Daring/Brave – or just being?

Recently I was asked what’s the most daring EDI intervention or action you have taken? In that moment I was stumped but it caused me to I reflect on what it has been like for me being an EDI leader. It seems to me that, compared to many people’s working lives, mine requires daring acts pretty much every day. I conclude the main characteristic you need to be an EDI leader is bravery.

One of the first things I did when new in my current role was pitch the need for a structural inequality development programme for the senior leadership. This brainchild of mine, co-designed with the amazing Ian Philips and Ola Lagunju, was the first that this leadership team and organisation had experienced.

On the day of the first session, I was terrified and excited. This was my putting into action what I had learnt as an activist and as a more junior member of staff. I knew meaningful and sustainable change started with leadership commitment. Why was I so frightened? This was exactly the job I had been asked to do. I had worked hard, collaborating well and using all my professional know how.

Well, as any person of colour will tell you, it feels like you are a walking target when you stand in front of a group of (mostly white) people and tell them that there is inequality all around us. That they work in and lead an organisation where racism exists and, as the leaders of the organisation, it is their job to act. Why so frightened though? Let’s have a think about what each of us minoritised senior leaders might have experienced.

My good friend and MD of this here Krystal Alliance, an amazing black man of Jamaican heritage, an activist, and a leader. Rob Neil OBE (Order of the British Empire or Obviously Black Everyday – you take your pick!) Tells me that some 10 years into his career he ‘became’ black. Before that he was ‘colourless’ believing that merit had no colour and if he worked hard enough, he would succeed. But, sadly he eventually realised that this just wasn’t the case.

I feel the same. Here I am not far off my half century. Sarah Guerra, the brown girl that started life in Edmonton Green on the Joyce Avenue Estate and is now Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at King’s college London.

Yes, I have always been bright and capable. My Trinidadian dad schooled me in arithmetic and my letters, so I arrived at school way more advanced than my peers. Yet I was passively and actively discouraged and urged to lower my ambitions and expectations. In parallel to that, I had the constant refrain at home, ‘You’ve got to be twice as good, Sarah.’

We (people of colour) must absorb and process all of that coded and not so coded messaging; what we today call implicit or unconscious bias. I existed in a world where my brown-skin was hardly ever something that figured out loud in a conversation, or even, for many years in my own mind. It was there as clear as day, but not something to be mentioned. I became a ‘black’ woman maybe in my early twenties when I started to build my own race consciousness and fought off the imposter syndrome demons.  

So, back to being terrified with our senior leadership. I was pleased that day that the response was overwhelmingly a thirst for knowledge and an appetite for action and since then, we have seen the oft talked about ‘buy in’ and seen real changes and improvements. 

Then some 18 months or so later came the brutal murder of George Floyd and it is fresh in my mind as I write, 3 days after Derek Chauvin was convicted. I am still surprised and curious as to why this particular, horrific event galvanised so many? What was different about this time that helped people see that action is needed? The systemic racism that enables everyday violence and exclusion of people of colour in so many ways is something that those of colour experience constantly. It is something we have been highlighting and fighting for a long time.

But something in 2020 led the world to realise and accept that we were moving too slowly for the toxic, pervasive all-consuming virus that is racism. That recruitment processes are likely not operating fairly, that in all walks of life if you are ‘of colour’ your life chances and success factors are diminished – not because of some genetic factor, not because you are less capable than others, but because of the barriers society has created and maintained. 

This last year has been intense – a global pandemic and the realisation that we have a similar level of dangerous toxicity with racism. People often, before, asked what the burning platform is and now it’s so obvious. Never in all my years has the heat been so strong. The eruption of world feeling and attention created a window of opportunity for real change. 

We (people of colour) must absorb and process all of that coded and not so coded messaging; what we today call implicit or unconscious bias. I existed in a world where my brown-skin was hardly ever something that figured out loud in a conversation, or even, for many years in my own mind. It was there as clear as day, but not something to be mentioned. I became a ‘black’ woman maybe in my early twenties when I started to build my own race consciousness and fought off the imposter syndrome demons.  

So, back to being terrified with our senior leadership. I was pleased that day that the response was overwhelmingly a thirst for knowledge and an appetite for action and since then, we have seen the oft talked about ‘buy in’ and seen real changes and improvements. 

Then some 18 months or so later came the brutal murder of George Floyd and it is fresh in my mind as I write, 3 days after Derek Chauvin was convicted. I am still surprised and curious as to why this particular, horrific event galvanised so many? What was different about this time that helped people see that action is needed? The systemic racism that enables everyday violence and exclusion of people of colour in so many ways is something that those of colour experience constantly. It is something we have been highlighting and fighting for a long time.

