How to facilitate a safe DEI workshop in the COVID-19 Era
DEI Action Notes: Real-Time Strategies from the Field
Kicking off a new bi-monthly micro series on diversity, equity and inclusion to share what I’m learning in real-time from the field.
Grateful to facilitate a three-day socially distant workshop retreat series late August for a small team of seven on Values, Courageous Conversations and Compassionate Anti-Oppressive Leadership for a client close to my heart City Surf Project, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that provides youth in the Bay Area with equitable access to the ocean and surfing. Here's a capture of what I've been learning:
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Facilitate outdoors with an agreement that everyone will stay at least 6 feet away with their mask, get tested before and after the retreat. The facilitator or person speaking can ask permission to remove their mask, to be vulnerable, to let themselves be literally seen. And this person to ensure COVID precautions, must remain strictly, at least 6 feet away. We facilitated our retreat in Precita Park and the parking lot of City Surf Project’s office. The conditions weren’t ideal, there was construction and police officers making sure people in the park were wearing their masks. We had to use our phones and iPads to view my Google slide presentation around difficult conversations as projecting a screen indoors was not an option. However, I was inspired by the creativity of our team amidst a global pandemic. Going from facilitation over Zoom to in person (even with masks at 6+ feet away) was like going from a mobile music app to tickling the keys of a grand piano, the unsung songs just poured from the room
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Co-design with your community. It was really important as an organization that is focused on serving youth, to have young people involved in shaping the workshop experience and refining the organizational values. As City Surf Project alumnus and surf coach Jarryd Aureus said, “The community should be led by the people in the community.” I worked closely with Jarryd to finalize and present our organizational values back to the team.
Community Agreements for a culture of radical inclusion
Beginner’s mind
What is said here, stays here. What is learned here, leaves here.
If you tend to speak less, take space. If you tend to speak more, make space.
Understand the difference between intent and impact. Be conscious of how humor, sarcasm or speech might cause unintended harm.
Be present, listen to really hear.
Celebrate vulnerability, have the courage to share what you really feel, and think - your dreams, fears, life experiences and insecurities.
Embrace failure. It’s better to show up imperfectly than not at all.
No one knows everything: together we know a lot.
Breath into discomfort, pause if things get heated.
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Co-create community agreements that shape the culture of your workshop -- and enable you to hold people accountable around micro aggressions and speech that may cause unintended harm. We repeated the agreements at the start of each afternoon to remind people of the container we were trying to create, emphasizing the agreements that people, particularly a group of mostly white cisgender men, were most likely to avoid or break, such as "celebrate vulnerability, have the courage to share what you really feel and think."
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Sloowwwwww down, breathe. Practice collective mindful meditation. Every workshop following the community agreements started with a short meditation to help people stay present and grounded. Things may get heated, which happened at our retreat, calm the room through the breath. Don’t be afraid to pause or sit with the discomfort of silence or difficult emotions.
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Inspire the most powerful person in the room to role model anti-oppressive vulnerability. The Executive Director Johnny Irwin did an incredible job of creating psychological safety at the outset of our retreat by sharing a heartfelt story of his life -- from navigating the shame of a learning disability to admitting to upholding white supremacy on the waves as a white man of means. We worked closely together before the retreat alongside their operations manager Meg Hanebutt to be hyper intentional around nourishing a culture of psychological safety.
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Hold people accountable in real time. Your community agreements will empower you and other folks in the room to call out with kindness -- micro aggressions, malicious speech and behaviors that might be interpreted as oppressive. I often start by asking someone,”May I offer you gentle feedback around something you just said?” If they say yes, I may say something like,”I want to offer a humble perspective. I say this with love and kindness, I know this wasn’t your intention, your comment caused me pain as someone who has experienced a temporary physical disability -- and made me feel unseen and someone who hasn’t always been fully able-bodied.”
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Embrace the messiness, normalize discomfort. Not every workshop will neatly wrap into a beautifully tied bow. Sometimes you need to leave and end a workshop with discomfort, without a sense of optimistic closure to get people to truly change their behavior. Things will get messy. You may feel as though you’re on the verge of team destruction but if you can stay with the discomfort of difficult feelings, it will bring you closer to your colleagues in a way you never imagined. Dismantling racism, transphobia, sexism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, classicism and other forms of oppression requires a certain level of destruction of existing systems to arrive at enduring equitable and inclusive organizational transformation.
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Move through the discomfort through a somatic practice. Following the last workshop on organizational values, we took a team field trip to surf at the infamous Ocean Beach. It was so healing and centering to spend time in nature together, to move from our heads to our hearts and our bodies, to let go of the tension, the difficult feelings and anxieties, to be one with the water. Even if you are facilitating a remote workshop, find a way to incorporate physicality and movement into the experience-- whether it is a short yoga session, dancing or eating the same food together. We need the physical now more than ever.
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This is just the beginning. An annual retreat or training on diversity, equity and inclusion is not enough. It needs to be an embedded habit in the organization. Part of what I have been working on with City Surf Project is making diversity, equity and inclusion more explicitly tied to their values and organizational strategy with the hope of diversifying their leadership and staff, creating a culture of safety, sustainability and sensitivity, and kicking off monthly Surf and Shares that enable us to talk about difficult things like racism and sexism then go surf together in the ocean.
@melissaandrada
Support City Surf Project's Back to the Beach Fundraising Campaign, help marginalized youth in the Bay Area get equitable access to surfing and the ocean! <3