This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart’s interview with Catherine Rocheleau on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

KEYWORDS

people, leader, work, business, leadership, leading, purpose, triple bottom line, listeners, leadership role, introvert, talk, networking, feel, norm, inspires, hearing, opportunity, organization

Erica Mills Barnhart  01:26

Hi, Catherine, welcome to the show.

Catherine Rocheleau  01:28

Thanks. Okay, it’s so great to be here and I’m so excited to have this opportunity to chat.

Erica Mills Barnhart  01:34

I am I’m excited to have you on the show for very many, many, many reasons. We have many different directions and things to cover. But one of them is that you were based in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada. And this makes me happy.

Catherine Rocheleau  01:49

Oh, yes, I love Vancouver too.

Erica Mills Barnhart  01:51

Now, are you originally from there or did you make your way there?

Catherine Rocheleau  01:55

No, I made my way there. So I originally was born in Victoria. My dad was In the Navy, so obviously Victoria on Vancouver Island, about three hours from Vancouver, for those who don’t know, is a major naval city. And so that’s where I started my life. And then being a Navy brat, I had to travel across the country with my parents. And I ended up in Halifax in Nova Scotia on the East Coast, which is another major naval city. And, and so I did a lot of my growing up on the east coast. But I also had the fortunate ability to move to England. My dad was on exchange with the Royal Navy. So he worked there for three years and so I got to go to school there and to live and to travel.

Erica Mills Barnhart  02:42

And how old were you when you lived in England?

Catherine Rocheleau  02:45

I was in I was 12, 13, 14. Yes. Yeah. And so then I came back and we went back to Nova Scotia, I went through the rest of high school and university. I finished, I actually skipped a grade, so I finished university at 16 and or finished high school at 16 University at 20. And then I moved to Vancouver to do my internship because I started my career in dietetics. And I moved to Vancouver and loved it there. I do not like winter so I got there and that was it. And now I have a goal of moving back to Victoria. Because my parents now live there. And it’s like, okay, that’s a great place to go. I can be close and, and we have a lot of family friends and stuff in Victoria. Yeah,

Erica Mills Barnhart  03:37

Vancouver Island is breathtaking.

Catherine Rocheleau  03:39

It is. It’s beautiful. So yeah.

Erica Mills Barnhart  03:43

Okay, so I’m a little mentally stuck up on graduating from stuck up stuck on graduating from high school 16 and college from 20 I mean, I guess that yeah, that’s that just feels young like you were just thrown out into the world kind of…

Catherine Rocheleau  03:58

I was I was, but you know what I think that, you know, I mean, obviously, one of the things we have in common is is, you know, looking at how do you market yourself? How do you How are you a leader, you know, in what you do, and I mean, I literally I jumped in with two feet, I knew that I wanted to be in a leadership role. I only worship role. I mean, right from my first job, as a as a registered dietician, I was in a job where I was leading a team, I was interacting with a team of employees, and, you know, then had my colleagues and, and whatever. So, I’ve kind of that’s just kind of been my net natural. And then over the course of my career, you know, even getting into being self employed and in the field that I was in and I worked primarily in foodservice management that I was actually in something that was really quite unique and I was sort of a leader in in those areas and it been that way all the way along. And you know, I just keep pivoting and jumping. And I say I literally jumped from wave to wave. But I’m on that leadership edge of the wave. And then when everybody else gets on, I’m probably on to the next thing onto the night. It’s just kind of been the wave that I’ve always been.

Erica Mills Barnhart  05:17

I mean, that’s very interesting to me that you, as a very young woman said, and presumably said out loud, not just like to yourself, like I want to be in a leadership role. That’s very, that’s quite unusual.

Catherine Rocheleau  05:31

It probably it is. I think some of that came from while I was in university, while I was like it even in England, there were opportunities when you took a leadership role that just appealed to me. I’m not an extrovert. I’m very much an introvert. As a leader, being an introvert, you had to go about things differently. It wasn’t that I was out there like connecting with the world. I was making very strategic partnerships, I was making connections, but I was demonstrating my skills and oftentimes I had an extrovert who would partner with me and I would be leading from behind. So they would almost be perceived as the leader. But in fact, I would probably leading more, but face of it and so that actually has always worked to my my advantage. But when I was in unit when I was in university, I, you know, I’ve led the group for the within the faculty I was in, I also ended up on Student Council, I did all of those kinds of things, and I just organized because I saw the benefit of people coming together working together and and getting an outcome and and I was very outcome driven right from the get go. always have been. And I think when you’re very outcome driven, you tend to lead a little more, because because you want to see the results. Yeah. How do you do that by getting involved? And I also was very fortunate because When I moved back to Canada after England, my mother said to me because she knew that I was I wasn’t into sports. But she said, You need to get involved in something. That’s how you’re going to meet people. And by getting involved, and then people would have opportunities, and I go, Oh, well, I could do that. And so I think it was a way of me being able to get connections without within my introverted way, but getting connections that actually built what I wanted to see happen. Yeah, yeah. fortunate that I had that advice early on. And, you know, I go into things and like, networking, for me was really hard. But I learned, okay, just get involved in the organization, maybe sit at the reception desk or get on a committee early on, and all of a sudden, now you meet everybody, and now it makes it easy.

Erica Mills Barnhart  07:52

So that is a gem of a tip. I think for listeners, particularly those who are more introverted And, like networking just causes such anxiety because you’re like, I’ve talked to a room, there’s all these people. And to, I guess, think of it differently, it’s like, well, you could network by actually being of service and taking these roles where it’s a little more clear. And also, I mean, I like visualizing the receptionist. People come to you. And I think that’s one thing for introverts that is particularly challenging, like the idea that you’re gonna, like, march up to somebody and be like, Hi, I’m Catherine, you know, is terrifying.

Catherine Rocheleau  08:34

Absolutely and I mean, I my experience with networking, I remember those days where, you know, I would book you know, my seat for dinner at this meeting, I would drive myself there, but I would literally be like, so anxious and making myself sick, I get the parking lot, I’d actually physically get sick, and I would never go inside and I would turn around and run Home.

Erica Mills Barnhart  09:01

And that was fun? Not!

Catherine Rocheleau  09:05

And it was expensive, you know. But then, you know, but then I decided, Okay, if I get there, but I get there right at six o’clock, then I literally can walk in, pay my money sit down, and everything happened. I don’t have to do the networking, but you would meet the few people at your table much more comfortable. And then I give them one day, you know, somebody came late. So often I did this month after month, that was my success. And then as soon as it was finished, I was out of there. But you know what was really interesting because somebody said, you always come too late. And I said, Oh my goodness. I said, I really get upset. I tense and anxious about networking. And they said, well, any chance you’d like to work on the desk? And I went, yeah, I can help you. What that did is a it got me out of networking, but it got me meeting everybody. So with somebody who picked up on what I didn’t like, they couldn’t get people to work the desk because everybody wanted to do the networking. But what I ended up doing was working the desk getting to know everybody on the inside the organizing people as well as the people attending. And then I ended up moving up. And in that organization, I became president elect. Just in the time that I there, I never became president by choice.

Erica Mills Barnhart  10:27

I think Katherine, you’ve given listeners not only a gem of a tip for how to handle this, but really the gift of letting go of this idea that networking, by definition means mingling,and small talk. And some people love that, but so many people don’t. And so I just, thank you and thank you for being so honest about like being so anxious that you would get physically ill and then leave and I know that there are listeners who were like, I’ve done that.

Catherine Rocheleau  10:58

And a lot of people wouldn’t ever say that they did that.

Erica Mills Barnhart  11:01

Right, cuz who wants to admit that? So anyway, that’s so brave. And thank you. Especially like as leaders, you know, you’re like, no, somehow you’re supposed to magically love networking. Yeah, so many different ways.

Catherine Rocheleau  11:16

And you know what? I’m so committed to taking action so committed to helping others take action, how to get the results they want, that I’ve learned over the years. How do you market yourself as an employee? You know, as an introvert, how do you connect with people as an introvert? How do you do these things as an introvert, and how do you now pull out that slightly more extroverted part of yourself, use it and then be able to retract back into where your comfort zone is. And I think part of leadership is to me is you have to be willing to push outside your comfort zone, you have to be willing to grow and to experience and so it was part of marketing you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone. To really get there, and then you have to, but you have to lead yourself as well as your business. And then, you know, get the results that you’re looking for. So there’s different components there.

Erica Mills Barnhart  12:13

Yeah, and what I’m also hearing how strategic you are, and I’m gonna use the word planful. Even I’m not even sure that that’s technically a word, but because one of the things so I skew towards being an introvert, definitely more with each passing day, week and year. And one of the things that I share is so going to networking events, so I can, I can do it, but you know, it’s I’m tired after. So one of the things I do is plan for that, right? Because because you have so much in the tank and you know that it’s going to deplete you. What are you going to do after the event? and and you know, really knowing as a leader, and we’ll talk about the term leader and what that means. What do you need, what’s the full cycle because it’s not just showing up at the event. For extroverts, you need to plan for like, you’re gonna have a plummeting moment after you’re like, we’re all the people I liked all the people and the people have left, you know, because they gave you energy. Introverts are like oh my god, where’s you know, where’s my book, where’s my cup of tea. So just, it’s a full cycle deal that doesn’t end at the end of the event or whatever.

Catherine Rocheleau  13:17

And, and that’s where like, knowing yourself, knowing yourself what you can do, it’s not uncommon for me to go to say, a live three day event. And when we have meal breaks, I take off and go have a nap. Yeah, that’s how I survived. Or, you know, I find ways of, you know, like, I have my breakfast in my room. So I always travel and I buy breakfast items, and I have them in my room, because then I can go downstairs like right on time, but I’ve had that morning to kind of get myself ready. And I can expend the energy. And then I can retract deck and have that quiet time and then I can go out again, and there are some days where people go, I can’t believe you. You’re introvert, well, I can go for so long. And then I crashed. And every live event whether I’m like I work live events now online, I do coaching for some of some people through their events. But you know what, the two days after the event, I have to book a really slow two days because that’s my time when I’m going to crash. That’s my time when I have to find a way of recharging. And not always can I take that time completely off, my business requires me to continue. But I can take them as slow days, I might take my appointments much later, or I end my day much earlier. And then I have what I call my my downtime, recharge. And then I can go again so I can turn. I’ve now learned that okay, turn on that energy and then turn it off. Cooper, eight, rejuvenate, refresh yourself and then hit your hip go again. And that’s just part of getting results I want getting getting the results my clients need, as well as you know, like, if I’m on an event like this with a podcast, I really want to give my best 100% of the time, how do I show up with 100% and then be able to recharge for the next time I have to do that. And you know, and you find those times you find that energy cycle, but you do you have to be strategic, you have to plan for it. But one of the other things that I’d like to share is that when I go to a networking event, my goal is not to meet everybody in the room. Yeah, yeah, my my goal may be to meet three really good connection. That’s my goal. Three good connections. I don’t care about I don’t need more than that. But if I go to make three good connections, I feel really good. I haven’t expanded more energy or effort than what I could have the capacity to do, but I can do a really good job. I can now follow up with them. Whereas some people, they’re out there to maximize the number of cards they could collect, or the number of people they can talk to. And I just always say that’s never worked for me.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:08

Yeah. And an observation, which is, this isn’t about good or bad. It’s about how are you wired? How can you show up? Because so much of leadership is how can you be fully present?

Catherine Rocheleau  16:19

Yes.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:21

So if you’re somebody who’s listening, and you’re like, well, but I’m the person who likes to gather all the cards, great. Go gather all the cards, because because Katherine’s the Catherine’s or the world meet you in order to complement and one of the themes I’m hearing from you throughout your career is this kind of idea of leading from behind, and I was I was curious how you got into coaching, but actually hearing you talk about your career. I’m like, this makes perfect sense. Yes. I love this description of you and your work, which is “if corporate teams are orchestras trying to make music, Catherine is the bandleader helping them hit all the high notes, all the right notes, I put in my high notes. Yeah, I suppose whatever syncopation whatever is gonna happen little pauses. I love that one. Because it’s, you know, we can see that and sort of feel it. Does that feel true to you about how you try to work with corporate teams and leaders?

Catherine Rocheleau  17:14

Yes, because I will often orchestrate how people can come together what they can do. So I work with the leader, but I also work with each member of the team. I believe that if we can get this two way, communication is two way built of trust. And I think teamwork really doesn’t include that, then when we can do that. I, my philosophy is that as a leader, if you can build the trust, build the communication and, and and support your team, they’re going to do the same in reverse. And I’ve learned that firsthand, that sort of almost seemed my natural style. And now when I work with with lead who, you know, some have been introvert some have been extrovert some have been, you know if you use the diff profiles like some are dominance, but there are there their dominance but their staff may be you know, steadies and conscientious, well, they’re totally different styles, they have different communication, different thinking different operational style. How do we bridge that gap so that we create what we want. And so for me when I learned, I didn’t have to be the leader. Yes, I had the title as director or whatever. But I didn’t have to be the safe person.

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:37

I don’t have to be a capital L leader to lead.

Catherine Rocheleau  18:39

no, I could lead from behind. I could let whoever needed to be the person in the front. I could let them be in the front that never undermined what I was capable of. And I was able to support them assist them direct, but in a way that was more collaborative was more connected and got the results we were looking for. Yeah, just like this, like an orchestra director does. I mean, they’re directing everybody. But you know, each of those musicians knows exactly what to do. And they’re going to do their own thing, but they’re going to keep their eye on the leader. Because that’s what makes the beautiful music.

Erica Mills Barnhart  19:23

So it makes it come together. I did you play an orchestra by the way?

Catherine Rocheleau  19:27

No, I’m not musical at all.

Erica Mills Barnhart  19:29

I was just curious. I played oboe for a really long time. Cool. I was I was like the most mediocre. Principal oboist you ever did meet I was not particularly gifted or good. But it gives you great insight into kind of this idea of of independently doing your thing like to independently counting and then it all coming together which which is which is cool. For sure. So we’ve Okay, so we’ve definitions are important. We’ve used the word you know, we talked about leadership and leaders. So one of the and that whole basket of words, you know, there’s leadership, and there’s leading, leader capital L, and little l, all of these things. I think they’re all kind of a bit slippery. So one of the things that we were going back and forth on when we were introduced was this idea. You know, I wonder if leadership has a marketing problem? Before we can answer that, I think we have to define leadership. And so one of the I study language, it’s one of the things I do, and when I was looking at the idea of leadership, so etymologically speaking, if we go way, way, way back, it actually meant to see one’s own way. So it had nothing to do with other people, which I find superduper fascinating. Because the way we hear it now, I think, in general, is you know, by definition, there’s like other people are by default, there’s other people. So I’m very curious about like, how does that original definition land for you and then how do you stack that up against the you know, modern day definition and reality of leading, it’s fairly rare to have somebody refer to, you know, I guess their thought leadership and you can like think deep thoughts um and have it not really involved with leading other people. But beyond that, I can’t think of examples. So how does it land and how does it stack up given your experience?

Catherine Rocheleau  21:18

yeah, I think you know, finding your own way you have to if you’re a business owner, or if you’re sort of pushing through into new areas, that’s what leaders do, they find their own way, and other people don’t have that skill set. So if you can find your way, other people will follow behind you, that sort of is natural for human nature. So if you are a thought leader, a thought leader is somebody who brings the idea of knowledge and brings it forward in a way that it demonstrates them as having found their way having sort of have demonstrated their skills and ability and their understanding on a certain topic at an elevated level. And now people want to follow that person because they see them as an expert in that one area. And so you thought leadership is more than just knowing a topic. It’s, you’ve, you’ve almost proven it at the same time. So that’s where that’s why we often hear now is, you know, are you writing books? Are you doing, you know, what, what kind of media media exposure Are you getting? What kind of work have you done? What are the results you’ve got, that builds your thought leadership component. But you know what, there are lots of people who are great at putting stuff out, but they’re no good at implementing. I personally believe, yes, you can, you can, in order to be a really good leader. You not only have to be able to get the knowledge but you have to be willing to share it and to help others to follow in your footsteps. And that to me is where we go from a leader finding their own way to a leader being what is now believed to be a leader who is somebody who can help others find their right way through the same path or a parallel path or a perpendicular path, whatever works for them to get to the results. So it you know, if I think about teams in a business, we have our vision, mission, our values, our purpose in our businesses. That’s what that’s supposed to be our guiding star. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. You know, you need that North Star, when everybody kind of buys into that North Star as your your vision and your purpose. Now, what happens is, we work the mission well, as a leader, you’re going to help people to work the mission, which is the how you get to your vision, which is that Northstar, and it’s keeping you on the right path. So as a business leader, That’s what you’re doing. Whether you’re an employee, whether you’re in a church group, whether you’re in, you know, whether you’re in, you know, Boy Scout,s you’re still going to have that leadership capacity to be able to take you forward. And now what happens is people will follow. But your goal as a leader is to not shine above them, but to help them shine individually and collectively with you. Yeah, yeah, it’s not separate.

Erica Mills Barnhart  24:31

Yeah. And so I think one of the things that, you know, if we think about a big L leader versus a little l leader, especially now the big L leaders implied in that is that you have positional authority. So you have the title or you know, you’re in charge of the budget, or there’s something about that. And I would say one of the things that gives me pause about big  L leadership is that it often feels exclusive and are like, out of reach for certain folks, I’m thinking particularly marginalized, you know, those are in marginalized communities, leaders of color, that like, structurally, it feels out of the gate, kind of either harder to get to or more challenging than if you’re white, privileged some of these other things. So there’s some, like structural barriers to getting to big L leadership. And so that’s, you know, when I say does leadership have a marketing problem, part of what I’m sort of trying to poke at is, is there a way to recast how we talk to and I’m thinking next generation right so I, you know, teach at University of Washington. So I have these students and when I think about them, or channel them like what can we be saying about leadership, big l or little L, but particularly big L, because that does come with some privilege. How do we how do we, how do we reframe it? How can we talk about it differently and think about it differently so that you know down the road, there’s not that sort of exclusive club feel to it, and we remove some of these structural barriers.

Catherine Rocheleau  26:08

And you know what, I think you’ve touched on a topic that when when I look at impact business models, and when I look at, at how we are seeing a shift in the way that businesses are pulled together, I believe that leadership is not a title, I believe it’s, it’s a way of being it’s a way of moving and interacting. Some there are lots of people who get promoted into leadership jobs, because they were maybe the brightest or they they were the most visible. There are lots of people who are less visible, but probably more capable. And what you’re seeing a little bit more is that in order to get into leadership roles, particularly in businesses that are more focused on the well being have their people within their their within their organization that they’re now recognizing that just because you were maybe the top salesman or you were the most visible and sat on most committees didn’t necessarily mean you were the best with developing and nurturing the people. And what that created with silos. It created fractionalized teams. It created divisiveness. And now what we’re looking at is leadership is now all about collaboration. And that takes a totally different skill set a totally different mindset. And a totally different way of being that has, like for me has been my norm. I mean, I’m very fortunate living in Vancouver, I have worked with over decades, every different cultural group I can think of and I’ve had people in, in all different sectors. That to me became my strength. I didn’t see people as beyond, okay, what’s inside them? I see beyond a color of a skin or a stereotype. I really work hard at trying to recognize what what is inside what is the quality of the content inside of the person and help bring that out. And it’s been interesting because as we kind of walk through this change that we’re starting to see becoming more visible, that some of the things that for me seemed like such common sense, is, you know, what, why would that stopped somebody but now I’m recognizing Okay, it is stopping, I need to better understand that so that I can now advocate on their behalf. So I can take a leadership role as a leader for somebody else, and help them get where they need to go by being an advocate and a partner rather than as that superior.

Erica Mills Barnhart  29:00

Yeah, and I’m also hearing you bringing great intentionality to using your privilege, because of the positions you hold and the color of your skin. And this is one thing I do, I want to sort of definitely call out that the history of race and racism in Canada is very, very different than it is the United States. It is so I think, you know, for listeners in Canada, because I know we have so much makes me happy. You know, there, this will land differently on your ears, listeners, depending on where you grew up. And so just the history super different. And the moment that we’re having in the United States is going to have a trickle trickle effect in many directions, I hope. And, and it’s just, it’s different.

Catherine Rocheleau  29:46

And, you know, I totally, I totally understand that and it’s interesting. I’ve had some amazing conversations with some Americans of all different nationalities are different ethnic backgrounds and and whatever and it’s been really interesting. For me to get more of an understanding of where they’re coming from, because as I work with people because I work with people in the US, as well as in Canada, in other places, trying to get my head around, where, how to position this, but I still come at it from let treat, you know, let’s look at how can we bring out the best of each person, and then work collaboratively to do that. And gradually by our actions, we’re going to change the norms. And sometimes, you know, I love that it’s an open conversation. Now, I love that people, there are enough people that are wanting to see change, that the people who don’t want to see change are now being out, out, out voiced and the more that we can raise that awareness, the more we can get that common bridge, the better it’s going to be and all it takes is calling people out Demonstrating walking your talk and you really using your business as a force for good to support these things to show people that you know what, I can have a phenomenal business. And yes, I can have people of all different ethnicities and different colors of skin and different backgrounds. And I can still have a really strong really cohesive team that worked well and delivers what it is I need to be delivering.

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:25

And actually to put a finer point on that what the research will tell us is that because of that diversity, you are in fact stronger. Yes. And this is your you are more profitable, you are more powerful, you are more pretty much everything that’s positive in terms of business and humanity. By definition of diversity. There’s a gentleman here in the Seattle area, Mozart Guerrier, and he is the executive director of an organization called 21 Progress and he was on a panel and a couple of years ago and I will never forget him saying you know, people ask me like why are you so in favor of diversity. And I remember him say, “Because there’s no downside.”

Catherine Rocheleau  32:01

Exactly.

Erica Mills Barnhart  32:01

There’s no downside. There’s no downside, except the downside of people individually being afraid of it. Yeah. And you know, the, you know, that’s on each individual to to work through. But literally all of the data will say to you, it’s not like, oh, we’re doing this and we’re still doing well. It’s like we’re doing this. And by the way, this makes us more profitable, stronger, and more compassionate, more kind. So interesting.

Catherine Rocheleau  32:27

And the more you get to know somebody as a person, the more you interact with them, the more you understand them, the more that you realize how similar we are. And it is those we want to celebrate our differences together, not to use them to divide us and you know, it’s interesting, I worked with one client, I, they I went in I was helping the the the leader of that department to really improved the efficiency of their department. They they really were fraction I factionalized. And when I looked at it, I thought, you know what, I have one ethnic group here. I have one ethnic group here. I have one ethnic group here. No wonder we’re not chatting. And so what I did was I literally said, we need to diversify the team. And they’re like, What do you mean? I said, clunk. Here’s my three groups. We need to break that up. We need to hire people who are not part of these ethnicities. And we need to start mixing them up, we need to cross training them, so that now they have to work together. They they have, they can, you know, they mix and match. They were like, horrified that I would even think that because they thought everything was working so well, because they all understood each other. Well, they had infighting within each cultural group. But then they had in, they had fighting between cultural groups. I said, it was bizarre. I wish and I was out to break all of those silos. I was out to break all of those barriers. And that’s literally what I worked with them on for six solid months to try to, you know, add somebody laughs let’s try to bring somebody different in and then support that new person who wasn’t part of the inner circle to break into that and to be good at what they did, but to have everybody else welcome them into understand. And now let’s do that between sections of our department and within sections of the types of tasks we do. And that was like, it was a big challenge.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:31

That’s just that’s culture change, like it is deep culture change. And I think there’s that there’s an important piece to mention as we think about leadership and organizational context and culture, which is historically, like we’re out of whack, right? Because biologically, what we understand is how to be in tribes. Yeah, so we have a like, in our DNA is this idea that there are in groups and out groups and that helped us survive for a moment. nia. So this whole idea of this strength through diversity on a biological level is kind of like newness for our brains. So I love this example that you bring up because it’s like, yeah,this is new. But now in the in the world in which we live, tribalism doesn’t serve in the same way. And that doesn’t mean that’s not to say that there aren’t that there aren’t strengths to that and obvious reasons to stay within however you describe tribe for you. And if we’re looking at it in an organizational context, which I think you have to you know, you’ve got a nod to like millennia of survivalism and biology and how it’s playing out and as a leader of the organization.

Catherine Rocheleau  35:45

And you want to celebrate that you want to celebrate your origins, you want to celebrate your your uniqueness, and that empathy then when you can bring everybody together in a diverse situation. Recognize that you know, what we All, a lot of us, like think can act and behave the same with slight differences. But there are some a lot of commonalities in there. You know, within any, you know, if you look at like, the Black Lives Matter movement, I mean, they have strong leaders, they have strong communicators, they have strong, you know, everything. And so why shouldn’t they be just as recognized as if it was white or Latino, or, you know, anywhere or, you know, whatever, it doesn’t matter, Chinese Asiatic Indian, you know, we have all of these. So I always think, okay, we can do all of this. Because ultimately, we often have the same ideas. We just have differences. Let’s celebrate those differences. But then when we can break down these silos that make me and you different, and part of that is we have to push people outside their comfort zone, and that goes both ways. And that’s what human nature doesn’t like to do.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:57

So Catherine, I’m very curious about your thoughts. We still we’re recording this under the backdrop of the global pandemic that is COVID. And there’s such widespread anxiety because of that. So if you think about Maslow’s hierarchy, I feel like and you know, when I’m reading and listening, what seems to be emerging is, you know, a sort of across the board as individuals being lower on Maslow’s hierarchy, because we just don’t have those basic sense of safety doesn’t have to be there. And I’m curious if you’re seeing like a, an increased aversion or fear or whatever word you want to use, to the, to this idea of getting outside your comfort zone, because it feels like all of us have just been kicked outside of our comfort zones in so many ways. And so we can’t do much about it. So I’m just curious what you’re seeing if anything in that regard.

Catherine Rocheleau  37:52

You know, I haven’t seen I have seen some people who are retracting, but interestingly enough, with So, with the fact that we all have been kicked, this isn’t any one group, this is everybody, everybody got kicked backwards. I think what this does is open up a door of opportunity, and some are walking through that door at different rates. But I think what you’re going to do is see more and more people walking through that door. And the people that will get left behind behind are the ones that aren’t embracing. And so it was interesting. I was just hearing just before we went on air is that there was a gentleman that was being interviewed. And he was talking about the fact that with Black Lives Matter coming up now, while we’re in a pandemic, has the capability of us shifting way more, probably more way more effectively and probably faster than at any time in history. Since, you know, slavery was like the prime norm. And and it was interesting because I’m thinking how does that happen? And my brain kind of got thinking, but you think it is because when you put people off balance, they find balance, but it’s not always the same balance. It’s like having a three legged stool, you could put that third leg, it doesn’t have to be in exactly the same spot. It’ll just go back and it will hold you stable.

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:27

So it was part of what they were saying that because of the global pandemic, and because certain opportunities simply aren’t available to us, by definition, we need to be looking for different a different leg to the stool because the previous one is no longer there?

Catherine Rocheleau  39:40

Yeah,

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:40

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think behind that.

Catherine Rocheleau  39:43

And so, you know, when you think about it, you know, now it’s like, okay, we’re all we’ve all been equalized, in a way not completely, but there’s more of an equalization because, yes, certain certain groups have been affected more, and I’m not discounting…

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:00

Yeah, I think it’s important to say that BIPOC communities have been disproportationality negatively impacted, at least in the United States.

Catherine Rocheleau  40:03

I totally realized that, like, every every single country in the world is being affected. And you know some sectors more than others, and in the severity and in the frequency. However, what this has done is it’s upset the norm because people who thought that they would be immune or not, they thought this was only for the poor or only for the blacks or only for the Asians or only for third world countries, that has no law that no longer can can stand. We know that we know that unequivocally with all of the rapidness that this happened. It didn’t happen in just one country. It happened globally. This is something that has changed the whole face of what we’re facing. Now what we want to do is look at how can we put this back together like a jigsaw puzzle, but put it back together better than what we had it and this is an option. tunity for leaders in all different areas and for diversity to become so prevalent, and for acceptance of diversity, and to ensure that everybody’s life matters, and that we all have a role to play, and that we all have this opportunity. All of us as leaders, anybody who sees themselves as a leader, anybody who sees himself as wanting to have a world better than the way we found it has an opportunity to now advocate to demonstrate to to implement exactly these issues in a way that we have never ever had before.

Erica Mills Barnhart  41:43

And I mean, I hope that one of the things that will make that possible because I would go one step further and say there’s an opportunity. My one step further would be I think there’s no obligation at this point in time like we no longer deny certain things and so, if you are to lead with integrity, then it is an obligation to make sure that the jigsaw puzzle gets put back together, more equitably. And I guess what I hope that this message, which I want to go back to is, is this idea of this, there’s there’s no downside, like, if you were in a for profit company and you’re like “What about the profits?”, they’re going to get more. Yeah. Like, that’s what every scrap of data is going to say. So I hope that that emboldens people, because I do I do sense. And I feel and you know, I own sometimes I still have these moments of feeling it, which is because you know, as humans, we crave progress and we resist change. It’s like what was on the other side, what that look like. So just knowing that, that, that it’s, you know, we have proof that it’s going to be better and being brave and fearless in the face of it and and know that also we’re going to stumble and get it wrong and, and that that’s going to be part of the part of the journey for all of us, right?

Catherine Rocheleau  42:56

And you know, and I think that’s important is yes, we are going to to stumble, it’s not going to be right. And really what we’re looking at is that when we think about an impact business model, so that’s an impact business model is a business model where all shareholders have to be taken care of. So that’s your shareholders, your employees, your customers, your suppliers, your community and the planet. The triple bottom line which I, I use a little I put my fingers together into a little triangle. That is the triple bottom line. But to me, that’s a triple when you’re helping people. That’s the people in your organizations and people in your community and the people in the world, you’re going to be helping your profit. What that means is that you’re going to have a strong thriving business, and you’re going to use that business for good. And then you’re going to also help the planet you’re no longer is it okay for company to use their business at the expense of everything else. But then the anchor point to that in my model is your purpose. If you’re a purpose driven business owner, a purpose driven leader, you have empathy, you have a way of being you have a way of trying to increase all of these things. So diversity, pay equity, making sure people are taken care of making sure that people have what they need. Because when you do that, you are going to build a much stronger team, that training team is going to be more engaged, there’s going to be less turnover, there’s going to be more innovation, there’s going to be better customer service. What does that do to your business? It increases your profit.

Erica Mills Barnhart  44:42

By the way, it’s much easier to market this. Absolutely, because I feel like I’m referencing a lot of research and data today. But that and you know, this varies a little bit but you know, 82% of consumers would prefer, all things being equal. So quality being equal, right? They would prefer to purchase from a company that has this triple win framework. By the way, I really hope that we can rebrand the idea of the triple bottom line because that feels heavy. It’s like one’s not enough? I need three to manage…that we could go from triple bottom line to like the triple win company or something. I don’t know, Catherine, I think you’re onto something there.

Catherine Rocheleau  45:20

Yeah, well, that’s that’s what I use all the time. And so I always say every decision you have has to have a triple win. It has to fit that model. It has to be on purpose. It has to fit in, you know, it has to have a win. Now, some things are going to have a little bit more of a balance. But I honestly believe that when we run our businesses that way, and what the data has shown is that impact businesses not only attract more clients, but more loyal clients and we all want the loyal clients because they’re the ones that buy from us or less press price sensitive, and they become a raving fans and talk about us in a positive way to get more people to come, that we need to do to communities want more impact related businesses, because they want to be a part, they want their companies to be a part of the community, not just an existence that, well, I’m just here until, you know, my resource runs out, and then I’m off to the next place where I get a tax break. But when you run your business that way, an impact business model has been demonstrated time and time again, to be more resilient, and more effective in every single economic condition that it faces, then those businesses that are just profit driven.

Erica Mills Barnhart  46:41

That’s incredible, actually, so I want to underline that verbally. Because it’s podcast, just to say, you know, we’re hearing so much about resilience, and I think folks feeling a little bit behind the curve since this wasn’t necessarily the standard mindset, but know that you You can make the transition and that then you will become more resilient over time. I think that’s quite powerful, even though maybe it feels a little daunting to folks, but you have an ebook that I think might be able to help which is: “How to be how to be a great purpose driven leader: leading on point and on purpose”.

Catherine Rocheleau  47:17

Yes, yes. And in that ebook, I talked through what it means to be a purpose driven leader,how that that mindset of having a purpose is sharing your purpose, working your purpose and aligning that with your team, with your company but sticking to your own purpose will actually create that that strength that you’ll never know any other way.

Erica Mills Barnhart  47:42

Okay, so if folks are listening and you’re like, ahhhhh, I don’t know about that. You know, lots of we have listeners who work for nonprofits and foundations and B corpse and for profit businesses LLCs, all the tax statuses. And I think purpose is kind of taking on new meaning as well. I had Dr. Akhtar Badshah on on a previous episode and he talks he has a new book coming out. And he talks a lot about shifting from the me to the we want mindset and this reminds me that because he really is about, you know, all of that rules don’t have any common purpose shared purpose that aligns with individual purpose and I think we’re all seeing just such a yen for that now so we will make sure to put a link in the show notes to the ebook.

Catherine Rocheleau  48:31

That would be great. And you know, it’s starting the dialogue. You know, when I say when people have a purpose, this is your like more than just a why this is this becomes your driving force. Your purpose is why you do what you do, why you want to make a difference why you want to be a leader, and then that you want to make a difference. And there are ways we can all take that on. And it doesn’t have to be really foreign. It means making tiny change. Consistently to advance through forward, but you’re, you’re on a path that really kind of gets you there. And it really does shift you from me too weak. And I think the more we think about all of us collectively, as leaders, we have the ability to shift people’s thinking the way they behave, and to create that movement. And when we can create movement where we’re engaging in positive change, and that’s ultimately and when you think about it, B corpse, you know, which of course is my goal for my company is to become certified as a B Corp. And so I’m, you know, I help other people go through that certification process. But what it does is it helps people focus on all of those triple wins, to get it into the core operation of your business, if you can get it into the core of your business. Everything else just kind of grows from there, but it forces you to keep re looking at it and going back and that Where you can create that ignition point of change and opportunity in this new reality that we’re facing, seeing, and it’s going to change anytime soon. So we might as well look at what we’re facing.

Erica Mills Barnhart  50:12

But I love that you’re mentioning operationalizing, all of this. So I do a lot of work with organizations drafting mission mission value statements, it’s kind of my bread and butter. I love them. But I love them because when because I’ve seen so many times when organizations coalesce around that in a really is like, Oh, you know, on the bad days, we’re all gonna have bad days, and then your teams in a bad day. And the idea is that you could go back to it and sort of say, you know, remember, this is why we’re doing this. And it can kind of, I think, kind of see you through that. But I think you know, a follow up conversation for another podcast is I think getting into that tactical like okay, that’s all well and good and very aspirational. And it’s in the operationalizing of that’s like the the mission vision value statements. I think that’s kind of the tip of, you know, the tip of the iceberg. And then there’s all of these things that are underneath. And sometimes that is about culture change, which means, you know, sort of like, seemingly, I’m saying boring sort of things like, you know, so what’s in your handbook. Like when you onboard somebody? What do you say? Yeah, you know, what is when you interview them even before you onboard them, like what does all that look like is so important. So but I’m mindful of time. So conversation for another day. I like to ask every guest, this final question. So again, I look at words. And so the the original meaning of the word inspire means to take a breath, this breath in, and then motivation is about taking action. So we need both inspiration and motivation. They go hand in hand. So I’m curious what inspires you and what keeps you motivated to do the work you do?

Catherine Rocheleau  51:47

I love to see people thrive. I love to see people thrive and do more do better to get to be the best they possibly can. That motivates me. Every time I work with teams, every time I work with leaders, every time I work on anything that almost motivates me to do it again and again and again. So I love that. So it’s almost like it’s a externally internally driven motivation. When I do bet when I do better, I know I’ve helped somebody, when other people do better than that motivates me to help them more. So it creates that and what inspires me is to see people take on new challenges take on new opportunities, that and for others to be sharing their their what they’ve learned, in a way that we can get that knowledge out there because make it the norm instead of the unknown. And I want to see everyone have the opportunity. So my vision for me and my company is that every business is profitable and thriving, that it’s a great place to work and that they make an impact in the world. That is my driving force that inspires me. It motivates me in every aspect of my business. But when I’m at home when I’m just me and not doing my business, I want to see change happen I want to be helped make it happen. And I want to help those that are struggling. And because I have that capability, so for me, it just becomes like, all mixed in together. And I believe that’s what inspires and motivates me to keep on going day after day. Even when I feel like somebody kicked me in the teeth. I just, I have this resilience that just says just get up and keep doing it.

Erica Mills Barnhart  53:36

After you’ve after you’ve recharged and whatever introverted way calls to you, right?

Catherine Rocheleau  53:43

Exactly. But you know what, I can do this in my own way and I can do it. And quiet leadership often is a really cool way. Because a lot of times introverted leaders will do things because it’s the right thing to do. Or if it’s good for everybody else, that it’s not all, think if you can shift your leadership from not being about you. So again, going back to what we talked about earlier, it’s not about you has nothing to do with you, either than you might be motivated to help make the change happen. But it’s all about everybody else. And when you can shift your thinking, to doing that, I think we all have the ability to get a whole lot more done a lot faster, and with a lot better results.

Erica Mills Barnhart  54:29

Yes, agreed. And again, if you’re running a triple win operation that is way easier to market than something else. Oh, Catherine, thank you so much for being here for sharing all your wisdom. And it’s been truly wonderful. Thank you, listeners, for being here with us, along for the ride as always. Do good, be well, and we will see you next time.

Catherine Rocheleau  54:53

Thank you. Bye bye.

The post Ep 21: Catherine Rocheleau: Building a Successful Business Through Diversity appeared first on Claxon Communication.

