Transcript for 442_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190607.mp3 Processed on: 2019-06-07T19:22:27.262Z S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results Path to JSON: 2019…06…442_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190607.mp3.778427195.json Path to text: transcripts/2019/06/442_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190607.txt xero Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of trick Otello, Sis, if you split hairs with me over whether you missed today’s show disrupt unconscious bias. Our panel encourages you to dive deep into your own biases and how they influence you and your brand, Then deconstruct and disrupt those you no longer want. They’re Joe Shoffner at International Centre for Research on Women Minal, BOPE IA with brevity and wit, and Sarah Boysen from communities in schools that was recorded at 1990 si. Then you’re normal is my trigger except without blame that you’re normal is not everyone’s. This panel helps you recognize differences and manage across generations. They’re Barbara Grant with Crux Consulting Consortium and Eva Corley from Food Lifeline that’s also recorded at 19 and TC Tony stay too pissed in Brussels, Responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash Pursuant by witness Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers regulars wetness cps dot com My goodness and by text to give mobile donations made easy text NPR to 444999 I got that one already is enough. Here are Joe Shoffner, Middle back-up Aya and Sarah Boysand from 1990. Si. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 1990 Si. That’s the non-profit Technology Conference. We’re in Oregon, Portland, Oregon, at the convention center. This interview, like all our 1990 si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising. Tools to help non-profits make an impact with me are Joe Shoffner, Mental BOPE Aya and Sarah Boysen. Joe is senior communications specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women. Excuse me. Mental is principal consultant at brevity and wit, and Sarah is director of digital strategy for communities in schools. Welcome everyone. Thank you for your pleasure. Have you, uh, we’re talking about your seminar topic, which is disrupting unconscious bias as we grow our brand. Uh, let’s start down at the end. Sarah. What? Before we unpacked What? Unconscious biases? What What’s what’s the trouble? What are non-profits not getting right about growing their brand that you wish they would? Well, I would say a lot of non-profits are really struggling Teo identify where some of the problems are coming from. In terms of things like hiring a promotion in terms of the communications, I think a lot of organizations are starting to see that diversity isn’t something that just could be thrown around is a buzzword. But it’s something that they actually have to embody within the organizations, and from there it usually flows through the word. Okay, mental. You want to add to the headline on the leave? Um, yeah. I mean, I agree with everything. I think I’m sorry agree with everything, Sarah said. And I think in this day and age, brands do need to be very conscious of diversity and equity and inclusion if they want to have a brand that’s still relevant. I think thie millennial general generation is probably the most inclusive generation of it’s time. America is more diverse than it’s ever been. And if you want to appeal to all segments of the United States, if you want to be a global NGO, and in the end, the in the era of social media where a misstep can go viral, it’s really important that brands protect themselves by having an awareness of how unconscious bias could have affected their brand. Okay, Joe, you want to lead us in a swell, I think the one point, I would add is, is that unconscious bias within a browned is both individual and group. So in order to work as a team to tackle unconscious biases that come out in your brand, you have to alert look internally as an individual and as a team. Okay, let’s define unconscious bias. What do we mean? Sure, So they’re going to throw it to me since I have the degree in clinical psychology. And so I’m technically supposed to be able to do this. So it’s It’s easier with slides and with visuals, to be fair, if you are a picture of the brain. But I’m gonna I’m gonna do this via just speaking and see how this goes. Basically, within the human brain there, two systems of thought. There’s automatic thinking, and there’s deliberate thinking. Dahna condiment talks about this and his work thinking fast and slow. I prefer the words automatic and deliberate, because you can have delivered thinking that is fast as well. And unconscious bias happens because thie automatic thinking pathways, which air dictated by the limbic system, which contains the amygdala and the hippocampus. And those are areas that are really responsible for creating emotion and creating memories tend to fire together. And what that allows you to do is to make quick split second decision. So, for example, if you’re in a dark room and you you walk in and it looks like there’s a snake on the floor, you would recoil. Now, if you turn on the lights, you may find that that snake is actually a rope. And so you’ve based your data, your based your reaction on what your brain has perceived and made a split second decision that’s protected yourself. We’re talking about such decisions about people. Yeah, so if people in groups, yeah, so if you are not exposed to people of a certain race. But all of your data has been for movies that portray that raised negatively you may have if you meet somebody of that race, your initial reaction, maybe based on poor data at the same time, that automatic system can protect you. So I used to be a rape crisis counselor in a previous life, and a lot of women have said that they had the sense they had a flag that said maybe this guy was dangerous, but they didn’t want to be biased against them. And that’s not the time to just go against your bias is what we really talked about in our session was that if you want to mitigate biases, you have to start employing that more deliberate system of your brain. And bring your unconscious biases, too, your awareness, and really start to look at whether you’re basing those decisions on accurate data or not. If you’re a woman who’s in a position where you physically feel threatened, you need to get yourself out of that space first. But then reflect back as to whether your fear was based on something realistic or whether it was based on a past memory that was maybe inaccurate for that situation. Or worse, just something culturally that understood. Yeah, and grossly. It could be grossly and actually wrong, and but it it could be really accurate. And it it’s up to every individual to really do the work to explore where their biases air coming from and be able to respond from from their deliberate thinking from their from their executive functioning part of the rain. Rather then just that primal urge of their brain. Okay. And then Sarah on I may even be asking youto repeat what already said, But I’m trying to I’m processing this. And you all have been thinking about this for months. Relate this back now to brand, please. Yeah. So in terms of the brand, I mean one thing I can say that, at least in my organization, that community schools, what we’re doing is we’ve implemented diversity equity and inclusion work. So what we were doing is we’ve identified a taste of the basic level that there’s some work that we need to do organizationally, right? So we recognize that as we work with one point 6,000,000 students across the country, that each of us individually may, you know, we all hold biases, and it’s up to us to do that work to ensure that we’re able to better