How to Have Conversations about Racism with Your Team.
In March, I published a guide on How to prepare for conversations about racism. This leadership guide aimed to prepare you for this. If you haven’t read it yet or wish to revisit it before diving in, you can find it here <link>. It will help you establish your own understanding and relationship with racism, and you will be better prepared for this next activity.
I am a White, heterosexual woman who has a mixed background (French and Welsh) but because of this background, I have never been subject to racism. I’m sure that I’ll have experienced discrimination or disadvantage as a woman and as someone who was raised in a single parent household, but I have never been subject to racism.
So, who am I to talk about this subject?
I’m not a researcher, or specialist and I am not someone with lived experience of racism, but I am committed to being an ally and being part of a solution rather than upholding the current situation. I also know that as a Leader, you may be fearful of stepping into this space even though you want to do something. I know because I’ve been there myself.
I know that I am not perfect; I haven’t done enough in the past, especially when in my leadership role and I’m sure there are times now that I am still not doing enough or not aware enough of the errors I am making. But if I do nothing, don’t try to do something differently, then I will remain part of the problem. I’m making an active commitment to do better, be better and lead better.
This guide has been created to help you build your confidence to make a difference. By taking a proactive step, you are demonstrating your commitment and showing your team what can be done.
I’m not developing this guide in isolation, I am actively involving a former colleague who is an expert and works in the field of change for all types of discrimination, with an emphasis on racism. Tara Leach, Senior Advisor (Equality Charters) with Advanced HE is going to input to and review this guide, and we are also recording a podcast covering this topic and key questions to support this.
We’re not going to be able to cover all aspects of conversations about racism here. It is not a step-by-step agenda that you can tick off. It will point you in the right direction, get you thinking about what you need to do, and give you the encouragement to step forward.
Let’s get started.
Your role as leader.
We covered this in the preparation guide in March, but it is worth refreshing a few key points.
· Make sure you have prepared.
· Pay attention to your own knowledge, privilege, and biases.
· Be deliberate about your intent to lead these conversations.
· If you don’t feel ready, prepare some more first. But don’t let not feeling 100% ready hold you back from starting as I’m not sure you’ll ever be 100% ready.
You are not going to fix racism but by choosing to do something to change the conditions that enable racism, you are being active in changing the current state.
Make use of the support systems that you have in your organisation and share openly with your manager and those who lead on this focus area in your business that you are going to do this. Seek out other colleagues who have done the same or are willing to be there to support you.
Here’s a great Ted Talk by Amanda Kemp to look at conversations about race and racism as a journey, not a battle. This is about holding space for transformation and handling yourself in the conversation, this would be great to share with your team in your preparations.
Creating safe spaces for proactive and reactive conversations
As covered in the preparation guide, a trusting and supporting environment across the team is essential.
Your team needs to feel safe enough to share, challenge, and be uncomfortable.
Let’s pause there for a moment and look at what we mean by uncomfortable. What this means is speaking up to change things, not accepting or maintaining the status quo, it’s about being fearless. Yes, that is scary, but it can be done and is the only thing that will change things. This is beautifully outlined here by Luvvie Ajayi Jones on Ted. What I take away from this, is you need to allow yourself to jump, and you need to help others do the same too.
You should also consider this great talk by Caprice Hollins – Caprice looks at how White people can move conversations of racism forward and helpfully challenges some of the myths. You might think you are demonstrating you aren’t racist but are you really acting in a way that acknowledges difference and changes things? This is a very powerful talk.
Conversations about racism will be uncomfortable. Not every moment and these moments will be different for everyone – but let’s consider how uncomfortable it has been and remains for our colleagues from racially minoritised communities, who face racism.
Part of changing things is looking at the reality demonstrated by this discomfort – it should feel uncomfortable, this is a deeply troubling subject.
How to create safe spaces.
Do your team operate in a way that is safe and respectful most of the time? If they do, then you should be able to start. If they don’t, then you need to work on developing this first – see February’s guide on building the foundations for brilliant conversations.
Engage with the team as a group and 1:1 about your intent to start these conversations and share why you want to do this. Give everyone time to reflect and encourage questions. This will help you understand where people are.
Invite people to take part, make this optional for now – forcing people into a space they don’t want to be in won’t move this along – start with active and willing participants.