The post Ep 22: Marlette Jackson and Erin Dowell: Are you guilty of woke-washing? appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart’s interview with Stephen Robinson on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

KEYWORDS

philanthropy, people, power, contemplative practices, nonprofits, listeners, impact, switching, work, created, jargon, language, important, marketing, world, philanthropists, donor, white, foundation, called

Erica Mills Barnhart  00:32

Alright, welcome everybody to the Marketing for Good Podcast. I am very excited to have with me here today, Stephen Robinson. So Stephen is a philanthropic advisor at the Seattle foundation. And his little bio says, “as a philanthropic advisor, Steven brings contemplative practices and rigorous qualitative methods”, not two things that you often see coming together. So out of the gate, I love it. It’s very you, Steven. “And he uses these two things to shape conversations and decisions. He draws on these tools as he advises families and individuals on effective philanthropic strategies to support community interests, realize philanthropic impact and unlock their full generosity potential”. Now, you know, we were chatting a little bit about this, people who work in the foundations, there’s like this mystique. You know, it’s like you work for foundation. So will you share with us a little bit like how, how you got into the mystical, magical world of working for a foundation?

Stephen Robinson  01:36

Yeah, you know, it’s a question I get often. And I think my top level sort of headline around it is, I’m bad at math and that’s why I’m in philanthropy. I did the Peace Corps masters international program at the Evans School. And when I got back from that, I added up all the credits that I needed, and, you know, took the corresponding amount, of course, loads. And a week later, I went back and looked, and I had actually added wrong, I needed four more credits. And so at that time, there was only one course, that had only met once, and that was Philanthropy 101. And so I, you know, emailed the teacher, and she was kind enough to put me in her class. So I showed up the next morning and, I mean, really, I never thought that I would be in philanthropy, I never thought that a person with my background would be valued in this space and that’s proven to be somewhat true. But also, I think that the core of philanthropy is something that is, it’s really important that people like me are present in this space. And, you know, when I was reading through some of the coursework, it became very apparent to me that, you know, one of the things that’s really important in a program officer is that they’re able to do their own internal work, right? Like, you never want to be standing in between an organization or whatever it is that you’re sort of fighting for, and their impact. And program officers can oftentimes play that role and end up actually doing a lot of harm. And so it requires a person who is able to notice sort of in real time, oh, I’m actually doing harm here. Or, actually, you know, like, this is how I stepped out of the way. And a lot of the readings that I was doing were focusing on that I realized, at a certain point, I realized, this is perfect for me, you know, I have this history of contemplative practices, I love and thrive in community, and all I want is for our world to be better than it currently is because there’s a lot of harm being done for no reason. So why wouldn’t I do this as a career? And, you know, I think a lot of people have that sort of revelation, the leg up that I had was that I actually did practical work with the director of family philanthropy through the Evans School. And so over the course of six months of working together, we had become really close, you know, mentor mentee, almost. And she sort of shepherded me into a spot at the Seattle Foundation, which was incredibly generous of her and you know, some of the things that she taught me, I now find myself really, you know, going to bat for others and teaching them and a lot of it has to do with language. A lot of it has to do with matching the language kind of of the oppressor a little bit and speaking to power using powers words.

Erica Mills Barnhart  04:47

Two things I want to follow up on, will you say a bit more when you said, “we don’t see people like me” quoting you, “in in philanthropy very often”. What do you mean by that?

Stephen Robinson  04:59

Sure. Yeah. So I have a variety of overlapping identities, so I’m half black, even though I have a white presentation. For those of you who are visually impaired, I’m sitting in sort of a white room with a wine colored sweater, I have a white appearance, I’m wearing glasses, but I am half black. I’m also gay. And I was raised in a, you know, single mother household. All of these things sort of stack up to a background that is not really conventionally seen in our time.

Erica Mills Barnhart  05:37

Mm hmm. That’s a lot of intersectionality right there.

Stephen Robinson  05:41

A lot of things overlapping.

Erica Mills Barnhart  05:45

Overlappy, very overlappy, right? But is it fair to say, because I think that this will become important as we continue the conversation, that although you are white passing, for the most part, you identify as a black man.

Stephen Robinson  05:58

Well, I identify as biracial because there’s many ways where my blackness is very present. And there’s many ways where my whiteness, the privilege that comes with walking around with white skin is also very present. So, you know, we don’t deal very well in our binary culture. Things that are just clearly non binary, and I feel like my race is, or my my impression of my own self, as it regards to race is very non binary.

Erica Mills Barnhart  06:30

Thank you. That’s really helpful. Okay, I want to go to code switching quickly. However, not all listeners will necessarily know what you mean by contemplative practices.

Stephen Robinson  06:39

Yeah, of course. So another overlapping identity of mine is that I was raised Buddhist. And so contemplative practices, or contemplative practices are practices that essentially they’re all based in mindfulness or meditation. It’s ways of stopping in your, you know, cycle of thought, creating an intentional gap so that whatever your reaction is, can be held. And you can also give a corresponding response that’s not just reactionary, right. So a lot of times, our personalities are actually just a build up of all of our experiences from life. And not all of that experience is helpful in every context. And so cultivating a practice of being able to stop, take a breath, and recenter on who you truly are, not just the experiences that you’ve had, a lot of times, you know, we confuse our defense mechanisms with a personality. And those aren’t the same thing, you know. And the way you disentangle that, from my point of view, is through practice, just straight up practicing.

Erica Mills Barnhart  08:01

Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t come easily to most people to be able to create that space. What we are naturally inclined to do is to project like, well, I like being on whatever it’s going to be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, so other people must also feel the same way. And I think just just make a tie, since this podcast is mainly about marketing, that ability is gold, when it comes to building personas, and really getting into the hearts and minds of your target audience. You know, I did an interview with Maria Ross, on this podcast about empathy, and the role of empathy, which I know is not the whole thing. But just for listeners who are like intrigued by that, because we could have a whole conversation on that. You and I, Steven, today could just talk about that and its role, but that’s not what we are going to talk about today, we’re going to talk about different stuff. But so for listeners who are intrigued by this, go listen, once you’re done with this one of course, to the podcast episode with Maria Ross. Why I wanted to call that out is because you were speaking, Stephen, to like one of the things that is important for you in your role is to be able to sort of translate and calibrate to the donors that you’re serving. So I think it makes sense, like how much better you would be at that if you have this contemplative practice and this ability to create that gap. Okay. Can we talk about code switching and your ninja level skills in this department? So you joined, you’re always so gracious when I say hey, come like talk to one of my classes. And you’ve said yes, every time I think so thank you for that. Most recently you, along with me back in K came and spent some time with my undergraduate students. And you said something and just in the course that conversation which went many many different directions about, and I think like what you the context in which you mentioned, it was sort of early on in your days in philanthropy, in particular, how you realized that you could use the language of philanthropy to your personal advantage. And in doing that you were mindful of the trade offs inherent in that. Will say more about that. That was just such an interesting, intriguing observation.

Stephen Robinson  10:26

Yeah, yeah, I guess first, just to sort of give a little bit more context. You know, I work with a lot of donors. I work in a lot of spaces that are inherently white and kind of institutional. But in no way can I speak sort of for the broad, like, all caps, philanthropy-

Erica Mills Barnhart  10:50

Yeah, sure. And, you know, we should probably start right by explaining what code switching is.

Stephen Robinson  10:54

Oh, sure. Yeah. Um, do you? Do you want to take a stab at it or?

Erica Mills Barnhart  10:58

No, you go.

Stephen Robinson  10:59

Okay, great. So code switching is anytime you use language that’s appropriate to the person who’s listening, even though it may not be appropriate, the most appropriate way for you to communicate. So it’s, it’s like this fun way that we put an extra burden on people who have identities that are not conventional to the place that they’re in. It’s like extra work. It’s like fun extra work to be understood. It’s important extra work though. Sometimes I look back at like, let’s see, see in the Atos work on of her work. She’s a powerful work just ample where we will put links to like to see as Yeah, in the Great. Um, yeah, she has those three articles, if you could put links to those. I mean, that like a good idea, Stephen. Yeah. of her work. But I look at the way that she’s sort of blocked out in her like addressing model, how she’s blocked out in any, any way that you, you know, whether it’s age, whether it’s race, whether it’s there’s all these ways that we’re either marginalized, or we’re overvalued by the society that we live in. And anytime that like you, you step outside of the overvalued column, you have to code switch into the overvalued column. I don’t know if I said that. Right. But basically, when you’re at the margins, you have to speak in the language of the people who have the power. And that’s code switching

Erica Mills Barnhart  12:33

of the majority. So I mean, maybe one way to think about it simplistically is if you’re in the minority, you find yourself having to speak to in the way that the majority of folks or and or because it’s not actually obvious majority, but the folks who hold power,

Stephen Robinson  12:49

right? We’d have Yeah, I was gonna say. Yes. Already minority thing.

Erica Mills Barnhart  12:54

Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. It came out of my mouth. And I was like, that actually doesn’t hold.

Stephen Robinson  13:02

It’s more about power

Erica Mills Barnhart  13:03

power. It’s about who holds power. Yeah. And actually I am, I’ll just share. I mean, I didn’t want to, to explain code switching, because the honest truth is as a very privileged white woman, I have not had to find myself code switching very often in my life. And it was in reading some of the CCNA Atos work. And she has these I think it’s seven categories. It’s seven or eight categories. Yeah. You know, so race, gender, socio economic class, religious affiliation, even if you weren’t religious growing up, but you know, so there’s a number of Yeah, nationality. And actually, because so the only two, where I wasn’t, you know, in the power position where I’m a woman, and also was born in Canada, which, you know, sounds a little, like, odd. But there was a pretty good phase of my life where that really, that that that, for me, I realized was the way in which I could access the feeling of the burden of code switching for a period of time. But also, that faded away as my Canadian accent faded, for the most part, in a way, although I still have some quirks. But you know, for a lot of especially, you know, white gender domain, folks, cisgender. Folks, we just don’t, this isn’t a part of our lives, we don’t carry this burden. So that’s why I didn’t want to be the one to explain.

Stephen Robinson  14:30

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate a lot of the I appreciate a lot about you, and that’s why I keep showing. Thank you.

Erica Mills Barnhart  14:40

Okay, so now we’ve explained what it is. And I’m hope I’m hoping that people get it. Do you have some concrete examples that you can offer?

Stephen Robinson  14:47

Oh, yeah,

Erica Mills Barnhart  14:48

just to really put you on the spot. But I know you’re totally

Stephen Robinson  14:50

you know, the way that I would talk to, I mean, even just the way that I’m speaking to you holding myself because This is a more professional space, if you were like a gay friend, and we were just kicking over a cup of coffee, you know, there would i would be just accumulating more I would be, there would be elements of my personality that are not currently present. And it’s not that they’re not invited to this space, like, there’s no, they’re just not necessarily appropriate. And the things that I’m trying to communicate wouldn’t necessarily come through in the cleanest way. And I think a lot of code switching actually is pretty subconscious. You know, some people are really good and able to consciously, you know, and being a biracial person, I might consciously switch into using different language or sort of holding myself and holding my values and a different through a different prism, you know, as if I was in in black company versus white company. And some people are really good at doing that consciously. But I think mostly, it’s actually a subconscious, extra bit of work that people do. And it’s part of why I like being a person of color is exhausting in this culture, you know, or you just think about, like this extra bag of work that you have to carry around with, you have like, Okay, well, I can’t use my language, or people who don’t speak English as their first language. Like, it’s very similar to that.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:28

Yeah. And I appreciate you pointing out sort of the somewhat professional setting that we find ourselves in. And I knew that might be another way for white listeners to be like, Oh, that’s right. I, when I’m chit chatting with my friends, that’s different than women, when I’m showing up. And just to be aware that sometimes that’s tougher, and that there’s this extra level, because if you’re white, you know, when you’re switching to your professional, you’re still white, you know, and so you’re still for the most part, you know, the the dominant vernacular. So, let’s talk about jargon, showing move to jargon. And, you know, eventually, so, so part of that conversation that, you know, got us here today was talking about how you became aware, relatively early on of code switching, and then taking your talks about Chiron in particular, and that you were mindful of the fact that in doing that, in some ways you were perpetuating, you know, oppression, and patterns of oppression. So I think for especially if this stuff is new, I can mention this point, some listeners are like, Whoa, I mean, I remember when I first heard about code switching, I was like, briefly, yeah, oh, oh, my gosh, wow. Maybe some folks are having that moment. And I want to say to everyone, all of this is a journey. Yeah. If this code switching stuff, or whatever is new to you, great. Like, don’t feel badly about it. I learned stuff. I mean, I get it wrong a lot. Still, but that’s okay. Like, at least we’re you’re on the journey. And that’s as well. I’d like to make things you know, examples are helpful. As an academic, I tend to really live in a theory land a lot. Because I can just fill in the blanks with my examples from doing this a long time. But jargon so so jargon is so important, and we talk about it a lot. And when it comes to marketing, and fundraising, and all these things. And the reason I really want to shine a light on it, this is my international hand sign for those of you can’t see it’s a really high tech fan sign on jargon. So especially when you’re talking to external audiences, unless you know, for darn sure that they know the jargon that you’re using my counsel every time it’s gonna be just don’t use it. Because it can be it’s making people feel excluded. Uh huh. Now, conversely, jargon can, you know can be handy in two ways, one internally to you know, in a in a culture, community or organization. You know, if you know the jargon, acronyms, by the way, are a subset of jargon, then it can actually be efficient. It’s like shorthand. But it can also be used in its most nefarious usage, I would say, it is used to purposely exclude people in like, better light version of that it is used to make people feel included. Right, like a part of something. So I just wanted to say all of that, because jargon is really tricky. Straight up horrible. Like some stuff is his but it’s very nuanced. I think it’s one of the ways in which you have to be so strategic and intentional, as a, you know, within organizations. So let’s, let’s talk about some of the most use jargon in philanthropy. And that because that way we can talk about Okay, in what ways does this perpetuate some of the very things that We’re trying to dismantle. Let’s start. So I’m gonna say word, Steven. And then we please, for listeners, like, explain what it means. And I actually want to start with word philanthropy.

20:10

Yeah.

Stephen Robinson  20:12

So a lot of the work that I do is with families. And the very first thing, especially if it’s a multi generational family wealth, the very first thing that I do is put up a slide that simply says philanthropy. And then we go from the youngest person up, and we define it. And you know, the Seattle foundation we have, we have our, also, I’m not speaking on behalf of Seattle Foundation, at any point in this podcast, just made that clear. But Seattle Foundation has a really great definition of philanthropy, I tend to break it up into two words, Phil, and anthropy, meaning the love of humanity, because I feel like that’s a little bit more expansive, and it gives more room to play. You know, I think a lot of what people on on that side of the table are trying to solve for is, you know, how can I live into my mission. And that looks a lot of different ways. It looks like volunteering, it looks like money, it looks like time on boards, it looks like, you know, hopefully, more and more, it looks like reconstructing the way that they’re making wealth. Because I think that that’s really the key to unlocking philanthropy is actually doing less harm on the front end. But a way to bridge into that conversation is by talking about the resources that they’re giving out, which is really a lot of the work that we do. So and you know, more broadly, I think people don’t really have that sense of what philanthropy is like, in the nonprofit space. I hear philanthropy just used. You know, like, if you’re a director of philanthropy for a nonprofit, that means a major gifts donor, you’re, you’re supposed to be sort of kicking it with the big wigs. Yeah, that’s, that’s your job, versus a fundraiser. And so it’s, it’s sort of synonymous with power. And then more broadly, I think, people think about philanthropy either as just being, you know, just charity, or they think of both top hats walking around and shiny gowns.

Erica Mills Barnhart  22:21

Yeah, I love that you pointed out that philanthropy is about the love of humanity. And it’s not just about writing a check, or, you know, it’s not it’s not, it’s not transactional. It doesn’t need to be limited just to money, but it really, because I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I, you know, I’m, you know, I don’t have money to, I don’t have a top hat, and things. We want to go on record as saying you don’t need to talk how to be a philanthropist. Bottom line. If you love humanity, whoever you’re showing up to do that. You’re anthropos. And I think that’s really beautiful. So Okay, next word, when people say strategic giving, what does that mean? Because I’m finding that like, you hear it a lot. And implied in that is that there’s and strategic giving?

Stephen Robinson  23:05

Yeah, yeah. So that’s actually a large part of what I do is helping people to create strategic plans for themselves. So oftentimes, LCL Foundation, again, we have like a, we have a tried and true philosophy and curriculum that we take a lot of our philanthropists through called giving with impact. And it’s the you know, sort of a modulated learning cycle that that people can go through first identifying your values and interests, moving on to trying to understand the sort of levels of impact that occur. So a lot of philanthropists don’t really have a direct relationship or understanding of how nonprofits work. So just understanding that there are different ways that organizations work, some are direct, some are preventative, some are systems changing, or reinventing. And it’s all sort of impactful, but the emotional output is different and, and whatnot. And the tangibility is really different to so I, you know, strategic giving, means that a person has actually thought about right, but they’re doing, it’s intentional. It’s intentional. And, you know, I think, you know, philanthropists are human so that in humans, I know, I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about, you know, all of the various things I could be thinking about in terms of our society. philanthropists are the same way. And so they’ll just do what is in front of them, or where their relationships are. So, you know, strategic philanthropy. And I also I always encourage, you know, there’s multiple different ways that philanthropists can operate and they should budget accordingly. So your whatever is your strategy. So, you know, my strategy is climate impact, or climate justice and impact associated with that. And so that’s that’s really where my story Teacher giving is, you know, that amounts to $100. Versus like my, my personal relationship giving, which is in smaller amounts, it’s $50 here, $50 there. So ultimately, it’s about building a budget where your relationships are honored, because those are important. And also impact is honored. Cuz that’s,

Erica Mills Barnhart  25:26

that’s a nice way of thinking about it. Yeah, I think you surface something that was important, though. And I’m hoping that people kind of got it, which is, all of us have multiple identities, and we shift in and out of them throughout the day, right. So when you wake up, you don’t, you’re not like necessarily waking up with your donor identity, front and center. Maybe if we all slept with top hats next door, then we can roll out of bed stick on the top hat, that seems really highly unlikely. But you know, this concept, I think, is really is very important again, and there’s this term called mutable identities. But it basically means we shift throughout the day. So you may wake up, and if you’re a parent, and you’re like, you’re primarily a parent, and then you go to work, and then you know, your professional identity is forward. And then we we all go through all of this. And I would say one of the biggest marketing errors I see nonprofits make is that they have this working hypothesis that when somebody reads the appeal, or the newsletter, or whatever, that their primary their hat that they have on, is the donor hat. Yeah. And so I mean, your experience with donors is a bit different, because they are they’re there with you, donor hat on. Like, that’s forward. But that’s really not often the case. So when we look at the I mean, when we look at the the evidence about how often people actually do any research around there giving, it’s not a lot, right, it’s not and by the way, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But I think it is, it is something to surface,

Stephen Robinson  26:58

for sure. I mean, we we exist in an attention economy right now. And unfortunately, you know, the, the things that are pulling attention towards giving and towards their love of humanity, are dwindling. And they’re not front and center, and they’re fighting with other things that are that are laden with dopamine, you know. And they have to figure out how to create a tool that gives the reader a dopamine hit, or you have to go through a broker of some sort. And so

Erica Mills Barnhart  27:31

dopamine broker,

Stephen Robinson  27:33

a dopamine broker, or person who is who exists in the world of philanthropy, this, to my role oftentimes comes in, it’s just sort of being like a sorting hat for on behalf of donor so I can uplift things to them. But CPAs and attorneys, and, you know, all every great gift planning officer that I’ve ever met, you know, operates in the nonprofit space simultaneously to the wealth advising space.

Erica Mills Barnhart  28:01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. For listeners who were like, Ah, that’s all that sounds overwhelming. But I still want to kind of sort of make maybe smarter decisions. I mean, there’s give Well, there’s candid there. I mean, there’s lots of places to go. Right? I have to say, when I was preparing for this, so I have one more jargon word that I that I want to talk about. And then I want to go to some of the specific ones that you were talking about when you joined in class. So catalyst for a long time has had a very bad rap. However, I came across this definition, or actually, that what it really means and it made me feel a lot better about the word catalyst said when it comes to science, a catalyst speeds up a chemical reaction, and allows for less energy to be used during a reaction. These substances exist even after the reaction occurs and go on to speed up other reactions. I’m just saying, I mean, I feel bad net that made me feel a little badly for the word catalyst, which tends to hold sort of a self congratulatory space, I would say, you know, organizations are using it, they’re like, well be a catalyst. But this gives you sort of, like a, like, I don’t know, isn’t going to speed up a reaction.

Stephen Robinson  29:13

Right?

Erica Mills Barnhart  29:15

You know, like, you can, like, that’s so much more concrete.

Stephen Robinson  29:19

A lot of these words actually have, you know, some really good heart and meaning behind them. Do they get overused. Think about synergy. You know, the the idea that two things can come together and create a reaction that’s larger than those two things could on their own. That’s a great concept. Who doesn’t energize?

Erica Mills Barnhart  29:44

You can synergistically catalyze something.

29:49

Yeah, I

Erica Mills Barnhart  29:49

don’t know. Can’t can’t Can Can somebody synergistically? I think so.

Stephen Robinson  29:53

I think so.

Erica Mills Barnhart  29:54

And I think we should all try to work that into our day to day conversations. I don’t know Are we synergy Stickley catalyzing in this meeting with me just be so goofy that it would lighten things up. Okay, now lay on us because I don’t work in philanthropy. I direct the center about nonprofits of philanthropy and many other things I don’t like I’m not on the inside. And so you shared a few terms. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, what? What are you talking about? Do you remember what they were? Yep.

Stephen Robinson  30:24

I remember one of them was the multiplier effect.

Erica Mills Barnhart  30:27

Yes, yes. So talk to us about the multiplier effect.

Stephen Robinson  30:30

Well, it’s also, you know, I think people talk about it also as knock on impact.

Erica Mills Barnhart  30:35

Oh, that was that was the thing. I was like, knock on impact. Yeah.

Stephen Robinson  30:43

Yeah, I don’t know where that language comes from. It seems sportsy. But basically, it means it’s like a domino domino effect. And the multiplier is looking at your you’re looking to do activity a, and it’s going to have impact B. But then what happens as that impact sort of ripples throughout? its intended sort of lane of of impact? So that’s a lot of the word impact.

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:12

But lane of impact.

Stephen Robinson  31:14

Yeah, well, and I just made that up. So don’t go ahead and use that. That’s

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:18

all they’ll be will, Steven, we will now be. Are you staying in your impact plane synergistically?

Stephen Robinson  31:30

Yeah. And so that’s, that’s the one that I remember. But what other terms to you out?

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:36

There were something well, the knock on effect was definitely one of them. Because something about that just seems so? Yeah, inside ball, right. Like, who didn’t? I was like, do people like you’re in a meeting and people are talking about the knock on effect? And, and also, you know, back to kind of this idea of different language being used very intentionally in different contexts. So maybe knock on effect is common language for nonprofits? I have I mean, I personally haven’t heard nonprofits using it. So if you know feels a little bit and now we’re gonna step, you know, toward this conversation about how is language use to perpetuate oppression? Yeah, basically, or unintentionally, right? Because if it is true, which it may not be, I may just be the last to understand this term, or to hear that term knock on effects. But because Foundation’s been foundations fundamentally are in the business of giving away money to support communities and causes, if they’re using that language, you know, so they hold the power, nonprofits are the ones who are asking. So you know, there’s a power dynamic that is uneven In this scenario, for the most part. Well, so if there’s language being used within foundations and nonprofits who are trying to speak the language, right, just way to say, right, we understand if they don’t know it, that seems to perpetuate the paradigm anemic?

Stephen Robinson  32:57

Yeah, well, exactly. And, you know, if you take a look back at how philanthropy got its start, it’s not hard to and so how philanthropy got its start was essentially people who were amassing larger and larger amounts of wealth and had ever historically been known, decided to give back some of that wealth. And so that means that incredibly powerful people created, you know, essentially banks of power, and then allow the those power banks to then distribute, you know, according to whatever strategy or whatever they wanted. But that creates a power differential, just from the start from the very getgo. We’re talking about very powerful people who create very powerful entities. And the whole structure is, I mean, I reflect on like Audrey lords. The, you know, the tools of the oppressor will never be used under the Masters tools will never be used to undo the Masters houses, how she terms it, I think about that, from the perspective of philanthropy, like the thing that we’re trying to do, oftentimes is undue harm that’s been created in our society, the thing that’s created that harm, oftentimes is the very thing that’s created the largest that’s that necessitates philanthropy, or that creates the opportunity for philanthropy. And so that’s just I mean, that’s, that’s one way. One way that philanthropy just sort of perpetuates harm.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:38

So, what do we do about that?

Stephen Robinson  34:43

Yeah, well, you know, again, I reflect on Letizia, Nancy’s work, because she talks a lot about I mean, essentially, what are the tool that she gives us is a power tool. So it’s understanding power, where it’s where it overly accumulates and where it doesn’t exist. where it has to be, you know, sort of grabbed. And so when she, when she looks at people who are further away from, from power, her whole thing is about re centering and empowering oneself. And so I look at like who leis work with, you know, nonprofit, with balls, and down nonprofit AF. Oh, that’s right. Yes. And other organizations like there’s a CEOs of color organization for Washington State, there’s lots of different organizations that are working to rebalance power and understand their voice. And, and I think all of that is is like the systems change work again, like looking back at that, that sort of gradient of work that can be done, right, there’s like very direct work that is tangible. And then there’s a sort of more upstream systems change work and reinvention, I think a lot of the systems change work is going to come from entities that are fully empowered, and leaders that are fully empowered.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:14

What does it look like to be fully empowered? concretely,

Stephen Robinson  36:19

I think, you know, again, we have I’m sort of talking in the abstract, but I think people who are fully in their bodies are fully empowered.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:30

This is where listeners are like, Oh, he really is higher. That’s a contemplated practice, say?

Stephen Robinson  36:43

No, I, you know, I think that there’s a lot of forces in this world that are trying to push you out of your body and trying to make you feel and this is where marketing comes in. Right? Like marketing wouldn’t exist if people felt like they were good enough. because there’d be nothing to market to there. You know, you have to have that deficiency. And so our culture is, is really predicated on a lot of deficiency

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:06

is part of what this podcast is trying to disrupt.

Stephen Robinson  37:09

Right?

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:11

Right, we just put a fine point on it. I mean, that that genuinely is right. Like, it’s why it’s called marketing for good because so much of marketing has been used to perpetuate yuckiness.

Stephen Robinson  37:22

Totally, totally. And yet, there are tools inlaid in marketing that make it very useful for getting out, you know, a clear message and for, for marketing, and for communicating effectively.

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:36

Well, and for, you know, inviting people into actions. Yeah, whether on the you know, as a consumer as a donor is whatever, the truly the truly are beneficial, right. But that starts to perpetuate cycles of good, as opposed to cycles of bad, you know, beds, if it’s, you know, it’s very binary and trite. But, but that is kind of the idea. I mean, it’s what keeps me motivated to do the work is to be looking for the examples, and that also within the way that you were doing the marketing itself. Right, right, that it’s sort of like to the greatest extent possible, you are trying to get to Kant’s, moral imperative, right? That, which is this idea, I just taught with FX last week in my undergrad classes, like friend of mine, for me, and I will also say, I know, like, every time I teach ethics, which I teach it in most of my courses, it’s important that students at the beginning of the class are like, ethics, yay, you know, and like, they’re good sports about it. And it tends to be one of those things that is most pointed to in valuations, like I love that class on ethics. I think it’s really important, right? So if you think about the ethics, so cost, moral imperative is basically that the that the means have to justify the end, like the the means themselves, the way in which you were doing whatever you were doing have to also be moral, which is juxtapose that to classic utilitarianism, which, which would say the means justify the end. Right? So in the end, if we, you know, plant more trees help more kids do whatever. obon Okay, sure, maybe our, our HR is all over the map, you know, or maybe people were even harmed or or back to your sort of bigger meta picture on this. Like, do people feel seen? Do they feel heard? Do they feel like they truly belong? Right in the space, whatever the space is being used to create the products, right? And I think of I had Aaron Dell on Merlot Jackson on a show who wrote an article for that. So they do culture, they called culture audits. They get very excited about the about the audits, but they wrote a piece for Harvard Business Review that the title I think was a get this off probably was woke washing won’t cut it for your company, right? So I’m definitely you know, in that space, and so in that conversation, You know, they are so I mean, they’re wonderful on so many levels. One of them is like they are concrete. They are gonna like it is like, are you looking at the you know, if you say that you value diversity, equity inclusion, what’s your turnover rate? Uh huh. And it’s so much of it. We were talking about how a lot of this is like, not sexy. But you kind of have to operationalize like, yeah, if operationalize ethics, you have to operationalize valuing diversity, equity, inclusion, liberation, you know, recently people are going are going there. Yeah. So, let’s bring this back to language power. Oh, I was going to get a language we can go to power.

Stephen Robinson  40:41

Let’s go the language of power. Yes,

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:43

let’s go there. Let’s combo meal it.

40:45

Ooh,

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:46

I think that was synergistic. What we just right there? What is the language of power look like in, in philanthropy in the space of doing good? And what might it look like? Like if we are trying to go towards censoring all voices? Or, you know, I guess I go also to like, What is it? What does it look like for everyone to belong? Yeah, it should like truly feel bad.

Stephen Robinson  41:10

I mean, this is where I really, you know, I think about like Octavia Butler. And I think about Adrian Murray. I think about all these authors who are really trying to be creative. Because the essentially like, you know, we can’t we, if we work within this system, like this system was created really intentionally to produce the outcomes that are currently being produced in which we are walking through a world of you know, and that goes to how things are literally constructed in our mind, but also in our internal environment, you know, a lot of the structures that we’re currently undoing through a lot of dei initiatives, the internal structures that we’re undoing, those were intentionally created. And so we need, we need creativity, we need somebody who can think completely outside of that box, which we live in. And this again, goes back to contemplative practices, because oftentimes, what it requires is that we’re able to actually identify where, where our how our mind is working. And if we’re going to be applying values, internally, I get, I always make a point to say that there is the personal liberation work that a person needs to go through. And then there’s the work, the more tangible work that you’re talking about, which creates the equitable outcomes. And those are tangible things those are, you know, who’s working in what level of power, you know, you can record some data around it, you can show how these things have shifted over time, you can look at sale foundations, history of giving, and see how we’ve changed our trajectory of giving towards bipoc. Communities. You these are tangible things that can be adjusted,

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:04

just so that we’re walking our talk, not everyone will be familiar with bipoc blesses

Stephen Robinson  43:10

people of color. Yeah. Yeah. So bipoc was created because people of color oftentimes leaves out even within the group of people of color, black and indigenous experiences, because they are so I mean, they’re, they’re not completely different. But the experience of walking in a black body or an indigenous body, I can’t speak to the indigenous part. But the those are independent, and require their own sort of century, you know, acronym. So that’s why they’re pulled out. It’s called bipoc.

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:44

So I was for anyone who’s watching this video, I smirked a little bit, when you were talking about creating equitable outcomes, and and being able to gather data around that evidence. You know, white culture loves data, we love evidence. So I think it’s an example of an opportunity, I think, right to just wonder, like, why, why are we collecting data? And I say, this is somebody who works in academia. Like, I love me some evidence, right? We just produced this report about the impact of COVID on nonprofits. I’m not saying so I’m not saying you know, data and evidence is powerful, right? It is, like I said, an opportunity to be like, what do we really need to know? What do we really need to know? And what what are our sources of knowledge going to be? Yeah, can be like a very specific actionable thing. You know, and I know a lot of listeners to this are, you know, hold leadership positions in their organization. So that’s something that you could concretely take away from this conversation and start doing this just one, you know, starting to wonder about those things. starting to wonder about why it is or isn’t okay for certain people to interrupt other people. Right. That is one of my biggest things. I have to work on. And it was like, a huge eye opener to realize how often you know, and I like I’m fast paced sprinter. So I could like make a bunch of excuses. But fundamentally, I get to, yeah, because of the positional authority I hold. It becomes very obvious. Right, and, obviously was the right word, but but it is illuminating. And so again, just to be wondering and observing, like how these shifts might take place.

Stephen Robinson  45:32

Yeah, I think it’s also important to note around the data, you know, who is collecting the data and who’s setting the agenda for data collection? You know, because I know, from a community philanthropy point of view, as well as this played out in my international development background with Peace Corps, you know, it’s, it’s who’s at the table at all times, you know, so who’s setting the who, who’s created the value system from which you’re working, in general, you know, and oftentimes, it’s, it’s done by leaders, and leaders or people who have been acculturated in a particular way. And that’s, you know, there. That’s one type of value system. And that’s an important type of value system. But I think right now, what the world is calling for, is for leaders to listen. And, and that’s the I think that’s like a central point. So, and, again, one of the ways that you operationalize that one of the tangible things is by creating cabinets of people who are directly from community who hold the ear of the leader. And that’s like a very tangible way of actually getting that input. And then the the internal part, because, again, I always break it into what’s happening internally, and what’s happening externally, what’s the tangible and what’s the sort of internal world. And the internal part is, I mean, I think every leader needs to go to therapy. Yeah. Like you need to know where you got your storylines from, from your own history. And you need to know how you can reach your own liberation before you can actually be an honest broker in the world. Oh, and especially, it’s, it’s very difficult when it when you’re adjacent to large amounts of power. Because people relate to you in a way that benefits you. And we’re comfort beings. So we like to stay comfortable. And so if if everyone’s catering to us all the time, it’s really hard to be self critical, and say, Oh, well, maybe I didn’t say that. Right? You know, because it requires you to do the work for yourself, is nobody will call you out, if you’re on the other side of the power imbalance. People call you out left and right, and you become better for it, because you have a ton of feedback. But the further up in the Echelon and this this relates to the way that philanthropy works in general, there’s not a lot of people calling out philanthropists, you know, or philanthropy. And partially, it’s because it’s a it’s a top a golden pedestal, it’s on top of, you know, and that golden pedestal is multi dimensional, because it’s also a golden pedicel. that’s associated with resources, but it’s also associated with our own moral virtue, you know, in some regard, so I talk to people at dinner parties and whatnot, and they’re like, oh, you’re saving the world? And I’m like, No, that’s no morality. This is, you know, this is it’s the moving of resources. It’s not inherently a moral thing, you know, but it is, but at the same time, it is

Erica Mills Barnhart  48:46

you’re moving money to move powers. Edgar Villanova would say, right, I think it’s after Who said that? Right. Okay. I think so. I think it sounds like something he would say, yeah. We’ll fact check that, but I’m going to attribute it to Edgar. Yeah.

49:00

I think this, you

Erica Mills Barnhart  49:02

know, I hope that people are hearing that, you know, this sort of a riff on this idea. We talked a lot about on podcast, if you’d like you have to have internal alignment before you can have external execution, like, high high quality extra execution. For the most part, we’re talking about that in the context of, you know, internal teams. You know, there was a great podcast with Beth castleberry, who she talked very explicitly because she works for right now for Fred Hutch, but she’s her for big systems and like, how do you get people internally aligned? Because you need that so much for externally but what you’re saying is much more personal, to my ears much more personal. So I am hoping listeners will just take a minute to wonder about like, What might that look like if I if I’m not already doing that? How can I think you know, to your point, the higher you get up, the more intentional you have to be about like really having truth tellers around you. And building like structures. Yeah. You know, building structures, so that you you are getting feedback. And then you know, the higher up you go been really intentional about what feedback you know, I’m err, quoting feedback because I don’t just mean formal like, and it’s your one year review. But I’m trying to echo and underscore what you were saying about folks who hold power, I think often unintentionally, are quote, unquote, giving feedback to those to those who aren’t in power. So I think there are a lot of different ways to start this work, I hope that listeners are inspired. To do the work, I’m totally not on your level, like I, you know, I meditate, I get my journal, hit and miss on both of those these days. But like, I tried to be fairly, I would say, My most consistent contemplator practice is making my cup of tea in the morning. You know, what it’s part of, I love tea,

Stephen Robinson  50:47

that is really great. I mean, I don’t want to I also don’t want to come off as though I’m some ethereal being who’s like constantly meditating or something like this, it is also a moment to moment, reality, you know, the, it’s just different for every person that I love that you have a check in practice around making tea,

Erica Mills Barnhart  51:08

I try not to do anything else except make the tea. And that takes three to four minutes, because I like my tea very strong. And there is something very nice, you know, about the tea, and then the term and, and I used to, like, guess, you know, take every opportunity, but like, do matter. And I guess it was, you know, year or so ago that I was like, you know, I’m just gonna build this. It’s gonna be about the T and some days, that’s as good as it gets, like the rest of the day, just like a downhill moon. same person is hard. Yeah, team presents really hard, but so important. I close every interview by asking folks the same, the same question. So it’s about inspiration and motivation. So motivation is about taking action. So when we look at the root of words and inspiration, we go back in time, originally meant to take breath. So we need both inspiration, and motivation. And I’m curious what, what inspires you? And what motivates you to keep doing this work?

Stephen Robinson  52:06

Yeah. My inspiration right now, I was mentioning a little bit before, in our pre pre conversation that I’ve had a lot of babies be born into, recently jealous. Yeah, and, you know, I think it’s almost trite to say that babies are inspiring, but they are, they’re so new. And there’s something about the fact that they don’t know all the systems, they, you know, they could be born into any configuration of a society and they would thrive. So there’s something just so open and completely vulnerable about a baby that I just find incredibly inspiring, because we were those babies, you know, and we have the opportunity to shift our world by reclaiming that mindset of, you know, everything can be new. So that’s my inspiration. Motivation, I think the thing that keeps me motivated, is, every single time I walk through, I live in Rainier Beach. And every single time I walk anywhere, I just am more and more motivated. You know, there’s so much genius around me at all times. And I feel like I’m sitting on a secret, because it doesn’t seem like the genius that I’m seeing is necessarily valued all the time. Especially when I talk to people, you know, I’ll say, I’ll say a little bit about where I live or something. And people are like, Oh, you know, and there is such beauty in in so many places. And so I find that very motivating to sort of center in my community. And yeah, keep, keep moving forward. Because there are a lot of people need all of us to be moving forward, especially, you know, those of us working in the environmental space, like, you know, if we, if we don’t work hard right now, we may not see a 2030 you know, or, I mean, the earth will see the 2030 but humanity may not be present on that Earth.

