the uplift

“To incorporate the sense of oneself as part of a complex web of mutual dependence is to become more humble. At the same time, this humility enhances one’s ability to form bonds with others. In short, retreating from the center of things – both in reality and in one’s self-conception – is inseparable from forging connections that expand the boundaries of one’s self.” –Sarah Buss

In today’s episode I thread together what we’ve heard and learned from Jayne and Renee, along with some things I’ve learned from books on my bookshelf, and distill that into a few key ways to think and behave with a focus on inclusion, building trust, leaving space for other’s agency, and reducing harm.

I focus on how to move from humility and decentering ourselves, which Jayne and Renee advocate for, to action. I draw on ideas from Inclusion Uncomplicated, by Nika White; DEI Deconstructed, by Lily Zheng; White Feminism, by Koa Beck; and Radical Humility, a collection of essays edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jame Vander Broek. 

Additional resources

Rebekah Modrak's examination of Shinola -- how one big-name US brand co-opted the community of Detroit and continued its historical racialized representations of Blacks in the united States: Rethink Shinola.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Episode 47: White Women's Work: An Invitation, with Jayne Sommers

Episode 48: From Climate Crisis to AntiRacism

Episode 50: White Women's Nonsense, with Renee Wells

Episode 26: In Community: Interracial Feminist Co-Mentoring

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

Today I talk with Renee Wells about what it means to educate for equity through the lens of restorative justice. Renee is an educator and consultant with a grounding in the work of bell hooks and Paolo Freire, and I love how open and frank she is about all the things that we sometimes find hard to deal with…or to talk about…or to change…in our work on campuses. 

I wanted to speak with Renee particularly because she’s white and spends her time helping predominantly white campuses think about how to act and intervene in ways that disrupt racism, misogyny, homophobia, and all the other structural things that cause harm. Our shared whiteness frames our whole conversation: as Renee says at the end, we’re two white women with the time and energy to talk about these issues in ways that could easily be construed as just white women’s nonsense.

Renee has a preference for action - and in that spirit, consider this episode an invitation to shift from the nonsense of white women who are nice ladies thinking about themselves as antiracist, to being intersectional feminists who take action in support of all minoritized people on campus, across the many multiple minoritized identities they hold. 

If you're leading on a campus, Renee's call is to include in your decision-making and action-taking frameworks the focus on reducing harm. 🧡

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

The day Jayne and I talked about the book White Women: Everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better, I woke up here in Milwaukee to snow. In April. Yes I'm a Prince fan and yes I'm familiar with the jokes. 

On May 1 I was running an errand with my kiddo and we sat at a stopsign for about 7 extra seconds, marveling at the snowflakes hitting the windshield. Moments earlier it had been raining, and moments later it was raining again. But for a few moments, it was snowing. 

So I dug back into the audio recordings from my convo with Jayne and stitched together a short version of the first 20 minutes of our interview -- this is a new track where we connect the climate crisis to antiracism and unpack the ways that there is essentially one job for white women to do, and we need to do it over and over and everywhere. 

I hope you enjoy this shortie episode!

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

Come read this book in community! We're hosting a book discussion group facilitated by Dr. Jayne Sommers of the University of St. Thomas. Get the details and register at the website.🧡 

I love this book -- "White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better" -- a lot. And I’ll be honest: I don't enjoy reading it.

Aaaannnd…white women are not meant to enjoy it.

It’s meant to hurt – not to wound or cause harm, but to open white women to the ways we hurt others -- historically yes, but also today through our participation in white supremacy culture. And if you’re a feeling human, knowing you’ve hurt others – and learning that you’ve hurt others through your own words and actions –  should hurt. 

So I thought I’d share what reading this book is like for me because I think my experience as an educated white woman with leadership experience in higher ed will resonate with you.

In short: if you’re delaying reading this book because…you think it doesn’t apply to you because you’re not racist…or you feel some uneasiness about being schooled on your whiteness…or even if you’ve done a lot of DEI work on your campus so you’re not sure you have anything new or more to learn…I hope this episode can help you get over those hurdles, quit delaying, and read the darn book already.