serve our students and better understand their circumstances. So what is happening at my organization is that our board of directors is actually mandated that we implement d I work across all of our affiliates across 26 states and D. C. So there’s work that’s being done from the top down and also from the bottom up. So what we’re doing as well is that we’re we’re going to our affiliates and we’ve actually way have affiliate representatives that are on a d. I planning team. And what they’re doing is they’re actually creating a tool kit, and they’re creating actual work flow for the entire organisation for us to follow in order for us to better serve the students in our community. So this sounds like I mean, even though I asked you about Bram, this sounds like mission. I mean, it goes right to it, really is more of your work and your what your mission is. Absolutely. I feel that if you can’t address a lot of the things that go on in terms of diversity equity inclusion, I almost feel like you really can’t as an organization served. You know, many of the populations that way Do you want to help? So d I needs to be identified as a core value of the organization? Absolutely. It’s time for a break. Pursuant. The art of First Impressions had a combined strategy, analytics and creative to captivate new donors and keep them coming back. It’s all about donorsearch acquisition. It’s on the listener landing page. You want to make that terrific first impression so that your donors stay with you. They’re attracted to you and they stay retention as well as attraction. You’ll find it at Tony dahna. I’m a slash pursuing with a capital P for please. Now back to disrupt unconscious bias. I mean for a non-profit. Hold on. I want to find out what his communities in schools do. What’s the work? S o Right now we serve one point 6,000,000 students across the country. Essentially, how it’s structured is we play psycho. Nader’s within schools. So we work with school district and schools and state offices. We have sight coordinators in schools that helped afield. Resource is between the schools in the community to help the students and their families. Okay, pulling together resource is from local communities. You’re in 26 states. Yes, we’re 26 states in D. C. Okay. Community resource is for the benefit of students. Yes, So it is. It’s academic and community resource is so good example would be like if a student comes in and their and their families facing homelessness instead of the student putting that responsibility on the family and the student, the site coronated will help so one identify what some of their needs are and work with those in the school as well as some of the folks in the community to ensure that the students able to get the resources that they need so they could focus on school. We’re gonna know I was just going to put a finer point on Sarah’s comments and say that you know, for non-profits how you execute your mission is your brand. And so that’s why I like if there’s bias and how you’re executing your mission, that is a reflection of your brand reputation than in the space and goes back to, you know, how do you want to be known in your community in the country? Okay. Okay. Um, so from your session description, your dive deeper into our own biases on how they influence us on the point being made that we’re not only talking about organizationally, but also individually, Um, how did they influence us? I mean, it could be positive. My my thinking is that it’s I mean, I think, is that it’s mostly negative. But it could be positive, I don’t know. Or is it all negative? How did the job your turn? How does how does how did these biases influence us? What’s don’t go by me? What’s the consensus of the pattern? Sure. So I think one thing mental untouched on was the snake versus rope on DH. You know, applying that to Ah non-profit setting where it shows up is actually because there’s so many things going on at one time that you have to make decisions quickly so you don’t have a lot of time. It feels like to process and to think about these decisions that you’re making so to an extent, what we wanted to focus on them. The session was how to bring that out and discuss it in an honest way with those in your organization and also focus on who is in the room who is at the table discussing this because you do get caught in these cycles sometimes of having the same people making these decisions, whether it’s events, whether it’s what photos you’re choosing. Teo, display the Bowler hat brand. What project you’re taking on and a great way to mitigate that is bringing other people in from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different views and how you work together to come up with solutions of that. Create that change. Okay, the how and the who Let’s talk about some of the house. How do you bring it up? So one of the things that we’re working on at I c e w is the International Centre for Research on Women is an event checklist. So we’re aware that with all these quick decisions we’re making, sometimes you bypass the thought process and how to, uh, figure out how who’s on the panel for the events on DH? The checklist brings into mind, um, you know, who are you bringing in for the planning stage? I think that was the most important point that we came out with is who’d you bring in the room? And then you look at, um what photos? For the invitations you look at, you have considerations of who’s on the panel. So, for example, if you have a panel on talking about youth and there’s no one represented who is in the category of youth, right, so, uh, kind of bringing all those perspectives to the table. Okay, Sarah, anything you can add about who should be in this conversation? Yeah, I’d liketo piggyback on what Joe was talking about. So for me, like working in the use sector, what I’ve seen is a lot of times you have people who are making decisions that, uh, that that impact other people. And one of the things that I really want to challenge, not only just ourselves, but other non-profits do is to really allow the people that we’re serving to be the experts on their lives like, yes, we have the resources and the tools to maybe empower them, um, to shift course of change. But I really do feel that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by not bringing the people that we serve into the conversation to be a part of the solution. And that’s one of the things that including when their school age Absolutely that’s do-it-yourself. Absolutely. And I for us, I mean, there’s definitely a perception that young people aren’t ready for leadership right now, but many of them are already leaders in serving in their communities, and many of them are very well versed in what’s going on and some of the problems at their peers phase. So we’ve actually found it to be incredibly powerful toe bring in students early on in the process. When we’re doing the programs, when we’re doing projects and asking them, Hey, what is going on? And what do you feel would actually be a viable solution? And we actually just did a student in it. Evasion Challenge in Las Vegas and we had four students. Three of them were from Charlotte, and 11 was from Michigan. And they actually presented ideas that they worked with on a student team to help mitigate some of the issues that are happening at their school on. It was a great opportunity, one for adults to kind of just sit back and listen to these students. But it was also another opportunity where we were actually e-giving Students of resource is to be able to actually create change in their own neighborhood mental about how to raise your advice, how to raise this in in your organization. Yeah, it’s an interesting question because I think it’s sort of organically being raised in a lot of non-profits right now