Erica Mills Barnhart  54:25

So you started with babies, and now you’re ending with doom and gloom.

Stephen Robinson  54:31

Find them to be you got to hold the tension.

Erica Mills Barnhart  54:36

You got to hold them both, which is hard. Yeah. Yeah.

54:41

Thank you so much.

Erica Mills Barnhart  54:42

Oh, thank you for being here. listeners, thank you for sticking with this conversation. You know, some of these conversations are like, it’s like, you know, chirping along and flight light light and we’re talking about you know, things that are easy and I think they’re, they’re gonna be pieces of this that really give people pause and hopefully opportunity for reflection maybe you’ll be fully present when you make to your coffee next time ever. I always appreciate time with you Steven. So thanks for thanks for carving out time for this. And so listeners as always do good be well and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening to the marketing for good podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast please rate subscribe review and share on Apple, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like more information about Clemson University, how to make more impact in and for your organization for hiring me to speak or coach. Go to Cox marketing comm or reach out at info at Clarkson marketing comm again, thanks for listening, and thanks for making our world a better place.

The post Ep 35: Stephen Robinson on Code-Switching appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart’s interview with Mita Mallick on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

marketing, colorism, people, pandemic, linkedin, brands, post, marketers, diversity, product, inclusion, kids, talk, black, piece, lives, life, work, question, consumer

Erica Mills Barnhart  00:04

One of the things that we talk a lot about on this podcast is inclusion. And how can we make marketing more inclusive, because historically, it has not been historically, we have been bombarded with images of, you know, especially in the realm of beauty with images of white women, white people, blond haired, blue eyed, very Eurocentric. And that’s, that’s not our culture, that’s not our society, it’s not reflective. It does not represent the beautiful diversity of voices, perspectives, and bodies that really make up our society. And so I’ve been heartened to see progress in this direction. And I’m joined today by Mita Malik, who, gosh, if you’re interested in marketing, she is such a strong advocate. So consistent, so insightful, definitely go check out her LinkedIn profile. It’s just like a treasure trove of examples of what’s working and sometimes what’s not. But like Katie story now of mega babe, who, you know, is such an advocate for all bodies are beautiful. She has this really wonderful way of bringing people into the conversation. And if somebody has maybe not met the mark, she doesn’t she never shames it’s always from a perspective of like, let’s do better, I think we can do better. So she just has this wonderful, wonderful combination of deep insight, tons of expertise, her lived experience as a woman of color, who has been in marketing for 15 plus years. And also she is just really practical, as well. So she always pairs insight with action and practical tips. So we talk a lot about that as well. But I just I feel like she’s such a special person in the space because of her combination of, you know, she she she doesn’t hold any punches, and yet, they land softly. They land softly and I anytime I get to share time with me to I’m learning that that is time really, really well spent, I gain greater perspective, I always learn from her. And I’m always inspired by her. She’s really just truly wonderful. And I can’t wait for you to listen to this conversation. And I’ll be intrigued to see what you what you learn from her and what you take away. I am so deeply hoping that the progress that we made during the pandemics, the dual pandemics will stick with us and that we truly are at a tipping point when it comes to inclusive marketing. One of the things meet and I talked about is like our dream is that, you know, someday when you say marketing inclusion will just be implied. We’re not there yet. We have a long ways to go. But thanks to people like Mita we’re a lot closer than we ever have been. So enjoy, enjoy, enjoy my conversation with Mita Malik. Okay, I am very excited because With me today is Mita Malik. She is a corporate Changemaker with a track record of transforming businesses who gives innovative ideas of voice so true, and serves customers and communities with purpose. She’s currently head of inclusion, equity and impact at carta really interesting job title, I want to talk about that. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that trio, inclusion, equity and impact. She was formerly the head of inclusion and cross cultural marketing at Unilever. She has loved marketing and storytelling since she was a little girl and parlay that love into an extensive career as a marketer in the beauty and consumer product good space. Mita is a LinkedIn top voice a contributor contribute tour for entrepreneur, and her writing has been published in Harvard Business Review fest company and Business Insider. Luckily, luckily Luckily for us, Mita has channeled her considerable talent into making marketing way more inclusive. She is a powerhouse when it comes to representation and inclusive marketing and advocating for that and I’m so glad that you are here with me today. Mita. Welcome.

Mita Mallick  04:48

Erica, thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Erica Mills Barnhart  04:51

Yeah. So on your LinkedIn profile. It says I believe diversity of thought doesn’t happen without diversity of Rep. presentation, when you have all those points of views, life experiences and cultural backgrounds coming together around a table colliding, clashing and collaborating, that’s when magic happens. One that is just beautifully written, and a testament to your love of languages storytelling. Yes, it is. Thank you. Will you share a bit with us about how you ended up doing what you do?

Mita Mallick  05:24

Gosh, well, it all starts from my childhood. I’m the proud Daughter of Indian immigrant parents, my younger brother and I were born and raised here in the US, we were raised outside of Boston. And I was the funny looking, dark skinned girl with a long funny looking braid, whose parents spoke funny English until I wasn’t funny anymore. And that became the start of bullying for me. And I think the dark side of when you start to sow seeds of othering individuals, that person is crazy, different, strange, funny, weird, lazy, not very smart. And the things that we say casually, that start to create a narrative of person, and I was excluded by my peers every day, they let me know I didn’t belong in that community. And so that was my upbringing. And then at the same time, I didn’t grow up in the Instagram error. Wow, has it changed? Now? There’s so many amazing black and brown role models out there. But I didn’t have that. And so I always was like, why doesn’t this work on my hair? My skin? Why don’t I see individuals like me reflected, I can remember my mother concocting things in the kitchen, for my skin or my hair or bringing things back from trips for from India. And so I think if you know that about me, that’s really what’s driven me all my life is to make sure no one ever feels excluded. And I think in particular, when it comes to marketing, and how we all want to be as marketers surprising and delighting customers, surprising and delighting.

Erica Mills Barnhart  07:02

But also, and you’re talking about this in the opening to your excellent Harvard Business Review article, titled marketing still has a colorism problem about like, yes, we want to surprise and delight, but also there’s this sort of like, but we’re not going to go too far. We don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable. And so can you talk about that, that like balance between kind of the powers that be, and marketing as a discipline? We talked a lot about this on the show, and I talked a lot about it. When I teach at the University of Washington, when I teach marketing, it is white dominant, like the people making decisions, myself included.

Mita Mallick  07:38

So there always seems to be this burden on historically marginalized communities to prove the markets they’re to prove the darker shades of foundation will sell to prove that somebody would buy this for this type of hair to prove to prove to prove. And I think what’s interesting now, Eric, about the time we’re living in is the demographics from a US perspective have rapidly changed so quickly. And if you look at Nielsen, which is one source, the multicultural consumer, as they coin it, there is over $3.2 trillion dollars of spending power with that consumer. So what I would say to anybody listening, who says they’re struggling with growth, I’ll convince you otherwise, you’re not looking hard enough. You’re not thinking about your products and services, and who you’re serving and why and who you’re excluding, and who you’re not talking to. So I think it is tied to what my good friend DC Marshall, who’s the CEO of diverse and engaged calls the diversity tipping point of last year. And what we see happened on top of the changing demographics of our country, on top of the pandemic we’re living in and on top of the other pandemic, which is the pandemic of racism, right? So you think all these things are building and building and building? And so all of a sudden there’s there’s an explosion, and consumers are demanding, are demanding these things. And do you believe that we have tipped permanently? I believe we have. I’m a half glass full person, me to my husband, my husband jokes. He’s half glass, I’m damn left festival, but it’s always I choose to do this work. I think you have to be half possible. I think there’s glimmers of hope. I don’t want to think that we’re going back. I want to think that it’s like street sleep training my daughter. I’m so intrigued by where you’re going with this step forward. 10 steps back, you steps to it right. It’s sort of the back and forth pendulum, but eventually she will sleep by herself one day, I know she will. And so this is I have this, it will happen. And there’s so many amazing people doing the work and pushing for change that I know it’ll happen. Mm hmm.

Erica Mills Barnhart  09:54

Let’s talk a little bit about this article. colorism so again, it was called marketing still has colorism probably one of many articles that you’ve written. So I just, I find this one particularly relevant. First, will you explain what colorism is? Because I’m not sure all listeners will be familiar with that term. I mean, it’s sort of intuitive. But anyway, I’d like to hear you speak to that. And then I want to talk about your recommendations, because one of the things that I really appreciate about your writing is, it’s practical when it’s backed by research.

Mita Mallick  10:20

So the academic ma works out on that. But also, it’s really practical to come back to the recommendations. But first, what is colorism? It’s a product of racism, it is discrimination towards individuals who have darker skin. And I have personally experienced that, through most of my life, I wrote a piece for cosmopolitan on what my life might be like if I was a lighter shade. Oh, interesting. And that is something that I have faced as an n m woman of South Asian descent, and something that happens often in the South Asian community that we don’t talk enough about. And so that I had personally experienced and then I saw that coming. You know, as I started my career in marketing over and over again, like I talked about in this piece, wanting to hero, a dark skinned woman for this beautiful campaign that I was working on early in my career. And the creative director be like, we can’t put someone so dark skin for the campaign. Like we can’t do that. It’s like, why not? Again, why not? Right? Because it is colorism is also tied to the the notion that there is only really ultimately one standard of beauty, which is Eurocentric, white, blond, blue eyed, tall, thin, but that’s the only one standard of beauty. And so that is and that there’s all that’s tied to the history of our country and our world. And so that is colorism. Okay, thank

Erica Mills Barnhart  11:58

you for that. I mean, I wish that we could have even had, like, we had video of that conversation with you being like, why? But why? Cuz I just, I mean, I’m curious what he actually said, because I can’t imagine any response. That wouldn’t be palatable today.

Mita Mallick  12:21

Because the markets won’t like it. The other markets like it, I won’t sell the product and sell was very clear response. And that’s not the only time that’s happened in my career, the product will not sell. And here’s what’s interesting, Nielsen has done some research and study around this is that when you have when you lead with an insight for the black consumer, and in particular, I would say black women, you solve for many women of color. So as a woman who identifies as South Asian as a brown woman, I am first in line to use products that my black girlfriends recommend. Because I know if it’s working for their skin and their hair, it’s going to work for me as well. And so the market actually becomes even larger, if you think about it from that perspective. And yet, we’re still back to convince me Show me. I don’t believe you it’s not going to sell.

Erica Mills Barnhart  13:15

What do you think it’s going to take for that question to go away?

Mita Mallick  13:19

I think it’s going to take more black and brown representation around tables, whether it’s as you’re starting off as an Associate Product Manager or marketing coordinator all the way into the CMO position. And it’s really interesting, I think we often talk about from the marketing lens, we talk about the marketers in the organizations, it’s a huge ecosystem agencies play a huge role, right? Because you’re working with some of the largest sort of marketing organizations, they don’t do the work alone. They are the agency you don’t. And so the agencies and I know you talk about this in your in your class, and communications, and who else is up the table. And so I think, again, it’s nothing for us. Without us. You can’t be wanting to sell products authentically and serve a community without the voice of that community at the table in a meaningful way. And that you also allow for that voice to be heard. And I’m hearing you say meaningful start to finish, meaningful start to finish and not tokenized. And not just one person because guess what, I don’t speak for all brown women. So that’s also a burden you bring me into the room. I’ve had that happen before. And it’s like oh meter meter is going to speak to all brown women. It’s not a model solve this across the board. Yes. And so that’s no, it is every you know, you think about from the time you write a brief from the time you develop a product from the time you are actually on set, who’s behind the camera, who’s in front of the camera, if I’m talent, and somebody says to me, Well, your hair’s too difficult to work with. Or actually your skin’s too dark. I don’t have any foundations to match or any eyeshadows or blush that are going to work. That’s that’s We’re talking about it’s the ecosystem.

Erica Mills Barnhart  15:02

It’s the ecosystem. It’s the ecosystem. And that was one. So that was one of the recommendations that you made in this article, yes is kind of be be mindful of your ecosystem really look at. Because also right there with the agency piece or, you know, consultants or you know, whoever you bring in, because it’s just easy to default to white people. Because we’re so dominant, you know, within the space in the marketing industry. And so, you know, sort of like looking at your supply chain. Yes, yes, this is not the sexiest work that one will do. And we think of marketing to sort of external and just the product. And so I just want to just underscore how important that recommendation is. And looking at the whole ecosystem, the whole supply chain, the whole nine yards,

Mita Mallick  15:50

and don’t and let me just add this, Erica, don’t wait, do the work. Now start to create diversity of representation when it comes to your list of marketing agencies you work with, right, the best in class, whatever roster you have, which I know many big companies have the same five agencies they go to. Now, I mean, people don’t try to retrofit when you decide, I actually want to extend this product line. So it speaks to, and can be in service of women with darker skin. Don’t do it, then do it from the start when you start working, as we talked about, as you so generously read part of my LinkedIn section. It is that’s where the magic of magic of innovation happens. So do that from the start. Yeah,

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:39

I, you know, I think a lot about and we talk a lot about when I do teach my class, we talk a little bit about it on this podcast, but marketing also tends to attract people who are prone to perfectionism. Yes. And so I just want to say to listeners, like Do not let perfectionism get in the way of progress, even if it is incremental, even if it’s one step in the right direction. You know, start now, don’t like this piece run, don’t wait. I think that I think that perfectionism gets in the way.

Mita Mallick  17:07

Absolutely. And I think there’s a bit about and I can say this as a marketer. There’s been moments where I’ve been arrogant, because you say, but I’m supposed to know my consumer the best. Like I have all the insights I know. And Erica, you’re coming in and telling me, there might be colorism. In this content I produced? No, I know. And then I’m admitting I don’t know something. And that’s really difficult, right? Because all of a sudden, Oh, wow. Well, I guess I don’t know my consumer as well as I thought I did. And someone else was questioning me. And so that’s the vulnerability and growth piece.

Erica Mills Barnhart  17:41

Well, and that’s about culture. Yes. I mean, again, so much of marketing, like it would be super handy if it didn’t have to do with organizational culture, and organizational development and leadership and all the rest of these things. But it’s actually very, very messy. And I have marlette Jackson and Aaron Dell on the on the show a while back, just talking about their article about woke washing your company won’t do it. Yes. Just kind of like you can’t just schmear, you know, the work I do with my clients. So you know, I create powerful messaging for purpose driven clients. And mainly what I’m working on is mission, vision, values, purpose statements. And then how do you flow those into things? Because when you’re solid on those, and you have the values filter, you know, it goes both ways. It goes internal into Korean culture that lives into those and then they make their way into external marketing. And it’s really interesting to me how bifurcated that is and how we try to do this, like cute and run, where it’s like, well, we were just gonna update the website, but that doesn’t. That doesn’t have to do with culture. It’s like it has he just you can’t schmear, a bunch of Rp. No, no, that’s that’s not that doesn’t address the problem. That’s

Mita Mallick  18:45

diversity washing, which we’re talking about. Yeah. Washing, diversity washing. Absolutely.

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:51

Yep. 100%, you had another very specific recommendation, which I want to talk about. So you say, intentionally cast and feature dark skinned models and actors in your content and programming major, the impact consistently and evaluate your progress on a quarterly and annual basis, brands have the power to shatter stereotypes by moving beyond featuring only light skinned individuals. say more about this. I mean, so much of this, as we’re talking about it comes, you know, I think we have to acknowledge that holding on to power drives a lot of decision making. And this idea of casting sort of racially ambiguous feels models feel safer.

Mita Mallick  19:27

Yeah, it makes us feel uncomfortable. What is it that makes us feel uncomfortable, we have to ask ourselves, and so when you think about, I think about myself as a little girl, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. And so if I don’t see people like me represented in media, in images in marketing and campaigns, where do we leave our younger generation, the generation of leaders who are rising and who you know, that’s what we’re doing all the work for is for them? That’s what I believe that’s why I do this work for all of our Yeah. And so that that’s the question you have to ask. yourselves is like racially ambiguous just feels more uncomfortable, we don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable back to that point of like, Oh, that’s gonna make people uncomfortable, no one’s gonna buy the product if we feature someone of a darker skin. And that those are the conversations, we’re not having Erica, which is why I wrote this piece because I know these conversations happen. I’ve been in the room, but no one wants to talk about it. And so that’s also about shattering stereotypes, shifting cultural narratives, making sure that you see people represented in different ways. That’s what that’s about.

Erica Mills Barnhart  20:33

I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about measurement, like measuring impact is tricky. So if I’m a company, and I’m like, okay, we’re gonna start doing this thing. We’re committed to it. What do you measure that truly reflects impact?

Mita Mallick  20:48

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s like, you go back to the, it’s the end to end inclusion ecosystem, like start with agencies, right, start with who’s sitting around the table, start with diversity of representation, not just on your own team, but also on the adjacent teams that are working with you. So it’s the marketers, it’s the agency, its sales, its finance, a lot of people touch marketing, it’s the hub and spoke as we know. And so who else is involved in what you’re creating, I think is really important to think about. And then I think measuring things also like products and services I go back to I’m a cosmetics beauty person, as you know. So I go back to that a lot. But I recently saw and I and I won’t name the brand, a beauty brand on Instagram, who featured a beautiful, beautiful shot of a very dark skinned woman. So I was like, wow, this my heart sings this speaks to me. I go and do some research, Erica, they don’t sell darker skin foundations eyeshadows or blushes. Oh, wow. But they have a cosmetics line. And they’re featuring her with some sort of dewy look lip gloss. And like this is so that is what I would call diversity dressing. It’s like window dressing. But then you could go to the other end, you could read this piece. And you can say yes, practical tips. Now I’m going to really intentionally measure and feature dark skinned models. And then you don’t actually have products and services that serve them. So you’re like, wow, that’s,

Erica Mills Barnhart  22:27

I mean, that that that concerns me so deeply, because most folks aren’t going to go do the research that you did. Yeah, it’s diversity dressing. Right? They’re gonna like we’re scrolling through Instagram, and you’re like, Yay, like, nailed it. Beautiful. Yay. I mean, I suppose that the research would be if you were really moved, like by it, and you went and tried to find products as a black or brown woman? And you were like, Wait, what? But how many? How many? How many, you know, will that aggregate to a point where there would be backlash?

Mita Mallick  23:00

I think it will, eventually, it will, it will eventually. Because I think especially with the diversity tipping point, brands, marketers are under a lot of pressure. And there are no quick fixes in this work. There are no quick fixes. The work takes time. And it’s the work that you do every single day. And I think Sephora, I give a lot of props to them. For the progress they’ve made every single day since being accused of having a racist incident in their stores back in 2019. You look at them now. I’m like, but this is, listen, organizations are flawed brands are flawed, because human beings are flawed. And that’s who runs them. And so we have to show ourselves, I think the same grace we would for people in our lives, making mistakes, right? And that give them a chance to show that they can do better and be better. That’s what I think. And so But back to your measurement piece. So if you think about the ecosystem that we talked about, there are so many places to measure. And in the article as I reference, some research, there was research done to actually watch to see after the diversity tipping point, were companies going to be actually featuring more darker skinned models, and we see a slip, we see a slip, it lasted for a little bit. And then we see the slip. And so that’s what we have to watch out for to make sure it’s not performative. And check the box exercise.

Erica Mills Barnhart  24:22

Yeah, that it actually sticks. Because the goal, I think the ultimate measure of impact is that when we say marketing in inclusive marketing is implied. Absolutely. It shouldn’t be marketing.

Mita Mallick  24:39

It should be Yeah, it is one in the same. It should be one in the same. It should be. Yeah, but I don’t know that. I think it’s to prove wrong that the the growth is there. The girl Yeah, right. So I go back to the again, my my favorite beauty example. Everybody is is chasing with Fenty and sort of how they disrupted the entire marketplace two years ago. Oh my gosh, there’s 40 plus shades, right? darkest skin tones. And then it’s like, Yeah, but I want lipstick and I want eyeshadow and I want blush. Like why are we stopping with that? And of course, Fenty has gone beyond that. But that’s been sort of the check the box for brands and there’s growth to be had. Because if you’re going to, if you’re going to sell me the Foundation, which I’m going to buy, I need the whole look, Eric, I need. Yes, exactly. Sell me all of it.

Erica Mills Barnhart  25:29

Who else is getting right? What other brands are getting it right?

Mita Mallick  25:32

Oh, my gosh. There is a brand recently, I profiled on LinkedIn called coffee. It’s a South Asian brand, started by a founder of South Asian descent. And she’s really again trying to fight colorism and also trying to create a beauty line that’s inclusive. So I think that’s there’s so many. I mean, there’s just so many examples out there. I think Sephora, if we so let me let me step back. If you go on Instagram, you will find so many brands getting it right. And a lot of them are black and brown founders who have seen where the gaps are in the market. And they say I’m going to disrupt this industry. So that is what you’re seeing happening. And then you’re seeing really big players having to say, Okay, now I have to retrofit or now I have to really get this right. So Sephora, yay, Target, yay, as well. And it’s been way too much money at Target. But target, really, I mean, you look at what target’s doing with their accelerator program, and supporting black and brown founders and bringing them in so that they can understand how they can get their products retail ready. Look a big kudos to them. And then another brand that I’ve been watching is Hallmark Hallmark cards. replanned, they did not see that coming. Yeah, I’m gonna give you different examples they created online, black writers writing for black community, our black friends and our black colleagues who need healing. And so how can you express that in the form of a greeting card, and how you express it is with the insight of nothing for us without us. And so having black writers and designers behind that line is so meaningful. So I’m like, I, again, half glass full, I think there’s a lot of positive momentum in the market. And again, inclusion is a driver of growth, there is growth to be had, when you start to problem solve and think about what are all the gaps in the market that have never been addressed? Yeah, I love how glass half full you are.

Erica Mills Barnhart  27:44

Tell me how many people will people ask me, you know, like, how do you keep doing this work, as you know, I work to apply, marketing’s that it’s, you know, eradicating extreme global poverty and, you know, feeding hungry kids and like, these are not like little topics. They’re happy. And what I, you know, I’m like, because I think we can, like, I believe that we can solve these intractable issues or would not keep doing it, we just have to double and triple down. And that takes a certain amount of internal fortitude. But also, I mean, one of the reasons I get worked up, and why I love teaching so much is because I see the things that my students dream up and come up with. I mean, you were so generous, you came and joined the marketing class, thank you for having us. It was so fun. And like they’re, they just they blow my mind all the time, every time. They like it. You know that that generation is amazing. And I don’t know, I just whenever I get a little like, the world is kind of going to hell in a handbasket. I literally go back and I look at some of my students,

Mita Mallick  28:49

but that’s what we said it’s for the next generation. It’s for the rising leaders that we do this work for.

Erica Mills Barnhart  28:54

In Yeah, totally. Okay, um, I want to shift gears a little bit. Sure. And talk about how you’re using LinkedIn as a platform to advocate for representation and inclusion. So you are super active. You’re constantly putting out like this amazing content every single time I’m like, again, and again and again, and you do it all yourself a job at carta, and you have these two beautiful and young kids. And and and so so I have like a super practical question, which is like, what’s the mechanics behind that? Sure. And or are you on other social media platforms is actively or were you like, I’m all in on LinkedIn.

Mita Mallick  29:34

So here’s my secret. Are you ready? grab a pen and a piece of paper. I stopped drinking and I stopped binge watching Netflix and then all of a sudden, you’ve got time. And I say that tongue in cheek but I also say for the things that matter for the things that you want to work on in your life. And I think these last 16 months have given us as we’ve all gone through a lot of grief and loss. It’s like what matters and it’s like, I want to use my power of storytelling to share the stories of others and like the amazing things that are happening in the world. And as you see, I’m not in the business of indicting brands, I will use my own personal experiences, but I want to shed positivity and practical. Okay, so what are we going to do about it now? Like, yeah, I know that there’s this problem. So what can you personally do about it? And my, I think one of the biggest compliments I’ve gotten is people reaching out to me saying, who’s your social media agency? And I said that you did that. You want to three people who’ve done that. And I was like, wow, maybe I could make a living off this. But it is me, myself and I. That’s who it is. And it’s pretty easy. I stopped reading books, this pandemic actually stopped reading books when I had kids, to be honest, I don’t have time I started reading what they read, right? Yeah. So I recently have been reading stamps for kids with my son, I was a and my grown ups, which with my daughter, and I had posted about that this week. So I try to read things that we can read together. But otherwise, I’m reading a lot of short form. And I just post on things that I’m reading, and I try to post four to five times a week. I don’t post on the weekends. And I post when I have something meaningful to say. And if I skip a day, I skip a day doesn’t matter. I’m not doing it for anything, but I want to share what I’m learning. And I’m also now really focused on watching black and brown founders, founders from historically marginalized communities who are solving some of the biggest problems, and also some of the problems in our lives that you’re like, wow, I never thought about this, I just met with the founder this morning, a co founder who started West meets east, I’m gonna butcher this West x east, like, West by east, like so she doesn’t know in which direction by another direction is that it was like South by Southwest. So the branding I want to get right is like west by east, right, West, x east. And it is all about customized Indian apparel. So for anyone of Indian descent, who’s either gotten married or had to go to a wedding and having to go back to India, or find somewhere in the US where you can find an outfit that you like and get it tailored and customized is an enormous hassle and usually ends up in lots of tears, and a colossal failure. But she has created she and her co founder this amazing business where you can actually get customized outfits, one on one consulting and tailoring and it’s just phenomenal. And I’m like, That’s amazing. Like, I just feel like there’s so much goodness in the world and people doing such great things. So that’s what I use back to LinkedIn. That’s what I like to use my platform as well for. So I just interviewed Guy Kawasaki for the show. Yes, um, who a lot of social media,

Erica Mills Barnhart  32:48

all social media all the time. Not all the time. I’m kidding. But you know, he has a massive presence. And he’s on all the, you know, he’s on all the platforms. And I said, how, like, my, one of my questions to him was, how does he decide what to post? Yes. And I’m paraphrasing what he said, because I don’t remember it. But he basically said he didn’t want his grandchildren to ever wonder where he stood on things. He was like, I don’t even want them to have to ask me, they should know. Wow. And I thought that is such a powerful filter. Like very clear, you know, and he’s like, you know, he’s, he also is gonna post on, you know, entrepreneurship and technology, of course, and all these things, but he actually has somebody. So what he said was, when you see posts, like he is very pro vaccine, very anti anti vaxxers, like he’s in, you know, he is clear about his political views. And you know, him surfing, any anything that’s him posting, and then he has somebody who posts on sort of, you know, the other topical content areas, that he’s known for design technology. And so he has sort of a divide and conquer approach. But I thought, well, I feel like one of the things that I hear leaders struggle with in terms of how to handle social media, like one, there’s just so much instant consternation, right. Like, should I be on there? Do I have to be on there? And I’m sort of like, if it doesn’t feel good to you. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Do it. I enjoy it.

Mita Mallick  34:08

I enjoy it a lot. Can you ask me that question earlier, LinkedIn is my primary platform. I have a public Instagram account. I have Twitter. I say Twitter scares me. So I’m not really audit. face. Why does it No, I find that people are less friendly on Twitter than LinkedIn. Although LinkedIn, LinkedIn has gotten LinkedIn, I’ll give LinkedIn props when there has been hate speech on my posts, that gets removed pretty quickly. But I find LinkedIn to be as my friend Kelly Schweitzer would say, who is now one of the Creator program leads there is that it’s a platform of generosity. I find it to be a very generous platform. And so that’s the approach I take but you should not do it. If you don’t enjoy it. I enjoy it. I look at it from if I learned something, I want to share this other people, that’s my filter, or if I’m struggling with something, I want to To share with my community that I’m struggling and I, as a working mother, which I know we’ve talked about, I feel really strongly not to pretend that it’s really easy. And everything’s gonna be okay. And every day I wake up with Yes, all this energy like, No, that’s not it. And so I don’t want to, I want to let people know that like, yeah, it’s possible to have a successful career and to be an amazing wife and mother, but it’s also a struggle. And so I want to be I’m very open on that, as you know.

Erica Mills Barnhart  35:31

Yes, yes. Well, I think it is one of the the gifts of the, of the pandemic of the multiple pandemic, so we’re living through is like, we used to be if you wanted to, you used to be able to be like, my private life is entirely my private life. But when you’re like, for me, you know, I have a 13 and a 16 year old and despite my best efforts, you know, they like they’re gonna pop into the screen and be like, I can’t find the peanut butter. Like, it’s exactly, it’s exactly where the peanut butter is. Yeah, the same spot in the fridge. Did you did you look for the peanut butter there. And it’s like, that’s my life, you know, and I, you know, I love being a mom.

Mita Mallick  36:10

But I have to hide it. That’s the soundtrack of our lives. And we actually don’t have a choice. We can’t hide it anymore, which I think is one of the silver linings of the pandemic. I want

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:18

to make sure our listeners just hear what you said, which was that’s the soundtrack of our lives,

Mita Mallick  36:21

the soundtrack of our lives, and I’m not hiding it anymore. And so my kids might come in cool. They’ll say hi.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:28

Oh, my gosh, that picture that you posted of them with their books on LinkedIn. If anybody would like an infusion of adorableness. Oh, to meet as LinkedIn, oh, one quarter so cute. Oh, they’re big smiles in their books in there. I love that. I’m in this phase, because my kids are older than you and I was not a baby person. That’s clear. Now all of a sudden, I’m like, a little person. You know, my daughter, like what is wrong with you? I’m like, you’re big. But she’s not very big as she she’s a very teeny person but

Mita Mallick  37:00

but like, if you ever ever up for babysitting post pandemic, they’re not that cute. Right around bedtime.

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:08

I remember the witching hour. It is really tough teenagers because sometimes pop into my you know, they disappear. Yeah, like there’s no there’s no bedtime ritual. There’s me being like, hey, love you. Do you do what you want to do? No, no chit chat if you really have to insert yourself and it’s a very weird transition. That kind of happens. I mean, at least for me, like it happened. It felt quickly. Like I went from being like, Oh, my God just could have been like, hey, do you want to like hang out? You want to go get coffee?

Mita Mallick  37:40

Off to get some advice from you flash? flash forward into the future for me. Just

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:47

always be there and have them know that you’re always there, no matter what you’re gonna love no matter what. That’s it. That’s always advice. No matter what, even other thinkers? Yes. Which they will be. And I will be a stinker. But yeah, I would say that’s another like I have good relationships with both my kids. And I do feel like part of it is I decided early on that I wasn’t gonna act like I got it right when I didn’t. Like his parents, we are all doing our best. all day, every day just doing our best and then we mess up. Yes. Back to your point because we’re humans.

Mita Mallick  38:17

Well, that’s back to leadership marketing. Right? all around.

Erica Mills Barnhart  38:21

Yeah, owning 100% of your actions. Yes. For sure. I asked every guest this final question which is so inspiration, if you look at the root of the word is about breath to take in breath. And motivation is about action and taking action. What inspires you What keeps you motivated to do this work?

Mita Mallick  38:42

My kids, all of our kids. I use that really broadly. once said, I just inspires me you think about your students in that class. So when I went to inspiring my kids, their friends, my niece’s my nephews, neighbor, kids that yeah, that’s the that’s the generation. That’s the future. That’s why I do this work, because I want them to live in a different world than I grew up in.

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:04

me to thank you, thank you. Thank you for being here. Being willing to have a candid conversation about a topic that is sometimes tricky. And for the huge contribution you’re making to making marketing and just making it the norm to just say marketing and have that be inclusive and have it be implied.

Mita Mallick  39:24

Thank you so much for having me. I want to come back next year, but an awesome conversation.

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:28

You can come back anytime, anytime. Okay, anytime, anytime. Is there anything that you were hoping I would ask you that I didn’t that you still want to talk about?

Mita Mallick  39:35

No, I just would love for people to follow me on LinkedIn and continue the conversation there. I love meeting new people.

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:43

Yes, I will put all of your contact information there for sure. Everybody should connect with you and follow you. I find inspiration and like everything you post, so thank you. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, listeners. Thank you for being here, as well. Do you know how to get in touch? If you have comments or questions do good be well and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening to the marketing for good podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast please rate subscribe review and share on Apple, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like more information about blacks in university, how to make more impact in and for your organization for hiring me to speak or coach. Go to coxsone marketing comm or reach out at info at Clarkson marketing comm again, thanks for listening, and thanks for making our world a better place.

The post Ep 37: Mita Mallick on Representation & Inclusion in Marketing appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart’s interview with Elizabeth Ralston on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

KEYWORDS

people, accessibility, disability, arts, universal design, marketing, consortium, Elizabeth, accessible, thinking, important, Seattle, masks, talking, listeners, thought, space, programs, barriers, cochlear implants

Erica Mills Barnhart  05:22

Welcome to today’s episode of the Marketing for Good podcast. With me today is Elizabeth Ralston. Elizabeth has more than 20 years of experience working with nonprofits, government agencies and academic institutions. She has a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan and a certificate of nonprofit management from the University of Washington, a certificate that is near and dear to my heart because I taught in that program for so long and I met so many amazing people. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi. And that’s where Elizabeth experienced firsthand the powerful impact a person can have on another person’s life. She’s devoted her life to public service ever since. Her work to showcase an organization’s story and impact in a compelling way attracting more program participants, volunteers, donors and community partners, and any and all other stakeholders that are important to the organizations that she’s working with. That’s really the core of her work. Now, Elizabeth does all this and she is deaf and she uses two cochlear implants to hear. One of the core tenants of Marketing for Good is accessibility. And so I was so so grateful to Elizabeth when she reached out and said, “Hey, I think we should talk about how marketing impacts or doesn’t those who are deaf and hard of hearing.” So that’s part of what we’re going to talk about today. Elizabeth is also an avid patron of the arts. So we’re going to drill down on that a little bit. She founded the Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium (that’s a mouthful!) which is a grassroots effort to connect arts and cultural organizations with the information and resources to improve accessibility for people of all abilities. The consortium is the first of its kind in Seattle. I’m really curious to hear, Elizabeth, if there are others that you modeled this after. It’s a first for us here in Seattle, to address inequities in accessing arts events, programs and spaces. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Ralston  07:30

Hello, It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. So, yes, this is the first the first kind in Seattle and I basically modeled it after the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium. So there are many different consortia around the US. There’s about maybe 15-17 consortia around the US and a friend of mine said to me…well, it’s a long story. I’m sure we’ll get there at some point…you need to start something Seattle. And I realized that there was nothing like this in Seattle, based on my research. So it was definitely a journey in terms of figuring out how unique we want to be and how we want to follow in the footsteps of other organizations around us.

Erica Mills Barnhart  08:29

I would assume that was part of the questions that you asked yourself is how much do we want to be like Chicago or these other 15 places versus unique to Seattle. Okay, I want to get there. I’ve got lots of questions about the consortium. I find it really fascinating. Can we start with having you share with us how you got started in your accessibility journey and what what led you down this path?

Elizabeth Ralston  08:57

So as you mentioned earlier, I’m deaf. And I read lips and I use cochlear implants to hear. And I say that because there’s so much diversity within any disability community, and so many people think I sign and I don’t sign. So there’s a continuum, right? Some people sign and some people do cued speech. So I make that distinction purposefully because I want people to understand that I don’t sign, and read lips, etc. So growing up, my parents were very avid art and theater goers. And so they took me everywhere. They took me to musicals and they took me to museums, and of course going back then, I’m not too old but back then, there was no captioning, there were no assistive listening devices, no interpreters, there was nothing. And so I grew up taking script to a play or a musical. And that’s fine. But I did run into many barriers doing that. It’s kind of a pain looking up and down and up and, I would often get scolded by other audience goers because of my tiny, tiny light, right? A pen light that I was using to read the script. Anyway, fast forward. I just became a really big lover of the arts thanks to my parents, and I got a season subscription to one of my favorite theaters in town. And I started thinking, you know, I can only go to one Captioned show per round at the show, and I’m a busy person, sometimes I can’t go to that one particular show. I started thinking with my public hat on about equity and accessibility. And so that’s how I got started. And thinking about, well, how can we make the arts more accessible to people of all abilities? Not just hearing loss, but people with vision issues, people with neuro-diverse conditions. It’s all kinds of disabilities you name it.

Erica Mills Barnhart  11:30

Okay, I have a question about words. In your bio, it says people with all abilities, or actually that’s pulled from the information about the consortium. Will you share your opinions about the terminology of people of all abilities versus the word disability?

Elizabeth Ralston  12:03

That’s a good question. Um, disability is a fine word to use. I use people of all abilities to make it even wider. Because people don’t often see themselves as having a disability. So I wanted to make sure I included those people as well. Yeah, that’s pretty much how I see it that way.

Erica Mills Barnhart  12:26

So you’re not offended by the term disability. It’s more like, “Oh, hey, I don’t think of myself as having a disability. That’s weird that you do, because I don’t think of myself that way.”

Elizabeth Ralston  12:37

That is interesting, because when I grew up, I tried so hard to fit in. I wanted to be like everyone else and so for long, long time, even after accepted it, I had a loss and I was much more forward about it and open about it. I still wanted to be seen as a professional, a health educator, a mom, a storyteller. I didn’t want to be known as that person who had a disability. And, um, you know, it took me a while to realize that, Oh, wow. It’s actually an asset that people, you know, understand what it means for anybody experiencing barriers to accessing anything. And I chose the arts because it’s something I’m passionate about. And it’s something that I’m quite familiar with, because I have my nonprofit background, and I have been in an interim leadership role at Spectrum Dance Theater. I already knew people in the arts community and thought would be a good place to start.

