March 2023 - How to prepare for conversations about racism

Welcome to March’s Purple Sky Thinking for Leaders. Each month, this self-guided learning resource is an opportunity to discover a new way of doing something or to reflect on and refresh how you currently approach an aspect of your leadership.

In last month’s edition, we looked at ‘Building the foundations for brilliant conversations’ as an important step to leading successful conversations with your team about racism.

Racism continues in our organisations and society; you only have to look at the recently published report into The Met by Louise Casey to see that these issues are still prevalent and wide-ranging. We are all responsible for understanding, recognising, confronting, and changing it. We must face it, and as leaders, we are responsible for seeking out and removing the circumstances, behaviours and systems contributing to and maintaining racism in our workplaces.

By focusing on racism, I want to bring it forward as a conversation that matters and a conversation you should be leading with your team. This is about tackling racism in your work so you and your team can demonstrate you are actually doing that, changing the way things are done and influencing culture for long-term change.