because, like I said, the younger generation of employees who are coming in are very aware of this and really wanted When you have an intergenerational office, Yeah, and and I think, really, when we’re talking about building diversity, equity inclusion when we’re talking about building inclusive cultures, what we’re talking about, his power dynamics. And so you really need to be able to study power to be successful in any diversity and inclusion initiative. And that means working with leadership. If leadership is not bought in that diversity and inclusion needs to be a core value of the organization, it is unfair to put the burden of change on people who have lesser power. And and that’s really critically important for organizations. Understand, once leadership is bought in, then it needs to be like any other operations or business unit where there is actual commitment in time and money and metrics for progress. How do you get this buy-in What? So much of the power is white and male. Yeah. Andi, let’s assume the leadership is because a lot of it is not all but a lot is Yeah. How do you How do you go to the CEO? The white male CEO and try to get this D I core value buy-in from? Yeah, the guy whose power he perceives is being threatened. Yeah, so not assumes. Powers xero some, but But ah, lot of guys do. Yeah. So how do you overcome that? Yeah, so that’s a big question. So I’m gonna take it in multiple ways. Got two and 1/2 minutes now we have more than yeah. No, that’s a really good question. And I think it gets to their multiple approaches. First of all, like somebody died. So I would not recommend somebody like me because I’m much better at strategy than I am as an executive coach or facilitator. I think it takes, um, Riel s o. I worked with a lot of diversity inclusion. Consultants are facilitators, and they’re exceptional at their ability to have a conversation at that level That doesn’t trigger people’s defensive isn’t Isn’t this almost essential? Tohave an outsider facility trained facilitator. Sarah, you’re shaking. Did you did you use a a facilitator? Yeah. So currently way Do bring in outside facility. Other conversations I’ve had with other guests. They’ve said that it’s almost essential because it’s doing conversation. Could break down. Yeah, rapidly. And you need you need sort of an outside there. But, I mean, I think of a diversity inclusion consultant almost like a family therapist, like their job is to give you that outside perspective and help you to see things in a new way on DH, then within, like, sort of having those conversations. There’s multiple things that you could speak to. Some people like to go the fear and avoided through, which is what I mentioned before about brand reputation. You know, if you want your organization to continue to be successful in the 21st century, you need to get on top of this. Bring a Brown. Once gave a talk at Were Human last year, where she said, If you are a leader who is not talking about diversity and inclusion, you will not be a leader in five years from now. And if you are going to talk about it, you were going to mess up and you were going to fall flat on your face and you were going to make mistakes. And you need to learn how to be an evolved enough leader to make public mistakes. And like rumbled through it and get through to the other side. So it takes a lot of it takes a very mature leader to be able to do this. The second part is to make what people like to call the business case, which is There’s research that shows that shone and this is from the for-profit sector. But companies that have diverse product teams have three times as many patents as companies that don’t. So the leveraging diversity will inevitably help your programs, your operations, your bottom line. And that’s really important to know, especially as we live in a more globalized world. I mean, I remember growing up is an Indian American. I didn’t think most of the television and most of the magazines were relevant to me. I didn’t buy any of that stuff. Nobody got my dollars because nobody was marketing to me on the third way is really too, you know, I think that there are enough white men like Joe, and you probably like you, Tony, who are you who are men of conscience? You know who who understand that you shouldn’t. There is a business case to be made, but you should just write this was the right thing to do for God’s. You shouldn’t always have to make the business case to do the right thing. And more importantly, like how, like, Why don’t you want to create a place where you wouldn’t recruit the best talent? You know, like Sara shared an experience today in our session. I’ve had a similar experience of being in organizations where we wanted to give our best. But the lack of an inclusive culture made us leave. And so you’re losing exceptional talent because of unconscious bias or because of your lack of commitment to including creating an inclusive culture. And so if you want to create the best products and services, if you want to have the best programs, if you want to have the greatest impact, this is is absolutely critical to all of those goals. And so diversity Inclusion isn’t something you do because it’s nice. It’s something you do because it’s mission critical and a strategic goal for every organization. I feel like the conversation has been raised to another level just within the past few years, and that may be the result of black lives matter now metoo. More recently, metoo No, because for so many years it was just It’s the right thing to do. But now, on DH, that was unavailing, obviously, to the white power structure, white male power structure, because things weren’t changing. So doing the right thing wasn’t sufficient a za motivation necessary but not sufficient. But now you know we’re so buy-in next level, we’re making the casing in different ways. That you can argue should have been, should not have been necessary. But Aziz said change wasn’t happening. So, you know, making the business case, for instance, Yeah, If you have to bring it, bring it to the bottom line and say you risked relevance, you risked losing talent. Well, I think it’s a communications professional, and other communications professionals here can speak to this. It’s important to speak to the values of your audience, and I think it’s it’s hubris on the part of people who actually care about these things to believe that the other person must think like you in order to be able to enact diversity inclusion initiative. I really think that Dee and I needs to take the same approach that truth campaign took to smoking. They created a multitude of ads, and they basically was like, We’re going to target everybody. We’re going to target everybody based on whatever they care about. And so when you would see the ad, maybe one out of 20 adds spoke to you, but then they got 20 different archetypes that they could speak to. So they weren’t saying, Oh, you have to care about this one thing in order for you to buy into this way of living. And I think diversity and inclusion needs to take that approach that different people are going to be motivated by day, different things. And we need to be able to speak to all of those motivations instead of sort of rank ordering and saying This motivation is better and more noble than this other motivation. I think that’s really judgmental, and it doesn’t move anything forward. Okay, Joe, we haven’t heard from you in a while. What you want to contribute? So, uh, we focused a lot of the session today on, uh, workplace, but I would extend that to say, particularly for white males. Um, this is a conversation that I think needs to be had in the home. A school on the street because of some of the issues that we’re facing. It worked. We bring in tow work. It’s not just something that