Allyship and the Problem with Labels
Allyship is a slippery word. We want people to do better so we tell them to “be an ally” but then people ask us “okay, I want to help. I’m an ally. Now what do I do?” So then we told people that allyship wasn’t enough ( thinking isn’t enough). We started telling folks to be co-conspirators and then they said, “Yea I can come up with a plan with you”. And again the work of helping people falls short of folks doing the work. There seems to be a never ending search for the right words that will spur people to not just think of supporting each other, but actually doing the supporting. . .with actions. And for some reason, instead of rolling up our sleeves and doing more, we seem to get so easily distracted by the words. What should we call it? DEI? IDEA? DEIB? IBED? DEIBJ? The irony isn’t lost on me. I think the labels are what got us all in such a tizzy in the first place. Potato, Po taw toe. There’s a lot of humans.
Do Better
Do better.
Help more humans.
I recently read Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. It’s a manifesto about Black women and feminism and our relationship to labor and the context of the United States. It is a rich text full of references to Black liberation theology, Womanism, afro futurism, and Tricia’s personal accounts of how women in her own life demonstrated the power of rest. And in it Tricia refers to rest as an act of abolition. There’s a word I don’t hear often.
Words Matter, But Action Matters More
I do think words can sometimes be our downfall, but I also recognize when people use specific words they are trying to tell us something specifically, something that maybe we have not encountered before. It’s an ask to think differently. And I am always here for that kind of party.
Abolition as a Practice
So I did a little digging on this idea of abolition and I found this beautiful article co-written by Reina Sultan and Micah Herskind from 2020. You remember 2020. Global pandemic, racial reckoning, people saying the quiet part out loud. It was a global powder keg of “what about my needs?”Sultan and Herskind offer this idea of abolition as a verb, a practice, the taking of consistent action to build safety and to tear down harmful institutions. It’s quite simple. It’s an answer to everyone who has a need. (Everyone does).
Abolition is all about 3 things:
- choosing not to harm
- dismantling that which has harmed and
- rehabilitating those who have caused harm.
Choose. Dismantle. Build again.
It’s so simple. Be more helpful. Do Better.
The Role of Inclusive Leadership
I’ve taught inclusive leadership for my entire career and I say that because I started my career working in management and helping teenagers learn how to mentor and tutor k-12 students and in that role, being inclusive means listening to your students. It means loving on them with positive affirmation and recognition. It means finding where they are in their reading or their math understanding and then meeting them there. It is all about being helpful and doing the most helpful thing moment to moment and it’s amazing how easily teenagers can grasp this point. You don’t have to explicitly tell them to give a kid a high five or to tell them good job or to take 15 seconds to do the latest dance move with an 8-year-old. It comes naturally because some of that is just straight up being human and that’s regardless of where you come from or how you were raised.
The Gift of Togetherness
We know how to connect with each other if we’re open to it and unafraid. But maybe it’s the two edged sword of the pandemic that has us remember that if we are all connected, your hurt can travel across the globe and become my hurt too. Vulnerability opens us up to love and to hurt too. At the same time. And yea, that’s scary. To mask or not to mask. . . we are all breathing the same air.
Every Action can be a Bridge or a Barrier
I think every behavior, every action that we take has an opportunity to be helpful and be a bridge to humanity, a bridge to the gift of together. Every action can also be a barrier. And sometimes what’s a bridge for us is a barrier for someone else. And oof, the shame we feel when we make that mistake. But mistakes don’t make us wrong. Mistakes make us human. And if you can extend yourself grace, your humanity shouldn’t scare you away from relationships.
Sometimes you extend an olive branch and poke someone in the eye.
Oops. Say sorry and try again. Be more helpful. Do Better. There’s room for nuance, there’s room to learn from what others are telling us they need. There’s room to change our own behaviors – to rehabilitate ourselves if you will. But I don’t need to read you all of Charles Duhigg’s masterpiece to explain that change is hard. Change requires effortful practice. To move us from our automatic go to responses to something different requires time and a whole heaping spoonful of self-compassion (what’s up grace?)