Set expectations and boundaries for the conversation. This means being clear about what is and isn’t acceptable but acknowledging that people might get things wrong. If the intent is not to harm or be offensive, then this openly creates the space to learn. Equally, if the intent is harmful or disrespectful the team needs to know this will be handled and not tolerated – they also need to see this handled if it needs to be.
Encourage curiosity, questions, and collective enquiry. You don’t need to know all the answers, but you do need to facilitate the conversation so answers and understanding can be established.
Encourage participation – draw people into the discussion or action planning so you give everyone a chance to contribute. The caveat here also needs to be OK for people to say they aren’t sure or don’t feel ready to share their thoughts or feelings on something. There should be no judgment, this might just be people checking on how safe the environment is and establishing their own boundaries.
Check-in – during the conversation, at the end, and afterward. See how people have found taking part, what feedback they have, and how to build on what’s happened. This is equally true of those who have chosen not to take part.
Keep the conversation going, return to it, build on it, and learn from it. Agree on points that you could take action on and how you’ll demonstrate impact from that conversation.
Ideas to start conversations about racism with your team.
By choosing a specific topic, you give focus to the conversation. This will make it easier to prepare and keep the conversation on track.
If your intent is to have a conversation about racism as a tick-in-the-box, one-off conversation and then never discuss it again - then you shouldn’t be doing this.
This is about starting a series of conversations and exploring issues across your team through some focused topics. This will then identify future discussions and/or actions.
By starting with a few focused conversations, this will identify future areas for your conversations.
Topic idea 1 – Privilege and how this maintains racism.
Topic idea 2 – Is there balance and representation in our own team?
Topic idea 3 – What actions would we take to address race underrepresentation in our team? How do we feel about taking deliberate action?
Topic idea 4 – How can bias impact our decision-making?
These are challenging topics, but they are broader ways to bring the conversation of racism directly to the team. It’s a way to test the safe spaces and start actively having conversations about racism and how this is impacting or experienced in your team.
Taking care of those with experience or exposure to racism when actively talking about racism.
There may not be anyone in your team who is part of an underrepresented ethnicity. If this is the case, then this is a good reason to start these conversations. You should not only be looking to do this because you have people of colour in your team.
However, if you do have people in your team from an underrepresented race or face racism, it is your responsibility to ensure they are supported and that they are not marginalised or disadvantaged further because of you starting these conversations with your team. There needs to be a safe space for them, whether they are in the conversations or not.
It is important that you share with them your positive intent for starting these conversations and be ready to answer their questions. They are not to be excluded from these conversations, but it is OK to give them the option to remove themselves, supporting them in whatever way is best for them.
They may have a clear idea of how they would like to participate. They may want to see how things progress before they get involved or they may want to actively participate and help you chair the conversations. Talk to them and listen to what they have to say and keep them updated, whatever they choose to do. These boundaries can be discussed with the team too for clarity, if this is something they want but it is important that you maintain and support the reality that it is not them who is responsible for solving or resolving any issues.
If you have no lived experience of racism, you will not know how this will feel. You certainly shouldn’t be relying on someone who has a lived experience of it to explain, explore, or expose this for the benefit of others. Look at how to facilitate understanding and empathy through resources you can access (some were provided in March) not through your colleagues who have experienced harm from racism.
Identifying opportunities for change.
This is not about turning these conversations immediately into an action plan. Initially, I’d recommend that your focus be on building a better understanding, knowledge, awareness, and a collective intent to change things. However, the point of these conversations is to enable change.
Therefore, alongside being active in the conversations, start identifying opportunities for future conversations that lead to a discussion about actions the team wants to support and start implementing.
Identify these opportunities for change and then start working with the team on bringing these into your team goals and action plans. Start bringing the actions and desire for change into your normal everyday work, so it becomes part of how you do things.
What next
Take some time to plan your approach. Then, get started.
After each conversation, take time out to hear the feedback from the team and identify areas you can make further improvements in as well as recognising where things went well.
Share these thoughts with the team and build on that together. Share with those who chose not to take part, if they want you to do this, so they are still included.
Seek out support where you get stuck or need more help. There should be people in your organisation who can help you or perhaps in support organisations for your industry. If there is no support internally then talk to senior leaders about how to access external support.
Tara and I have recorded a podcast that will be looking at this subject in more detail and it takes a Q&A style. I’ll share this as soon as it is ready but if you have any questions at all that aren’t covered by the podcast – please do get in touch and we’ll try our best to answer your specific question.
Contact me directly at anwen@purpleskyconsulting.co.uk.