Erica Mills Barnhart  14:07

Do you dance?

Elizabeth Ralston  14:10

I love to dance…in private. I love dancing. I need to do it more often. And I’ve thought about actually taking some of the classes, but I just didn’t have time.

Erica Mills Barnhart  14:28

That’s great. My daughter’s a dancer. And I periodically will say like, well, maybe I should take a dance class. Now she’s almost 16 she’s like, go for it, Mom, you do you, But before she was like, oh, not at my studio. And I was like “oh it’ll be great! I’ll take hiphop, honey!” <laughing>

Elizabeth Ralston  14:50

There was a class at Spectrum of people who were over the age of 60 in a dance class. It was so inspiring.

Erica Mills Barnhart  14:58

I now I’m tempted to change just talking about dance, I really do find it such an incredible art form. Like I love Spectrum Dance, my daughter dances at ExitSpace, and there’s just a lot happening in the dance community right now around inclusivity around diversity, around anti racism, around accessibility, and it’s like, it’s just making me so proud on so many levels, so, okay, um, speaking of that…diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, all of this has been gaining traction over the past few years. And now of course, is front and center. Finally, I mean, even a few months ago, words like racism, anti blackness, white supremacy, I mean, we were tiptoeing around those words pretty delicately. And now, we’re not because that’s no longer okay to tiptoe around them. If you can’t say them, you’re not going to be able to address them because everything has changed. With that, I would love to hear your thoughts on where does the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community fit into all of this into this, this movement and this energy towards diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility,

Elizabeth Ralston  16:16

I can only speak from my perspective as one individual. I can’t really speak for others, but I think the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have really laid bare the barriers that exist for people, whether it is black people, whether it’s people with disabilities is really kind of opened up this can of worms that’s been that’s been needing to open for a long, long time. So I think that one of the things that I’ve learned through this journey is when I first started, I was thinking about accessibility for everyone, just broadly all people with disabilities. But over time, I’ve realized after meeting people, mostly BIPOC that I have privilege as a white woman. And so I was only seeing it through that lens. Even though on the other side, I am part of a marginalized community, the disability community, because I’ve faced lots of barriers too, but people of color and black people face especially difficult barriers and that. So issues of intersectionality are really important to highlight during this time. And I think that this is something I’ve really committed myself to do. Going forward is to amplify and highlight BIPOC with disabilities and the barriers that they face when it comes to accessibility and civic life and the arts.

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:13

That’s beautifu. I want to go back to the Consortium for a minute, the Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium. I don’t know how many syllables that is, but it’s a lot of syllables.

Elizabeth Ralston  18:24

I knew you would bring this up because of the Wordifier. And I knew I should have done that before I came on, and you’re not going to believe it but it used to be called the Seattle King County Accessibility Consortium. And I said, I can’t deal with this. I had to shortened it. So we’ve just shortened it by two words. I hope that’s okay. <laughing>

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:50

So the mission is to connect arts and cultural organizations with information and resources to improve accessibility for people of all abilities. So, when you created this, what was your vision? Like if you could wave your magic wand? What does the consortium make possible?

Elizabeth Ralston  19:13

I think the Consortium has made possible a dialogue about what accessibility could look like from a universal design perspective. And it’s really a good time. Right now, as you know, the arts sector has been particularly hit hard by this. And as they start to prepare, what is that going to look like? What is that new normal gonna look like? And here’s a beautiful chance to use universal design principles, to create something that anyone can enjoy. And not just that this person or that person and not having to think about access for different groups of people, but just creating spaces, programs, and events for people, for anybody. So I’m really excited about how we have entered into this dialogue about what this could look like.

Erica Mills Barnhart  20:21

And can you be specific when you say enter into a dialogue, who’s in the dialogue?

Elizabeth Ralston  20:29

So enter into a dialogue with community partners, with arts organizations, with staff, with funders, you know,

Erica Mills Barnhart  20:40

Anyone who cares about arts and making it accessible to all?

Elizabeth Ralston  20:44

I mean, arts is a human right. We all know from a public health perspective, that if you engage in the arts, you’ll be happier, you feel like you’re part of a community and so it’s kind of a no brainer.

Erica Mills Barnhart  21:00

I agree with you on so many levels about its importance and its historical role in terms of civic life. And yet I find it so interesting that it is thought of as a luxury. And I’m not sure when that happened, but I feel like with COVID and the pandemic and everything that’s happening, it has just sort of again brought to light this, or not brought to light, but this idea that arts is sort of like a nice to have, as opposed to a must have. It feels like that’s coming up again. And I’m curious if you think this is an outlier perspective that I happen have, just one one person’s perspective, or are you hearing that come up in conversation?

Elizabeth Ralston  21:58

I’m hearing that. It’s supposed to be for everyone, but not everyone can afford it. And it’s not accessible from a socio economic perspective. And yes, I hear about that, right. And educating people that people with disabilities and other low income people, they can’t pay $50 per ticket for a show. So yeah, there’s a lot of inequity within that. Public art is probably the cheapest way to access it. But even then, that’s not always accessible because you have people singing and they’re no interpreters or, you have paintings or you have sculpture and someone who is low vision can’t access that so there’s lots of different issues in that I believe.

Erica Mills Barnhart  23:05

I want to go back to this idea of or the concept of universal design. And I’m hoping you can share a bit more with listeners, what that really means. And then I have a follow up question. But will you start with explaining to us what universal design means? It’s sort of implied by the name, but I think that there are some principles to it that are important.

Elizabeth Ralston  23:27

So universal design is founded on the basis of equity and access, it levels the playing field, and it takes into account a space…I’m talking more about physical space…let’s start with that. When you create, let’s say you’re creating a new architectural space. You’d have to be thinking, Okay, we need elevators for people with physical disabilities and you need a mom and baby cry room, you could be thinking about everything like how can this space can be used by everyone, and I’m not an architect. So I can’t really dive into specifics of that. Bu it’s more of a concept that involves all audiences in the planning and design of the space or even the program. So you know, the expecting nothing without us. Nothing for us without us something like that…I was forgetting that. And so you always have to include people with disabilities and anyone that you’re designing something for in that process, to make sure that is inclusive of everyone.

Erica Mills Barnhart  24:56

My understanding, which is limited I want to say, but when I was reading up on universal design, one of the things that really stood out to me was…and what made me think of this as I was reading about it as a relates to architecture and building out spaces, was we think of it as an accommodation. But in fact, when you apply the design principles, it really makes the space better for anybody who’s in it. So it’s not really an accommodation, it’s an elevation of the space. Right?

Elizabeth Ralston  25:29

So if you put that beautifully. Yeah, just not thinking about accommodation just thinking about things that will make it useful and enjoyed by anybody who accesses that space. So if you could, if you think about all the different kinds of people there are, you will make sure okay, can this space, you know, be inclusive and welcoming? And that’s a key word being welcoming to anybody who enters in that space.

Erica Mills Barnhart  25:59

Okay. I will not get this quote, right and I, and I wish I could attribute it. So with that really great preamble, or, disclaimer, there is this quote, which goes something like:  it’s not that you’re welcome here, it is that we built this with you specifically in mind. And there’s a difference between, you know, we created this space, whatever the space may be virtual or in person, and you are welcome to enter the space that we have created. And the difference between that and we created this space because we were so hoping you would be part of this community that you would come here. So we actually had you in our minds and hearts as we were building it. And that feels very substantively different. And although I didn’t come across that in the context of universal design, that’s kind of what it feels like and what I think of when I try to think about it concretely.

Elizabeth Ralston  26:53

Yes. And if we’re gonna be talking about marketing, that’s a perfect example.

Erica Mills Barnhart  26:59

Yeah, let’s go there.

Elizabeth Ralston  27:00

Yes, of how you can really draw people in. Because if they understand that something was designed with them in mind. How perfect can that be? Another example, not really an example of universal design, but a theater that includes people with disabilities in their musical in their plays will be more likely to get people of a much more diverse audience, for example. The hiring practices and even having an accessibility statement on the website will be very powerful.

Erica Mills Barnhart  27:42

Yeah, yeah. Okay, let’s do talk about marketing, because this is a show about marketing! But I feel like the the context is so important. And I’ve learned a ton from you already in this amount of time. So thank you for that. Let’s look at a very specific example of marketing that missed the mark in terms of diversity, equity, inclusion and access and specifically the message that was sent to Deaf and Hard of Hearing consumers. Okay, so this was in 2017. There’s a South African dancer model and former beauty queen Simone Bopha Welgemoed. And she was part of an advertisement for Virgin Active, which I had not heard of, but turns out it’s part of the Virgin Empire, the Virgin Brand. So it’s a chain of high end fitness clubs. And she’s a dancer, professional dancer, and so she was part of effort. Now, for background, notable is that on the Virgin Active website, they say they believe in catering to all, being a force for good, and making sure every one of their 1.4 million members is treated with adequate care, respect and attention. So Miss Bopha Welgemoed wears cochlear implants and she has since she was 22 months old. So imagine her surprise and indignation when without her permission, her implants were airbrushed out of the picture for the advertisements. And here’s what she had to say about that. I quote: “They just went and without my permission decided to edit the cochlear implant out because why? It doesn’t fit with their pretty little picture of portraying the perfect life that is virgin active. Well, guess what? Life isn’t perfect. No one is perfect.” I don’t know Miss Bopha Welgemoed, but I love her. Yeah, I mean, she went right to Instagram and was like, absolutely not. You know, and then they course corrected. There are so many things to learn from just this one example. Um, and I know you just have one perspective, but I’m pretty confident you have tracked this more than I have over the course of your life. That is kind of horrifying. That they would just…I know airbrushing is very common, and we have a whole sidebar on that. But to just not tell her, and to, in essence erase her identity in that way feels so invasive. Sort of editing for the sake of perfection and pursuit of perfection. What’s your experience with this? Have you seen other examples of it? When you hear that, or are you surprised in any way or are yo more like, yep there they go again.

Elizabeth Ralston  30:30

Yeah, that’s a fairly typical story that we see because disability is seen as something to be fixed. And not something to be highlighted. So that’s partly why they took that implant out of the picture because that mars the photos somehow. And so I totally get why she would react that way because it’s part of her. That’s who she is. And, and if you take it off, it doesn’t really make sense anyway. Because yes, it just doesn’t make sense as part of her. But I don’t know if you know they actually issued an apology.

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:15

Yeah.

Elizabeth Ralston  31:16

So I’m glad that they did the right thing and yes, I think there’s so much ignorance and ableism thinking out there that things are developed with ableist thinking and this is a perfect example of how this universal design principle can come in because you do away with the ableist thinking of how something should be a fear…

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:47

Will you explain for listeners what ableist thinking means?

Elizabeth Ralston  31:52

So an able bodied person has a certain way of thinking and thinks as an able bodied person without considering that there are other people who don’t have this similar situation. So able bodied comments that are dismissive about a person with a disability might face. So ping me again later to see if I can come up with some examples. But it happens to me a lot, oh, I guess an example would be going to the cashier line in the supermarket and paying for my stuff and a cashier will start signing to me, and so they’re ableist view is that I sign, so this is how they’re going to treat me without really seeing without really realizing that I’m speaking to them, so they could speak back to me, but is that they choose to sign so it was very dismissive and marginalized that way.

Erica Mills Barnhart  33:03

That makes perfect sense. Yeah. And Virgin did issue an apology, which is great. And they reissued the advertisement, unedited, un-airbrushed. But part of what really jumps out at me is, you know, just to reinforce your point, is this assumption that seeing those implants would make people uncomfortable, and that was more important than honoring her identity and who she is fundamentally. It was more important to make people feel comfortable. And I feel like, you know, this is marketing. We’re having a moment in so many ways. And I hope, I’m hoping so hard, that with conversations like this, that we will sort of shift this mindset…marketing is about optimizing. It’s about optimizing for target audiences, that is all true. And there’s an awesome opportunity for it to be less about being perfect and more about being real. In pretty much every episode I talked about radical realness. I imagine a world 5, 10, 20 years from now, where no one would blink an eye at seeing a cochlear implant. They’d be like, sure, but of course, right? And that norming of it. And the other thing that then gets lost and you mentioned this at the beginning, but I really want to go back to it is that you view it as an asset. Right? So it to say like, Oh, that’s a disability and to not simultaneously see the strength and to have that asset frame on it, is demeaning, and also just a missed opportunity.

Elizabeth Ralston  34:52

Right, I think I had to go back and do a bit in my journey in terms of realizing that this was an asset. In my professional life. A few years ago, I was trying to figure out what was next. And so I left this job, feeling pretty confident that I could find another one. And it was around the same time that I did that nonprofit certificate program at University of Washington. I have an impressive resume. I’ve been in the Peace Corps. I’ve written lots of articles, I’ve managed programs, I’ll get a job, no problem. And two years later, no job. I was doing a little bit of consulting here and there, but nothing was really sticking. And so I thought, okay, what is going on here? Okay, is this is this some sort of ableism going on? Is it ageism? Who knows what it is? I mean, I’m a very young at heart person and you can tell when you meet me, right. So I have a lot of good experience. And I started thinking about, okay, what are my real assets? Right? What? Because something’s not working. And so that’s where I got on the track. Oh, I really have a lot of experience talking to people about barriers and educating people about stereotypes. And, I mean, I used to do the trainings, diversity trainings, and do I really want to go down that road because there’s so many great people that are doing that work. And they should do that work. So I guess where I’m going with this is coming down this road has shown me that I can really be an ally, for other people with disabilities who may not have a voice for whatever reason, because of society’s perceptions of them. So, by starting the Consortium I thought, okay, now I can do that I can say, I know what it’s like to have a hearing loss. There’s just no way you can dispute that. I don’t know when it’s like to be blind. But I have the resources to find people to educate others. I’m a community connector, I know how to find people and connect people with one another. And getting them the resources they need to make their programs. meaningful to, to participants, to donors to volunteers, to everybody.

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:41

But it sounds like that was a journey and maybe a bit of a mind shift to embracing this. As truly, and by this I mean being deaf, as an asset and saying I’m going to really live into this.

Elizabeth Ralston  37:57

Maybe it was a mid-life crisis. I don’t know

Erica Mills Barnhart  37:59

Yeah, I mean, you know, whatever. They’re not mutually exclusive. Ha!

Elizabeth Ralston  38:10

But getting back to this notion of an ally, when it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, and talking about intersectionality of people with disabilities, and the whole ally thing, I think it’s really important that able bodied people or white people become allies even much more so now than ever before. And there’s so many concrete ways that you can be an ally. But that’s a whole other conversation, I guess.

Erica Mills Barnhart  38:42

It’s an important conversation. And it’s not one conversation. It’s sort of The Conversation. I think society and certainly if we’re going to talk about marketing for good and make good on that, it’s the conversation that we need to be that we need to be having again and again and again and again. Which brings me to a question. So I think people can wrap their brain around I hope after hearing you and thinking about Black Lives Matter and all of these other things that they can consider, it’s easy to like conceptually get to a place where you’re like, Oh, I could apply universal design to our marketing campaign. Now, translating that into concrete action steps can be a bit trickier, I think. So how can accessibility be integrated into every aspect of an organization’s marketing?

Elizabeth Ralston  39:37

Well, I think you should hire me to find out.

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:41

Okay, we’re laughing but Elizabeth, you are making a really important point. And so I want to elevate it, if I may, which is there and actually, we just had this exchange on LinkedIn about the new organization that Akhtar Badshah and Sandra Archibald started and I’m pausing because I’m forgetting the name of it, but it’s the mask initiative to wear masks in Washington. And you saw that on LinkedIn. And this is just such a classic example. It had not occurred to me that for someone like you who reads lips, it’s like masks are real problematic. Right?

Elizabeth Ralston  40:19

I thought about showing up wearing a mask because I wanted you to see that I had these masks they have a clear panel in the middle but I just bought this face shield. Face shields are so much better than that, because they don’t hide your face and your glasses and much more comfortable. And they really have been shown to be preventive against COVID.

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:46

But yeah, we laughed about it, but your response which was beautiful was, Okay, you know, what can we do? And you’re like, well, they should ask, they should ask me and this point of if you’re not sure, reach out to folks who you want to be all inclusive, who you want to bring in and ask. And I think there is a hesitation around that. And some of that is very real, you know, for black folks and BIPOC, and everybody who for years has been trying to educate those of us who walk through the world with a lot of privilege. And that work needs to be done. We can’t keep asking them to educate us. So I feel like that’s a bit tricky, and folks maybe aren’t quite sure when can I ask and it’s okay, and it feels like I’m bringing you into the conversation. And when is it, like, “Really? Did you do the basic research?” Like, don’t ask me again to educate you again.

Elizabeth Ralston  41:48

I guess at the beginning, yes, I did the basic research, I talked to people and I realized that if any of this is going to take hold, then the leadership needs to be on board. The Board and the leadership. You know, they need to understand how critical it is to make things accessible for everyone. I don’t know if you’re talking about masks, but I’m talking about the arts, okay, I’m just being really specific about that. And it kind of know if we could broaden it to include masks, and that the first step into integrating accessibility within the organization is get the leadership on board and the board on board. Because if they’re not, then they’re not going to be a budget line item. It has to be a budget line item. And when it comes to marketing, when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to programs, everything has to have a budget line item for accessibility.

Erica Mills Barnhart  42:54

In the words of the esteemed Vu Le, “your values are in your budget.”

Elizabeth Ralston  43:00

Exactly, yeah. And so I have a lot of ideas about how accessibility can be integrated into marketing specifically. So, first of all, if you don’t market that you are accessible, nobody’s going to come. Right?

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:21

Right.

Elizabeth Ralston  43:23

Actually, you will get more people, if you market that you’re accessible, and it makes amazing business sense when you think about it, one in five people had a disability.

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:37

One in five people has a disability.

Elizabeth Ralston  43:39

Yes, one in five people in America has a disability. And that is only going to increase as the population gets older. Right. And so, in 2030, which is 10 years from now, we are going to have one in five people who will be 65 years old, older. That’s 10 years from now. And so, businesses and organizations have to rethink who their target populations going to be. And so that’s why accessibility becomes really, really important with our population.

Erica Mills Barnhart  44:17

There’s no true downside from a business perspective to making things inclusive for all. In fact, it sounds like you would you would increase possibly by 20%. Just out of the gate if you really looked at that.

Elizabeth Ralston  44:30

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So having that accessibility statement, front and center, making your website accessible for people who have low vision, having captions and to add clips for people who are deaf blind, who rely on transcripts and people who are deaf rely on captions just lots of way is to make videos and social media access. And, yeah, I mean, really sending the message that you are welcoming to people is going to be a really important part of that marketing message.

Erica Mills Barnhart  45:18

I’m seeing a new step. So you know the Claxon method, but I’ve really been thinking about this, and, you know, revisiting it and wondering in what ways can it be made more accessible and explicitly anti racist. So it’s: 1 )what does success look like. 2) Who’s your target audience? And I think in there, you know, it would just go so far to when we get to the third step, which is how are you going to reach your target audience, asking this question: is this accessible to everyone, right? People of all abilities. Will whatever we’re doing be accessible to people of all abilities? I mean, I can sit here and think back on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these conversations that I’ve had with clients. And you know, I haven’t asked that question consistently in any way. So I’m going to commit to starting to do that today and encourage others to do it, because then I can take those conversations and play out how we might have been, you know, we might have seen that a certain way of phrasing something and definitely where you place it, you know, in terms of website or Instagram or a pamphlet or whatever it’s going to be wasn’t accessible to all and the course correcting that could happen if that’s asked in the planning phase and not after things are done. I think that can be really powerful. So, thank you.

Elizabeth Ralston  46:46

Yes, and I commend you for that, by the way. I think that’s fantastic. I think another population that tend to be left out are the people with neuro diverse conditions. People with autism, people with other intellectual and behavioral challenges. Now that everything is switching to virtual, programming is very challenging, especially for those kind of folks because, I mean, they actually prefer that than having to go out somewhere. But there’s a lot of things that you have to be aware of to make it to the to experience accessible for an autistic person, for example, many of these people need to move around, they need to do stuff in the context where they with their hands so that many people can’t sit for long periods of time they have invisible disabilities and that another sector of the population we have to consider. So, commiting to all abilities, it is really important because hearing loss, blindness, and other physical disabilities are the top three that people recognize immediately. And not those other two.

Erica Mills Barnhart  48:07

Yeah, I can imagine some listeners at this point, you’re like, ah, overload. I can barely do my marketing as it is. And now I have to factor all these other things in. So I want to underscore and reiterate this point that you made earlier, which is taking this approach of universal design and applying that to marketing, actually, just across the board is going to improve your marketing. So I say to listeners of this point who are already doing so much because every single one of them is making the world a better place. And that’s a big task. Just to bear that in mind. That it may feel a little overwhelming. Change is always hard. And there’s no there’s no downside.

Elizabeth Ralston  48:57

Yes, I think I see the light bulb going off? I think so exciting. I did want to mention what the Consortium does. I realized I did not mention that earlier.

Erica Mills Barnhart  49:10

Oh, yes. We talked about the magic wands. Yeah.

Elizabeth Ralston  49:14

The magic wand back to that. Yes. So what we do is we do workshops and training around a variety of topics, because people are hungry for the information and they don’t know where to find it. And lots of arts administrators and staff operate in silos. I thought that may change but the new normal and so I want to be a central clearinghouse resources so that people can go okay, how do I make captains for my videos? They can go to the our website, which will hopefully be in existence by the end of the summer. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed. Yeah. And how do I talk to someone who has a disability who comes through my doors. You know, there’ll be a sensitivity training, we provide accessibility audits, sensitivity trainings for staff and board and creating an accessibility plan that you can roll out over time and talk about what it means to market in an accessible way. So there’s sort of those kinds of consultation services that we provide, as well as free and low cost workshops. But we do depend on donations to keep them going. As you know, yes, we’re basically sponsored by Shunpike. And we’ve gotten a lot of generous funding from the City of Seattle, which is fantastic. And our next project is going to be a podcast and I think you have inspired me to do a podcast where I am going to interview BIPOC, and by the way, there’s been four black indigenous people of color, with disabilities about their experiences accessing, you know, civic life and the arts.

Erica Mills Barnhart  51:16

I 100% hope that this happens. And I will talk it up on this podcast for sure. Because, you know, podcasting, like a lot of things we’re hearing some different voices but it’s pretty white, it feels pretty white, and pretty ableist and gender norming and you know, a lot of things. So I love where you’re going with that. So podcasts aren’t, I mean, you alluded to this, but they’re not really very accessible naturally. And just so listeners know this, you’ve been so wonderful about this, because I’m like, we’re gonna have transcripts, well now I have to learn all about that, Oh, it’s service and oh, they’re not perfect, and then you were so generous because I was like, you know, this is my ignorance, but I really didn’t know. Do they need to be 100%? Or, you know, 100% accurate, or is it the case that it’s like, close enough and you’re like, “They need to be hundred percent accurate, Erica.” I so appreciate that but these are the, you know, these are the things that I’m certainly still learning. So can you share with us as you think about your podcast, what are ways hat that they’re not naturally accessible to deaf and hard of hearing or deaf blind audiences? And what are some solutions?

Elizabeth Ralston  52:30

There are a lot of resources out there. There are websites, I guess, that will do that for you.

Erica Mills Barnhart  52:45

The transcription services?

Elizabeth Ralston  52:46

Yes, yeah. Thank you.

Erica Mills Barnhart  52:49

I’ve been scoping those out!

Elizabeth Ralston  52:51

Yes, yeah. And you’re the one with the words so I can be wrong on that. And there are apps like Otter.ai. I guess that you can, you can go in and they’ll do a transcript, but you have to go in and clean it up a little bit. If you, not necessarily for a podcast, if you do a video, you can upload it to YouTube. And YouTube does automatated captions. But again, you have to go in and correct them though. They’re not that good. But at least you have something to start with. And it’s really easy to fix. So there’s lots of great resources and I want to do a shout out to Rooted in Rights. They are wonderful disability advocacy organization that puts out amazing resources and how to do things like that.

Erica Mills Barnhart  53:46

I think it’s rootedinrights.org. But we will definitely put that in the show notes and all the other resources that you’re mentioning for sure. Yeah, I mean, I learned about them as a resource. And I instantly went there and was like, Oh, yes. Wonderful. Yeah. All right. So at the end of every interview, I ask guests the same question which is, so it’s about inspiration and motivation. And the root of inspiration comes from the idea of breath, and to breathe in. And then motivation is about action. So we need both inspiration and motivation to take action. What inspires you and what keeps you motivated to do this work?

Elizabeth Ralston  54:32

Well I am a very goal oriented person. I need to feel like I’m making an impact every single second of the day. So I have to have something to work towards because I find that very tangible and very inspiring to see something good come out of whatever I choose to do. I’m also very inspired by, by my kids, I learn something from them every day, I mean, my kids are a continual inspiration for me. And they make me want to keep doing the work that I do, because I do it partly for them, because they both have hearing loss as well. And so they have to navigate this new normal as well.

Erica Mills Barnhart  55:23

I bet you’re an inspiration to them to Elizabeth, you are definitely an inspiration to me. I so appreciate you joining me today for this conversation. I was really looking forward to it. And I’m un-surprised at how much I have learned. I’m sure listeners have too, just help us think differently about access and inclusion and diversity and a whole gamut through this very unique lens that you can offer us. How we can make our marketing more good or gooder, or by offering some of the practical ways that you offer for including those who are deaf and hard of hearing into our marketing And for me, I really feel like you gave us an invitation to think about making marketing inclusive and accessible for all and for all as part of the planning. Not it’s just sort of like a thing you thought of after.

Elizabeth Ralston  56:14

Yeah, exactly. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And I really, really appreciate you having me on your show because I love talking about this and I love talking to you. And I hope that some of what I have said makes sense. There’s a lot more I can say, but I think we touched on some really good points in this conversation.

Erica Mills Barnhart  56:37

I think so. Tip of the iceberg. Well done. But yeah, there’s so many other trails that bunny trails as I call them, that we could have hopped down,

Elizabeth Ralston  56:45

So maybe a part two!

Erica Mills Barnhart  56:48

Exactly part two and part three. I can’t wait for your podcast to come out whenever it does. For now, I’ll thank listeners for joining us and for listening and say: Do good, be well and we will see you next time.

The post Ep 15: Elizabeth Ralston: Making Marketing Accessible to All appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart’s interview with Fleur Larsen on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

KEY WORDS

people, racism, marketing, power, communication, white fragility, learned, passive aggressiveness, bias

Erica Barnhart  00:41

Welcome to the show, Fleur. I’m super glad to have you here.

Fleur Larsen  00:49

Yeah, thank you for inviting me on.

Erica Barnhart  00:51

Yeah, I was looking on your website in preparation for this, and I learned something about language that I didn’t know prior. Which is that because well, on your homepage, you shared that the root of the word facilitation is from the Latin word, facilis, meaning to make easy. So it’s fun to learn that, that feels particularly meaningful, given the work you do. Since a lot of that is not easy. And just one that was a fun fact. I you know, I love etymology. Did you pick that word intentionally because of that?

Fleur Larsen  01:29

No, probably just reverse of like, I got my origin, my start facilitation when I was doing outdoor Ed and we were called facilitators, challenge course facilitator, and then I learned the origin of the word and, you know, less of the focus of like to make it the experience easy, but to make it easy to do the work that we need to be doing.

Erica Barnhart  01:51

Ah, oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. Okay, one thing I noticed in your bio, that you don’t mention, is that you’re the founder of Skate Like a Girl. I understand why it doesn’t make it into the short bio, I get it. You’ve done a lot of things. But it made me a little sad, because let’s be honest, that’s still like, very, very cool.

Fleur Larsen  02:11

Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, Co-Founder with a couple other folks and people that are running it now are doing amazing things. So I’m excited that they’re still into it. So yeah, it was a great chapter in my life was I’m like, so grateful I got to be a part of it.

Erica Barnhart  02:24

Yeah, very cool. You sent out an email recently about a workshop you’re hosting called the language of racism and the subject line obviously, captured my attention. And I want to get to talking about the like, substantively, the workshop. Before we get there, though, it’s so important to have shared vocabulary in general, but especially for some of the stuff that we’re gonna be talking about in this episode. And so I was hoping we could start by going through some, just walking through some key terms, and that are going to come up and that all of us have probably heard, but it’s possible, we have different definitions, and that’s fine. I’m not saying there’s like one definition for any of these things. But just to offer a way that you as somebody who works deeply in this field, thinks about them. So and just so the folks know where we’re coming from as we move through the conversation. Does that sound okay?

Fleur Larsen  03:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Erica Barnhart  03:17

Okay, let’s start with racism.

Fleur Larsen  03:20

Yeah. See, one thing that’s important to notice about the word racism, and the definition is, it’s really been about power plus prejudice. Right, or prejudice plus power. So anyone can discriminate against anyone, anyone can be an asshole to anyone, right? Like, equal opportunity. It’s really about when you map it to power and in, so there’s institutional power, and then systemic power. So when we have prejudice plus power, then that helps us understand why there isn’t reverse racism towards white people.

Erica Barnhart  03:53

Oh, okay.

Fleur Larsen  03:58

So it’s not just like one race of a person discriminating against another race, like, you know, equal discrimination. It’s really about power and prejudice mapping there together. In today’s context, that means white people being racist against people of color and not the reverse. There’s no reverse racism against white people.

Erica Barnhart  04:20

Because it’s at the individual level and there isn’t power associated with that necessarily.

Fleur Larsen  04:27

No, I mean, at any level, individual institutional, whatever. So you know, we’re talking about prejudice plus power, meaning that at any level, so when we, yeah, that’s I guess, like it can really be at any level and thinking about when people are moving forward with something or you know, something’s happening. I think the reason the using those two words, prejudice plus power, is so important is because so many other folks will be like, well, what about when I was discriminated against, a white person will say that and you’re like, okay, well, let’s think about the whole context here. Historical and current, let’s be clear that anyone can just like be mean to somebody else or discriminate against somebody else, but it’s not actually racism. Right?

Erica Barnhart  05:14

Okay. I feel like that’s an important distinction. You mentioned historical and current. And so I feel like from racism, I also want to talk about anti-blackness.

Fleur Larsen  05:24

Yeah, yeah, specifically, black folks, you know, the, the history, the origin story of the United States can start there. Like, it’s part of the origin story, and obviously, very closely related to, you know, native folks oppression, and currently, and then in all of our laws, and historically, and currently looking at how black folks are just really targeted in a very, very dramatic way. We’ve all the data and numbers. And I think anti-blackness, you know, it’s so insidious, it’s like, just in all of our minds, I mean, I just, anyone grew up watching the show cops, right, like, it was just like, it’s everywhere. It’s just in everything and I think in particular, for me, as a white woman, the way white women have been really socialized to be afraid of like black men, for instance, it was just Emmett Till’s birthday, would have been his birthday a few days ago. You know, he was lynched and murdered for being accused of whistling at a white woman. And and she later came out and said, he didn’t do it.

Erica Barnhart  06:31

It goes deep.

Fleur Larsen  06:32

Yeah. So so we have like, really intense stories like that and then there’s all the everyday narratives around how anti-blackness is manifesting and so insidious.

Erica Barnhart  06:44

Yeah. So I’m gonna get through the definitions. Let’s get through the definitions. And then we’ll come back to these things. Okay.

Fleur Larsen  06:50

Definitions are like books and books.

Erica Barnhart  06:53

Yes. Yeah, I know, this is all just like, here’s just a little dollop. Yeah. What about the difference between equity and equality?

Fleur Larsen  07:03

Yeah. People use those words interchangeably a lot. I think that it’s, so equality, everyone gets the same. There’s a great image actually and you can you know, we can find it in your show notes of equity in equality, the bicycle image. So equality is everyone gets whatever size bike like the same size bike equity is people get the bike that fits their body. Yeah, that works, that’s what they need.

Erica Barnhart  07:29

I love that image, because for a long time, the image was the one of the boxes and people trying to look at a, I think it’s meant to be a baseball game. And there’s different you know, if everybody gets the same height box, a shorter person that doesn’t give them the same access, but I love the the evolution to bicycles versus different things. What about bias?

Fleur Larsen  07:50

Yeah, so we all have it. That’s the important thing about bias. Like I’m not a neuroscientist, right. But so my definition will be like, you know, won’t be the most scientific one out there, but this thing of like, everyone has it. And then I guess another added one is neuroplasticity is actually a super cool term.

Erica Barnhart  08:09

I know it sounds like painful, but it’s wonderful.

Fleur Larsen  08:12

It’s a really good concept. I’ll take it right?

Erica Barnhart  08:15

Yes, neuroplasticity.

Fleur Larsen  08:16

I can learn something new. The kicker is really that we usually feelings about that process, feelings come up, as I unlearn like, maybe shame or guilt or humiliation or defensiveness. And then feelings when I learned something new, like, wait a minute, this isn’t what I thought or you know, cognitive dissonance. This is hard or I don’t know how to do it, now I’m embarrassed or whatever, like, so all that stuff comes up around, unlearning our bias and learning a new way of relating to people.

Erica Barnhart  08:47

Yeah, yeah. Okay. We’re gonna use the term white dominant culture as we go through this conversation. However, I feel like it’s incumbent on me as the host, to say that’s a pretty conscious choice, because I know that most listeners to this podcast are white, and that’s a comfier term than white supremacist culture. However, in the spirit of unlearning, and relearning some things, can you help us understand the difference between white supremacy culture and white dominant culture?

Fleur Larsen  09:18

I don’t think there is one.

Erica Barnhart  09:19

Okay. One just makes us feel better?

Fleur Larsen  09:21

Yeah.

Erica Barnhart  09:22

Yeah. I mean, I think white supremacy as a, as a term has such close association with things like the Ku Klux Klan. It’s just almost impossible for us to decouple to uncouple those things, whichever term is correct. So okay, but there is no, I think importantly, though, as we go forward, just knowing that if somebody uses that term, to pay attention to what it like, really listen to your body, listen to the emotions, why does that make me feel a certain way? Those are really important questions to be asking. Yeah, and to welcome all the emotions I just read this book called The Language of Emotions. That is a fantastic book. I think I’ve already talked about it before on the podcast, I can’t remember. But basically the premise is like, emotions are teachers. Right? And our, in our culture, it’s like, anger is bad sadness is bad. Those are negative. She’s like there are negative like anger helps you set boundaries, sadness grounds you. Do they kind of suck to go through? Heck yeah, they suck to go through, but you know, joy sounds so much more fun. But anyway, it’s all good. You know, all the emotions serve a purpose, some, some vilify someone and not others, and in that the emotions are teachers, if it brings something up for you, looking at you, listeners right now, even though you can’t see me looking at you, you know, be open to that and let it teach you something. Okay, so often we think of, I am thinking of your workshop title, the Language of Racism, and I think often, we think of racist language as being obvious or overt, you know, things that we would never say. But it’s much more nuanced than that. And the session description that you offered, really gets at that. So I want to just read that so that listeners can hear  what I mean. And then we’ll, I’m hoping you can unpack for us, like, why this workshop, and why this is such an important topic. So the description says this experiential engagement will explore the spoken and unspoken cultural norms of communication as key pieces to advancing racial equity in yourself and your workplace. Passive aggressive communication, and conflict aversion are based in WASP, White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant and Middle Class norms and values, which communicates an unclear and watered down sharing of information. This is significant, because it is hard to manage for something if you cannot name it clearly for everyone to understand. Okay. Can you unpack that for us? And are there, do you have specific examples of this type of communication so that we can become aware of it? Because I think you know, you were the one who use that the first time I heard the expression of fish doesn’t know it is in water, wasn’t that from you? And I think it’s so helpful. So yeah, help us understand.

Fleur Larsen  12:11

Sure. Yeah, that and I’ll just name that that workshop, I’m co facilitating with Jodi-Ann Burey, so-

Erica Barnhart  12:18

Wonderful.

Fleur Larsen  12:18

Yeah, local here in Seattle, and does a lot of phenomenal work. You can follow her.

Erica Barnhart  12:22

And we’ll put her information in the show notes as well.

Fleur Larsen  12:24

Yeah. And so the other part of the workshop, I don’t know if it’s in the title there explicitly, but it’s about the language of racism and passive aggressive communication, specifically, is what we’re focusing on. And so that was probably that’s where we’re going with this. But like, that would be a definition to ground ourselves into. So I’m going to read it. I pulled up my slide deck real quick, so I can-

Erica Barnhart  12:48

Oh good, I was going off of what’s on your website.

Fleur Larsen  12:50

Yeah. Great. Good. Good. Yeah. So passive aggressive communication, indirect resistance to the demands, or communications of others.

Erica Barnhart  13:02

Okay, just because people are gonna be hearing this indirect one word not in space, direct two words, right? Because that would be a totally different meaning.

Fleur Larsen  13:10

Absolutely.

Erica Barnhart  13:12

Okay, indirect, all one word.

Fleur Larsen  13:14

Um, indirect resistance and then an avoidance of direct communication. Okay, so the key pieces there that want to just name because it you know, then right now we’re doing you know, so that’s passive aggressiveness. Being an indirect communicator is not the same thing. Right? So passive aggressiveness, the opposite isn’t just direct communication, that’s one piece of it. Because the important part inside this definition is that you’re really like, indirect resistance and the avoidance part.

Erica Barnhart  13:48

Yeah, I was wondering, yeah, it’s the avoidance of conflict.

Fleur Larsen  13:52

Conflict, of clarity, of engagement. And so where we go, how we bring this together with the language of racism is really looking at the way the impact is on the other person. And in particular, when in passive aggressive communication is also almost normalized in a professional setting in particular, I’ll just keep things focused here in Seattle, because thats where I spend most of my time, where we are known for our passive aggressive communication norms, our conflict aversion, our dancing around topics, and here’s what I noticed about working with majority white organizations and companies, so it’s cross sector, is that an organization’s ability to engage in healthy conflict correlates to retaining staff for color.

