the emotions that arise when injustice and oppression are present in our workplace?
Here’s what I unearthed as I reflected on those two questions: White supremacy culture encourages and rewards us when we construct and prioritize rational and logical narratives. In its most toxic form and expressions, it perpetuates the notion that the emotions of BIPOC team members don’t matter or aren’t valued. Denying someone and ourselves the opportunity to be in touch with our emotional landscape is, at its core, oppressive and soul crushing. The impact of this can be observed in everything from company morale, engagement, and disconnection to individual mental health, physical health, and performance in the workplace.
By not learning how to acknowledge, unpack, and navigate our own emotions or another’s emotions, we perpetuate and inflict the same level of violence, brutality, and dehumanization inherent in the most toxic expressions of white supremacy culture. Furthermore, by not allowing for the fullness of emotional expression to emerge through behaviors such as tone policing, outright minimization, and denial, or through overt and covert forms of silencing, the workplace once again reinforces the existing inequities that make it okay for members of dominant groups to have access to the fullness of their humanity at the expense of marginalized community members. We, ultimately, make little to no sustained progress towards achieving racial equity and justice in the workplace.
Locate, listen, and look for emotions before jumping to solutions or fixing.
As I’ve explained, working to create racial equity and justice in the workplace is, by its very nature, emotional work. Doing so requires us to have an awareness of our internal emotional landscapes and to be in relationship with the very components that play a key role in our human experience. Additionally, knowing that emotions drive behaviors and that they are a core ingredient to our lived experiences as human beings requires us to sit with a powerful question:
What can our emotions tell us about the very roots of the problem that we are trying to develop racial justice and equity solutions around?
Again, pause for a few minutes and think about how you would answer the question stated above.
What I’ve found in reflecting on that question and working with clients as a coach, facilitator, and consultant on racial equity and justice initiatives is that our emotions drive the very interpersonal exchanges and relational dynamics that contribute to the equity and justice problems we are trying to solve for. Simple declarations uttered by myself or a participant such as, “Before we move to a solution, I’d like to express how I feel,” and/or “I’d like to know how you felt about what I or another participant just shared,” can deepen and transform a coaching session, a training, or consulting engagement because it invites a deeper level of humanity into the room and moves the individual or group to sustainable change anchored in real-life lived experience.
When we don’t, can’t, or won’t share the fullness of what’s true for us at the emotional level (or when the impact of our sharing this part of ourselves is not fully taken in because we’ve opted to jump immediately towards solutioning, fixing, or rushing the time and depth we spend in the emotional sphere) we actually don’t get to the real roots of the problems that we intend to set out and solve. In fact, this leads us to create half solutions based on partial truths, which, in the long run, makes the problem worse, more performative, and more frustrating for all, especially BIPOC leaders and employees. Whatever solutions we then come up with around racial justice and equity can only be as good and as effective as what we’ve allowed ourselves permission to feel and explore both individually and collectively at the emotional level. Only once we listen and account for those emotions can we truly create a restorative and holistic solution that directly addresses the power and privilege dynamics that make oppression and injustice flourish in our workplaces.
It’s no secret that racial inequity and injustice are woven into every facet of American society — from its institutions down to everyday systems, structures, and our daily interpersonal interactions. Race is often a leading indicator of disparities in the workplace and, within our wider society, a consistent indicator of a person’s success and wellness. That is a fact. However, we must internalize that deepening our understanding of emotions and our ability to unpack and express them are keys to a) keeping the conversation around racial equity and justice going in the workplace, b) creating organizational change and correcting past and present harm, and c) empowering leaders and employees to have authentic, connected, and transformative conversations about racial justice at work so that they/we can ultimately create workplaces that honor and uplift the fullness of our humanity.