But something in 2020 led the world to realise and accept that we were moving too slowly for the toxic, pervasive all-consuming virus that is racism. That recruitment processes are likely not operating fairly, that in all walks of life if you are ‘of colour’ your life chances and success factors are diminished – not because of some genetic factor, not because you are less capable than others, but because of the barriers society has created and maintained. 

This last year has been intense – a global pandemic and the realisation that we have a similar level of dangerous toxicity with racism. People often, before, asked what the burning platform is and now its so obvious. Never in all my years has the heat been so strong. The eruption of world feeling and attention created a window of opportunity for real change. 

I have worked with many organisations to get leadership to pay attention, being forced, frustratingly often, to prove the point that race and other inequality exists by laboriously and repetitively identifying the evidence of inequality and its impact. I know many individuals, practitioners and networks still face this daily. Indeed, in the last few weeks we have seen a report commissioned and endorsed by the Government that seeks to set us back and undermine the progress in equality, diversity and inclusion work and thinking that we have painstakingly made in the last 30 years or so. So, it is still refreshing and frankly surprising when those in power in an organisation don’t need persuading. Where instead they demand that the roots of inequality are tackled, and they take on the work themselves. Something which 2020, in some organisations at least (though not, it would appear, our reactionary government) seems to have shifted us towards.

Now in my 4^th year in my current role I am optimistic about the progress we are making; I know us to be an organisation of enormous heart and ambition.  But like so many places we are also complex and can be slow and ponderous. As a senior leader I am in a position of privilege, somewhat buffered from resistance and hostility and deferred to in a way that more junior colleagues are not.  However, racism and sexism or the fear of them still touch me most days. I see it when my actions and words are judged differently to a white and/or male peer. When I offer ideas and see them ignored until someone else says them and – even more jarring – when the responder starts their response with a surprised-” Actually, I agree with you”. When I get feedback about how confident, knowledgeable and prepared I am or single minded in advocating for the EDI agenda as if these are bad things!

As a woman of colour, and a human being I attest to being regularly exhausted by the need to second guess how I might be received or interpreted. Not to mention by the overwhelming task that is dismantling structural inequality. And structural inequality is real, no matter what denial and delusion the Sewell report writers are in!

Have a think about what you spend your time thinking about and preparing for each day, when starting a new role? Or meeting new people? For those of us in ‘the minority’, that minoritisation plays into our preparation. 

I consciously consider how to be seen and heard for my knowledge, talent, and capabilities (but not too much). How to ensure my colour, my gender, my sexual orientation and my age don’t act as barriers.  I specifically think ‘how I will prevent people judging me through their default assumptions and biases’?

The summer of 2020 helped us all understand that there is a difference between not being racist and choosing to be actively anti-racist. How are you making that a reality? Here are some suggestions, as they say on Strictly, in no particular order….

• Ensure EDI-related issues are in any and every issue of your ‘all staff communications’ this helps build equality consciousness and anti-racism into your organisational DNA.
• Support and empower your staff networks. If you still have these working on a voluntary basis – check yourself – reward and recognise this valuable contribution to your organisational effectiveness. 
• Engage with the training opportunities on offer and if there aren’t any, find/make some. 
• Have conversations and commit to self-education.  There is no shortage of resources to help you in this area. There is no excuse for ignorance these days. Here’s a great one https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX3of_VgqO-NlaskweLs7nw
• Play your part in making wherever you work a safe and welcoming place for everyone.
• Think about the roles and power you have.  Are you a budget holder? A hiring manager? You can take direct action to examine how these things are supporting your ambitions to tackle inequality. 
• Pay attention to who is speaking, notice who is around you, choose to disrupt your social media or reading with different voices, and call out racism/sexism/homophobia/ableism and microaggressions when you see them.
• Most of all as you walk through life, ask yourself: what is my contribution? How do I contribute to the problem? What power do I hold?  More importantly, how do I contribute to the solution? 

This last year many have woken up to what I have absorbed and understood over my whole life and from 20+ years in different workplaces. That it is the everyday reality for minorities in workplaces to be or feel ‘othered’. That is why diversity – the mix of people we have in the organisation – and inclusion –  how people feel when they are here – are such critical issues.  If nothing else, just think about all that wasted energy that could be going towards furthering your business/organisation aims! So – what’s the most daring thing I’ve done? Every day I am me, I challenge the status quo, overcome resistance, show up, and do an amazing job.