Erica Barnhart  14:44

Oh, that’s interesting.

Fleur Larsen  14:46

Because when people raise an issue-

Erica Barnhart  14:50

Right, yep.

Fleur Larsen  14:51

Don’t shoot the messenger or shoot the messenger is what comes into play because people are not playing the game of passive aggressiveness. They’re raising an issue. Talking about racism is an explicit issue. Right? And when there’s a commitment to staying comfortable, right, and passive aggressiveness is about preferencing someone’s comfort over the content.

Erica Barnhart  15:15

Will you say that one more time?

Fleur Larsen  15:17

Passive aggressive communication preferences the comfort over the content, the comfort of receiving them-

Erica Barnhart  15:24

The comfort  of the receiver.

Fleur Larsen  15:26

Or even the comfort of delivering something like I’m not comfortable talking about this, I don’t feel safe, like we’ll hear all these things all the time, particularly from white folks. And we do want to be, this is that part that I think about the spirit of equity, it matters who we’re talking about. So if folks of color say they don’t feel safe, that is a woah, everything needs to stop and we have to change or do something different. When folks when white folks say they don’t feel safe talking about something, I always want to check in, hmm is white fragility at play? What do you mean you don’t feel safe is it’s just awkward, or, you know, like, the exploration there and be like, maybe it’s okay, that you don’t feel comfortable and really distinguishing also, between comfort and safety, white folks are safe. You know, I do want to acknowledge like, with white women, gender based violence is real and we’re seeing a myriad of examples of white women thinking they can just call up our institutional criminal system to protect them on a whim, right, Central Park Karen, as my friend Jody Ann calls Amy Cooper, and all the other white women that are calling the manager wanting to be protected, because they don’t like what’s happening, right? I know there’s a lot there that just got impacted.

Erica Barnhart  16:34

Well, I think one of the words, the terms I think it’s important and might not be familiar to everybody is white fragility. Yeah. And what that means. And I’ll say, so as you’re taking a sip of water, one of the most eye opening pieces, and also to offer concrete examples of how this shows up, is so I’m a teaching professor at University of Washington and that comes with a really interesting combination of power and privilege and one of the things is, is physical, I’m standing in front of the classroom, okay. And then I also, of course, do consulting. In all of these contexts, if I talk over somebody, no one’s gonna say a thing and it was one of the most, the moments that I’m like, once I heard it, I was like, like, what, I, oh, shit. I do that. And personally, I’m, you know, I’m an impatient person, I things fast and so differentiate between like, you know, whatever, I’m talking to my daughter about like, the grocery list, and I’m like, let’s move on. Okay. That’s the one we’re both white. But also that’s different than me really having to realize like, I’m doing that because I can, and then it may not be my intent to make whoever’s on the receiving end, feel a certain way and yet the impact is there. I would say that is one of the things that has influenced my teaching, you know, from my work, which is ongoing, and will be life work around white fragility and all of this is just it seems so small, but talking over people is really the impact of it is big, especially the cumulative impact. So that’s one example of white fragility. Are there others that you can offer?

Fleur Larsen  18:25

Yeah, and it’s, it can be internal or external meaning it can be out in the world or just something you feel inside. And a key piece of white fragility is the inability for white folks to engage around race or racism, particularly theirs, or what, you know, the way we perpetrate racism, and like, the intolerance to even entertain that thought. So an antidote to white fragility is humility. Right? And if we know that all people have bias, and therefore no one, you know, we didn’t escape learning all the things about anti-blackness. So that must mean that I have anti-black racism, deep in the recesses of my mind, just the way we know, you know, learning and neurology works, then I can be like, oh, I’m really uncomfortable maybe this is like my white fragility like I’m like having a hard time even sitting with this concept, or someone telling me something about myself, right, as a white person. Often it might be in the form of direct feedback, or like to give you some feedback about how you’re showing up but usually it’s not that way. It’s not that gracious. Yeah, so I think it really is this thing of sounds like you probably inside your example got some feedback about how you were as a professor who you also mapped with power right?

Erica Barnhart  19:45

Do you know, it’s horrifying? I’ve never gotten that feedback. And why I say that’s horrifying is because, you know, and I tend to have like, you know, pretty friendly, approachable environment, I’m not like, I’m your professor, you know, I’m the only one talking, and even in that context, and I have many students of color, I just didn’t even see it. Like the power, the power imbalance in that scenario is so vast that I never even got the feedback.

Fleur Larsen  20:17

Right. Right. Yeah.

Erica Barnhart  20:20

And in academia, I don’t, I think more so now, certainly, yeah, probably more. So now, you know, it’s just a realizing of how much I do it.

Fleur Larsen  20:31

Sure, sure. One thing I want to say about Robin DiAngelo‘s body of work, which is her term white fragility, and her book and all this stuff. So speaking of power words, and folks that are writers, one thing that’s happening right now is people are like going out and buying a ton of books or wanting resources. That’s great. People should do that. And we want to think about where the money is going. So, what I recommend to white folks in particular, but just anyone is, go buy books, or move your money to support black authors, right? Ijeoma Oluo, Ibram Kendi, a bunch of others. And you can watch, Robin DiAngelo’s video clips on her website, you can there’s lots of articles online. But there’s something a little bit funny about her making a ton of money off of the book, which you know, so that it’s mostly in this moment, I bought the book. And so let’s not, I don’t want to mince words around this. But she’s really like, if everyone’s throwing their money in different places, we really want it to go towards our values. So a way to combat anti-blackness is to really make sure that we’re supporting black authors, right, you can still get the learning of Robin D’Angelo, you know, from her, all of her work on there’s great videos and TED talks and things like that, so that’s a strategy and way we can support kind of like how the flow of information is mapped also to money.

Erica Barnhart  21:49

Mmhmm. I would also say I’ve learned a lot from Rachel Cargle.

Fleur Larsen  21:52

Yes, absolutely.

Erica Barnhart  21:53

There’s so many we can I mean, there’s so much but but one of the things she does, which I think is brilliant, is she will take example. So on Instagram, you know, she’ll take examples of things that people have said to her on Instagram, and she unpacks them line by line, word by word. And it’s just, it’s and she has this beautiful, beautiful way of being like, Okay, I’m gonna paraphrase just by saying like this, but like, well, that sucked. And that didn’t go very well, let’s stop that, but I love you all, and like, you know, and she’s, I just, I think her combination of things. She’s tough love. Yeah. And she, she does not pull punches, and there’s no malice in it. I think it, it just creates an openness, which is, I think remarkable to have. All right, let’s see. So when I teach, I teach marketing at the University of Washington, marketing for social impact, and I on the first day of class, I think somewhat to too many students surprise, on the first day class, we talked about implicit bias, and the importance of understanding implicit bias and your lived experience in the context of marketing. Because unless you’re aware of it, you actually run the risk of really perpetuating white dominant paradigms. And, you know, again, I’ll speak to personal experience a couple years ago, one of my students of color pointed out and again, with so much kindness, so I’m like, forever grateful to the student. She said, Hey, I don’t know if you noticed this, but there, every single one of the readings was a white author. Every single one, and I like, I get like, emotional every time to talk about it. Because again, I just, I’m white, and I didn’t notice. And so then, so so I’ve been working on that one. It’s, there’s so little, that isn’t written by white authors that is in the like, approved marketing space. So if you’re looking for, like textbooks or anything, I don’t even use textbooks, I stopped doing that. But just like how white dominant even the literature around it, and especially the academic literature is, so I rely now increasingly much more on what we refer to as grey literature, right? So articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, all sorts of that. It was really eye opening, because it meant that I was perpetuating it, right? Unwittingly, and this happens all the time. So you’ve joined me a few times on the first day of class after I go through some stuff. And you’ve done a beautiful job of facilitating an exercise that kind of helps students orient to what is implicit bias, and how might that show up for them and what that might mean for marketing. And I’m wondering if you can speak to that because I think this idea of implicit bias is so important for marketing, and yet a little bit, possibly uncomfortable and maybe a little nebulous, so I’m hoping you can make it a bit more concrete.

Fleur Larsen  24:53

Sure, yeah. A couple things that are, to frame this, is that it’s really hard to manage for something if you can’t name it, so that’s what we’re starting with. And if we start with the premise that everyone is bias, so we all have it, no one escaped it. It’s not like there’s bad people somewhere else that have it, but I’m a good person, although that trope is very present here in liberal, white Seattle, right? And so if we all have bias, then that means we all you know, also there is racial bias. And if we can’t name it, then we can’t manage for it. And so part of the thing that is in your class is to bring awareness shine a light on okay, if this is true, how am I going to manage for this moving forward? When that there is a responsibility in marketing and and as a human, but this piece, especially if you’re, you’re doing communications for your job, or trying to represent ideas and people and things like that. And partly, one of the exercises we do is looking at this idea does the fish know it’s wet, right? Like, I’m just swimming around, and whatever I grew up with as normal, wherever it was, and and that really is, you know, what we all learned as young ones is, here’s what’s normal, some of us learned as young ones, how to code switch, here’s what’s normal at home, but when you leave home, you have to go do this. So that’s like assimilation. But some identities have been preferenced to have their normal be than normal, ie white dominant culture, right? It’s been kind of carted out as what’s normal. And not only just that some normals are some normals, like white normal, are what should be everyone’s normal. It’s also right. That’s how it’s, you know, propped up is that this is what’s normal and it’s what’s right. And so when we see that in terms of like education, here’s what studious, we see that in the professional world around professional standards, and the fact that we just have had to have passed the crown act in California, so that no one can actually be fired because of their hair, which primarily had been was is now to protect black women, right? Like those,  the most cases have been about black woman’s hair. So the policing of what’s normal and i.e. professional, even in your hairstyle, and we, you know, there’s been lots of those videos of, I am thinking of one where the young man wanted to wrestle, and the ref made him well, in order to wrestle the person, he had to have his dreads cut off. And then if that video is fascinating to really look at the patriarchy was dictating what’s normal. And who did it, who did his bidding, who carried it out was this white woman. She went up and cut his his dreads off some black boy. And so that is, you know, there’s that that is like the narrative for all of white supremacy culture, white dominant culture, especially how that maps to nonprofits, right, which mostly has white women delivering a lot of the work.

Erica Barnhart  27:54

Yeah, definitely. And in leadership positions, until you get to the tippy top.

Fleur Larsen  28:00

Or until you get to large budgets or but, you know, and that is the scene where patriarchy and economics really like are at play there. The way sexism is limiting, and, so most, many impressions are at play, a lot of things are going on.

Erica Barnhart  28:15

Yes. Well summarized. Yeah, I think the thing that I’m hoping listeners are hearing and I hoping their ears are still open because some of this I just want to acknowledge may be new to folks may be hard to hear, so just hoping that people that you’re keeping your ears open to it, is that if you’re white, that your normal is the normal, and so we’re trying to bridge, you know, is we are trying to bridge into, as we’re thinking about marketing, okay, so if that’s the normal and that’s off, because it’s not representative of all cultures, okay, how can we be proactive about that? And that’s the thing you know, if my students I’m like, you know, we’re you have to be so proactive about this, while also, kind of hitting the mark in terms of target audience and messaging I just had Elizabeth Ralston on and she’s deaf and so we were talking about marketing that’s inclusive for all and thinking, you know, through that perspective, so you know, like this is it’s a lot it’s a high bar it’s a high bar for sure. Now speaking of high bars, I mean not so much I want to talk about woke-washing. So, I don’t know if you saw it really recently there was a Harvard Business Review article okay called, the title was Woke-Washing Your Company Won’t Cut It. And this references actually an article that came from the Guardian written by Arwa Mahdawi, I think I am saying that right-ish, a couple years ago, actually. So it’s kind of it’s coming around. But anyway, they give some examples so of woke-washing as being appropriate the language of social activism into marketing materials, okay. So this happens all the time. Right? Basically companies saying they are in solid with, for instance, the Black Lives Matter movement, and yet not having very many, or any black leaders, or very few even staff, things like that, you know, being committed to anti racism, etc. So saying these things externally while not really addressing internal power dynamics, imbalances, you know, and really having practices that perpetuate racism. So it’s akin to green washing. Right? I’m curious, because you do so much work on this internal piece. Right, and we’ve talked on the show a lot a part of marketing for good is, you have to have internal alignment, before you can have excellent external execution. How do folks, you know, are you seeing a lot of woke-washing just as a consumer, but the consumer the specific perspective and how can, how can organizations and companies do that internal work to get there that is not woke-washing?

Fleur Larsen  30:58

Yeah. At the core, all this is about integrity. Right? Like, am I walking my talk? Am I doing what I say I’m going to do? So having that as our internal guide, and then, you know, obviously, that can be at the company wide level and the other thing that is a part of this is, you know, in particular here in this region where people just say the right words, but they don’t know what they mean. People are introducing equity and equality interchangeably and they mean fundamentally different things. And if you know, really, really dropping down, what’s an example of equality in your organization, internally, right, how you, what happens with the staff. One classic examples, we all get the same PD money, professional development money. Now, what would, how would you do that in the spirit of equity? It might be like, Oh, well, I have a Master’s, I’ve had tons of resources and access to advancement, someone who hasn’t had those opportunities should get more money.

Erica Barnhart  32:04

Oh, that’s a great way to go. Yeah.

Fleur Larsen  32:07

So and what’s important here is that people are just using terms and jargon. It’s a great exercise, like, how do we talk about this without using the latest terms and jargon, in vernacular, and especially in a culture that is committed to pretense in such an intense way that we are here in our provincial Northwest, I grew up here. So I get criticized, I grew up in QueenAnn and Ballard I’m squarely a white Seattlelite in a very waspy way, right.

Erica Barnhart  32:34

I mean, East Coast listeners are gonna hear this really differently. Yeah, cuz it is different.

Fleur Larsen  32:41

Although waspiness is not, and it’s even more intense in the East Coast in some ways. I mean, depend on it for you know, we’re talking about like, classic New York or something. New York direct, right? Yeah. New York direct. Yeah. And so this thing of really like, what are you talking about? Like, what is the what that you’re even talking about? Do you even know? Do you know, when you say equity, you’re committed to equity work? Well, that would, that would probably look like reparations internally. Right?

Erica Barnhart  33:06

That just made some listeners real uncomfy.

Fleur Larsen  33:09

Yeah, we don’t even we don’t even have paid equality. You know, we have our like, we don’t actually have equality yet.

Erica Barnhart  33:18

We’re not even there.

Fleur Larsen  33:19

No, we have tons of gender pay gaps, which is just literally companies stealing money from their employees, who happened to be socialized female, gendered female, right?And the way that looks, you know, in a racial context is there’s not advancement, there’s no opportunity to you know, for positions of leadership. So going back to your original question around woke-washing, or, you know, another way to think about is performative allyship. And I think what’s important to think about this is it’s like arriving late to a party and then wanting to change the music. Or wanting like kudos for your arrival, right? And so, it’s okay, if you’re late, it’s okay if you’re like, gosh, like I, you know, this is, you know, everyone is at a different place in their journey and all of that is okay. And what’s really, really useful is to have humility. And that doesn’t mean throwing yourself under the bus. It doesn’t mean being a doormat, like I’m not you know, this isn’t about, the shame spiral is not abuse. Feelings are meant to be felt there’s nothing to do but feel them but you don’t just stay there. Right? Right. Shame and guilt can be helpful motivators to be like, whoa, and want to be clear about when you think someone’s shaming you versus when you have feelings of being ashamed of feeling ashamed. Those are those are different things and often, naming is equated with blaming. Right, so naming the dynamic, naming the racism is experienced and heard by white folks as you’re blaming me, versus well, actually, I’m just naming that racism is in existence and you might have feelings of shame that come up but like oh my god, I’m ashamed that that’s happening. I’m ashamed that I’m just now learning this. I didn’t know it or I didn’t see it, I had no idea. Like your example with both of your examples, right? Yeah. Like and it’s just you know, so all that stuff like the emotional intelligence of this is like a poor competency.

Erica Barnhart  35:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Fleur Larsen  35:16

Like a hot furnace, I’m having all these feelings, I’m really triggered and is something bad happening? Or am I just having a whole bunch of feelings? And that is, can be very confusing when you’re accustomed to privilege.

Erica Barnhart  35:28

And that feelings are meant to be like clouds, right? Constantly shifting, constantly moving, we don’t accuse, like different types of clouds of being good or bad. We don’t judge the clouds for their shape. They just serve different purposes. Yeah, I think that I want to underscore for listeners this point about the conflating of naming and blaming, and how important it’s, it really sounds like for quite a while, I think we’ve been hearing in terms of organizational development, you know, which feeds right into marketing a lot of different ways, the need for higher emotional intelligence, and how much more important that is going to be going forward and then also a piece, you know, we’re just, you know, coming out of a fleeting moments, it would seem that there were there were protests, you know, after George Floyd was killed, and already, like, three months after that, nope, two months, that’s already kind of fading a little bit. So and there was all you know, all these companies coming out with their statements of solidarity and all the rest of it and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when things are really appreciated in that Harvard Business Review article, about woke-washing is them saying that’s great and, and I’m going to paraphrase, they did not say it this way, this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. And if you treat it like a sprint, you’re all at a steam and you’re not going to get to the finish line, if it’s a marathon. And I mentioned that partially because there is a sequencing of events, to your point about this is about integrity. So if the internal work hasn’t happened, that external statement is super great and maybe the way in which you do it is part of the internal work around integrity. But a lot of them felt like they were very quickly slapdash together and thrown out there.

Fleur Larsen  37:21

Yeah, I mean, it was clear with lots of folks, it was more about not wanting to be seen having not made one. Right? My work with middle school girls, greatly informs a lot of my work with this around equity.

Erica Barnhart  37:34

Oh, that’s interesting.

Fleur Larsen  37:36

FOMO fear of missing out, I want to be seen, I don’t want to be the last one to arrive into the party, because I’m not pushed, like whatever. So basically, it’s about not based, but it’s it’s like fear or insecurities, or, you know, just trying to be seen as doing the right thing without actually doing it.

Erica Barnhart  37:53

Yeah, I mean, we have so many examples of this, that predate any of this. I mean, let’s see, Audi’s equal pay for equal work the Super Bowl ad from a couple years ago, and then it turned out, they didn’t have a single woman on their leadership team. You know, this list goes on, Pepsi and the Kendall Jenner ad. And then there’s sort of lesser known ones that are a bit more poignant. I’m thinking of the founder and CEO of Feminist Apparel, who’s a man Alan Martofel, admitting to a history of abusing women, the female employees then said, you should resign and instead of resigning, he fired them all. Feminists apparel, right, like this is, so you’re not that’s not that’s not being an integrity if there was any question about that. And then even Nike, right, which, you know, ran the Colin Kaepernick ads, and then it came out that less than 10% of its 300 plus vice presidents-ish were black. You know, so I think, you know, Nike, I would say they’re doing the work, they keep, you know, trying. And this is it’s hard, and it’s complicated. But just just like dashing off the statement isn’t doing the work necessarily. And I think on a podcast about marketing, and so so much of marketing is external messaging and proclamations, announcements and statements. I just feel like that’s really important to say.

Fleur Larsen  39:13

It is and it what’s tricky, or just complicated as well is we also can’t wait for everyone to have an aha moment.

Erica Barnhart  39:23

Say more about that Fleur. Yeah, well, reading books is phenomenal. We need to do that, we need to unlearn, we need to process, we need to talk about stuff, we need to go to trainings, and basically, this moment is calling for like enough with that there has to be action people are begging to not be murdered. So you can’t wait for each person to feel comfortable and relaxed enough and have an aha about their alignment with racial equity or their commitment to racial equity. It just, the stakes are too high. And so, there’s both like you need to do the internal work and we can’t wait. We don’t wait to try things until everyone is arrived at a certain critical mass of commitment because we could just keep waiting, right? Similar to think about, like the labor movement, like, the boss didn’t just give people their rights, because they were like ah I had a change of heart. Right? Yeah, the people to fight really hard and, like, still I mean, that’s a continued thing with, you know, workers rights anyway now. So that’s what I mean by there’s, there’s a impatience, because things really came to a head recently, partly because of long, long movement work that people have been preparing and doing for a long long time, particularly communities of color have been leading movement work for for a really long time. And this moment, really kind of was able to galvanize enough people. And I think what statements you know, the best ones I’ve seen are, we are new to this. Yes. Like, acknowledge, like, that’s an integral thing to say is, we’re new, we have not centered racial equity and that was a mistake and now we’re going to move forward and try to figure out how to do it. Yep. And that gets back to your point about humility.

Fleur Larsen  41:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Erica Barnhart  41:19

Right, humility. Marketing so much is in an institutional context and I think that there are a variety of factors around organizational dynamics, that, you know, we’ve talked about and so I want to transition here to make sure that we touch on kind of the individual opportunity arounds, pushing some of these issues forward which has to do with consumerism. And then on the other side of marketing is always a consumer or a client or a donor or volunteer, or whoever it may be, but there’s an individual there. And, you know, I just, I think that there’s so much opportunity now and millennials and Zoomers are definitely leading the charge on this. You know, they’re demanding more accountability and, and they’re, they’re putting their money where their mouth is, to a great extent. And so a little bit of this is generational, but I guess just, you know, and also acknowledging that, yes, some of this can be really overwhelming. And yet it is urgent. And so as individuals, and you know, I don’t listeners are going to be in all sorts of different organizational contexts and they’re going to have this sense of personal agency around every single time they make a purchasing decision. So a little bit of a call to action around that. But I would love you know, your thoughts on the importance of the consumer side of things, versus the organizational and institutional side of things that we’ve been talking about?

Fleur Larsen  42:46

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like one key aspect around thinking about my individual actions or contribution is knowing my significance, right, for everyone to actually really get in touch with our significance. What we’ve been seeing the past few months is enough people feeling like they wanted to contribute in a, you know, critical mass type of way, you know, protests and lots of other organizing and all of that really requires folks to know that you matter. Like over a third of people didn’t vote in 2016 election for lots of reasons, it might not have been connected to them knowing their significance might have to do with literally voter resist, what’s the word to keep people from voting?

Erica Barnhart  43:30

Suppression?

Fleur Larsen  43:31

Suppression. And so I think if you know, really, especially as I think about power with, not power over is like a sentiment I work with white women a lot on and the first part invites us to really know our power, then it’s easy to share power. Once I am clear on my power and my significance on the planet is not related to how helpful I am or how well like I am right? And so then I can really be in alignment with right action with my values. Moving from, with right action, or into right action in right relationship and ingrain all this into relationship. This isn’t a solo thing being connected, connected to myself, connected to each other. I mean, that’s what is really, that’s the intrinsic motivation for me and what I try to invite other white folks into there has to be an intrinsic motivation because otherwise this works too hard. You’re gonna feel too bad. And what’s in it for me is I get my humanity, more access to my humanity.

Erica Barnhart  44:39

So actually the last question which you just walked into that I am, I’m gonna say you segwayed right into. Last question I asked every guest is based on the words inspiration and motivation, etymological root circle, come full circle, go back to that, of inspiration has to do with breathing in, so breath in and motivation has to do with taking action, so you need both breath and we need breath to take action and you were speaking to this, but what inspires you and what keeps you motivated to do this work, that can be tough work?

Fleur Larsen  45:08

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ll kind of map two questions together a little bit. You know, if enough people, if we all moved our money, where are our values are and what’s helpful to me is like really knowing that a lot of people can make a big difference with our individual actions, right? So you know, intentionalist.com is a great place to go and figure out, hey, I want to buy from black or you know, POC owned, or women owned businesses, and like really move our money to match our values for organizations or companies, you open up the budget, and find what people value based on where they put their money, right. I mean, that’s true for humans too, but also just connecting it to organizations. And so I think that kind of bridging off of if I’m really connected to my significance, and also my influence my sphere of influence, not like being influenced or not like that way of the term but just like, someone that interacts with another human, then we really can invite people into liberation work, right? And I think especially for white folks, where there’s just there’s a disconnect, and so part of this is connection, connection to myself, and, and a reconnection to information that I have been cut off of because of privilege, right? Like, that’s where, again, bias and blinders come up. I don’t, I didn’t even know that there was something else that I’m missing here. You know. So, you know, like, if everyone moved their money into black owned banks, for instance, that would be huge right, or just really, you know, so there’s a lot here, individual and small micro moments, you know, certainly how you interact with another human, but also huge, large scale.

Erica Barnhart  46:47

Yeah, I mean, to go back to your example, as well, of where you buy your books. Yeah, and buying from black owned bookstores. And yes, more complicated than ordering from Amazon and, you know, not judging if somebody does that, just if you’re interested, right, in these micro moments, micro actions, because they add up.

Fleur Larsen  47:06

They do and those it’s like, there’s a lot of like, the kind of non-sexy work of liberation or racial work, is that moment where you’re like, I’ll order from this thing, and it’ll take longer, it’s not the like, I’m out at a protest. I mean, it can be but that that’s one version, and it’s not what I posted on my Instagram, it’s all these little moments of really the fabric of how you live your life and each moment is an invitation to be in alignment with your values and integrity.

Erica Barnhart  47:34

Mmhmm. Yeah, so liberation work ain’t sexy. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

Fleur Larsen  47:39

Not all of it.

Erica Barnhart  47:40

Not super sexy.

Fleur Larsen  47:42

Some of it’s really hot and steamy and fun, and not all of it.

Erica Barnhart  47:48 That’s, that’s great. It’s a great, a great place to end. I do want to encourage listeners, we will put in the to, you know, do the work, obviously, I’m just hoping nobody heard like, oh, well, I don’t have to do the work. But what we are saying is do the work, yes, so that you can take action in a way that is in alignment with your integrity and who you are because every single one of you matters. And I really hope you’ll hear that I really love, Fleur, your invitation to think about significance and your significance and and then when mapping that to all of this work and then for those of you that are doing the marketing, the communications, just becoming, you know, ever more attentive to the language you’re using the lenses, this idea of implicit bias itself is so important. It’s so important. So thank you Fleur for being here. Thank you listeners for sticking with this. Like I said, we’ll put the resources in the show notes. Let’s all keep learning and keep doing. Do good. Be well and we will see you next time.

The post Ep: 23: Fleur Larsen: The Language of Racism appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart’s interview with Wendy Chamberlin on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

KEY WORDS

poverty, people, donors, philanthropy, marketing, constraints, solution, problem, communities, money, markets

Erica Mills Barnhart  00:13

Well, welcome to the show, Wendy. You do such interesting, very interesting and very important work. The more I learned about it, the more I was like, wow, this is fascinating, and this is needed. So we’re going to talk about whether or not poverty has a marketing problem. We’re going to get there. I’m wondering if you’d be open to it, can we start just by hearing how you got into doing what you’re currently doing with the Boma Project from Kenya? How’d you get there?

Wendy Chamberlin  00:46

Um, there’s two stories. The one that goes back like 25 years is when after college I had a volunteer teaching assignment in northern Kenya and I got a chance to teach in part of East Africa that I knew nothing about. And I also learned how difficult it was to, for entities and NGOs to operate in the area because the area is characterized having like really low infrastructure, the only part of the A2 highway from Cairo to Cape Town that wasn’t paved ran through northern Kenya. It was known for having a lot of banditry and just tensions between communities and was very prone to droughts, and other just reoccurring environmental experiences that left communities in a lot of shock. And so I left northern Kenya thinking a lot about that experience trying to understand how to get into development, and eventually found my way working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and was doing a Google search, this is about seven years ago saying who the heck is doing work in northern Kenya. It’s really hard for stuff to stick there and not have it just be humanitarian response. And I stumbled across this organization called the Boma Project and got really intrigued by their work, partly because it wasn’t an outside NGO bringing in a solution, it was an NGO that was focused on having local talent, people from the community delivering a solution in a way that was really contextually appropriate and responsive to the needs of the community that it was working in and I got really hooked on that. And through a series of interventions, the Boma Project ended up winning, being one of 19 awardees for a big RFP at the foundation. And I got to know them closely on the donor side and fell into this world of understanding or trying to learn I should say about something called poverty graduation programming and, and poverty graduation programming is much of what Boma does which is it has a this approach, a multi sectoral approach, in what we say, to addressing the pernicious sticky issues around extreme poverty. And instead of saying, oh, if a person just has a bank account, then they’re no longer poor. And we know that not to be true. It looks at what kind of person pay for their school fees, their kids school fees, can they do they have money so they can pay for health care? And if a drought comes and wipes away their livestock, can they still be resilient and withstand that shock. And that’s the type of approach that poverty graduation undertakes is to build resiliency, through job skills, training and ongoing mentoring and coaching for a period of time. And being a bit of a data geek, I wanted to look at the research behind it. It turns out there’s a whole host of randomized control trials that look at the effects of this type of programming to say yes, this works even in the long term, even after you and your intervention and sure enough, the results show that at scale that, you know, seven years after somebody goes through this type of programming, which I can explain in a bit, they they still are considered resilient, their savings grow, their assets grow, and their family is able to absorb shocks, which is really what you want to see happening when people are taken through a type of intervention to help move them from one point to another point. I found that working in northern Kenya, and I just got sold on it. I also wanted to move my family to Kenya and I wanted my kids to have a chance to live overseas and grow up in a different country for a period of time. And I wanted to understand, I’d spent a lot of time looking at philanthropy and understand funds. I wanted to understand the implementation side. And I also needed to kind of put my money where my mouth was, I spent a lot of years on the philanthropic side saying go and scale and go work with these partners and now that’s exactly what I’m doing and I am feeling it directly. So long answer, but that’s how I am where I am. We moved to Kenya a year ago and we’re learning to adapt and adjust to a new environment.

Erica Mills Barnhart  05:11

And you made a choice to stay there when COVID was becoming a thing and you’re still there.

Wendy Chamberlin  05:19

And we’re still here. And we’re glad we’re still here because we have, well, Kenya has its challenges. At the same time, we were privy to consistent communication about how what’s happening with the spread of the virus. There’s just a lot of adoption of approaches to keep people protected. And honestly, it’s, my kids get a chance to be outside in a completely different environment and culture and see things and do things that they don’t have access to, which is an enormous privilege. And it gives me, the work I do a chance also to work firsthand on like, really relevant solutions and how we respond in light of COVID-19 too, that would be harder to do where I am in the US.

Erica Mills Barnhart  06:13

Yeah, and you were saying that, that they that Kenya, like shut everything down after three cases.

Wendy Chamberlin  06:19

Yeah, it was March 13. Kenya had like around three cases and the government shut down all the schools. And then they went through even more restrictive measures across the country. We had a geographic lockdown, which meant we couldn’t leave Nairobi, the evening curfew still in place. Like stock markets are closed. All kinds of restrictions were put in place and a large majority of them were just lifted last month. But it was really meant to contain the spread because most of the virus has been concentrated in population dense areas like Nairobi, Mombasa, other areas.

Erica Mills Barnhart  06:53

And you were saying before we get to poverty, I want to talk about the marketing of masks. Just for a moment. Will you just, will you share the messaging that came out around masks very early on?

Wendy Chamberlin  07:07

Yeah. You know, around actually was around Easter time because I remember we were, we were on a drive and the ministry of health was coming out with public announcements. They were actually quoting scripture which I don’t remember what it was, but it was essentially wear a mask, you know, do this in service of your neighbor because you care about, you know, we care and take care of one another, and wearing a mask is a way that we can show each other, you know, we can do that humbly and serve one another. And that’s honestly how a lot of people talk about wearing a mask here is like, I would of course, wear a mask because maybe I have been in touch with someone who has it and so I want to protect you and those around you. And the side version of that is like we we live in a country that has a health system that was working to respond rapidly to the spread of the disease, but is nowhere ready at full scaled to responding to people know that these interventions will be life saving. And so they’re willing to undertake those interventions. And so you don’t have the same sort of pushback of like, people feeling like a mask, wearing a mask is taking away their personal civil rights.  Yeah, yeah.

Erica Mills Barnhart  08:19

Yeah. And it sounds like I mean, I don’t know if this was what they were quoting, but that’s like, the super old  school messaging around, which is do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  So thank you, I’m just I’m appreciating hearing how different you know, within the US, obviously, lots of different approaches. But I really appreciated hearing you know, these international perspectives and it does so frequently go back to the marketing of individualism which is just part of the DNA of the United States. So watching that play out is super interesting.

Wendy Chamberlin  09:06

It’s interesting from here, because people ask me or tell me, well, you made a really good choice not to go back to the States, what’s going on? And that’s telling, and that’s people who have a different set of means that I have, but who would be are really, really concerned about the state of things happening in the US.

Erica Mills Barnhart  09:25

Yeah, yeah, really fair. Okay, so that makes me think of othering. Right, and how we all we all sit from our place of, you know, our lived experience, and we make all sorts of assumptions about other people. And then I think that that gets amplified because I think the further away you go from what you know, your assumptions become probably further from the truth. Just because you because you don’t know. And so I think that’s really relevant to this question, which was the subject line of the email that you sent me said, does poverty have a marketing problem? And honestly, as soon as I read it out loud, it’s just me in my office. I was like, yes, it does. And I thought this for such a long time, because way, way, way back when I did work in micro-finance. And one of the things that was always shocking to people was to learn and just to open their mind to the fact that people who happen to be living in poverty were actually excellent credit, I am air quoting, risks. They were really credit worthy. And so you know, when I when I talked to donors about that, or just was chit chatting with people about micro-finance, they were like, but what, how is that even possible? And I think that says so much about the marketing problem that poverty has, which is that we do have all these preconceived notions about it. Like with so many things, we bring our own biases to the idea of poverty, our own privilege, our own lived experience, or lack thereof, as it relates to poverty. And then we make a bunch of assumptions. So I had to look up where the word poverty came from because I love etymology. That’s, you were talking about your data geek streak. That’s my dorky streak, as listeners know. So I learned that it came the word poverty came into the English language in the 12th century. I don’t know what happened prior to the 12th century about how we would talk about poverty or not, but an immense misery or wretched condition. So not a strong start. Then we get poverty stricken in 1803, poverty line in 1901, and poverty trap in 1966.

Wendy Chamberlin  11:41

Oh interesting.

Erica Mills Barnhart  11:42

Yeah. So I just think the, so where it came from, does say a lot I would say about how we think about it. And that combined with this idea of many of us, myself included, do not have you know, we haven’t lived it and we have a lot of people assumptions about it. So that meant, you know, a piece of marketing there’s always this like for whom are we optimizing? How do I get into their mind and heart? So there’s that like projecting itself into other. But with poverty, there’s just something different that’s happening. So what made you ask this question about does poverty have a marketing problem?

Wendy Chamberlin  12:26

With COVID 19 oh, a few things. So, where I work in northern Kenya, the communities in which I work, they’re called pastoralists. Pastoralists are people who earn their livelihood through livestock, and they are semi nomadic, which means they are, their houses are temporal. And so and that has been the prominent livelihood activity of people who live in northern Kenya, which is an arid, semi arid land area. It’s like it is the desert. So people, know livestock, and that is livestock is their full way of life. And it’s an area also that in the 1963 constitution that Kenya adopted after left colonialism, they made a commitment that basically said, we’re not going to invest in this area economically, we’re just going to leave it be. And that didn’t change until the 2012 Constitution when they rewrote an article and said, we will now invest economically in this area. And this is an area that it covers more than the country of Ireland in size and is about 6 to 8 million people. So it’s not like a small area and there are northern Kenya is everywhere. In Sub Saharan Africa. They are characterized as being last mile, which is really if you imagine the last mile of a road, it’s where the road might cut off because there’s no infrastructure. There’s areas where there’s no electricity, there’s no, there may be buildings, but they are not completely finished. And so that context matters because it sets the scene for also understanding what typically might be in place for economies to thrive and continue to grow. And when you have infrastructure, when you have investment in communities when you have a tax base that can contribute as part of this too, that means you get schools with teachers, and you have industries that are attracted to an area and all these other things that grow and grow and create jobs and create opportunities. When you don’t have those things, and when we talk about this under investment that took place for such a long time, it means that it has what we see happening is that people have been sort of removed from the opportunity equation because of a lack of these things being in place, and so many of the people who live in northern Kenya are characterized as being extreme poor, and the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, even SDG one has a definition around extreme poverty, which is, you know, people who live on $1.90 a day or less, but people who are extremely poor don’t walk around saying I have $1 and 89 cents I’m extremely poor. It’s really meant to like capture that there’s this massive I mean, it’s, it’s there’s very, very few resources that they earn on a regular basis, and probably a better measurement tool, in my opinion might be like, the Oxford Multidimensional Poverty Index, which looks at not just monetary value that a person has, but also that ability to mobilize resources to take care of their basic needs. And globally, there are about 700 million extreme people in the world. That number was reducing pre COVID, that number is increasing post COVID and in northern Kenya, the reason I try, it’s important to me to focus on it is because I think it shows both the opportunity that can be realized for the extreme poor, it also shows what constraints need to be addressed in order to overcome some of the barriers that are consistently persistent. And COVID-19 really amplifies or exacerbates what those barriers are.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:30

Yeah. Do you find it to be true, so one of the things about poverty, when we think about the US context is there is this residual thinking from the Elizabethan poor laws, which came across the water with us when people came over way back when on the Mayflower, and part of that was saying that if you poor, it was your fault, there was something you had done. So I just wonder when people hear constraints, and opportunities, but I’m gonna start with constraints. So when we hear that, I could imagine some folks being like, well, you know, constraints you kind of put on yourself as opposed to societal constraints, structural constraints in your context. I’m just curious if in Kenya and northern Kenya in this last mile zone that’s as big as Ireland, good gravy-

Wendy Chamberlin  17:27

And beyond.

Erica Mills Barnhart  17:28

Yeah, and beyond. That’s real big. So it’s just like, I think for listeners to be last mile to this really big space. When people talk about poverty and constraints there is, is there this idea of like, well, they kind of did it to themselves? It’s kind of their fault?