White Supremacy Culture Characteristics: the website. The art is by Melanie Walby; check out her full portfolio.

Ten Ways White Supremacy Culture Hurts White People: A Tale of Mutuality, by Greg Elliott.

A significant book list, courtesy of Christina Holmgren & Jayne Sommers: https://theclareogroup.com/resources

Episode 47, White Women's Work: An Invitation, with Jayne Sommers

Episode 26, In Community: Inter-racial Feminist Co-Mentoring, with Christina Holmgren & Jayne Sommers

Episode 9, Unleashing the Power of Diversity by Creating Psychological Safety

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

Jayne Sommers shares her journey from first-born Capricorn -- achievement-oriented, striving for perfection, confident in her own rightness -- to anti-racist educator. She brings these experiences to her work as facilitator of our upcoming challenge: White Women's Work, where we'll spend a month exploring Regina Jackson and Saira Rao's work in White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How To Do Better. ps: Our potty-mouths let loose a bit on this one. 

Interested in the challenge? Join us here: https://theclareogroup.com/whitewomenswork

Learn more about Jayne at LinkedIn. 

Read Jayne's article: From Shame Spiral to Humility Helix.

Grab a copy of Jackson & Rao's book from the publisher.

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

If you work on a college campus, I’ll guess that most of what you do, all day long, is talk. You teach, mentor, and advise students. You run committee meetings. You report on your findings, whether you’re conducting research, designing systems, or enforcing policy. You send emails. You chat in Zoom. You message in Slack. You trouble-shoot and problem-solve. You talk to prospects – students, employees, donors. You hire and supervise people. All of that involves a helluva lot of…talking. 

Which means that whether you feel joy at work – whether you feel valued, whether you feel like you’ve really reached other people, whether you enjoy time with your colleagues, whether you get dopamine hits from the work you do – depends on the quality of your conversations.

In this episode we explore how to use feedback -- low-stakes, short, daily conversations with your colleagues -- to build trust and increase joy at work.

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

There's a story I regularly tell when I'm asked how I deal with conflict. It's of a time when a campus leader called my cell and chewed me out. Hard. In today's episode I unpack that story and try to disentangle what I usually say about it from what the neuroscience of conversations tells me. I come to some interesting truths along the way, all in the context of helping us think about how to understand the neurochemistry of our emotions when we're having fraught conversations.

Understanding what parts of your brain are activated in conversations, why they're activated, and the stories you're telling yourself about your physiological reactions (your racing heart and churning stomach) all give insight into the neuroscience of conversations -- and how you can harness that to turn difficult conversations grounded in fear into conversations that build trust.

https://theclareogroup.com/category/the-uplift-podcast/

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

“Twenty years of research involving more than 100,000 people reveals that the key skill of effective leaders, team mates, parents, and loved ones is the capacity to skillfully address emotionally and politically risky issues. Period.” (Crucial Conversations, pp 9-10)

Here’s some of the research showing how organizations benefit when teams are skilled at crucial conversations:

1. Respond five times faster to financial downturns – and make budget adjustments far more intelligently than less-skilled peers.
2. Are ⅔ more likely to avoid injury and death due to unsafe conditions.
3. Save over $1500 and an eight-hour workday for every crucial conversation employees hold rather than avoid.
4. Substantially increase trust and reduce transaction time in virtual work teams.
5. Influence change in colleagues who are bullying, conniving, dishonest, or incompetent.

In this episode I'm focusing on #3: saving money and time by having crucial conversations instead of avoiding them. 

With all that saved time, you and your team can focus on the things that really matter: your morale, inner work life, trust, and well-being. All the things that contribute to making work feel joyful. 

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

W•A•I•T is an easy framework that helps you ask: Why Am I Talking?
It's a great tool for slowing down, asking questions, and inviting greater participation in conversations. Get the details and grab my easy guide to the framework, along with a (very partial) list of powerful questions in today's episode.

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡

In this episode we revisit The Grounded Academic Leader from episode 30. I want to help you set yourself up for a strong start to your next term by reviewing your goals as this term comes to an end, and making adjustments based on what you've accomplished and learned to refine and recalibrate your goals for the next term. 

Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.

Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