comes up at work. So it’s something where to have a coffee with someone and and just try to shift perspective a little bit. And there’s in the us in particular is a lot of this attitude of pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Um, which, yes, that’s worked for some. But there are others who don’t start out at the same level where there is race, gender, economic way, same level. But you don’t have the same opportunities, right? Don’t have. You don’t have the power. Yeah, So it I think by avoiding, um, even reflecting on that, that’s where the biases come in. And that’s also where we continue doing the same thing, Um, at work, at home. So it’s like, how do we create that shift? And part of that? Is this through honest, open communication? Ok, uh, we still have, uh, another two minutes or so. Two and 1/2 minutes. What else have you done your panel yet? Yes, you have. Okay, So what else you had 75 minutes with in front of an audience. What else did you talk about? That we didn’t talk about here or more detail that we didn’t go into enough. We got a couple of bones talk about white privilege of fragility. Sametz. Well, actually, actually want anything I want to bring up was we had a bingo card which included some of these terms, but we did have, ah, exercise on privilege. So essentially, we made some statements. Uh, and people would raise their hand if they felt that reflected on them on DH. Keep their hand down if they felt like it didn’t which there’s been a breach has such a sure such as? I have no college student loans. There were some that raised their hand, Some that didn’t, um that one’s a little easier to answer than others. Like I’ve never been bullied. Some might think, Uh, yes, I’ve kind of been believed, but it hasn’t been to the level of what I think. Other people have been bullied. So what we focused on through that was that it’s a little more complex. It’s not binary either, or sometimes the decisions made in those moments, um, are more complicated. And I think That’s kind of what we want to focus on here. Um, so relate this back to white supremacy. Yeah, sure. Um so white supremacy, white power, White power, White privilege. Okay. Yeah, No. So a lot of, for the most part, this is just to reflect on the fact that the privileges are there. I think that’s Ah, it seems simple, but for a lot of there are a lot of people who will not associate themselves with privilege. Or they’ll say, But I grew up in a poor area without reflecting on the fact that maybe someone else of a different skin color or different gender also did. But it’s staggered. So that and this white powers, you say, white privilege. It’s structural. It’s ingrained in our systems and our institutions, um, and and too tow have those conversations. And to create change, we really have to be reflective and admit that they exist. Okay, way. Have another minute left. So let’s, uh let’s give the wrap up sorrow that I asked you to start with you. Have you mind wrapping up what you want to leave people with? I just really want to challenge people to do the hard work of really looking within themselves to identify any bias is that they may have on and just know that it’s a lifelong commitment. I think a lot of people go into it thinking like, Oh, I’m going to do, you know, for three hour sessions this year and I’m going to be woke check, Yeah, and you know, I definitely want to challenge people, not to feel the pressure to be quote unquote woke. I feel like that’s a word a lot of people have been throwing around recently, and I just think that people need to just do the work consistently in order to be able to change their perspective on different peoples in places and things. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much for all three of you. Each of you think they are. Joe Schoffner, senior communications specialist at the International Centre for Research on Women. Manabu piela, principal consultant at Brevity and Wit, and Sarah Boysen, director of digital strategy for communications for communities in schools. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks to you for being with Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of 1990 sea as non-profit technology conference in Portland, Oregon. This interview. Like all our 1990 si interviews brought to you by, or partners that ActBlue free fund-raising tools to help non-profits making an impact. Thanks for being with us. We need to take a break When you see piela CPAs, it’s in the title. You know what they do? Do you need one? Do you need a new one? If you think you might need help or your tinkering around the edges of maybe changing accountants, check them out. You goto weinger cps dot com. Do your due diligence there, of course, and then pick up the phone. Talk to the partner. Yet each tomb who you know because he’s been on the show twice already and he’s going to be coming back. He’s not high pressure. He’ll explain whether they can help you. All right, that’s the process. Get started at Wagner’s cps dot com. Now time for Tony’s Take two. My video is pissed in Brussels. Yes, uh, manic in piss, and that is what it’s called. I’m not being crude, so if you turned off well, if you were to turn off the volume or shut me down, then there’s no point in me saying Don’t because you’ve already done it. But for those of you were still here, like on the fence. Don’t be offended, because that is what it’s called. There’s a statue in Brussels, Belgium, called manic in piss. Okay, maybe it’s peace in Belgium on these manic and peace, but it’s spelled like this. So, um yeah, so I got I got assaulted. I got assaulted by the little statue. Um, he pissed on me and you can see it. You can see it on the video at tony martignetti dot com and then go to Brussels, Belgium, and get some for yourself. Just keep your eyes in your mouth close. That’s all on DH, that is Tony’s Take two. Let’s do the live. Listen, 11 the, uh And you know what comes after that? So the live love goes out. Thank you for listening. I’m grateful. The live love to those of you listening at, uh, Friday 1 p.m. Eastern time. And whatever time zone you might be in, the love goes out to you and the podcast pleasantries My gratitude to our over 13,000 podcast listeners. Sometimes I wonder why you stay with with all the I don’t know the talking about piss and everything else. But you have you have you still here? So the pleasantries go to you and you should stay. Don’t Don’t wonder why Leave? Leave the wondering and the and the worrying to me about that you just stick around Ana. Now here is from 19 NTC. Your normal is my trigger. Welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio coverage of 19 1990 Si. That’s the non-profit Technology Conference 2019. We are in Portland, Oregon, at the convention Center. This interview, like all our 1990 si interviews, is brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits make an impact. My guests now our Barbara Grant. She is CEO of Crux Consulting Consortium sitting next to me and even Gourlay. She’s director of information systems at Food Lifeline Barbara Evey kruckel. Thank you. Thanks for having a pleasure. Pleasure. Your topic is a little provocative Little bit, er when you’re normal is my trigger unpacking multiple generations and white privilege. Let’s start with you. What? Uh what do we need to know? Give us Give us the headline in the lead. Well, what’s going on here? You fundamentally, you have a normal that you view the world of particular way. That is your way of viewing the world. And you think that’s the real way. That’s the truth of the world on you interact with it like it’s absolute, but you don’t appreciate. You do sort of live your life like other people’s normals of the same as your normal. And that causes real problems for people, particularly