Wendy Chamberlin  17:46

In this particular context, no, because the decisions were made during colonial times, in some cases to both how you even geographically delineate the areas or partition the areas to begin with, and then how and then post-colonialism how you choose to invest or not in this area. Um, so it’s not, that was less of a like they did it to themselves and even then and I you don’t see this sort of you either pull yourself up by your bootstraps sort of mentality or not that kind of spills over into that people widely recognized in Kenya, Kenyans themselves, widely recognize that the North is really challenged by constraints around infrastructure and environment around really distinct ethnicities that are different than what you see in other parts of the countries that impacts language, that impacts culture, and a host of other things. And so, people don’t look at it like I should have done better, that doesn’t carry over.

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:54

You just pull yourself up from your bootstraps. It’s like if you don’t have boots, there aren’t bootstraps. Right, like, yeah, you got to get to the point of having the boots even so. Okay, so when you think about constraints, and then you were saying that there’s a lot of focus on opportunity. And, you know, part of marketing, many things, but definitely in the marketing for good space, is painting this picture for people, particularly for people who aren’t, who are living a different experience of here’s the problem and here’s the better, brighter future world, right, that together, we can work together, we can get there. And so then how do we bridge that gap? How does that picture get painted in your context? So I think there’s there’s both kind of it’s actually why I wrote you that question, too. There’s kind of the mythological side of that. And then there’s there kind of the reality you know, there’s, there’s perceptions people have about that marketing of like oh people are poor in these areas, they are passively poor and they’re waiting.  What is passively poor, what do you mean by that?

Wendy Chamberlin  20:09

Passively poor means just like a person is just sitting waiting for something to be given to them

Erica Mills Barnhart  20:15

Oh, okay, okay.

Wendy Chamberlin  20:16

That is what passive poverty would be and they’re just waiting. They’re just there’s nothing there, they’re this this kind of image is created, there’s nothing there until somebody comes and brings in something to them. That’s both a marketing of poverty and I’d say it’s also a myth about poverty too. And that myth gets extended to, maybe there’s no markets that are happening. And maybe that all that can be done in this area is just time after time humanitarian response. And people do respond to that and it has generated interest and it has generated thinking about what to do, solutions. But what we see long term is that that belief structure around that type of marketing of poverty creates almost a static picture of what it means to be poor. And it fails to recognize, in my opinion, that in fact, people are pretty entrepreneurial by nature.

Erica Mills Barnhart  21:26

Yeah.

Wendy Chamberlin  21:27

And that there are markets that exist, they may not be in markets that one can compare to a savvy market, but they exist. And often the failure has been actually around the responsibilities of the state. And I would, I would also say, large scale donors who have made commitments to reach that further end. And so and that’s what we see play out what I mean by that, so a few things in, northern Kenya has experienced a huge amount of humanitarian crises one after the other, especially in terms of drought and it’s not even just like one offs. This year we had like a flood, drought, flood, locusts, and the COVID 19 phenomenon.

Erica Mills Barnhart  22:13

Oh yeah, the locust, it was biblical.

Wendy Chamberlin  22:17

And it’s still going, and they are huge and they’re, you know, they’re terrible. But we have cycles of experiences. And so that creates one image of like, okay, we got to do something now, drop food aid, do this like one time one shot thing that that is necessary at times, and I would never say it’s not necessary. But when these cycles of crises become predictable, because drop cycles are predictable, there are now there’s so much that is done around predictive analytics on when we know that there’s another drop is coming, we need food insecurity as part of that. When there’s predictability, you can create longer term solutions. That are responsive to the overall needs and constraints. And the same goes for when, well, let me pivot here and just say part of that is then entities making commitments to know more about what’s going on on the ground with communities as opposed to saying there is a problem here, we’re going to solve it, and we’re out. But having staying power and being in communities and being from the communities really matters. I mean, the communities need to have a voice in solutions and that voice by paying attention to that voice, that voice alone tells you that there’s a lot more going on than a static picture of poverty. And there are also I would say, a lot of premature declarations of victory against and around poverty. And this is part of the myth piece that goes on where, you know, we see examples where commitments around electrification, putting electricity into rural communities where towers are put up but they are not cabled for like years.

Erica Mills Barnhart  24:07

But victory is claimed because the tower is up.

Wendy Chamberlin  24:09

Exactly, the tower is up. A health clinic is built and it’s been paid for by somebody, multiple health clinics but they’re not staffed but you have that built and so the accountability to fully see efforts that are funded at a large scale play out and have their intended impact is missing from the picture. And that gets dismissed and put into the it’s just really hard and they’re just poor and there’s nothing else there sort of bucket of you know, that’s how it is there versus it’s hard, it’s complex, and it takes more stickiness to address these issues because they are very now we’re in the tangly, tangly mess bit of really impacting with is causing all these ingredients that are causing poverty.

Erica Mills Barnhart  25:04

Yeah, you used the word pernicious earlier which stuck out because I love that word, pernicious, it almost you know, I don’t know it feels almost like an onomatopoeia. Pernicious problems are messy, and therefore they require sticky solutions to it. What I’m hearing a bit of what you’re saying is how these, you know, victories are marketed toward donors, perpetuates and actually makes things messier, not cleaner, and definitely not better. And I’m curious you know, I mean, I have my own opinions about like, why is early victory claimed? Why is it claimed and if I mean that’s those examples right when we hear them like that was goofy to claim victory. That’s, that’s goofy. That’s a public health clinic that is isn’t making anybody healthier because it’s just a building. Why does it happen?

Wendy Chamberlin  26:08

There’s one of the other myths, I think that happens around poverty is a lot like that movie Field of Dreams of if you build it, they will come. If you create the solution, it will trickle down, right? By building a building, they will be educated, or are the teachers there? Are they capacitated to teach all those things? Somebody else has got to focus on that. That’s not my problem. Right? So that’s what I’m saying is that one of the challenges we have in the field of development is this very siloed approach to addressing poverty and poverty is not siloed. Poverty is not just siloed or on the line to like it’s an agriculture thing, it’s an education thing, it is a complex thing. And yet, donors are not organized in that way in how they respond. They’re not organized to fund in multi sectoral fashions, they’re focused organized funds sectorally and by virtue of that NGOs are oftentimes organized to operate sectorally as opposed to multisectorially. So if I am a donor and I prioritize agriculture, and I give out grants for improving agriculture, I’m looking for entities who can do that thing. And so that’s part of the problem. That’s part of the challenge that we see is that kind of siloed thinking as to how to address a problem.

Erica Mills Barnhart  27:36

Right? So I have a hammer so I’m looking for a nail.

Wendy Chamberlin  27:40

 Exactly. And we all do this right? I will say one more thing is that, the, what was I gonna say? The other part of this is patience. So and,  kind of like, I won’t say sexiness probably. That’s terrible to say I’ll say like, patience and like attraction to like, this is the thing I want do and hold up as my, my beacon. So people want to fund the thing that they feel like is the most catalytic in their silos, right? And so maybe that’s building school buildings, maybe that’s rolling out laptops, it could be a host of other things. People do not really tend to want to fund or have the staying power for like what happened five years after you did that? They’re looking for somebody else to fund that. And that’s where you have to ask, that’s where we actually need more focus and attention to say, well, you didn’t actually electrify the towers so nobody got electricity, or you gave people a bank account, but guess what, they didn’t use it as you thought and they’re still struggling. And so more attention needs to be put on these so what factor of poverty solutions, or maybe just as much and to many organizations credit, this is happening, but sometimes it has to, we either get so caught up in the like it has to happen in this only methodological way to being able to like, let’s just ask ourselves honestly isn’t working, I can look at the building, I can see there’s no lights, and it’s clearly not working. I don’t need an RCT for that. I can tell you that that’s not happening.

Erica Mills Barnhart  29:16

Yeah, I go back to this question that Beth Kanter asked many years ago, and we were doing a panel discussion about data and transparency. And the question she posed somewhat rhetorically was, is it are you proving it or improving it? And I  come back to it frequently from a from a marketing perspective to say, oftentimes we get and then there’s some structural reasons for this very focused on like, look, I’m proving it, there’s a building, there’s a laptop, there’s this or that or that, but does that improve the situation? And I think it’s that next question that would really inform things like Annual Reports. I point, I wiggle my finger at annual reports, because similar to like the electoral timelines, you know, so if it’s two years and four years, you’re kind of like, what can I get done? And it’s very frenetic. I feel like in some ways annual reports are a disservice because they perpetuate this approach to funding and to doing when you’re the NGO, because you have to have something to put in the annual report, you know, to show people whoever those people may be, the funders who gave you money or whatever, whatever the case may be. What’s happened? And am I saying do away with and reports entirely, I’m not ready to go there. But I would love to see an evolution of them to acknowledge exactly what you’re talking about, which is, here’s the bit that happened this year. What else needs to happen? How can we improve it? We can prove that we did it this year, how are we going to improve going forward? And if there was that type of framework, well then that becomes I think a positive. But as it is, I feel like we’re all kind of stuck in the development field for a long time it’s been stuck. I also think some colonial roots and historical things play into this for sure. And also for the first time I sort of for the instances where it’s a US based agency that’s coming in this like pull yourself up from your bootstraps kind of plays out, which is like, well, you have a building we gave you a jumpstart, okay, let’s see what you’re gonna do. You know, like it’s, I just hadn’t thought about it in that way. So it was interesting to hear you talk about that. But there has to be, you know, you can’t like marketing can’t solve all the problems unfortunately. But these but it, plays out these perceptions. And so it seems to me like we need to shift some perception in order to get the structural changes to start happening, that would downstream impact marketing.

Wendy Chamberlin  32:06

Totally. And  we see this play out, so about 60% of our program participants and business women we work with, they receive government cash transfers, or safety net payments. I want to use this example because one of the things is, so when they receive those payments, that the equivalent of like $20 a month, it’s not a lot of money. And it’s proof alone, that subsidy from a government by itself will not support you, as you know, as an individual. They spend almost the exact same amount to go to the distribution point to receive those funds, which almost cancels out that payment completely. The banks will not offer their services locally to them, because they have been told these myths that there is no businesses here. People aren’t entrepreneurial, they’re passive recipients, and there’s no market and so what we have been trying to do as an organization that supports entrepreneurs and tries to access them to markets and make those linkages I should say the market is we start talking to the private sector players, the financial service provider and say, there’s actually businesses here we started 11,000 businesses with these women. And we have savings groups, and there’s stuff happening. There’s livestock markets, where women are trading like crazy in goats and sheep. And when we tell that story to the financial service providers, they are like, that’s not what I knew of that area, I’ve never been to that area, but actually, that’s not what I heard about that area. And so we are there to myth bust for them to say there are markets here, people are entrepreneurial, they are like, they can kill it. And actually what is missing is you, you are not bringing the services they need to their community. You can’t offer it the same way you do say in Nairobi, you can do it differently and still have an impact and you can be a profitable on the same side. So we try and reverse the tables of communication that way to change the narrative. There is something happening here.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:07

So you’re trying to do what we would refer to as changing the frame?

Wendy Chamberlin  34:11

Yeah. I just found out that it was called that.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:14

Yeah. Well, yeah. And the frame often shows that you change frames. So how do you if somebody has grown up with this one frame, this one belief system around the entrepreneurial activity or lack thereof in this region, how much does it take? Like, do they hear facts like 11,000 businesses. Does that shift them? Does that open their minds to this different way of seeing it or what works?

Wendy Chamberlin  34:46

We try and use data to tell a story. So yeah, we use facts. We tell them what’s happened. We move from like you thought this was cute and boutique, and now it’s scaled. And so what we thought was a one off is now happening regularly and it means this and we can show them through the program that we offer because we do all kinds of business monitoring to monitor business growth of these small enterprises to say, here’s how they grow. Here’s what’s happening in terms of these businesses financial activity, and it fills in the blanks of a picture that was honestly blank. And it had been before populated with very sort of monochromatic flat images of what people thought it meant to live and work in these areas, and give a lot more clarity as to like, oh, this is actually, there’s a lot, there is an economy here, there is something happening here.

Erica Mills Barnhart  35:38

So sounds like you take them to a black, from black and white to like full spectrum color version of it. And I’m hearing a little bit of by mapping their language, your language to their language, so words like growth words like scale. I mean, these are bankers, so that would be the language that might perk up their ears.

Wendy Chamberlin  35:59

We think it’s important to do that with private sector players its banks, its mobile network operators, but also donors too, because we have to counter this narrative as well to say, no, there is something more here, there’s a reason for you to invest this far out in an area that has otherwise been written off, because this is what it means. And it’s also about showing that the breaking point around poverty is not the individual and their lack of aptitude or anything else that’s like super derogatory that can be applied. It’s actually about the breaking point of responsibilities that are on the shoulders of governments and those who have made commitments to service those areas as part of their, you know, jobs.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:46

Yeah, yeah. That’s very fascinating because switching frames is tough business. That’s tough. I feel like we’d be remiss if we didn’t, if we were talking about poverty and marketing and we didn’t talk about poverty porn. Let’s talk about poverty porn. So, for listeners who are not familiar with the term, it is a term that’s been used for a long time to describe the type of marketing that has been done which shows you know, you can mentally envision the like, you know, very emaciated images, flies on faces all of that, if we are speaking about Africa, and that type of image versus a more asset framed approach to it about the possibilities and opportunities and what’s super interesting about poverty porn, is that it you see a lot more of the asset framing of you know, positive opportunity framing, around domestic marketing of sort of domestic and by domestic I mean like within the UK, within Ireland, within the US, within Canada, we see more of that positive frame. And yet what persists poverty porn persists and part of that, so there is a bit of research which says poverty porn actually works in terms of acquiring new donors. It is not as effective at retaining donors. And we all know that acquisition is way more expensive than retention. So if that’s true, why does poverty porn persist?

Wendy Chamberlin  38:32

Yeah, I think it’s such an interesting I, I’m always surprised when I I, I’ve had the experience firsthand where I was on a site visit for another NGO and I got pulled into shots of like, let’s surround yourself with children and I will throw candy in the air and they will smile and we will smile together to see faces and I was completely appalled because I didn’t know what was happening until it happened and, and yet, this was being used for this organization for that acquisition, they felt like that was super important and yet it had nothing to do with what they were trying to tell their story, I think, I think it has to do with a couple things. One is that some audiences have short attention spans for good or for bad. And they have only been given one story since the 1980s or before but especially the Ethiopia famine is you know, is exactly and so and that’s what they attribute with poverty itself, and they can’t be moved from that point, and to take audiences to a more complex conversation around what poverty is, and what can cause it and how it can be solved means that people need to be willing to commit more attention. And to understand that the solutions are not as simple as that prior image would allow them to think about and respond to. So the first image of like, this is what it looks like and it’s a static image of poverty that allows me just to always respond in one way and when it becomes more complex, that means I need to ask more questions, I need to understand that I may not, you know, this idea that maybe, you know, I, as a donor, have all the answers gets challenged. And it means that the solutions aren’t as straightforward as they were before. And so people choose, I think, between what they want to have straightforward and simple, call it good. And, or stay in the complex. And maybe that’s too reductionist? I don’t know. But that’s one way to think about it.

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:39

Yeah, what comes to mind also is that it’s not only, so those images aren’t only simple. They are so different than what most donors experience. Right. And so, you know, what we know is that donors in the United States are more prone or more likely to give to poverty alleviation in another country, as opposed to, you know, we have a lot of poverty in the United States and that doesn’t get as much of the donor resources. And part of the, one of the hypotheses about that is because that’s too close to home, it’s like, oh, but then then I can’t other enough, you know, if it’s if it’s that close to home, that could end up being me that somehow makes donors feel differently guilty, because they’re not taking care of it. And I think the further away and the more different and the more othered we make folks keeps donors feeling more comfortable. Right, it kind of, you know, perpetuates a lot of things that are maybe not too healthy. I was just having a conversation on Twitter with Tom Ahern, I don’t know if you know him, he is brilliant fundraising, direct mail message, brilliant. And he was saying there’s been this term about donor centric fundraising for a long time being the gold standard and Vu Le, I don’t know, in the last year too was like, that’s not the point. Donors shouldn’t be the heroes. So unbeknownst to Tom, Vu had said that a while ago, and Tom said, you know, what other term could we could we use? And I said, you know, because I agree with Vu very much so that we’ve sort of got ourselves wrapped around this axle of this cycle where, yes, we want donors to feel good about their donation. They’ve done something wonderful, wonderful, and I never want to take away from that. But it’s like we kind of got ourselves in this. It’s like, but that’s not actually the point. The point is what that money has made possible. And it’s the people being served. So my offering to Tom was that, you know, if we need to sort of give it another term fundraising that is and in the marketing of doing good that we will call it mission centered fundraising, because that’s the point. You know, Vu is offering this community based fundraising and I’m like, it’s often about the community, but there’s many organizations, where it’s about plants or trees or animals or you know, something that doesn’t quite fit in there. So I think that you know, this is a long winded way of saying, I think that a piece of it is complexity is hard. We know right now with COVID our brains are all so overwhelmed. So the simpler things can be, the more we’re likely to take action. But I also feel like we maybe haven’t done a great job of simplifying intersectionality around you know, addressing these like people get that it makes inherent sense when you start talking to them about how these things are related. I actually, I have greater belief that people will get that, actually think we haven’t messaged it very well, because that’s a tough concept.

Wendy Chamberlin  43:51

Do you feel like though, I wonder about that, because that makes sense to me, but then I wonder like there is still this like, but what can I do? What can I do about this? Right? And so thats where the fallback becomes like so much like, at least I can do this. I can’t solve for infrastructure. But at least I can do this over here and because they don’t know how to, they may be able to make that sort of intersectional connection that as to I think people are looking for a way to respond.

Erica Mills Barnhart  44:24

Sure, sure but could we do a better job of saying, you’ll do better with the examples? But, you know, okay, no, I can’t contribute to infrastructure, what I can contribute to is food, you know, in some way. But where I think there’s an opportunity for doing better marketing is to say, here’s how food relates to infrastructure. Here’s how it relates to education. Yes, thank you, thank you so much. Do your thing right here. Awesome. And then know how these things connect because I think in that way we might keep people more engaged while keeping it simple.

Wendy Chamberlin  45:15

I think that’s super interesting. I’m trying to put my mind, my head, in the mind space of somebody who might be a founder who’s like, I just gotta get money in the door, and how there would be attraction across around a very sort of, quote, unquote, simplistic, you know, model versus the complex one. And but I could imagine if you took that what you described as the starting point, that’d be really, you get a really interesting engagement experience with your donors. Right? And, and even in interesting conversations, or, I mean, you might even just get a different set of donors. I don’t know. I think they are, you know, those I think people are drawn to support different things. So I love that idea. That’s, that’s really interesting.

Erica Mills Barnhart  46:03

Yeah, I, my addition to it would I just want to acknowledge with it is, when you are the Founder or Executive Director, and you just need to raise money, this idea of approaching things differently would come across as pure luxury said from somebody who is not needing to raise that money right now. So I really want to acknowledge that, that the offering of idea comes from a place of privilege. And that sometimes there’s urgency and we know what stuff works and what stuff doesn’t, which, you know, unfortunately perpetuates a lot of the scarcity mindsets. And so that’s, I mean, that’s a structural issue that is going to be tough to unravel in the philanthropy side of things. And, and I, you know, I look to the philanthropy side of things to say you have flexibility how, you know, how might philanthropy in the way that philanthropy is framing things, these issues that complexities help unlock the way in which historically and you know, to this day, we’re really marketing poverty.

Wendy Chamberlin  47:09

Absolutely and to the extent that there are those philanthropies who are willing to have that conversation and that discussion and recognizing the power dynamics that are part of that conversation, because that’s where I think you start seeing the needle move forward, and not just philanthropies, but when we believe that addressing poverty needs to be done with a multi sectoral approach, bringing public sector or the private sector to the table as well, that also means that you’re creating a different kind of conversation than what’s been done before. It is no longer one entity that has the solution set, but it’s recognizing that it’s a complex problem with a complex solution set.

Erica Mills Barnhart  47:53

Yes, and then what we know about people’s minds in particular is then there’s work of breaking it down and sequencing it. And then this and then this and then this. I just, I just I sit here and I’m wondering, like, maybe we have a sequencing problem. Frequently when I work with organizations, I’m like, oh, you have all the pieces, we just need to rearrange them. Right? Yeah. I wonder maybe, you know, that is like, my hardcore optimist coming out, like, oh, if you just rearrange a couple of words in sentences will be good. I know it’s not gonna be that easy. But hope springs eternal. You were saying actually, that you’re in a Whatsapp group, which I just want to say every time I hear something like that, I’m like, wow, we are not on the Whatsapp train here in the United States, but you were saying you are involved in one that is a conversation around power, privilege and philanthropy.

Wendy Chamberlin  48:45

Yeah, I wanted to, It’s a group that has folks who represent a variety of sectors talking about this issue, and it’s it represented by people from all over the globe as well. So it’s coming from a variety, with a variety of voices at the table. And  it’s talking about, I actually brought up this topic like, what are these myths that we have around poverty that we need to address? And what was really interesting about a conversation that we were having is that even the notion of philanthropy is a challenge with it, how that money gets to be where it is, who decides how that money is used and what that money influences is part of this conversation at a huge level. And some of the belief being that, you know, ultimately, what philanthropy is trying to address are constraints and challenges that individual governments should, should solve for themselves and for their citizenry. Which means there’s a host of conversations around that around how those governments came to be, around how the power structures came to be, and what are the systemic issues within each of those context that needs to be addressed because they’re greatly imbalanced. But I think it draws out an appreciation for this. And I know, there’s a lot of folks talking about this topic right now that, how we think about the role of philanthropy and the voice that philanthropy has at the table has to be measured in this conversation. Money does not equate with solutions, per se, because whoever writes the biggest check doesn’t mean they have the best solution. Sometimes it’s the worst solution. And so it’s more that that conversation has to be a consideration of this broader piece about how we talk about unpacking and tackling pernicious problems. Because there are many, just as we see as the social issues that come to light in the US, there are so many threads that are tied to these things that you can’t look at one ting and say this is the only part of the issue that matters. You have to begin to look at all of it. And that also means there has to be a broader scale commitment to talking about all sides of the equation too.

Erica Mills Barnhart  51:10

And a broader scale commitment to being uncomfortable. Those are not comfortable conversation. So before we make any progress on, you know, substantively shifting things, it’s going to be uncomfortable.

Wendy Chamberlin  51:24

It’s gonna be uncomfortable, it’s gonna mean that people lose, who like me, you know, losing seats of privilege that maybe that people shouldn’t have had to begin with, or recognizing where that privilege comes from. And recognizing also around who decides, who decides who has the best solution? And that’s, that’s something I think about all the time.

Erica Mills Barnhart  51:47

Yeah, yeah. Who decides?

Wendy Chamberlin  51:49

So, it’s a huge conversation around power. That’s part of this too.

Erica Mills Barnhart  51:54

Yes, it is. As frequently happens, I’m learning on these podcasts like we get to this point I’m like, I know we have to wrap up, Wendy is a busy human. And of course, where I want to go now is to that whole discussion about power and privilege and marketing of those things, but maybe we’ll just have to stick a pin in it and have that as a follow up conversation. Which will give me an excuse to see your face again, which will be a blessing for me.

Wendy Chamberlin  52:25

Same as well, it is a treat.

Erica Mills Barnhart  52:27

Yes. I end every interview with the same question and it has to do with inspiration and motivation. So the root of the word inspiration means to breathe in, gives you breath. Motivation means to take action, so you need breath to take action. What inspires you and what keeps you motivated to do this really incredibly amazing work that you’re doing with the Boma Project?

Wendy Chamberlin  52:52

What inspires me? I’m cognizant of sounding trite. Honestly, though, I’ll just run that risk. I work with business women who kick ass, they are risk takers, they are super bold, they have a voice and they are creative. And they withstand shock after shock after shock. And they they keep like doing that with very minimal means. And honestly, they inspire me because I look at where they work, I look at what they do, and I think that just flies in the face of every notion about what it means to be poor, a passive picture of poverty if you. And what motivates me is that the work around this issue is not done and that’s not to suggest that I’m the solution or anything like that. I just try and think about what tools I have in my toolkit. And part of that is passion and interest. And part of that is thinking and just always analyzing, okay, what do I have? What do I do with what I’ve been given, to, to think about this challenge? And how do I work with those who also care about this topic, and I get so much energy about that from that place. And that’s, that is how I do my work on a daily basis.

Erica Mills Barnhart  54:32

 I love it. I don’t think acknowledging badassery is trite, by the way. And I did have the privilege of, not done as much work as you but some work in Cambodia and Nicaragua and other places around micro-finance. And those women are they are just they’re fearless. They’re fierce. They are so, I cannot agree with you more about how inspiring they are. And I feel like their stories are starting to be told but wow, I just our world would be a better place if more of those stories were out there so that our perceptions could be shifted. So that this mental image we have of passive poverty is eradicated along with poverty itself. I think one is the precursor to the other.

Wendy Chamberlin  55:19

Yeah, I totally I’m with you. I agree with you.

Erica Mills Barnhart  55:24

Thank you, Wendy, for doing this, relatively for me that would be relatively late at night because I’m a morning person, because you are coming to us from Kenya. Thank you, listeners for being with us today, as well, to learn about this work of the Boma Project, to get a little bit of insight into Wendy’s incredible brain and her great big heart, and about you know, maybe our path towards shifting the marketing problem that poverty has starts from our hearts and from a place of compassion and being open to looking at empathy and being open to poverty looking really, really different than we than we think it does. So thank you, Wendy. Thank you listeners. And with that, I’ll say do good, be well, and we will see you next time.

The post Ep 25: Wendy Chamberlin: Does Poverty Have a Marketing Problem? appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart and Kate Slater on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEY WORDS

anti racist, racism, racist, mission statement, organization, people, messaging, verb, world, purpose, values, marketing, mission, educators, statement, words

Erica Mills Barnhart  00:04

Marketing can be an incredible force for good, it can inspire and motivate and make our world more just equitable and inclusive. But too often marketing perpetuates the status quo for a select few, rather than disrupting it for the greater good of all. This show looks to change that. Join me your host, Erica Mills Barnhart as we usher in a new era of marketing, an era of marketing for good. One of the core tenants of marketing for good is that it be anti racist. So this term comes to us from Ibram Kendi and in his book, How To Be An Antiracist, he’s a prolific writer, wonderful, wonderful, gracious writer. In his book, he says racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people. And he goes on to say, on the website, whereas racist research historically has posed the question, what is wrong with people? Anti racist research now asks a different and better question, what is wrong with policies? This got me thinking, by extension, what is wrong with our marketing? In what ways does it perpetuate racism rather than dismantle it? And one of the things about anti racism is that it has to be very deliberate, very proactive, it’s not going to happen on its own. Where we know, as a universal law is that, you know, entropy is like the biggest force that we have, right, the status quo will perpetuate itself unless it is disrupted. And so Kate Slater, my guest on today’s episode, is  an anti racist, she’s white. She’s an anti racist educator, and scholar. And I’ve had the great good fortune of attending some of her trainings, and one of them she said, every mission statement should have the word anti racist. And I thought I get I get where you’re going with that, however, is it meant to be in the mission statement? Does it have to be in the mission statement? So the question that we grapple with in this conversation is, where does it make sense for the word and the work of anti racism to show up in your messaging? And so if you haven’t listened to Episode 26, on the messaging matrix, I would encourage you to listen to that, because we reference it extensively in this conversation, you know, like I said, you know, to show up with your values or is it the vision statement, or is it the purpose or the mission like, where does it fit? This is going to be different for every organization. Right? What I’m hoping is that you will listen to this episode, and be inspired to wonder about it to work through it. Even through the uncomfortableness that these conversations inevitably surface. Can you work through that in your organization to figure out where it makes sense for you? Where does it make sense for you? So take this as hopefully inspiration and some motivation and a little bit of fodder for those conversations. Kate has so much to offer in this realm. She’s a deep thinker and an active doer in the in the world of anti racism. So I as always hope that you will enjoy this episode as much as much as I did. And with that, let’s turn our attention to Kate Slater. Welcome, welcome, welcome to this episode of the Marketing for good podcast. With me today is Kate Slater. Kate is a white anti racist educator and scholar. She is currently, this is a new role, so congratulations, I’m super excited for you, Kate. She’s currently the Assistant Dean of Graduate Student Affairs at Brandeis University. Previously, she worked for the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, a nonprofit that promotes social justice and diversity in the American educational system. She’s also a lecture on the history of race and racism at the University of New Hampshire, where her research center is the experiences of underrepresented minoritized students who attend predominantly white institutions. She conducts trainings on white supremacy in the workplace for both K through 12, and higher education organizations, as well as numerous private companies. And we met much to my great delight, because you were doing trainings for the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance where I’m on faculty. And through that training, there was some, at some point and you very passionately, which I so appreciate anybody else who gets as worked up and passionate about mission statements as I do. I’m like, oh, my people. So you were like, antiracism should be in every mission statement, I was like, Oh, that’s intriguing. Let’s talk about that. So that is a bit about Kate and a bit about how this conversation came to be. And I’m so grateful for you taking time to educate all of us, myself, and all of the listeners on this.

Kate Slater  04:55

I’m so excited to be here.

Erica Mills Barnhart  04:56

Yes, fantastic. Would do you share? I mean, it’s it’s a little unusual to be a white anti racist educator and scholar. Can you share with us how that how that came to be?

Kate Slater  05:08

Sure, sure. What is it Bob Ross says he says that it’s a happy accident, I guess thats the way I would put it, it really was by accident. But I think that my meandering pathway into anti racist work actually is, is symptomatic of why so few white people are invested in this work. And in that, I mean, I was in my mid to late 20s, before racism as endemic in American society even occurred to me, just to give a little bit of context, I grew up in Maine, which is, you know, one of the whitest states in the union, I went to predominantly white schools, my entire life, my friend group is predominantly white, my workplaces were entirely white, my colleagues were entirely white, if not, predominantly, then entirely. And I say that to say, because it was only when I got to my job at the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers that it was the first time that I had ever not only been in spaces with predominantly people of color, but where I had ever begun to connect the dots in terms of the way that racism operates in this society. So to give a little background story about the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, it is this incredible, incredible nonprofit, you all should check it out. And what they do is they attempt to address the racial disparities in the educational systems in this country. So as many folks know, teaching faculties both in K 12, and higher education, predominantly white and predominantly white woman by a huge margin. So the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers said that we recognize one of the major barriers in terms of teachers and educators getting into the sector, is entering grad school, persisting in grad school, and then getting the professional development and holistic support that they need to make long lasting change and be social justice educators. So what we did at the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers is we support scholars in pursuing Master’s and PhD programs, and we help them through the entire application process, help them with a lot of career support and professional development, with an eye towards essentially beginning to dismantle some of those major racial disparities in the higher education sector. So I say all that to say that this was the first time in my life when I came to this job at 26, that I ever confronted terms like systemic racism, that I ever began to think about the ways in which racism permeates all of these different sectors in our country. And the only reason that I was beginning to confront these systems is because for the first time in my life, I was the minority as a white woman in these spaces. And that was a profound experience for me, because first of all, it set me on the trajectory to start doing the anti racist work that I do, but also to understand the systems of racism, the history of them, the ways in which they play off each other in the housing market, in the economic sector in education. But also, it really enabled me to see for the first time how easy it was as a white woman to insulate myself in a predominantly, if not completely white world. And that is where things began to click for me in terms of doing anti racist work. This was such a, this was such a rude awakening for me to go to the IRT and realize how, how, my white privilege made itself manifest in my world. And so recently, I started to say, Well, how can I bring that moment of understanding or that moment of clarity to other people, and I mean, specifically white people, you know, as we know, the workforce, especially in education is still predominantly white. When we look at the breakdown of racial makeup in CEOs and CFOs in America, when I say predominantly white, I mean 99%, white. So these are still very deeply rooted systems that we have to be cognizant of, and we have to confront. So I say all that to say that where my lane has been certainly over the past year, is in helping white people begin to understand what their own privilege looks like, and how it makes itself manifest in their workplace in their day to day interactions. And then from there, how can they begin to dismantle that white privilege? How can they begin to, for lack of a better word, use their privilege for the powers of good and really begin to do some racial repair for the deep seed inequities and, and, quite frankly, the horrific legacy of oppression and violence that exists in this country that’s racially based.

Erica Mills Barnhart  09:49

Thank you for, and on that light note. It’s always fascinating to hear somebody’s journey and their lived experience. You know, what you decide to do with those moments, and we have a whole episode for folks who are interested on the language of racism, and with Fleur Larson. So I do want to I want to define the term anti racism. But for folks who, maybe for whom all of this is a little new, and you’re like, Whoa, you might pause give this one a little pause, go listen along with Fleur, because we really dug into what all they mean. And the other thing I just want to offer to listeners right now is, uh, you know, I’m sure some folks are like, I don’t want to hear the white folks, you know, I don’t want to hear this. And to really, and this is still hard for me to wrap my head around is to not take it entirely personally. Right? So that when we’re talking about systemic racism, that is pervasive, but it’s not, but you can make it personal individual contribution to unraveling that. So that that piece around prepare, we do have a sense of agency we can as white people do something about it. But that you know, and I think going through this, like deep guilt and shame and lots of other things is a little bit part of this process, as white folks and just finally, when when the veil is lifted, it is this really wild ride of you’re like, Oh my god. I always think about jaywalking, because I was, and this is I mean this, I was like maybe I wasn’t even 20 yet. And a friend of mine who was black, we were at a intersection I of course started jaywalking, and they did not join me. And I was like, and they’re like, I’m black. And it took two decades solid before I came back to that. And thats when I thought oh, well, there was there was my white privilege in my jaywalking. But every single time since, I you know, it’s like very concrete.

Kate Slater  11:41

Absolutely.

Erica Mills Barnhart  11:42

But I just want to say to listeners, you know, what I want to acknowledge this is not always comfortable. And yet if you’re going to be committed to marketing for good antiracism is going to be at the core of that going forward. I hope and believe. So let’s define it. So this term anti racism comes from Ibram Kendi, who wrote the book, How To Be An Anti Racist. And he says and I quote, “but there was no neutrality in the racism struggle, one either allows racial inequities to persevere as a racist or confronts racial inequities as an anti racist. There is not in between safe space for, quote, not racist. The claim of not racist neutrality is a mask for racism”. Can you unpack that for us?  That’s like, woah.

Kate Slater  12:27

Absolutely. That’s the core, that’s that’s really essentially at the core of, of what it is that I’m trying to do. And you’re, you know, Erica, your term agency is is a perfect way to describe that. So to unpack, unpack the idea of anti racism, I think what many white folks, maybe for the first time realized, especially this this past summer, in light of the racial reckoning is that all of their lives when they’ve thought I have not been actively racist, define that however you will. I have not actively harmed people of color. I don’t say racist things in company. You know, I donate to organizations, they have thought white people have thought that is enough. That is me not being racist. So I’m not, I’m not contributing to the problem actively.

Erica Mills Barnhart  13:18

I know I am a good person.

Kate Slater  13:20

Exactly. There’s, there’s kind of this, this, this false equivalency of if you’re not racist, you are a good moral person. And what I think many white folks have especially realized in in light of the racial reckonings this past summer is that they’re, by not doing anything, they are still contributing to the harm by not being actively anti racist by not interrupting racism by not, not just being neutral, but actively fighting for the side of good, aka, anti racism, they are actually continue to be part of the problem. And one of the things that that has really allowed, much of the racism that’s endemic in our society to continue is the inaction of a lot of well meaning white people. And that’s kind of the moment that we find ourselves in. A lot of white people have realized that by not living their lives in ways that are deliberately combating racism, in their actions, with their money, with their business, with their words, with their relationships, they are contributing to the problem. And one of the things that I think, to your point, the kind of idea of being a good person means you cannot be racist. One of the things that Ibram Kendi points out so beautifully in this book, and critically, I think, is that you can be a good person and still do racist things. When you begin to understand that as as Kennedy puts it being racist, and anti racist is not so much a noun, as it is a verb. It’s a way of living. It’s a way of conducting your life. It’s a way of moving through this world. You begin to understand that actually good people can at one moment, be actively anti racist be confronting racism where they see it. And then the next moment moment, excuse me, do something completely racist. And and I think that, you know, while, we all have to strive to be anti racist, and that is imperative and it’s critical and it is urgent, there also has to be this recognition that anti racism is something that you commit, you commit to as a white person to living your life in service of it’s not something you ever arrive at. Because in any given moment, if you are not being racist, you can be anti racist. And if you’re not being anti racist, you’re being racist. Sorry, that was a whole words.

Erica Mills Barnhart  15:39

Well and I think one thing that is important to understand is that the reason that the default is that it is racist is because that’s the, that’s the status quo in which we are living.

Kate Slater  15:48

Exactly, exactly.

Erica Mills Barnhart  15:49

And so we know about entropy.

Kate Slater  15:51

Exactly.

Erica Mills Barnhart  15:52

Very powerful force. Right? So absent, like an amount of action, that can combat entropy. You know, that’s where we’re going to come back to. So I just think, you know, this idea of being proactive versus sort of passive. I think it can also be helpful, like, I always put proactively anti racist, because there’s that intentionality around like, I’m, you know, I’m gonna, I’m going to put intention behind this.

Kate Slater  16:18

Absolutely. Yeah.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:19

And so and also, I mean, you know, the word nerd in me when I read the whole thing I was like, I love that so much.

Kate Slater  16:26

It is, it’s really a very powerful way to think, yeah.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:29

It is a very powerful thing. And I think back to this, like, I don’t want to let folks off the hook. But I, in my experiences, it doesn’t tend to be helpful if you if you’re stuck in this like, but I’m a good person, and I’m taking this personally. Right? So that would be more around shame, right? I feel shame, intrinsic to you and your identity. So I like I feel like this idea if it’s a verb is one of the most empowering gifts that can be offers those that are interested in changing the status quo, because in that you’re like, oh, it’s like, what books Am I going to read? Where am I going to order my books? Black owned businesses, what about black authors and just to get a different perspective? And then in in those actions, you start realizing like, ooh, if I don’t bring intentionality, most white people are just gonna, it’s gonna be white authors and you know, all of it.

