| “We desperately need more leaders who are committed to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are self-aware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear.” ~ Brené Brown |
Hi everyone!
Before the pandemic, Brené Brown visited companies across America asking: What do you need so as to survive? The answer was saturated from the start - we need more courageous leadership. Further research highlighted that, far from being something innate or God-given, Courageous Leadership is observable, measurable and teachable. This means we can all learn how to become more courageous in our leadership. In fact, there were four key skill sets associated with it.
Today I want to explore why these are the four key skill sets that are needed to meaningfully tackle Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our organisations.
1. Upping our tolerance for vulnerability
Brené is perhaps best known for her reframing of vulnerability as courage. And if you haven't wrapped your head around this yet, then head to her TEDtalk. She best defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. These are all things that we need to get to grips with as we tackle DEI issues.
Uncertainty - For two key reasons. Firstly, because there isn't a cookie-cutter toolkit we can use as we are dealing with people with all of their complex uniqueness. And, secondly, because when organisations ask me for certainty in their DEI approaches, I can't give it to them. This is an emerging paradigm and we don't have all of the answers yet. Which leads me to...
Risk - We are going to have to take risks so as to succeed. This may involve falling on our faces in the service of learning. But best to have skin in the game and to be trying. (If we could just let the folks on social media know that too, that would be awesome).
Emotional exposure - Possibly the one that is most missing from many DEI strategies. We need to engage our hearts and minds in this work.
In the words of Tarana Burke: "I don’t believe your antiracist work is complete or valid or useful if you haven’t engaged with Black humanity". Less tools and process, more heart.
2. Living into our values
Brené makes the call for us to actually live our values not just profess them. It is easy for an organisation to say they are pro DEI. It is really bloody difficult to effect meaningful and sustainable change in our organisations. And hence integrity is paramount. We need to live our DEI work, operationalise it in to our organisation, give feedback to each other on it. It needs to be more than a Twitter handle or PR story.
3. Operationalising trust
We need to create cultures in which people can be brave. This requires trust. We need to, as leaders, know how to create trust in our organisations or rebuild trust when things go wrong. This ladders directly up to the extent to which people feel like they can be vulnerable, take risks and own and learn from any failures.
4. Resilience
Because we will get it wrong! I continue to be scared of a public shaming and we do live in a culture where people are being no-platformed for things they said twenty years ago. However, we are going to mess it up sometimes and we need to be resilient enough to lean in to that, get curious about what went wrong and learn from it.
Dare to LeadTM is the curriculum that Brené and her team built to teach Courageous Leadership. We're running an open Dare to LeadTM programme in London on 7th/8th/9th June where we will be teaching these skillsets and exploring what they mean for DEI. There are a couple of spaces left - if you're interested, email Liz for details or register here.
Another great resource is Brené's Dare to LeadTM podcast, on Spotify
We had a great time at the IPA's inaugural Talent and Diversity Conference last week, listening to incredible speakers David Olusoga, Elif Sharak and Jaspreet Kaur and delivering a workshop about Visible and Invisible Disabilities in the Workplace. It was such an inspiration to be in a room of people dedicated to the advancedment of DEI in the advertising industry. While there is clearly a lot of work still to be done, it is encouraging to feel the energy for positive change.
That's all for now!
Team THC xx