in regards to white, privileged white. People think that they’re the normal and they don’t attend to the concerns of people of color, and people of color lose out, significantly weaken all these different measures of public health will show that. But it’s very hard for people to see why their behavior is white people houses impact on people of color, and we’re going to delve into the dynamics, underlie the and really give people some access to engaging with how that their behavior has these negative impacts on the world. Okay, what what are some of these negative impacts? Barber? Well, I think that first we start with generations. And so what we’re trying to look at is that if my definition of What is normal is not your definition of what is normal. So, for example, what should be on a recruitment form like if you’re filling out a job application, should you ask people for their gender or not? So some generations would think? Of course, it’s a recruitment Forman application. You put your gender male, female, other generations would think, Why are you assuming my gender? Other people, other generations might think I don’t want to work here because clearly you’re more interested in my gender than my qualifications for the job. And so part of what we’re looking at is it’s not about one thing being bad or good. It’s about looking just to understand. The fundamentals, like Evil is saying, is that there are different definitions of normal and they shape your judgments and the shape your behaviour. And how can we look at that together? In-kind oven on blaming context because too often when we try to talk across differences, what we find is that people are talking, blaming like I think this is normal. You think that’s normal and I’m judging you is wrong. Uh, without trying to make excuse, though. But if we’re talking about across the generations. It’s what those of us and the older generations were brought up with Your butt s o to not make its use something but we can relearn wear depends on which people you’re tryingto hyre were trainable were trainable. Well, I think I just take it from a perspective of utilization based perspective. If you’re trying to hire people who aren’t exactly like you, it might be useful to understand what they think is normal because those are the people you’re trying to hyre those people are trying to work with. It’s not like what you think is wrong or how you were brought up is wrong. It’s just now there are five generations in the workplace, maybe for the first time in human history, because we’re all living longer and we’re not leaving. And we’re actually caring what younger kids kick would think. And another traditions. Other generations, you know, people who are younger really haven’t been accorded a voice, and people who are older either died sooner or left the workplace. So now we have five generations, all of which have been shaped by different understandings of what’s normal and so part of what we’re trying to do is to say these air who were working with on purpose. And so how do we create a workplace that is inclusive and gets the job done that we want? E. What is this normal that we’re talking about? If everyone’s normal is different or their cohorts that so you just coalesce around sort of more or less together. But But as an individual, what’s what goes into my normal? What goes into your normal what? What’s the normal? What are we talking about? Yeah, because you don’t you don’t think about it. It’s like you wake up in the morning and sort of put on your normal right. What is it? The world just seems to be to you a particular way. And the way that it seems to you isn’t necessarily the same way it seems. Other people want me to think about it. I mean, I don’t get too conceptual, but it’s an interesting talking to delve into right, like the context of your world and the content of your world are different things. If you’re a man, you have a view of the world in an expectation of what public safety feels like So it’s you know, too. Am your your friend’s house. You don’t call for a cab. Gonna walk home like it’s an hour. Like as a man, you have a view of whether that’s safe or not, and you’ll have your own opinion of it. If you’re a woman, you’ll have a very different view of that. Now there’s no Is there a reality or whether it is or isn’t safe to walk home? No, there’s no actual like, objective measure of what safety looks like, But I’m a lot of people don’t really understand it. Don’t appreciate that. They do have these. These contexts they view the world through. When you actually start attending to them, you realize that it’s not just like a couple of things. You have this entire world view on this entire perspective that informs everything about your existence, and you’ve probably never thought about it. Once you start thinking, you start finding things that you wouldn’t choose to believe. You know you you have come to believe that based upon experiences that you’ve had and lessons that you’ve learned and you pick up these ideas and you know it’s really good work to do that reflection figured out because it’s not just about race. I mean, it certainly has an impact on race, but it can affect your relationships that can affect your success in business. Your coworkers, like everything that you do in you, your life is in form. But this context and doing the work of digging into it’s really important. We like to look at it from levels in your workplace. In your non-profit. There are things that people you’re trying to attract, people you’re trying to retain professional development, how fast people are promoted, what’s appropriate use of technology in the workplace, What’s appropriate professional behavior, what’s appropriate communication, all of these things of what is appropriate in the workplace, these air. What you think is normal is common sense, and so, but that normal common sense is different, according to these different five generations. And we think it’s pretty funny because we catch ourselves all the time saying, Oh, I guess I thought I just what I thought right? But But it’s not funny when it happens in a space where the dominant normal gets to decide. Like I might think, it’s funny that you think that, but if you are in the dominant position, then that’s what it is. It’s gonna happen. So part of what we try to do is to just open up the conversation so that its future oriented decisions, instead of how we’ve always done it in the past. I had a panel last year at NTC, and, uh, it was related to this topic, and the subject of job descriptions came up, and it was the use of the word professional. You know, a professional makes makes a professional appearance. Yeah, well, that exclude, I think the guests. It was a panel of, I think there were three think there were three. And it was, I think, was Raja Agarwal on everything. He was sitting next to me and he said, So that excludes everybody with dreadlocks in a white privilege world. Those are not professional. So does that exclude everybody who’s black because their hair is different and you know, so that’s where that dominant. But the perspective is different than a note. A new miracle perspective. Yeah, but just to use the word professional, I mean, it’s an office. I do want people to be professional, but then, you know, professional appearance. You know that’s different than comporting yourself as a professional. You don’t even need to say professional. In the job description, you can consult season, think out of an interview. So it’s fun when you start scratching away at that word like professional like, What does it mean to be profession? Doesn’t mean, like no skilled at using office communication tools for understanding. I was 14 XL, but doesn’t mean where’s a shirt and tie e mean it does mean those things, but