Kate Slater  17:25

Because it is such a default, it is a thing.

Erica Mills Barnhart  17:26

Oh, and by the way, as you know, just being gracious, being gracious, not letting ourselves off the hook. But just being gracious, like, okay, you know, we just had the holidays, and I bought some books off Amazon. Yeah, that happens. You know, I didn’t make the effort, you know. But, interestingly, let’s just sidebar and this might be too much information for our listeners. But I did, I became committed to reading more authors of color, particularly women of color authors. And I have discovered Beverly Jenkins, who I want to go on record as saying national treasure. Do you know Beverly Jenkins?

Kate Slater  17:36

I don’t.

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:02

 That’s great, because you’re a little higher brow with your reading. She’s a romance novelist. She combines romance novels, you know all the like swoony goofy, slightly racy, naughty stuff with historical fiction.

Kate Slater  18:16

Oh, what a gift. Amazing.

Erica Mills Barnhart  18:19

She, and well, I mean, well written. And I learned so I just read one. Blanking on the title. We’ll put links to everything in the show notes set in just before the Revolutionary War. So yes, this is a love story. Absolutely. And by the way, one of the gifts of her books is, you know, from page two, how it’s that they end up together, there’s no mystery. There is no mystery, you know, oh, Charity is gonna end up with Nick. It’s gonna be great. So it’s just like a how is this gonna happen. But along the way, I learned, I mean, honestly, I feel like I know more about the Revolutionary War, and especially the role that blacks played in it, than I did in all my schooling.

Kate Slater  19:01

See? That’s, but this is a perfect point is that, you know, Beverly Daniel Tatum calls racism, the smog that we breathe. Yeah. And the point that that she’s making there is if we are white people, we are, we are absorbing whiteness, we are absorbing white supremacy, we are absorbing racism without even noticing it. To your point up until this year, it never, and I’m someone who does anti racism training. It never occurred to me to purchase my books from black owned bookstores. But that’s because my, my lens has always been whiteness as the default. And so to your point, I have to actively combat that conditioning. I have to actively try and dispel that smog that I’ve been breathing my entire life and actually actively seek out organizations, businesses, authors, writers, producers, creative people that that are not default white and I have to fight that every single day actively. And that’s how I, I attempt to be anti racist.

Erica Mills Barnhart  20:05

Yeah, you know, I’m mindful often when we start talking about these things that it’s that you know, and I’m like, I have to fight that every day. And like, it can feel very combative. And so I do want to offer to listeners who were like, that sounds scary, or don’t want to do it, you know, and I know some listeners are, they’re like, beyond there, they’re like, let’s get to how we integrate this into messaging. We’re gonna get there in a second. But also, it’s like, every scrap, I think of Mozart Guerrier, who was the executive director of an organization called 21 Progress, and he was on a panel, it’s a number of years ago, but also struck me, you know, somebody said, So no, I’ll paraphrase. He said, You know, people ask me why I’m such a fan of diversity. And he’s a black man. And he’s like, I just look at them. And I say, there’s no downside. There’s only upsides to more perspectives, and you know, all the rest of it. He’s like, I just, I don’t even understand the question, really type thing. So you know, everything’s better, actually. And this means ceding some power and a means opening our eyes and in ways that can be initially uncomfortable, and in some instances perpetually uncomfortable. That you’ve set up with somebody who’s like, if you’re really into this work, and you haven’t slightly peed yourself a couple times, probably you’re not really going at it hard enough.

Kate Slater  21:20

Right? Right. Because a huge part of reckoning with racism and trying to live your life as a white person in an anti racist way, is reckoning with all the ways that you have inadvertently or deliberately been racist in the past. And my God, is that painful?

Erica Mills Barnhart  21:36

It’s a reckoning, it is painful. Okay. So with all of that, and again, so two other things. So because I want to transition into how do we start integrating this into messaging, right? How do we verbify antiracism into our messaging to other episodes that I would recommend that folks listen to our Fleur’s episode on the language of racism, great context, and also one that I did with Marlette Jackson and Erin Dowell who wrote the Harvard Business Review article about woke washing, and how woke washing your company won’t do it. And so sometimes messaging can be it’s almost like you could schmear it on things. And that, that happens, you know, schmear, a little whatnot, diversity and inclusion and anti racism into my messaging. So before we go into this, I want to say, listen to those episodes, and really be ready to do the work. Like it is not okay, it is not marketing for good if you just integrate a couple words here and there but within your organization, you’re not living this. That’s that’s not that is not the intention of this conversation and the rest of the conversation in any way, shape or form. Not Okay, not marketing for good, bad marketing. So, okay, messaging central to our marketing efforts, I think we can all agree we need words, most of the time, all the visuals are really important, too. So when I work with clients, I use a framework that has two types of messaging, one I refer to as foundational messaging, and then you have messaging by audience. So foundational messaging, does not change by audience, right? This is the collection of sentences that communicate the why, what, who and how of your work. And since that shouldn’t change, depending on audience, we should not keep shifting on what we stand for. You may resequenced them, depending on who you’re talking to. But these really, these are the core essence of who you are. Whereas messaging my audience is linked to, you know, who is it? What are their motivations? And how do you, you know, want to engage with each other. So it is within these foundational messaging pieces that I want to talk through how we might integrate antiracism. And so I’m hoping what we can do is just talk through each one, and have a chitchat as we go. So so high level, I’ll say that the the four foundational pillars, messaging pillars are vision, purpose, mission, and values. So values is kind of underpinning. Now, I don’t want to hop too far down this bunny trail, but also brand personality matters in terms of how you externalize the messaging, sometimes those show up and external messaging, but really, they’re meant to inform the tone of your messaging. So I include them as a foundational pillar, however, for our conversation, because definitely all four of these pillars are, you know, meant for an external audience, but they have to be true internally first. So let’s start with let’s start with a mission statement, and then work backward. So we’re gonna go mission, purpose, vision values. Okay, so I think it’d be helpful for listeners, maybe, maybe, if I if I define or share how I define each of these. So in my context, which this is, by no stretch of the imagination, by stretch of the imagination, is this the only framework but I have found it to be useful for those who want to change the world. There’s lots of other ways to go about this. In this framework, mission is what you do and how you do it. So it’s the actions you take to get to your vision. And it brings your purpose to life. Your purpose as an organization is why you exist. So it’s your reason for being and grounds your work in meaning on a day to day basis. And it motivates your actions and guides you towards your vision. So it’s a why, nestled within another why, which is your vision, which is where you’re going, and why you’re going there. Right? So vision expresses what will be better in the world in the future, because of the work you’re doing today. And your inspiration, right. And all of these should be grounded in your values. So that which is the principles that guide your work, they shape culture, and that you know, there are commitments to how you will conduct business and treat others, they guide internal decision making and external engagement. Okay, so that was a lot. Also, listeners, if you’re like, wow, too much. There is an episode just going over this framework and unpacking these. So if your brain just exploded, go listen to that, and then you can come back to this one. Alright, so because this whole thing started with the mission statement, and you very adamantly saying, I think you said anti racist or anti racism, like it should have a, it should show up in that. Explain for us why you believe that that is where it should show?

Kate Slater  26:22

Well, that’s a great question. And I think that at the end of the day, I firmly believe that if a company, how do I put it this way? I think in light of the world that we’re living in, if a company isn’t naming the thing, then they’re not doing an adequate job. So what do I mean by that? I mean, I cannot tell you how many watered down statements about diversity, equity and inclusion, I have seen that don’t say anything. And this is the point that I’m trying to make. I think that one of the largest, I think one of the largest challenges that most organizations face when they’re thinking about their mission, and their thinking about their values, is they try to encompass everything, they try and put a big old DEI umbrella over sexism, homophobia, racism, ageism, ableism, you know, xenophobia, essentially, all of the different forms of oppression and marginalization that you see. And by putting the umbrella all over, over all of those things, they essentially don’t say anything. And as we have seen this summer, this past year, over the past decade, racism is alive and well, it is not so much, I was listening to a podcast a couple weeks ago, and they said it doesn’t so much make up the fabric of society as it is the fabric of society. And without, without sounding too much like I’m wearing a tinfoil hat when you think about the ways that racism operates in housing market, job market, economic sector education, it, it really does. It is the backbone that this country is founded on. And you don’t need to dig too deep into history to realize how how much it affects everything that we do, the ways that we live our lives, the ways that we conduct business. So my point is essentially by not naming that, by not naming racism, as the fabric of society, therefore, it guides everything that we do in businesses and organizations. You’re missing the forest for the trees in trying to encompass everything under that one umbrella. And-

Erica Mills Barnhart  28:34

Yeah, so from a messaging perspective, also, when you tell someone your everything they remember nothing.

Kate Slater  28:41

Exactly, exactly.

Erica Mills Barnhart  28:42

So we don’t want that anyway. And it is, so I’m a fan of mission statements that are no more than 12 words, including the name of your organization, I used to be 10. But I realized it’s actually can’t quite get there so I added two words. Part of the reason and oftentimes I work with clients, and oftentimes our mission statements end up being a bit longer than that. However, the experience of having to prune, prune, prune away everything except the essence and this is true for purpose vision about all of it, right, just that pruning, is actually this is a process that leads you to leaves you with that internal alignment that sustains it over time. So to your you know, to your point, like if you’re just sort of smearing, again, some of this language amongst a whole bunch of other things and a bunch of semi colons, so like we’re just gonna throw it all in the hopper. You know, for the most part, people can’t remember that, and it’s not really actionable. So if these statements aren’t actionable, what’s the point of investing time and energy into doing them, right? They are for marketing and for, the first job that they have is actually bringing internal alignment right they should be a recruitment tool for you, a retention. For you, and all sorts of other things, so so if it’s just a whole bunch of words, that’s not serving the organization.

Kate Slater  30:06

No, not at all, just like you say, the mission statement is like a lighthouse. But I think and so you should always be able to point to that beacon and say, this is what we’re working towards. But I think, to your point, and what we were talking about in the beginning, there’s this added dimension to it if you borrow Ibram Kendi’s you know, racist versus anti racism framework, because that’s a way of looking at your mission statement, and beginning to think, do the word, you know, do my 12 words, how could they be construed in ways that are anti racist? How can I use them to fight racism?

Erica Mills Barnhart  30:40

So what I’m curious about, okay, hear me out. I’m curious, if what you’re saying is, you need to be very committed to the language and not just, you know, put a whole bunch there as sort of like subterfuge or obfuscating or something, not some other big multisyllabic word. I mean, really, I think what you’re saying is that it should be one of your values?

Kate Slater  31:07

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:09

And it should show up everywhere. And so I’m curious about your thoughts, so if an organization was truly committed to this, it would be a value, anti racism would be a value. And then, if you’re, if you’re if that seriously thing, wouldn’t it find its way, it might open up the opportunity for to find its way more specifically, so what does that mean? In your vision? What does that mean, in your purpose? What does it mean in your mission?

Kate Slater  31:36

Yes, I believe so. I do. I think that so for example, Facebook’s mission statement is a great example. So Facebook’s mission statement, very piffy, to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Great, in theory, that is a great lighthouse beacon, right? You can always point to this kind of they’ve identified their mission as being open sharing of information, connect the world. Then if you take that and look at the values, the vision, the purpose in an anti racist versus racist lens, well, what are the ways that that mission could be construed to actually continue racism? How do we know that that Facebook, for example, allows open sharing of ideas? Well, what does that mean? If if people are openly sharing ideas that are harmful and oppressive and racist? That might be their mission? But does it align with their values? Does it align with their vision? Does it align with their purpose? And if you embed anti racism, into the framework that you use to look at all of these things in tandem, you know, maybe your mission statement doesn’t outright state the language of anti racism in those 12 words that you use. You know, but how do the vision, how do the vision statements and the values further guide and hone that moment to talk about the impact that you want to make in this world?

Erica Mills Barnhart  32:53

Yeah, and I think this is where, you know, so historically, we’ve talked about mission, vision, values. So purpose is sort of a new addition. And I want to give props to so the Evansville has an incoming Dean, Jodi Sandfort, who, you know, wants to do some of this work as right to sort of get us all settled? And are we all in the, headed in the right direction. And she feels very strongly about purpose. And so she really invited me to get more specific about the sort of job of each statement, because to me, it was sort of obvious. And I think one of the insights I have from from her invitation being, you know, sort of being given the opportunity to think about that more deeply, is that we sort of lumped the why together, right, so we’re making the vision statement and the mission statement do too many jobs, because we weren’t, didn’t have the rigor of saying the vision is is this like, you know, where are we going? And why are we going there? And I think that’s another place where, you know, we could be so much more specific about what does this world look like? Right? And how are you going to give voice to that? What do you really mean?

Kate Slater  33:59

Right? Absolutely.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:00

What do we really mean? And then purpose is how your organization very specifically, right? What’s your why? Why do you exist? That’s, that’s like the very existential thing, right? Yes, the answer might be, well, if that’s our vision, we might not be needed.

Kate Slater  34:16

Mm hmm.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:17

So that’s, I think, in some ways, you know, and especially nonprofits, who tend to be very heart driven, that that just would be that’s an uncomfortable truth.

Kate Slater  34:27

I agree.

Erica Mills Barnhart  34:27

So we’ve sort of mushed, it’s like, we took purpose, and we kind of made some that go into the vision and some go into the mission. And and so I, you know, I’ve been using this and it’s been helpful in terms of the rigor for organizations to be able to say, Oh, this is this is our why. And then this is how we’re doing it right here. Here’s how we are bringing that to life. Right. So and when I heard your Facebook, which was a great example, that very much felt like a combo meal, have a little bit of mission, a little bit of purpose. Will you reread it, because I don’t know-

Kate Slater  35:01

Yes, so this is called their organization. This was from 51 best mission statements, a very helpful article, Facebook to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Erica Mills Barnhart  35:16

So I think their vision would be a world that is more open and connected.

Kate Slater  35:19

Absolutely.

Erica Mills Barnhart  35:20

So what a great opportunity if we were if, if the if and I don’t know if they do, but if they were an organization that had antiracism as a value, what might what specificity might they add to that?

Kate Slater  35:33

Right. So a world that’s more open and connected? Do we mean a world that is more aligned around equity and social justice? Do we mean a world that is more liberatory for historically oppressed populations? Like by naming what a world that’s more open and connected looks like. Well, if you if you bear that out, you could say, a world that is more open and connected around white nationalist value. That’s the flip side.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:00

I do want, yeah, I want to acknowledge, like, of course, Facebook, and all the platforms come up against freedom of speech.

Kate Slater  36:05

Exactly. And this is I think, the trickiness. And that’s one of the the Evil Geniuses and beautiful, beautiful things about unspecific mission statements that aren’t borne out by these values. If you’re not naming the thing, you can essentially do whatever you want. And and it’s all copacetic. Right?

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:25

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that first part, to connect. Right?

Kate Slater  36:31

Yes, to give people the power to share.

Erica Mills Barnhart  36:32

Oh, to give people the power to share? Hmm. I mean, I wonder if that’s a, their purpose or their mission?

Kate Slater  36:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, I just think a lot about you know, it in anti racist work, a lot of what we caution against actually, is having these kind of binaries of seeing things because stuff is very gray, you know, something that is anti racist in one light, might actually be racist in another light. And and, you know, even though Kennedy’s anti racist versus racist framework is very helpful, there is the danger of the binary there, because to your point, Facebook has in many ways used its its power to connect and share and make the world more open for good, there is a lot. I mean, think of how many social justice movements have really been rooted in Facebook. But then at the other, on the flip side, you’ve given a lot of people with these horrific, racist and oppressive views a megaphone. And, and everyone’s voice is treated equally. Well, that’s both a good thing in some contexts and a bad thing in other contexts. And so it’s to your point, you know, when you have this purpose, and a mission, that can be your lighthouse, that can be your beacon, but it’s shining on everything equally, right, it’s just kind of moving in a circle. And I think that’s where, to your point, the values and the vision of where you want to go is what gives it shape and context. And that’s where you begin to imbue antiracism into the work that you want to see in the world you want to create.

Erica Mills Barnhart  38:08

Yeah, I mean, again, I go back to parts of speech a lot to hang up. But I mean, values, by definition are nouns. I think, you know, listeners if you’re if you’re going to be doing this really first picking your nouns for the values, and also the nouns like a better world. There’s some adjectives that would be adjectives and nouns, right? Because it’s the world is a noun, and the adjectives are describing the better world. Purpose and mission are, you know, they’re about verbs, especially your mission. Action, what action are you taking, but purpose is also action plus why you’re taking that action. And that is actually I take a verb first approach to mission statements. We do you can ask any of my clients, they’re like, yes, we have to pick the verb first. And the reason is, because we default to nouns in the English language, because about 50% is nouns. And so we default announced which nothing bad with focusing on people, places and things. However, efficient is that action, then you end up with super boring verbs like provide.

Kate Slater  39:05

Yes, give thanks, Facebook.

Erica Mills Barnhart  39:08

Yeah, yes. Yeah. So you know, so it really, it’s a specific example of how you can bring rigor into the process, and yet not have a feel to everyone, right? So pick your verb verbs first, for mission and purpose, and then focus on nouns for the for the vision and the values. I mean, in terms of sequencing in general, I recommend doing values vision, purpose, mission, but sometimes, I mean, if you’re if you already have some of these things, and most organization are going to have mission, vision, values and not have purpose, I think that’s going to be sort of the new direction that that a lot of, you know, organizations and companies want to change the world that you’re gonna need all of these things, especially millennials and Zoomers, like they expect to know this about you or they are not going to buy from you.

Kate Slater  39:51

Oh my god, I just I just you know, I just read a report from McKinsey that essentially said millennials and upcoming Gen Zer’s we’re opting not to work for companies that have not explicitly put out an anti racist DEI statement in wake of the racial uprisings this summer. People want to know what you stand for-

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:10

They do, they do.

Kate Slater  40:11

And silence is speaks volumes, especially when it comes to anti racism.

Erica Mills Barnhart  40:15

It does. And I go back to that article about woke washing won’t cut it by Erin and Marlette, which one things I really appreciate about as it gets specific. So if you read and you’re like, well, I don’t I don’t know where we stand. They’re like, here, here are some key indicators. But one of the things they say is having a diverse, equity, and, inclusion statement, whatever you might want to call it, because there were sort of all of a sudden a proliferation of them, however, is a great starting place, and not enough. And I really am and I don’t have an answer to this. But I really am wondering, you could have that statement. But if you’re living into values, vision, purpose mission, I feel like it’s a lens through which you should be considering everything. So not have it be a standalone, but instead be integrated into the foundation of who you are as an organization and how that shows up in your messaging.

Kate Slater  41:04

Absolutely. If you’re if you’re anti racist statement from this summer came out and used language and wording and verbs and nouns that were vastly different from your mission and values and visions and purpose, then that’s that speaks volume.

Erica Mills Barnhart  41:21

Yeah. And you know, if you did it good, I mean, yeah sure, there’s always organizations are like, well, I suppose ought to do the thing. I mean, it’s like greenwashing and woke washing this new green washing, right, ya know, and so there was a lot of sort of, you know, environmentally friendly statements that came out, and then you were like, wow, I don’t think you’re living that. And this is very similar, for those of us who are old enough to have lived lived through that. So again, like, if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, well, we did that we felt good about it. Well, good. I mean, if you meant it do, and now, again, all of this work, is working progress. It is action, it is verb. So now next action might be to see how that might fit in with these other statements, which are externalized. And it you know, I’m such a believer in the mission statement, because it’s what people ask, well, what’s your mission? For nonprofits. I mean, that’s literally the question, you know, what do you do? What’s your mission? And so, but, but just understanding that those are nestled into and a part of a complimentary to these other statements, I think is, is important going forward. I close every interview by asking guest the same question. So it has to do with inspiration and motivation. So inspiration etymologically speaking means to breathe in and motivation is to take action. So we need both in order to take action, we need inspiration. What inspires you and what motivates you to keep doing this work, Kate?

Kate Slater  42:44

I think what inspires me is, is educators writ large, you know, being, having done lecturing, and now being an Assistant Dean of Graduate students, the educators are doing the work. Oh, my God, they are out there making magic with precious few resources, they are underfunded, and they are overworked. And especially now in this pandemic, they deserve all the gratitude for keeping the wheels from coming off the bus. So educators inspire me. And what was the second question?

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:15

What motivates you?

Kate Slater  43:17

What motivates me? You know, it’s funny that you’re talking about mission statements, because one of the exercises I’ve done this year is creating my own antiracist mission statement, for 2021. Great exercise. And we’re, we actually have a worksheet that we’re creating in the next few days. So folks can go to my website and access that that document-

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:37

We will definitely put that in show notes. That’s awesome.

Kate Slater  43:39

Yes, it’s a 2021 antiracist roadmap to help you think about what you do. But to that point, what about what motivates me is thinking about the verb if we’re thinking about verbs to activate white people who don’t know where to start, but want to do better?

Erica Mills Barnhart  43:56

Oh, yeah.

Kate Slater  43:58

That’s really what I’m trying to do in 2021 is help white people hold each other accountable, and hold themselves accountable. Because this movement towards racial liberation is not going to succeed unless we’re on board writ large in mass. And so that means that we have to hold space for each other, but we also have to bring each other to the table as well as ourselves to the table again and again and again.

Erica Mills Barnhart  44:21

Oh, thank you. Great mission statement, Kate. Nailed it. Thank you so much for taking time to educate me, I always learn in every conversation and training I’m when I have time with you I end up being filled up. So thank you for educating me and offering your time and expertise to Marketing for Good listeners. I’m definitely a work in progress when it comes to all this I am. I am noun because I’m person but I you know, I’m a verb trying to trying to do this. So I really appreciate people like you and of course even Ibram Kendi and so so many others, who are gracious enough to help folks along the journey. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you listeners for joining us in this conversation today. As always keep doing good. Be well. And we’ll see you next time.

The post Ep: 28: Kate Slater: Making Your Messaging Anti-Racist appeared first on Claxon Communication.

*Trigger Warning* This episode contains discussion mental illness, suicide, and sexual abuse. If you are worried about your mental health, please call the National Suicide Prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart and Ian Adair on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, mental illness, mental health, stigma, wellness, story, organizations, marketing, leaders, addiction, statistics, conversation, shifting

Erica Mills Barnhart  00:31

Well, hello there, welcome to this episode of the Marketing for Good podcast. This episode, for some may feel heavy, like something you kind of want to just like skip past, because it is about mental wellness, mental health and mental illness. We’re going to talk about the terminology as always, it also is very specifically about the stigma that surrounds mental illness when we use that term and the role that marketing plays in perpetuating that stigma. This show about marketing for good, this is an example of marketing for bad, marketing being naughty marketing, perpetuating things that don’t serve us and that we don’t want in society, right? We don’t want this stigma doesn’t serve anybody. So is it heavy? Yeah, it gets a little heavy. And there, our guest is he is so captivating. He’s such an advocate for getting over the stigma. He just wrote a beautiful book called Stronger Than Stigma, which we’ll talk much more about in this episode. The episode closes with this poem that even thinking about it gives me chills. So it is yes, it’s heavy. But also, I found my conversation super inspiring. I want to give a little more context to this conversation, just so we’re kind of all on the on the same page as a word. In her book, The Naked Mind, Annie Grace says survival deserves a medal, not a stigma. Survival deserves a medal, not a stigma. Now Annie Grace is talking about surviving from alcohol dependency and so much of what’s in her book is applicable very widely, including to this conversation about mental illness. I mean, it’s really, it’s really quite interesting, the statistic we hear often is that one in five US adults, American adults, at some point in a year long period are going to have some sort of mental disorder or episode or something. Annie’s beautiful point is that citing that statistic perpetuates the othering of this, and it is in the othering of mental illness, that we give power to the stigma instead, Ann says, Hey, listen, five out of five of us, that’s all of us, all of us in some form, or fashion, whether it’s because we are dealing with the mental health challenge, or someone we know and love is, five out of five of us are dealing with this because it’s so pervasive. So if this is a five out of five thing, how do we allow the othering and the stigma to continue and marketing, you know, definitely plays a role in this. So we’re going to talk about that. Now, one thing that didn’t come up, it comes up a little bit near the end, if memory serves, is that mental illness affects ethnic and racial minorities differently. Okay, it affects them differently. So I’m not going to actually read off its statistics, because I know a lot of you are out walking or doing something else, which is totally cool. So I just at the big picture level, I want to say that depending on the statistics you look at, sometimes you’ll see that blacks are less impacted or have fewer instances of mental illness or mental health challenges or episodes. However, there’s a, you know, a fair amount of research that says that’s an underrepresentation. And also, the stigma is greater and the access to care is less. So there’s a bigger gap. Right? So one of the statistics that you’ll hear about is that 43% of folks in the United States, with any mental illness receive mental health treatment. Now you may be like, Well, that seems like a bright spot, Erica 43%. Right. But there’s a disproportion when that leaves 57% who aren’t. And if we, if we look at that, in the context of the amount of under reporting that happens, we just have a lot of our neighbors, a lot of the people we love in this country suffering. And that’s preventable, and it’s treatable. So this is something that we can do something about, there’s some intractable problems we can’t do anything about. This is one that if we can get rid of the stigma, and if we can get people connected to services, both things that marketing can help with, we could really make some headway. I find that exciting. We talk about some things in this episode that may be triggering to some listeners. And I want to say that upfront, because I want us to talk more about mental illness, mental wellness, mental health. The more we talk about it, the more it’s normalized, the more it’s normalized, the less power the stigma is going to have right, just by definition have to loosen its grip. And if you are struggling, if you are feeling worried about your mental health right now, please push pause on this don’t listen anymore. Pick up the phone and call the National Suicide Prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255. I want this episode to make things better, not worse. So if you’re listening, you’re worried about that, take care of yourself, make those phone calls, reach out to a friend, tell them what’s going on. Take care of yourself. Alright? For those of you that feel like you’re ready for this, I do promise there’s a lot of bright spots. There’s a lot of upbeat-ness, he is such a positive ray of light force for good in the world. So I felt so grateful and blessed that he took time to join us. Like I said, the more we talk about it, the better chance we have that we will reduce the stigma and Ian talks about that so eloquently and like I said, wait for the poem of the end which comes out of Anne’s book Stronger Than Stigma wait for it truly gives me chills just thinking about it. So now let’s you and me listen and learn from Ian Adair. So with me today is Ian Adair. Ian is a nonprofit industry influencer, TEDx speaker, and recognized expert in leadership, fundraising and nonprofit management. He is an advocate, author and speaker concerning mental health awareness and mental health in the workplace, and is the author of the very beautiful, very poignant, very powerful, my words not his book Stronger Than Stigma: A call to action, stories of grief loss and inspiration. Ian is currently the executive director of the Gracepoint Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Gracepoint, one of the largest behavioral health organizations in the state of Florida. Gracepoint impacts the lives of more than 30,000 individuals, both children and adults seeking mental health, medical and addiction services. Okay, so Ian I want to read something from Gracepoint Foundation website, which is referencing Gracepoint. And says, since 1949, Gracepoint has worked to become Tampa Bay’s leading provider of Behavioral Health Solutions dedicated to inspiring and creating life changing wellness for every individual. So I want to quickly go into defining terms. But as I was preparing for this, it jumped out at me, I mean, I’ve had to have been a very intentional choice to use the term wellness, rather than focusing exclusively on the illness side of things.

Ian Adair  07:16

Right? Yes, it’s, you know, I think I think we overuse the term wellness in a lot of things, I think we use it when we talk about any anything from massages, to salons to all these things. But in reference to mental health, it really, talking about wellness is really talking about a state of well being. So I use that term over and over, not only just in a lot of our marketing on the website, but also in the book as well, when we talk about a person’s path to wellness, because I think anyone that’s gone through anything traumatic, anyone that’s dealing, or living an active recovery, anything, anybody who’s experienced, profound grief and loss is really looking to get back on that road to, to wellness, and having that state of good health. And it takes some time. And it takes some effort. And it’s messy. But we like to use that word when we reference where we want people to move to, and not just talk about the illness.

Erica Mills Barnhart  08:13

So is wellness, the journey on the path to health.

Ian Adair  08:17

It really is. It really is, I think one of the reasons, and I will talk about the book later, but one of the reasons why I continually use a path to wellness in the middle of the other two sections, because every chapter is broken up into three sections was really that path to where you need to be to get back to either where you were, or to a comfortable place to where you can talk about something that’s happened to you or loss that’s happened to you, or talk about maybe the recovery that you’re in, if you’ve dealt with an addiction issue. So we really use it when we talk about the path to wellness, it’s just a phrase that we continually talk about amongst our senior leadership team at Gracepoint, amongst the directors, because you can go from an inpatient Baker Act unit to where you’re in crisis, mental health, for three to five days to moving to an outpatient, you know, type of treatment to where you’re seeing somebody once a week, every couple of weeks, also is having a case manager others or other programs, to where you can move to where you get to be to where you’re back in that place that you really desire.

Erica Mills Barnhart  09:27

Yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s a lovely visual image, I think any, you know, we can all go to their different, you know, parts of a path I like, you know, I hike and snowshoe and do all sorts of things. So for me, it’s a really lovely image because there’s going to be chunks to it, but you’re moving forward along that. So just to quickly define commonly heard terms that are used somewhat interchangeably, and I and I want to pull this out. One on this podcast, of course, we talk a lot about words and the power of words and I think it’s in particularly important when we’re talking about this topic, because I have a somewhat working hypothesis, that the use of these terms almost interchangeably is part of what is perpetuating the stigma. So mental health and this comes from mentalhealth.gov. They define it as mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well being. It affects how we think, feel and act, as opposed to mental illness and I got this from psychiatry.org mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in emotion thinking or behavior, or combination of these, mental illnesses are associated with distress and or problems functioning in social, work, and family activities. You okay, with these definitions, any edits, adjustments you would make?

Ian Adair  10:43

Yeah, I think people sometimes overuse certain terms, I think people don’t have such a grasp of certain terms. So mental health really involves a lot of things. I think when we talk about your overall mental health, you can talk about things like self care, you can talk about things that are in your environment, things that are in your social group, all these different things and triggers that can help you along the way, feel more complete or feel more Well, I think mental illness is more of a definition, or a diagnosis that kind of pinpoint exactly where you’re at. So I know a lot of people talk about, I had an undiagnosed mental illness and for a long time, my mental health was off. And so it’s funny when you use those terms all together, they’re really referring to all the things that were off in their life, meaning emotional relationships, friendships, the physical environment was off. So I, you know, I think more people are being more comfortable using the term mental illness, I think more people are talking more comfortably about their diagnoses. And then I think when you talk about mental health, I think you talked about all the things, including wellness, that help people with mental illness manage that each and every day.

Erica Mills Barnhart  11:54

Yeah, I love that. In your book Stronger Than Stigma, you say, “one of the biggest factors, I believe keeping the general public from understanding the importance of mental health and addiction is the messaging and outreach used by the mental health sector. All the national awareness organizations promote the same statistic that one in five adults in America will experience mental illness in a given year, what they forget to promote is the fact that five out of five people have mental health. And by forgetting this, they discount the connection all of us have with anyone who has suffered from mental illness or addiction or suffering today”. Now, we know that during COVID, the statistics around you know, mental illness and people struggling to manage their mental health, and they’ve just they’ve skyrocketed. So can you say more about how a refrain from alienating the one in five or whatever it is, during COVID that are struggling to focus on the connection we all share? Because I think that that’s so powerful. And you know, in messaging terms, this is kind of the negative to the positive frame. Can you say more about like what you’re seeing in terms of that happening? And what else we can do to accelerate amplify that transition?

Ian Adair  13:05

Yeah, I think the one in five thing always stuck out to me. And I started asking other people, what is it that’s really sticking out to you about mental health, mental illness messaging. And they always would say, well it’s that it’s kind of this statistic, we just see over and over and over again, with just a different graphic associated with it. So you can either say one in five people experience mental health condition in a given year, you see one in five people experiencing mental health condition in their lifetime, you see, 20 to 25% of the population is currently experiencing a mental health condition, it all kind of adds up to be the same thing. But then that’s it. And so I noticed when those statistics were being shared at any size audience, you always look to, you always look for the best reaction in the audience to who’s sitting on the aisle. Because if you say one and five, it’s usually that person on the end, looks at the four people next time and wonders which one of those four it’s going to be. And so that’s when I kind of jumped in and said, Wait a second, if we start putting out information that’s already letting people decide whether or not they want to hear it, like one in five, that’s not me, then I think you’re already discounting the conversation moving forward. So I started starting, I started starting every discussion, conversation speech, just so the collective room would see the response of asking people who in the room has been impacted by mental illness, addiction or suicide, either yourself, your family, your closest inner circle of friends, four or five friends. And I started it that way, instead of with the one in five, because when I asked that question, 95% or greater, would raise their hand, speak up or hit that little reaction button on zoom with the thumbs up. And so that changed the climate of the room that changed the atmosphere of the room. It was almost when you were live in person, there was a collective deep breath, that now you’re in a safe place. You’re in room with people that have also experienced something, whether it’s lived experience or whether it’s a caregiver, or whether it’s someone with profound grief and loss. And so after that everything I started saying, when I started doing that, it changed the room. And it made it easier for us to talk about, I think when you only bring up these statistics, there’s you’re always letting somebody escape the conversation.  And, and I, and I found that especially with managers, and HR departments, and supervisors, they were always looking for a way not to talk about employee mental health, not to talk about, you know, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, that’s their private life, this is their work life. And so it always gave them a little bit of reason not to have the conversation. So that’s why I run towards it and I have the conversation, because then there’s no way to run, because the only people that are uncomfortable in the room and asked that question, are just happened to be the four or five folks that luckily for them, have never had to experience this, or had somebody close to them experience it. So they were almost even more intrigued to learn how something so prevelant has escaped them for so long. So that’s kind of one of my biggest critics of that.

Erica Mills Barnhart  16:14

Yeah, I mean, sometimes the negative frame works better sometimes. But most of the time, especially right now, when we are all just starved for hope and inspiration and all the positivity, we can glom on to, you know, shifting that but also giving, you know, the bummer, and this happens so much in marketing is we use othering to distance ourselves from something that we don’t want to be a part of, right. So if we’re trying to look at marketing for good, and it’s a force for good, this shift that you’re introducing to a positive frame is so powerful, because it actually it changes who’s in the seat, meaning, I think hitherto it’s been the folks who are like, Oh, I’m the one in five, you know, and then I feel distant and now you’re creating connection and the folks who actually, blessedly haven’t had to deal with this, which, as you said, is very rare. And then so you’re inviting everybody into the conversation, which feels very powerful. Do you think, um, I mean, you and I, before we kind of came, made it official that we were starting the podcast, we’re talking about how one of the cool things about zoom, once we got over both of us being speakers and whatnot, once we got over the zoom, and being like, I really prefer to be live, you’re like, wow, one, you can connect with so many more people but also, there’s been this, this drastic humanizing that has happened. And I’m wondering what you’re seeing in that regard? Like, have you seen any impact of like, I think we just all have a deeper sense of we’re all human, at a very fundamental level.

Ian Adair  17:43

It’s been, it’s been funny, I’ve seen social media become more social. I think, I think before, you don’t see as much as many push messages out there, it’s like, this is what I mean, there’s still people that are always gonna always show what they’re doing 24 hours a day, from the webinars that they’re currently on to their cat or dog in their lap to whatever they’re eating. There’s always going to be that. But I think, as in terms of mental health in these discussions, it’s been interesting. I tell people all the time, it might not be appropriate to text me after nine o’clock, because I’m a family person, and I spend time with my wife and my son. But if you DM me at one in the morning, if you’re having trouble, I’ll respond, whether it’s Twitter, or whether it’s instagram, and it’s been funny that people have, like, Hey, I’m taking you up on this, it, here’s my phone number, here’s my email, if you want to get back to me, if I could really use some, some help, or some suggestions, people to follow for positivity, organizations, resources that you might know, in my area, just things like that. And so it’s I think it’s become, although we’ve seen a lot of negative on social media over the last couple years, especially a lot of it’s been politically driven. But I think if you look at this topic, in particular, and how mental health has taken a turn, you know, publicly, marketing, advertising, social, I think there’s been a lot of good, that’s come of it, because people have now been able to seek out people that inspired them, or encourage them, or empowered them, and say, Hey, I just wanted to touch base because you shared your story, or because you shared multiple stories. I feel like I’m in a good place where I can share mine. And, you know, what are some things that can come with that? And you asked about COVID earlier, and I think one of the things that I’ve really found is, for the longest time, there is a stigma to remote work. There was a stigma, especially in the social sector, nonprofit sector of working from home, of flexible work schedule. And then all of a sudden, we were just all told to work from home. And it’s not really working from home. I’ve worked from home.

Erica Mills Barnhart  19:49

Oh no, no, no, thank you for bringing this up. This is this is not working from home, I have done that.

Ian Adair  19:54

This is not working from home.

Erica Mills Barnhart  19:56

For 16 years I’ve done that. That’s not what we’re doing.

Ian Adair  19:58

It’s a my wife, my wife is on a zoom call 200 square feet away, my son is doing e-learning 100 square feet away. This is not working from home. And, and we’ve been told that we had to be socially distant, but what we but we were never getting any instructions for what that was. And somewhere in those first few months, we became emotionally distant. So that really started impacting our mental health. And so I’ve seen what I think myself and others are starting to call the epidemic within this pandemic, is the mental health crisis that’s about to emerge, especially those in the social sector, especially those who are mental health professionals, especially those who are first responders, because we’ve taken on so much in a short amount of time.