Changing Behavior: The Olive Branch Dilemma
And so I started thinking about how many of us are even aware of our automatic ways, of the behaviors that we’ve learned and the ways that we automatically extend olive branches and take out so many eyes. Can we name them? And then when we realize that our favorite olive branch is in fact an arrow? Or maybe just a gnarly pointy stick? What do we do with that data? Cuz I know sometimes those actions, those words, those ways of being, they become our security blanket. The ways that we comfort ourselves and tell us that we’re good people. We’re doing our best. What more can anyone want from us right?
Recognizing Automatic Behaviors
And so many of my clients over the years have asked me exactly this. “But I am extending olive branches. I don’t mean to offend. I’m so used to doing it this way. It worked fine 10 years ago.” They are asking me to make the changing part easier. . .or worse to make it less different from what they already know how to do. Ha. Write me a script, give me a dictionary, tell me the words to say and the things to do so I never have to think about this again. But that’s the thing. All of the work is in the thinking, and thinking actively, presently (not 10 years ago, and probably not 10 minutes ago either).
The Power of Naming Automatic Behaviors
I started toying with this idea more and more recently. I engaged with a new client who has been struggling in particular with finding their starting point. Every time I met with them team members were asking another version of the same question. “But what do I do? What should I do? And what about this situation or this situation?”
And it occurred to me that they just maybe didn’t have any vocabulary to understand that the stick they were carrying wasn’t so helpful after all. You have to first recognize that you hold the power to change your behaviors. Not me. It’s all you. And I started thinking about categories of automatic behaviors that can trick us into thinking that they’re always olive branches; those things that we do that have served us in so many ways. Whether that’s working extra hard or collecting degrees or making sure all our “i’s” are dotted, the “t’s” crossed, or smiling to avoid a conflict. . . there are a lot of ways that we think are helping, that are secretly daggers blocking us from vulnerable, supportive relationships. And that’s the learning part. Recognize your automatic and see it for what it always is: double-edged.
I think there are six categories of automatic behaviors that can be barriers to us being in harmony with humanity:
Six Automatic Personas
- The Critic
- The Pacifier
- The Hustler
- The Controller
- The Robot
- The Lone Wolf
Learning to Rehabilitate Ourselves
All of these personas have their benefits to protect us individually, but it’s when they are overused in the collective that we see they are not always helpful for relating to others. And by extension, they’re not even helpful to ourselves, because of course no human is an island. We actually do need each other. We crave being with one another (remember 2020?) and somehow we have forgotten how to do that in a way that mitigates harm. But if we could learn, or actually re-member (like an awkward teenager giving a third grader a high five), well then you know what that would look like? Abolition.
A Path to Re-connection: Abolition as Re-membering
- choosing not to harm
- dismantling that which has harmed and
- rehabilitating those who have caused harm (us)
I created a behavior assessment based on these principles and profiled these 6 automatic behavior personas. And then, because I’m me, I went down a research rabbit hole providing people with tangible information about how those automatics are embedded in white supremacy culture. And then because my coach brain is always on, I profiled the thought patterns, the beliefs and the words that we can use to reframe and rehabilitate those automatics to be more supportive in interpersonal relationships.
Are You a Hustler or Lone Wolf?
I’m curious. Are you part of hustle nation? Do you believe in working 10 times as hard? How many letters come after your name and why did you go after them? or maybe you’re a lone wolf– someone who believes the only way to get things done is to do it yourself. Workaholic much? How’s that going for you? I know how it went for me. I mean, that’s why I ended up reading Tricia Hersey at 40, and spent a small fortune working with a rest coach. Too much of a good thing is just that; too much. But I think if we choose to, we can slow down, extend ourselves grace, and learn how to be together again.
Final Thoughts on Abolition and Self – Reflection
I’m putting the final touches on the assessment this week but would love to hear your thoughts about abolition. How do you choose to do no harm, dismantle that which has caused harm, and rehabilitate yourself? Because of course when it comes to the human condition, all of us are guilty of transgressions. Check out if the Allyship and Calling Forth workshop we offer is ideal for your team.