unless you actually do the work of unpacking it, you don’t know what you mean. And it could be really detrimental to people like my own personal experience. I’m originally from Ireland. Dahna immigrated United States and was about 20 because I immigrated. I interrupted my college experience, and I never actually finished college. But a lot of job descriptions will say, you know, college degree required, and that’s that’s an assumption that people make about, like hiring that that’s a normal for people that if you’ve been to college, you’re there somehow qualified or somehow more capable of doing a particular job. Now I like, almost finished going. I was like one semester away from getting done and I have no regrets about coming to United States like that was absolutely the best decision I made. It was totally worth giving up, called my degree for. But you just got to really take the time to really investigate what you really mean by what you say because it has an impact on people and those impacts show and they’re often invisible. I think if you talk to people, United States, no one’s ever well, very few people will actually claim to be racist or will endorse racist perspectives. Or, you know, it’s very, very rare to find someone who’ll do it. If we do find them, we isolate them pretty quickly. But racism’s vivid and clear it. She was really clearly in the statistics. So how does it keep happening, like word of these, these negative influences come from. You have to be able to look beyond the surface in order to see that, and that’s where this but this work is about. I think what’s really important about the generations conversation, why we’re using this as a vehicle for talking about privileges, that this is a fun and accessible, an easy way to get into this conversation is not anywhere near is. Confronting is talking about race. It can be challenging, but generations it’s it’s a It’s a fun conversation right on dure. Your topic is generations and white privilege. So let’s overlay the white privilege to this. But now we’re at a disadvantage. There’s three white folks talking about white privilege. Well, one of the things we found is that oftentimes one of the dominant mentalities is that people of color should help us talk about white privilege because we don’t know how, which is once again, kind of layering a burden there. So part of one of the thing you just said is why people we don’t ever learn to say the word white like that’s because it was normal. Like if you look, if you read a book, a novel, the characters air never described by the color of their skin unless it’s not white because, like so you don’t say, he walked into the station, his skin was pasty, like the underside of a dead halibut. You know instead, But you would say like this. He walked in, She walked in, they sat down. He set down his skin, was dark, like cinnamon ice cream or something like it’s only described if it’s not white. So these are the kinds of things that that why people have to be able to start talking about. And so but no one ever talks about generational differences too much, either. So we tried it. We call it Training wheels is like if if I can try to talk to you across a different generation if I’ve had people come up. I was working with the A different client group last year and someone came up and said, You know, now I understand how to talk to my son, who’s been living in my basement, and I feel like we’ve never been able to talk to each other like I get it. Our definitions of normal are different. You know, there’s a There’s a lot of desire as what we call a part of a week circle. So, like we are all different generations. But we’re part of a family or we’re part of one circle we already identify as though we were just different, whereas across other things, like race or class or other dominant privileges way don’t see ourselves as a wee we see is us and those people. And so part of what we’re trying to do is even within our circle of who we already think is us. How do we talk across differences well and respectfully. And then how do we use that experience to try to talk across these bigger differences that are a little bit more charged? What kind of worker is the two of you doing together? You’re doing work for food, Lifeline Barbara. Yes. So I’m a consultant. I worked with international NGOs, NGOs, local domestic non-profits, and one of my clients for many years has been food lifeline, which is where I met Yves. And so there was even even if it’s even, that’s right. And so so and our work together is been issues around, trying to change a culture within their non-profit and also doing a move and trying to figure out how we do that move in a more inclusive way to this glorious, gorgeous new hunger solution center that they’ve just taken off the ground. And so a lot of my work has been with this system, and so we met, and here we are. Okay, um, and how did this topic Come, Teo, how each of you get drawn to this topic in the concerns. So one of things I’ve been studying since I do work with many non-profits and associations across the country has been this kind of she drops out in there. This this as I worked with years of all stripes and sizes and you’ll find me at six for 62 What I’ve found is that for the last 6 62 5 to 10 years, people have been very anxious about all these generations in the workplace and also about the great retirement fear that all these people are going to retire. We’re gonna have a leadership gap. And so I started studying what that meant to have a generation retire and what the composition was of the domestic and international non-profit in particular Workforce were all these leaders about to leave what was gonna happen with succession planning and became very interesting to see that they didn’t leave and then the next generation. So those easters air, now 26 at the top. And so now there are people in 1/5 generation. So everyone was all like, oh, skies falling is going to be four generations. And then these people are going to leave. They didn’t leave and these guys came. And so it’s a phenomenon. Now that is very interesting. And people are trying to figure out who are you trying to hyre? And it’s a very different mindset of tryingto hyre now when you’re trying to hyre outside of an assumed normal of a generation, and that could be across lots of industries and sectors. So I was drawn to it by my clients who were concerned and also, by finding it very like. It’s an interesting inflection point in our history as a sector time for our last break. Its text e-giving They have the five part email, many course to dispel the myths around mobile giving. You get one part each day it’s over five days soon as you sign up, they start coming. And then four days, Uh, we say four days hence, yeah, in four days hence, right that the right, Yeah, Hence his post post fact, post facto four days. Expos facto of the of the sign up, you get the remaining courses one a day. It’s an average of one per day. One is also the mode and one is also the median as well as the average. That’s what you get per day after you sign up for the course. What you do at by texting npr to 444999 And we’ve got butt loads. More time for your normal is my trigger. You baby. How about you? Barbara knows me from Food Lifeline and in my work, I’m the director of information systems for Food Lifeline. And what you do in that role is not only manage the system, but also the Iast systems. All the databases that base are works. I’m involved in every aspect of the organizations activity, right from our entry level staff and our new stuff right up to the executive team and then the CEO. So I cross the generations. Anyway, when we started talking about doing this the session together, some of the real issues that I have in my work came up in our