Erica Mills Barnhart  20:42

Yeah, I so I want to repeat that for listeners who don’t make sure they heard it, the epidemic within the pandemic, that is powerful and resonates. I mean, I think I, I’m one to look for silver linings, full disclosure, I’m hoping that one of the silver linings is, you know, people, even folks like me, who you know, I’ve been blessed, I haven’t dealt with mental illness, it has touched me very closely, many times in my life. And I think I, you know, because of the epidemic within the pandemic, I can definitely relate more like I’ve had stretches where it’s like, I’m not just bummed out for a few hours, you know, this is prolonged, this is deeper. And that, you know, I hope between that and some, some messaging marketing shifts that we, you know, we might be in a position because more people can relate to it. And I’m wondering, I mean, we might be too far gone. But I’m wondering if there’s a way to get ahead of the curve a little bit, I feel like we have been behind this curve, around talking about and destigmatizing mental illness for a long time. But we have examples of large scale, so what you’ve been talking about what we’ve been talking about a sort of a grassroots bubbling up approach to destigmatizing. But if we look at kind of very orchestrated grass tops, or top down marketing, we have examples like the one out of California that came out of Prop 63, which was specific to raising awareness about mental illness and connecting more folks with services. So they did a large scale campaign, and the Rand Corporation did the evaluation of it and they found, in fact, it was quite successful. So, you know, this, this moment feels a little to me, akin to the moment where we were kind of getting it that like smoking was bad. However, and we knew that however, the tobacco companies were doing such a good job of convincing us otherwise, that it like took a long time for public health and norms to shift in a in a way that were truly supportive to society. And this is, this is gonna seem like a negative question. But I really think it’s worth sort of exploring a little bit like who benefits of if anyone, because all I can see is upsides to destigmatizing mental health to getting more folks connected with services. I mean, on every single level, there seems to be nothing but upside. So then if this is persisting, we’re left with this question of who who benefits from continuing to stigmatize mental illness?

Ian Adair  23:05

Yeah, yeah. And I’ve thought about that I know about that study. The only thing I could come up with, because it’s hard to even fathom or think about who would who would benefit from this. I think the only people that benefit are the people that aren’t willing to change the current models of which they supervise and manage their people and then there’s fear if you become more human base, and not ROI base, what’s going to happen to your company? What’s going to happen to your leadership style? Will your shareholders be a part of that? So I think change is the number one reason for fear. I think people just have, especially people, if you look at Gen X and above, look at the way we were supervised look at the way we were mentored look at the way the advice we were given. I was always told that if you have the opportunity to move for a better title, and a better salary, you should take it. And that is not what’s going on in this country anymore. And if I look back at a couple of the times that I moved, I am almost horrified now like I moved just because I went from manager to director I moved for $2500 or something along those lines. That’s that’s nothing, because I wasn’t taking into account the things that are important to people today. And if you look at who’s in the workforce today, 70% of the entire workforce is made up of millennials and Gen Z. And they’re not. They’re not looking at title. They’re not looking at salary. They’re looking for a positive work culture. They’re looking for organizations that care about their mental health and wellness. They’re looking at mentorship and sponsorship, they want to work with up to date and the latest technology. They want to feel like there’s a connection to the vision or the mission of the organization that they have. They want their voice to be heard in all of these top five or six things that they’re they’re desiring it’s a little bit incomplete left field from the things that, you know, I was brought up in, and so many other people. So who’s benefiting? I think people are just afraid of that switch, because now it’s that unknown. I’ve been, I’ve been a manager of people for a long time, I’ve had over 300 employees. And now you’re telling me, I have to basically become retrained. And if I’m going to be effective, as a leader, I have to be I have to seek professional development, and further educate of what today’s employees desire and want because I’m wanting to keep my best people. And if I’m going to attract top talent, I have to change. And that’s scary for a lot of people.

Erica Mills Barnhart  25:42

We talk about that humans crave progress, and we resist change. And so if I’m tracking what you’re saying, it’s sort of those who currently hold power, positional authority and I wonder if there isn’t an undercurrent of I mean, one of things I love about you know, millennials and Zoomers is they, they are very open about, you know, even if I listen to my kids, and they’ll say things like, wow, I’m really anxious today, or Wow, that was really triggering. We didn’t say these things, and that there’s sort of a, there’s a vulnerability in saying that. So if I’m tracking what you’re saying, it’s less like a tobacco industry thing. Although, you know, maybe that exists and we just haven’t, we don’t know it is yet. But it’s more just a real resistance among leaders, currently, because they might have to do some changing, they might have to show some vulnerability, other things like that.

Ian Adair  26:33

It is I think it’s scary for some people that the warning label is new workforce may contain authenticity and vulnerability. That is scary to some people who aren’t used to it. I mean, if you’re not thinking about if you’re not used to it, if you’re if you’re used to an authoritative, authoritarian, supervisory style, and you’re told now, by HR, the reason, our retention is so poor, the reason why we’re losing good people, is because we need to start looking at these things that are more important to the workforce today. That is terrifying.

Erica Mills Barnhart  27:10

Yeah. I mean, the millennials and Zoomers, you are listing off things and the thing that keeps coming up is that they’re looking for a sense of purpose that that their personal purpose aligns with the company or organization’s purpose. And that is very different from, I mean I am a Gen Xer and so Gen X and above, that’s different, right? I always say, I mean, I feel so blessed to do the work I do. You know, it wasn’t by design, maybe it’s subconscious level was, but you know, I feel great purpose what I’m doing I mean, I honestly believe that marketing can be a force for good if we can do some shifting, because it hasn’t always been used as a force for good. And I’m also aware that that’s kind of it is rare, you know, it’s rare to really dig what you do. My son is great about because I, you know, I work a lot, but it’s fine. And he’ll come and say, Mommy, you know, I’m sorry, you have to work so much. And I say I am so blessed, I have this portfolio of just incredible things I get to do in a day. So sometimes I’m tired by the end of the day, and a little bit cranky. But that’s a blessing. And so but the idea of you know, this vulnerability in these shifts, that’s, um, that’s interesting that that’s, you know, in your opinion, sort of what’s holding us back, though, that rings true. Okay, I wanna I want to make sure that we talked about your book.

Ian Adair  28:17

Oh, for sure. I just wanted to say to close out that conversation, as it redefines leadership, and for people that have always kind of identified themselves as leaders. That’s scary. Because now you’re you’re redefining the term. And I think leadership today is much more about caring for the people doing the work, and not just the work itself. And for people that just basically live their entire life and, and receive bonuses based on just purely outcomes. That’s it’s difficult to swallow. And so I think that’s where you’re seeing the painful amount of change happen in the workforce today.

Erica Mills Barnhart  28:58

So So if it is the case, that kind of the target audience for shifting, shifting culture, shifting norms, as leaders, how do we how do we reach them?

Ian Adair  29:08

I think once they once they realize and once they’ve been trained to understand what, because everyone wants their organizations to do well. And so you can make this ROI based you can talk about mental illnesses, the number one reason today in this country, for loss of productivity, for workforce absenteeism, more people are missing work today because of mental illness than all the other chronic conditions combined, like back pain, asthma, all these other things. So if you have identified it, if you’re only able to get through people on on pretty much strictly a balance sheet level, we can do that. And we can talk about that. And then I think when they said okay, how do we combat that? What can we do about that? We’ll feel a little bit shy to kind of start doing all these new programs, we don’t know what our people really need. I keep telling people leadership can simply change the conversation by normalizing the conversation. There’s lots of things that we do already, internally in our systems, whether it’s employee intranet systems support, employee message boards, bulletin boards in break rooms, all these things, the best part about mental health, that I always tease about is there’s a mental health awareness day, almost every month of the year. So just are promoting those things, makes it easier to slowly seep into your workforce, that you care about those things and then for leadership to lead those discussions, or even, you know, be a little bit vulnerable themselves, and share their lived experience or share an opportunity where they, you know, suffered profound grief and loss or where they are a caregiver, it makes their staff when things happen to them more likely to feel comfortable and safe to disclose when something happens to them.

Erica Mills Barnhart  31:00

Yeah, I mean, imagine getting an out of office from your boss that said, I’m taking a mental health day. I mean, I, in terms of leading by example, that would so be huge. And actually what came to mind, I forgotten this, but I had a boss, who was, you know, had had a parent who was very, very, very ill. And they went, and, you know, were there and we knew that I mean, this, this parent was on the cusp of death and that was pretty clear. But what they said was, but that’s okay, you know, keep emailing and you know, I’m available and text if you need anything. And I remember thinking this was like 20 years ago. So, you know, well before, I would say, mental health and taking care of your mental health was on people’s radars in any substantive way. And I’m, but I do remember thinking like, wow, that’s not a great message to send, it’s not a good example to set. That’s not, you know, we’re all hard workers. And what that says is, even if your parent is dying, even if your parent is dying, you’re still going to work. And I hope that, that the opposite of that will soon become the norm. And I think, and I’m going to transition to your amazing book, that your book, like if I were a leader, business, nonprofit, does not matter a leader of any sort, one of the first thing is I would do is read your book, Stronger Than Stigma. Then in the book, you share 12 stories, including your own. And these are wide ranging. I mean, they’re about mental health or about addiction. It’s about loss. It’s about love. It’s about grief. It’s about shame and resilience and grace. And I’m, I am hoping that you will share with us both what what inspired you to write the book, I think we have a sense for that now, you sort of covered it. But if there’s anything else you want to add on that, you know, in which stories particularly resonated with you, yeah, I know I can say is me as a parent, the ones by other parents certainly struck a very deep chord. But I’m curious your thoughts as the author?

Ian Adair  32:47

Yeah. One thing that I looked at, I think people have to understand the context for the book when when COVID happened, and we lost the ability to be in front of people in a live format. The actual the largest event that we have at the foundation is actually called Stronger Than Stigma as well. And we started to find that when we started the event, a couple years ago, we were worried that the Tampa Bay Community, the Tampa area, greater Tampa area, wasn’t ready to start talking about mental illness, we had never really done it as organization when I came in, they focused on kids, and not adults and that’s our primary population. So when we started bringing people in to share their lived experience, whether they were in active recovery, whether they were out of bipolar diagnosis, depression, anxiety, diagnosis, or whether they were a caregiver, that resonated unbelievably with our audience. And so since we couldn’t get in front of people, in 2020, the idea was, let’s create a book that went all in on that idea of storytelling, let’s create an opportunity to where we can get these stories out, knowing that so many people were suffering right now, knowing that so many people, because of and I think you talked about silver linings earlier, the silver lining of 2020 and the pandemic is that I think more people become empathetic to people who actually suffer each and every day. And that’s what we need, we need more empathy with this, instead of, you know, diminishing people who are suffering, we need to support them and empathize with them. So for leaders, I’m like, what can I get out there that I hope leaders would want to read? And I think the goal for leaders really was to just promote the acceptance and inclusion of those dealing with mental health related issues and addiction related issues. And then how can we improve those support systems for that population? And so I wanted to target leaders within this community with a wide range of perspectives, diversity at all levels, and have me tell their story in the first person and that was the trickiest part. Because a lot of these stories resonated with me in, the best thing about all these amazing people was nobody felt that their story was worthy enough to be put in this book, which is unbelievable in its own right. But to have them all be at a place where they’re willing and able to trust somebody with their story and to put it in, in a, in a context, in a fragmented way that was a little bit different than it they had ever done before, really took a lot of faith on their part. And that was an opportunity that I spent a lot of nights worrying about. And they were part of the process the entire time. And I think just to give context, each story has three parts to it, we’ve kind of already mentioned that it has a part that’s called my story, where we just kind of explain why they’re why they’re part of this book, and why they’re in what and what that perspective is, whether it’s somebody who lost somebody to suicide, or to a violent crime, whether it’s somebody who’s been sexually assaulted or abused, whether it’s somebody who’s dealing with a diagnosed mental health condition, and then we quickly move into that path to wellness, like, what it what did they do, and some of them despite incredible odds and challenges, what did they do to get to a place to where they were comfortable with who they are comfortable sharing their story, and then put them on a path to wanting to be of service to others. And that’s the call to action. It every, every personal story ends with a call to action. And everyone’s doing something differently. Some people are very public writing articles that are featured in magazines, three people did TEDx talks, number of people written books, to more private where people are very involved in their church, very involved with family groups, very involved with support groups, want to be behind the scenes, helping people who’ve lost people, others or family members to suicide. So I’m personally connected to a lot of these stories. I know you said the parent ones really connected with you, I think the ones that people who’ve just been through unbelievable amount of challenges, and one of them. Vanessa is one of these stories. And when you read her story, a young lady who was sexually abused by family members, and then when that experience was over, has a little bit of a piece is working through a lot of these things, then gets raped on a trip visiting a college. And now she has to experience all these things with rape culture, shame, not knowing that she can, who she can tell her story to not knowing who she can trust. And, and that’s scary. And to read this story from this amazing person, Vanessa McNeal, I didn’t say her full name. And to see what she’s done with her life, and to see that she takes on tough topics. She’s now an award winning documentarian. She’s taken on men who have been sexually abused, she’s taken on human trafficking, she’s taken on women who have been victims of sexual assault, she tells her personal story on stage after stage after stage. You know, it’s just amazing. And you’re justcompletely inspired by people like that. But everyone has a reason why you can be proud of them and inspired about them. But I think the I think when people read this book, they read it knowing that that question, I asked everybody at the beginning of every talk, who’s been impacted in some way and those 95 plus percent of people raise their hand, it’s a lot of those people read this book, and they’re like, you know what, I’ve been wanting to get involved in some way and just didn’t know how, and the book is for them, because it inspires them to get involved.

Erica Mills Barnhart  38:44

Yeah, well, one of the things I appreciate about this book, yeah, you don’t I mean, I was gonna say you don’t just give inspiration like that, even if you had just stopped with the 12 stories, it would be a gift to the world this book would be in, I mean, I have so much respect, and just, yeah, for the folks who were brave enough to have you tell their stories, but you bridge from inspiration to action. And I mean, you don’t hide it, the subtitle is a call to action. So it’s not like it makes like what, but but one of the things I found most interesting about the call to action piece was that you have an overall call to action, then you have a call to action for men, then for businesses, and then for the kind of the government, so general advocacy. So can you break down the different calls to action, I mean, there’s a theme to it. But there seem to be some specific things to each.

Ian Adair  39:34

The stories kind of set up everyone’s personal call to action. And then and now I kind of want to address some of the issues where I think stigma is getting held up. And I talk about friends and family because the first person anyone discloses to is usually a family member or close friend, and sometimes it’s that initial reaction they get, which keeps them silent for the next five to 10 years. And I think as as as close friends and as family, we don’t want anyone we’re associated with to be hurting. So sometimes when someone discloses something to us, it’s never truly the full extent of what’s going on. So our response usually is quick, it’s usually not as empathetic as it should be, you know, we want to give, just don’t worry about it go for a run, it’ll be better tomorrow. You know, there’s other fish in the sea, whatever you want to say. There’s always something, time will heal all wounds, we say these platitudes. But we look back at it later, like, did they just disclose to me something serious and I did not take it that way? And you never know what they’re hiding in when they disclose because no one just fully comes out and says, Erica, I’m having suicidal thoughts every night, I don’t know what to do. That’s not how it, they’ll say, I’m not sleeping well, I’m having negative thoughts. I don’t know. And you try to figure out what the root problem is, you try to solve it in five minutes or through text, and then you walk away going, I think I just really helped my best friend, when they’re walking away going, man that did not go well. So we take on that and really explain to people how better to respond to people disclosing and how traumatic it can be and how we can impact them. When you when you respond in a poor way. Then we take on men, I think, as a as a two time college athlete, former pro athlete, I’ve surrounded by overly masculine culture a lot. And men do not take mental health seriously, I don’t know why they’re not taking mental health seriously, they should be. I think there’s too much of a toxic masculinity in this country where if anyone discloses a mental health condition, they’re automatically shamed and perceived as weak. So we have to address that men are dying by suicide four times greater than women, and much more violent means. So, you know, there’s just a lot going on, to unpack that. And I tried to unpack it as best I can, starting with just how we raise young men. And that perception that anything disclosed about feelings and emotions is wrong. And then the last part of that is addressing it at work, which really is talking about, we’ve spent more time almost at work than we do any other place. How can organizations, companies, businesses, create a culture that’s more accepting of those who disclose and supportive of the wellness and mental health of their overall employee base? And what are some of the things that they can do that are at basically zero cost to low cost that they can incorporate today to change their work culture. So if we’re going to talk about a call to action, we’re going to talk about inspiring people to do something, you really got to lay out what that can be. And so I try to lay that out as best I can.

Erica Mills Barnhart  42:42

Yep, it is, it’s a roadmap, I really feel like it’s a roadmap to finally destigmatizing mental illness, it is, I challenge anybody to read this book and not be totally inspired to take action either personally or professionally in the workplace, I issue that challenge, because it is it is so moving in. The you have a poem in here, which I would like to read in this poem is by Albert Rios, I believe written, Alberto sorry, was written in 1952 called When Giving Is All We Have. “One river gives its journey to the next we give because someone gave to us we give because nobody gave to us. We give because giving has changed us we give because giving could have changed us. We have been better for it. We have been wounded by it. Giving has many faces. It is loud and quiet. Big though small, diamond in wood nails. Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too. But we read this book anyway, over and again, giving his first and every time hand to hand mine to yours, yours to mine. You gave me blue and I gave you yellow together we are simple green. You gave me what you did not have and I gave you what I had to give. Together, we made something greater from the difference.” And I want to say you have given with this book and your work, and your speaking and your general overarching awesomeness as a human, you have given so much to this world. I really hope anybody listening and I’ll put it in the show notes how to buy the book because it is it’s a I think it’s a game changer for how we talk about think about and then ultimately experience as a society, mental illness and mental health and getting on that path to mental wellness. So thank you so much for this gift.

Ian Adair  44:38

Well, thank you and that poem, you know, everyone gave me their personal truth and their story. And I honestly think that stories have the ability to just impact us on a profound level. And especially when we feel a strong connection to the storyteller and you know, I just try to be a storyteller of these incredible people who have been through something extrordinary in their stories, I mean, even trying to tell them as best I can, I mean, stories have this, this common ground to allow us to, to communicate and overcome our differences. But also to better understand each other. And I think anyone dealing with anything right now, mental health related addiction related, recovery related, can read this book and feel connectedness with a number of people in it who share. And that’s why and that’s what I want to happen because everyone who experiences anything, and I’m very open about being a caregiver, I’m very open about my own battles with depression, anxiety, no matter who it is, we always the first thing we always feel is that we’re alone in this feeling. And the one thing I want to share in this book is that you’re not. And there’s, there’s people out there that care about you. There’s people out there that want to inspire you to get through whatever it is you’re going through right now.

Erica Mills Barnhart  45:55

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ian. At the end of every episode I ask, you know, I say do good be well. I just I say that with with greater urgency, I guess. I do also like to close by asking every guest what inspires you and what keeps you motivated to do this work? And I mean, this can be tough work, you’re talking about tough topics.

Ian Adair  46:16

Right? I think it’s just from the process of this book, although the subject matter was so heavy, sad, very sad in so many different ways. I think, when I see people that give themselves and their story to others, when I see people that want to commit themselves to service to others, who have been through so much, that to me is completely inspiring. And some of these people that I deal with some of the people that are in from the book that I’ve dealt with writing the book, and so many people that I work with, at my organization, Gracepoint, who have, who have suffered the loss of loved ones, who have seen loved ones battle and struggle with addiction, and that they continually want to give themselves to help others. It’s unbelievably inspiring.

Erica Mills Barnhart  47:08

The book is inspiring, you are inspiring. I just can’t say thank you enough. And I’m really proud of you for writing this book. On a personal level, we’ve known each other for a long time. And I’m like, look what Ian did. It’s incredible. So I will say at the end, as I always do, but with greater empathy and urgency to all of our listeners. Thank you for listening to this. I hope you leave as inspired as I am. I really do hope everybody buys the book, particularly the leaders since that’s where the shifting needs to happen, and that you’ll continue to do good and be well, and we will see you next time.

The post Ep 29: Ian Adair: Being Stronger Than Stigma appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Marketing for Good podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEY WORDS

statements, marketing, DEI, organization, people, commitment, words, employees, website, trend, values, feel, equity

Erica Mills Barnhart  00:04

Hello, hello, hello. This episode marks the one year anniversary of the marketing for good podcasts. I didn’t know this, so this was news to me, but 75% of podcasts don’t make it to their one year anniversary, that is a pretty high rate of attrition from podcast land. So I want to start today by saying a bunch of thank you’s. First and foremost, thank you, listener for listening and for sharing and for making it possible for this podcast to live to see a second year and hopefully more after that. There have been so many great moments on the show, I was just going back and relistening to things. And it was a little like, you know, my birthday is around the same time and so you know, you go back over the past year and you’re like, oh, I remember that. I mean, during COVID it’s been a little not only like, I remember that in a good tone of voice for like, oh, yeah, I remember that too hmm. It’s just been really interesting to, against that backdrop, go back and just hear the nuggets of wisdom from all of the folks who have been so gracious and taking their time to come on the show and you know, share their wisdom and wit and big hearts and smart thoughts and awesome tips and all the rest of it. So thank you to all of the guests for sure. You know, anniversaries and birthdays really are a wonderful time to reflect and you know, kind of look back so that we can move forward. And in listening to the episodes, it was interesting, I wasn’t sure what was going to emerge, but two themes emerge that align with things that are happening that are afoot as a word more broadly, that are really markedly different than a year ago. So in this anniversary episode, I want to take a look at those trends. And then share an example of an organization that exemplifies or, offers an example of what it looks like when you are part of these trends and you’re kind of incorporating them into how you’re working. The first is getting real about diversity, equity and inclusion. And the second trend is getting real about employee engagement much more broadly. Let’s start with getting real about DEI. There’s a lot of acronyms for this work. And so I just want to start by saying it’s always a little dodgy to use any acronym it is jargon, I advise against it generally speaking, especially in messaging, but I know that I’m gonna go there and say that. So when you hear me say DEI, that’s an acronym for diversity, equity inclusion, something that we have talked a lot about on the show, also about being anti racist, which is part of that work, right? I mean, a year ago, George Floyd was alive. And his murder along with wrongful deaths of so many other black people, Briana Taylor, Eric Garner, this list unfortunately, goes on and on. It ignited a movement that was long overdue or amplified, it was already in process. And this movement has made its way into our culture and into our organizational cultures. Every single client I’m working with and talking to just in terms of other organizations, even if I’m not working with them, they’re trying to figure out how to infuse their commitment to DEI into everything they do. Sure in our conversations, the question is, how do you include it in a way that’s authentic and true, like not overstating what you’re doing into your messaging and marketing. And you know, Kate Slater, and I talked about this in our episode, but it’s, you know, it’s coming up again, in the broader landscape and Marlette Jackson and Erin Dowell talked about this in Episode 22, which is the fact that woke washing isn’t going to cut it, like you just can’t slap a DEI statement on your site and be like, check, we’re good. We did it. Those statements are, they’re a great start. And you know, they say that, but that’s all it is, is a start. And you might need to start there, right? I mean, this work is a journey. It’s not a destination. So if where you’re at is a DEI statement, as a standalone statement on your website, at least your you know, raising your hand to be on the journey. But if that commitment doesn’t make it any further than a bunch of words on your website, it’s not really a deeply held value, is it? I mean, you’re not making a more substantive commitment to it. You learn if you’re living your values, I mean, you’ll learn if you’re living your values, not when things are easy. But when they get rough when they get challenging when you’re grappling with how to honor them. I actually just had this happen, I’ll share this with you. So after 10 years, Claxon is redoing its website, I cannot believe it’s been 10 years, on many levels, anyway, it has been apparently. So we’re redoing the website, which I’m super excited about. Long overdue needs to happen and we got to a point where we’re trying to make choices about images. And because of how the websites coming together, we need images of kind of like, you know, that really focus on at most like three people, but they’re not going to be a whole bunch of people, because that’s just not gonna work. And so what I was struggling with as a leader of Claxon is how do I honor our commitment, my commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. For me, I knew even though Claxon works with primarily predominantly white institutions PWI or organizations, that’s where our work happens. It also didn’t feel right to just yet again, have another website where the only images, the only faces you see are white people. On the other hand, it didn’t sit well with me to have it be a whole bunch of people of color because it felt like we were tokenizing and also being inauthentic about where most of our work happens. And so gratefully, I know Priya Saxena of Equitable Futures, I am somebody who is committed to DEI but I’m not an expert, but Priya is an expert. She’s a DIE consultant, and I just have so much gratitude for her. Because Priya came through and took a look at our websites and they were like, do this, don’t do this, you know, and just really helped us honor our commitment and live those values on the website. But boy, it was really tricky. And I genuinely wasn’t sure how to move forward. So we need these people like Priya who, like know, that think deeply about it, and really can help us move forward. And we’re seeing more companies start to speak up about things, you know, things that affect people of color, disproportionately, and negatively, like voter suppression, we just saw that happen. And more leaders are stepping up and saying we need to go on this journey. I mean, the mere existence and proliferation of DEI statements is markedly different than a year ago. And although I worry, I mean, I really do worry that this commitment will fade, as it has so many times in the past. And yet this time, it does, it does feel different. So I’m hoping hard that this is in fact a trend, that will become a norm. Like I really hope and I don’t know what the time horizon is, but I’m hoping that sooner rather than later, that it is the norm, it was almost to be taken for granted that you will not just slap the DEI statement on your website, but that truly organizations are living into that and it’s part of the culture. So I’m hoping it’s not a fad that will fade, that it is a trend that will then become a norm. So that’s the first thing that of course, we’re all seeing that play out in so many ways in our society. But definitely when you look at the episodes from the past year has been a theme. And then the second trend is around broader employee engagement. And part of why I’m actually optimistic that diversity, equity inclusion might become a norm is that employees are expecting it, they’re demanding it. And companies are paying attention to that. So employers are being engaged more broadly in efforts around brand purpose, which you know, this can be a piece of that also in terms of strategy, and just you know, places where it has been more siloed that work has you know, live in the C suite or like with a marketing team or you know, with HR and but it is becoming a horizontal rather than a vertical. So, I’m hoping that this will lead to organizations finally getting serious about unleashing one of the most overlooked marketing superpowers that’s available, doing the work to come up with consistent messaging and giving employees a consistent way to talk about the organization. In most organizations, if you ask 50 different people to answer the question, what do you do or what does your organization do? You’re going to get 50 pretty different answers to that question. And this is a total missed opportunity. Because we know still to this day, word of mouth marketing which can happen, I mean, let’s just clarify word of mouth can be like you and I are chatting word of mouth, but it also plays out on social media. So virtual word of mouth, I suppose we could call that. So not bringing consistency to this, it’s like, let’s say, you know, if you’ve ever watched it rain, and you’re like sitting by swimming pool, which that’s not a great combo, but let’s roll with it. You know, it is the difference between little drops of rain, you know, all over the pool. So they’re having a little bit of an impact. But imagine if you brought all of those together into one great big droplet of rain and boom that landed in the pool. That impact is deep and broad. And it’s focused energy. Right? It’s like somebody’s doing a cannonball into a pool, really, which I think we all have had the pleasure of being poolside when that has happened if not doing it ourselves. So that’s the difference, right? It’s like, why not harness all this energy, it’s happening anyway. But harness it so that it can advance your organization in a way that is consistent and compelling and all of those things. I mean, it is why they acknowledged the word of mouth marketing as one of the most powerful forms of marketing. And yet, interestingly, most organizations don’t like actively invest in it. It’s like acknowledge, but then the thing is, you’re like, what would that mean? And then you have this resource. And again, increasingly, and Akhtar Badshah talked about this, and he talks about his book, employees are motivated by purpose, about the overlap between their individual purpose and the company’s purpose. So it’s, I mean, it’s like, you know, it’s like Clark Kent, before he becomes Superman, or, or it’s like when Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCartney, McCarthy? Melissa McCarthy? Yeah, that’s right, I think? Well, okay, Thunder Force is this new super hero movie that came out, watch it if you haven’t already. It’s delightful. But it’s like, you know, they were amazing and awesome, and then got the superpower and with that unleashed, you know, was so much more powerful. It’s a similar thing. So that’s another deeper, broader employee engagement, also seems to be a trend and was a theme in the interviews and in the conversations I had with guests over the past year. So if you’re committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and being proactively anti racist, and you see the value in investing in word of mouth marketing, you would invest in the creation of two things. So a set of identity statements, we’ll talk more about that. And also investing in create a culture where everyone in your organization has the superpower to drive word of mouth marketing, because there’s consistency in terms of how people respond to the question, what does your organization do? So it talks about the identity statements in Episode 27, but let’s review, because you’ve heard these words before, but different people talk about them and use them differently. So in the framework that I use, you have, in the framework that I use, which I’m very familiar with, I actually am not going off the script today. So that’s making this you know, a bit more ad-libby, I suppose, let’s see if I can remember them values: the principles that guide your work, vision: where you’re going, and why, purpose: why you as an organization exist and the mission: what you do and how you do it. And it’s, you know, it is a little bit different. Sometimes folks are like the mission statement needs to have the why and the what and the how, and that just weighs down your mission statement. It’s like asking one statement to do all of these things. And then we see like semi colons, it’s super long run on sentences, and you’re like it has do everything. Whereas if you split these things apart, and you remember, this is meant to be the essence of who you are as an organization, that’s the job of the statements, then it kind of free’s, you know, free’s up some energy, as it were. So how exactly do we get to these statements, and empower folks to use them? Right, so that’s the part two to this. So I said I was going to share an example, and the example that I want to share is of the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington, where I have the great good fortune to be on faculty, we recently got a new Dean, Dean Jody Sanford, and she before she even started, said, “you know, I really want to be clear about our purpose about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it”. And so I got to be part of the process where we articulated our identity statements. And so those are optimized to be read not said, and this is an important point. I mean, oftentimes, we write this set of statements, and they are optimized to be like I said, read not said, well, then we try, you know, when we asked folks to you know, use them as the elevator pitch or whatever. And of course, you know, we sound like robots. Unless you’re doing like a standard deliver, right, you’re giving a speech or something, then then you could kind of read them. So you have to be intentional about that translation from written statements to a verbal response or a more casual response again, it’s like virtual word of mouth idea. So let me share with you, I’m going to give my version of the translation from these very powerful statements. So now when somebody asked me and I love having this language to be honest, I’ve been associated with the other school, well, I went there, so I am an alum, but yeah, taught there and served in various capacities for like 15 years and just haven’t felt like I had this language. So, I’m living through the experience, which I don’t get to do very often, so it’s pretty cool, of how empowering it is to have this language. So now, you know if you were to say, “so you’re at the Evans School, what is the Evans School about”? I would say, “really fundamentally what we’re focused on, our mission is to co create solutions to pressing societal problems” right? “And we do that by educating leaders, generating knowledge, and hosting communities, again, in service to co creation. Because we exist as a school to inspire public service and democratize public policy. And I’m happy to like talk more about what those you know, sort of lofty ambitions mean. But when you get down to it, you know, what we want to do, our vision is an inclusively built societies powered by collective wisdom, brave leadership and rigorous action. So that, you know, that’s where we’re going and why and that’s kind of about how and what we do and just, you know, in case it’s of interest to you, the Evans schools values are equity, courage and service. And so there’s like a direct correlation between this idea of co-creation and our commitment to equity, and to service which we define, as you know, being committed to discovering and daylighting disparities, taking anti racist action and dismantling systems or oppression, you know, different people to find equity differently, but for us at the Evans School, that’s how we define that. And then service, that we have a responsibility to think beyond ourselves and act to uplift all.” So would I say all of that, I don’t know, it would depend on how interested they looked after I said, you know, what we’re about is co creative solutions to pressing societal problems. And if they’re eyebrows went up and that seemed interesting, I would go on, if I got like, you know, no reaction or like, whatever, co-creating blah, blah, blah, then, you know, we would we would move on to talk about the Seahawks and whether or not Russell’s going to stick with us or not. So that’s an example of the statements and how they can you know, how they can work in a verbal setting. So in the more casual the setting, the more casual you would you know, you would want your delivery to be so let’s get super tactical, because it’s like, that’s all well and good. Erica, thanks for the example. But how do you get from maybe where you are right now, to engage employees and external stakeholders as well, by the way, like a broad engagement to that distillation of essence. So at the Evans School, and this is pretty standard, we sent out a survey to all the different stakeholder groups, so faculty, staff, students, alumni, other members of the community, right, but they all had an association with the Evans School. And just to be clear, like, I was not like, “what do you think the mission statement would be”? Oh, no, we deconstruct to reconstruct. So what you’re asking for is input actually, on individual parts of speech. What adjectives would you use to describe the school today? What adjectives do you hope people will use to describe it five years from now? That allows you to see how far you know, you might need to go? How big is that gap? What verb best represents the change that we’re committed to create in the world? Right? So it’s a very, like, laser targeted set of questions. And I will say, like, I’ve done this, you know, maybe hundreds of times at this point, but definitely dozens and dozens, people love filling out this survey, like parts of speech, yay, they will say like, that was hard, I sort of forgotten what adjectives were. But in general, every client I work with gets, like really great engagement on that, and people enjoy it. And therefore, wherever you land with the statements, you know, the adoption of them tends to go really well. So sometimes, you know, you can just do the survey and stop there. Other times, you’re going to want to get more qualitative input. So kind of focus groups, at the Evans School, because of Dean Jody’s work, we held world cafes, which are sort of a variation on focus groups. And this was because, you know, for her, this wasn’t just about, she didn’t come to me and say, we want to try word of mouth marketing, she came and spoke with me and others, and said I really want us to be clear on who we are going forward. So, these statements are being operationalized throughout the entire organization. And with that in mind, you know, she wanted to get this deeper sense of perspective. So that was another way that we gather data. And that gave us like a lot of information, both depth and breadth of information that then along with a few other folks, want to give a shout out here to Katie, Marie and Ben and of course, Dean Jody, you know, we started working on drafts, and we’d work on drafts and then we circulate them to key employers and decision makers that give their impact, their input we’d refine, and then we treat and we treat and eventually and you can you will be able to feel, feel when you’re done. And the sentences are complete. The statements fit together. You know, oftentimes when I’m asking for input, well, I never say what do you think? I often say, what do you feel? When you read those statements, how did it make you feel? Because that gives you different and more actionable insight. So like I said, now we’re turning this into action. You know, we’re revamping syllabus and learning objectives to be truly anti racist. We are assessing research and community engagement tuition, financial aid, I mean, this list goes on and on and on. And like everything is being run through the filter of these statements. So is everybody busting out pom poms in school, like, yay new language? No, change is hard. And this is change. But we are hearing things like, I see these statements and I feel proud to be an alum, you know, I feel a renewed sense of energy and commitment as a staff member or a faculty member, you know, quite a few folks have said they made me tear up in a good way. Right. So that’s the type of feedback that we’re getting from that process. And there does seem to be, you know, clarity and alignment around this, which is, you know, in terms of benefits of this type of engagement, doing this way that happens every time right, when I talk to clients after they’re like, we have so much clarity, and we have alugnment. So this is what we’re up to. And now at the Evans School, we need to do this translation bit, right. So it’s one thing to have the written statements again, but it’s another to kind of get everybody personalizing those statements, and to drive that word of mouth marketing. So when folks say, what does avid school do? There’s some consistency to what that response is. I’m hearing naturally, lots of gravitate toward that verb co-create, just hearing that pop up a ton. So we’ll probably looking for some consistency in that regard. And we’ll get there. And, we’ll have to create intentional space. And every time I work with a client, they’re like do we have to do a roleplay? And I’m like, yeah, let’s do roleplay. They’re like, I hate roleplay. And I am like, I get that, and yet, we do it in a specific way so it’s kind of fun. But the reason that I’m such a fan of that is because it you know, you can create safe space to play with the new language, which is, you know, a much, much kinder, more compassionate way of thinking about doing that translation, because change is hard. You have to proactively facilitate it. You can’t just expect folks to like gleefully change up their language, that just usually doesn’t happen. But you can, however, create that space and, and you’re not ever going to be like, you know, thou shalt help with word of mouth marketing. But because employees were invited into the process, they tend to go really invested in the outcome and open, open to that change, so long as they are supportive. And you know, also commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion means a commitment to your employees, current employees, and especially employees of color, and other folks who often feel marginalized. So, if you want to turn your DEI statement into a culture that’s living that statement, I highly recommend and encourage you to consider revisiting your identity statements, mission, vision, values, purpose, and including everyone in that effort. I know it sounds like oh, maybe overwhelming and dodgy, but you’re going to unleash this marketing superpower, and have folks feeling good about it along the way. You know, right now, things are tough. We’re emerging from COVID. But there’s a lot of uncertainty, most folks are pretty burnt out feeling pretty fragile. You know, as a leader, you have to move forward with compassion and a sense of urgency. And that is not an easy balance. COVID has burned a lot to the ground. For better or for worse a lot to the ground. It has forced our hand in a lot of ways. And you know, we’re left with a lot of questions about how to move forward, a path is not always clear. But one thing does seem clear from where I sit at the one year anniversary again of this podcast, which is now’s a mighty fine time and excellent time to define and refine your values, your vision, your purpose and your mission statements. Let language be part of the solution. Let words create some of the change you want to see in your life, in your organization, and the world. Words have energy with intentionality and focusing them in a specific direction. You know, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. There’s the action of putting words up to the world with intentionality and getting back what you are hoping to, so use words to stay true to your values. Your why, your what, your who, your how, will unleash a marketing superpower by driving word of mouth marketing. This is a virtuous cycle. So if this feels daunting, I totally get that reach out. We will figure it out together. Okay. In the meantime, thanks again for being a listener. Thanks for getting this podcast, the marketing for good podcasts to its one year anniversary or birthday or whatever. Keep doing the good work you’re doing. I’m so grateful for it. Take good care of yourself. Be well and I will see you next time.

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