discussions, and we really got into them and use this methodology to address those concerns. And we actually cover some of this in the presentation. And it became not just an opportunity to talk about what we love, what we what we care about, but actually to develop food lifelines business as well. So it’s really, really become really engaged in. It’s really become part of our work. Um, okay, you say, in your description, used the framework of generational understanding and predictable triggers to have deeper conversations. I paraphrased a little bit. But what is the general generational understanding of predictable triggers? Is that first of all, is that one that one one of the processors, too? So one of the things that we’ve found is that there are some predictable triggers that will show up across generations. For example, if we say Oh, you know, some of those people are so entitled there’s a whole set of people in the room that will not and laugh and say, I know you’re talking about in a whole other set of people in the room who will feel like the mute button just happened and disrespected and turned off, or one of our other favorites is when someone says, Well, this is the way we’ve done it successfully for the past 10 years and they think that. And so I have now sealed the point and half of the other people in the room think, and so it must be a relevant. And so some of the things that I feel like the most normal thing in the world for you to say someone else receives, like like you just said something completely different. There’s a very real world challenge that I have with this with regard to training and you software. So if I had, like, a new tool like any of the vendors here at this conference, if I had their suffering, if I take this out to the staff, it’s okay. We got this great new tool. It’s going to be awesome. It’s gonna make a big difference in your work. There’s two kinds of responses I’m going to get from older people, you know, boomers and maybe Gen Xers. You’re going to say, Okay, we’re going to training, which means we have to hire a trainer. We’re gonna have a training day and a reason to calm. We’re going for coffee and bagels and everyone going to sit in chairs and listen to the training, and then we’ll go through it. When we’re done, you’re going to find her and you take a binder to death you sent in your desk and okay, you’re trained. Now go and use the software, which means no one’s trained and they just sort of sit there and stare at the screen now. But when I when I try to train people who are younger, like millennials and sisters, it’s an entirely different model on approach. They don’t need that. What they need is give me a can account. Let me access the sulfur and sit down with me for like an hour and show me the basics and then go away would be available. I want access to the knowledge base online. I want to able to watch videos on the Web site. A chat room for users is great, and it’s an entirely different model of training. And my real challenge with that is that in order to train those easters in the millennials how to use the software, which is really what I need to do because they’re the ones that are gonna be using it anyway, I have to convince the leadership that it’s okay and that it’s safe to do that. So we do the training day, we forget about it, and we trained this Easter’s. It’s that there’s a lot of different generational challenges in the workplace that we have to go. Um, but I feel like way diving into the depths of this. I mean, I feel like we’re talking around it a little bit. Are we? Are we getting to the meat of the real issues here? Well, we’re getting to the middle of a generational issue. Just be circum superficial. So one of the most important things Tony is that is just the fundamental except acceptance that you might have a different normal, that it might guide your worldview like Eve’s even example there was and then to say, Okay, so then what? What do I do if my normal is this other thing? But once you fundamentally accepted that it’s different than thinking. Well, those people are idiots, and they should just do this thing or everybody knows, or common sense. People leave that stuff behind, and then they approach the issue like, Well, then how do you do it across five generations? And that’s the attitude where we can then begin to talk about privilege and dominant privilege, because many times, if people say well, you know you’re white So therefore you’ve inherited all of the benefits of being white, and then a person of color has not. There’s all kinds of stuff that goes off in people’s minds like, Well, I’m not racist and it’s not my fault. And I worked as hard as the next person, and it’s all defensive, defensive, defensive. It’s not curious, like if we go back to the other part where we have with generations, where people are like Okay, people have different definitions of normal, what do we do next? That’s curious. That’s like saying we’re we and we have to do something forward. But when we get into issues that are more charged and that are more layered with blame and oppression and dominance, then people generally defend and any kind of diversity training or an attempt to do that generally ends up with people often feeling worse than they felt before and more blamed and more isolated. So part of what we’re trying to do is to bring these two things together and to say, if you can learn this way to move forward with curiosity, what if we took those same tools into these conversations and to say wow your experience of being a woman in the workforce is very different of being a man in the work force or your experience of being cyst. Gendered is very different of my experience of being trans or your experience of being a black woman. Professional manager Leader is very different from mine of being a white woman, professional manager, leader Like what? I work for Microsoft for 10 years and at one point in the building, I was often the only woman in the whole huge restroom. And I would get startled if I saw another woman in the restroom because it was so unused to there being another woman in the building, you know, super different, then going to the theatre where women will wait for, you know, 15 minutes and then I walk in and out of the of the restrooms, right? And so So this is just something to start noticing that your experience is different and if you can fundamentally just accept that without blame, then you can say, OK, what is the workforce we want of the future? And how do we acknowledge that our experiences have been different? Someone may have had a glass escalator and somebody else has been clawing through a ceiling. But once were here together in this organization or in this moment in history, How do we lean towards each other with curiosity? Even you mentioned earlier? I think he said some of the physical manifestations of this among the people who are not the elite in the privileged. Yeah. Oh, our sound like you were referring to research of physical physical manifestations of this in terms of health outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. So, like life acceptance E on DH infant mortality or 22 rates. You can really see health outcomes on people of color in United States. What? We would actually we’re just setting this. Yes, we were talking about the impact of red lining on communities of color. Um, throughout the sort of last century, people color, black people couldn’t buy houses in neighborhood hoods and the weapon looking buy houses. And if people did buy houses in those neighborhoods, white people would leave. And judging the price of the property, this isn’t long term impact on the ability of their children to go to college or, you know, be set up for life. And so you can actually check? Was it like net and come or no wealth for for people, white people have a lot of black people I think is actually about xero. On average, across the population is a really impact on people’s lives and immeasurable. We still have another five minutes or so together. What else can we say about this topic? One thing that I think is really important for me, for your listeners and non-profits is like Take a look at all of the issues you have in your organization. Like what’s holding you back in good terms of growth, that every step of the way you’re going to find some touch of technology and each of those things. I think that’s a contemporary phenomenon. This is this is the era that we live in, and if any of those areas, if you investigate, I bet you find generations underlying those conversations. This is this is not just like an abstract thought exercise around understanding privilege. This is very riel way have, ah, my organization. We’re dealing with a challenge right now. Unlike who makes decisions about process about system, Wei have many experienced people who might be sort of boomers or Gen Xers have been trained, and they’ve learned their skills at a time whenever technology wasn’t a major part of their work. They’re now dealing with that migration to a system that’s very much technology based there, having to get on databases if they’re fundraisers they’re dealing with, like online giving an email and that kind of stuff ability. Younger people who are native in that in that world and they’re coming in wanting to participate, expecting different systems, to be available to them and then not having access to that expertise. It’s challenging. I think we’re going to see in a lot of non-profits shift from expert expert lead programs, toe having technology and performance management systems and business intelligence systems driving management for organizations. There’s a major cultural shift happening in the realm of technology. You’re gonna have to understand how that impacts in the community and the culture of your organization or to be able to deal with it. And one of the things I was I’d say that builds right off of what you talked about about digital natives, one of the one of the huge questions that’s happening right now in our culture in this country is, What does it mean to be native? And what does it mean to be an immigrant or a refugee? And who do we let in? What does that mean? Toe let in and when we look a technology across generations, there’s a concept of at one point people became digital natives. And that’s somewhere in the middle of the millennial generation, where you were born into a system where you had rights and you had privileges and you understood the language. And often when I’m working with people with generations, I’ll say, What does it mean to be a native citizen of a country? And so people will say what you have rights, You know where your addresses and even comes down to, you know, the right language to use. So first generation children well often have to inform. Their parents know you don’t have to say that to school or a siren doesn’t mean that they start interpreting the culture for their parents. And so it’s the same thing with digital native kids who basically interpret the culture for us and say, Oh, no, let me fix it for you. Just hand it over and so but this whole idea of understanding what it means to be in a land a digital land in which you are not native, in which you feel anxious where you feel like things, are at risk, your privacy is at risk. Your data is at risk. You don’t know what you’re doing. You feeling that and allowing people to have some time to think about that generationally. It’s slightly safer. But then it it it rolls back around to say So. What does that mean when we think about who has rights and privileges in our whole society, and what does that mean? And how are we translating that with each other and thinking about, for example, in public education, when your children are your English speakers and the parents may speak primarily another language? How do we think about is our system in English only system in school? Or do we think if we really want family engagement, we have to reach across that in some way? We’ve to begin to think differently. So a lot of the things that we’re talking about with generations and technology while we’re here, you know what the anti unconference and we both have technology backgrounds. And so he’s There are people to some extent, but we also are, you know, we are. You know, Eva and I are not exactly the norm in many other ways in our lives as well. And so we have the experience of not being the dominant norm in a space. And so we bring that to this conversation, not just to say that we’re white people, so we know everything about people of color instead, what we’re saying is that we’re white people and we understand what we’ve taken for granted as the dominant normal. And and we’re trying to figure out a way for people to have conversations that doesn’t involve blame and separation. We’re often times it’s like what I call the diversity sidecar, where you take all the people of color and organization. You put them on the diversity committee, and you kind of sideline them from the main business, right? Right. And so instead, what we’re trying to talk about is what if we were all You know what I call that? I call that divers Committee. Yes, they’re not. They’re not doing diversity for the organization. They are a showpiece committee that is diverse. I call that the divers committee and many of my colleagues who are amazing engineers or consultants or leaders or architects or artists. They’re not invited first to be on the top engineering or architect or artist committee. They’re invited to be on the diversity committee as an assumption because there are people of color. And so part of what I think we have to do is to begin talking about this because it’s not just because what we want to do is tow have organizations and a society where people are able to bring their best expertise into the space and we can talk about it. We’ve got to leave it there. All right, thank you. She’s Barbara Grant, CEO of Crux Consulting Consortium. And next to her is evey Gourlay, director of Information Systems of Food Lifeline Ladies. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks to both of you, This is non-profit Radio coverage of 2019 the non-profit Technology Conference from Portland, Oregon. This interview, like all brought to you by our partners at ActBlue Free fund-raising Tools to help non-profits Macon impact. Thanks. So much for being with us next week. E-giving Tuesday with Asha Curren It’s not too early to start your planning. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you Find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, Data driven and technology enabled Tony dahna slash pursuant by Wagner’s Deepa is guiding you beyond the numbers weinger cps dot com and by text to give mobile donations. Made easy text. NPR, too, that for 44999 creative producers Clam Meyerhoff Sam Lee Board says the line producer Thie shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein be with me next week for non-profit radio. We’re a little late there, Scotty. Yeah, big non-profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking Alternate network way You are listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in sometime potentially ater Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show yawned Potential Live life your way on talk radio dot N Y c Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business. Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested? Simply email at info at talking alternative dot com Thie Best designs for your Life Start at home. I’m David here. 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