Desiree Adaway on Challenging Oppression in Company Cultures

Desiree Adaway, principal at The Adaway Group, is a seasoned nonprofit consultant and facilitator. Her work involves helping people, organizations and institutions create systems to mitigate the multiple forms of oppression that affect our lives. She isn’t afraid to address anything that gets in the way of Great Work.

In this interview, Desiree reflects on:

• Why you need to understand the norms, policies and behaviours that are maintaining oppression before you can change company culture.
• The importance of choosing bravery over safety.
• How to recognize crossroads moments.

Resources

• Desiree Adaway’s website
• Desiree Adaway on Twitter
• Desiree Adaway on LinkedIn
• Desiree Adaway on Facebook

Also mentioned in this podcast:

• Barbara J. Love
• “The Cycle of Socialization” by Dr. Bobbie Haro

Full Transcript

Michael: So, here we are. Back to The Coaching Habit Podcast. I am your host, Michael Bungay Stanier. I don’t think I’ve ever called myself that before, but yes, that’s me on this end of the phone. So, who, you are wondering is on the other end of the phone? Who am I having a conversation about today around insights and the journey and the tools and whatever to become somebody who can become more coach like in the world? Well, it is a long-time friend of mine, Desiree Adaway. You know, I’ve actually known Desiree for probably about ten years, although we just connected briefly before we hit the record button. I’m like, I haven’t seen her or spoken to her for about three years or something since we hung out by a pool down in Arizona somewhere.

Desiree Adaway: (Laughs) Yes. That’s exactly.

Michael: Exactly. So …

Desiree Adaway: No, remember, I ran into you randomly in Miami, Florida.

Michael: That was so amazing. You were walking the street and it’s like, “Michael!” I’m like, “Nobody knows me here, so I don’t know what’s going on”, but it was Desiree just happened to be walking in the same street in the same city on the very same day.

Desiree Adaway: That’s right. Exactly.

Michael: That was so cool. I had forgotten about that. Anyway, why we are talking to Desiree, well, she is a wonderful person, wonderful woman, great coach. She is a seasoned non-profit consultant facilitator, and as she teaches, all of her content is thought provoking but infused with both humor and wit, and you’ll get a really good sense of that as we talk today. As she teaches she really makes a point to connect with the people she works with, to create a safe space for their growth because that’s kind of the focus of Desiree’s work. She’s known by the people around her, the staff, the leadership, the peers, the partners as being open, honest and a great champion for productive conversations. And here’s what I love, she is really willing to look at the stuff that potentially gets in the way of us doing great work. Not just the external factors, but how we show up with our own fears and anxieties and our biases, all of that and how that can get in the way of doing great work. So, you can see a perfect person to be talking to today. So, Desiree, welcome. It’s so nice to be talking to you again.

Desiree Adaway: It’s so nice to be invited and be here and have the opportunity to share with your community. Thank you.

Michael: Actually, I’m just going to jump in and ask this question right away. What are you up to these days? I mean, I’ve known you for some years and you’ve been doing interesting stuff. I’m curious to know what’s the work you’re excited about, that you’re really kind of on fire about these days?

Desiree Adaway: I would actually say I’ve been doing a lot of anti-oppression work. And not just anti-race. I’ve been helping a lot of organizations have some really difficult conversations around race, class and gender. So, if you were to ask me ultimately what I’ve been up to, I like to say I’ve been ultimately up to liberation and figuring out how we all get free together.

Michael: Hooo… That’s a pretty fine call to action, isn’t it? I love that. I feel like I should be picking up a flag and waving it right at this moment.

Desiree Adaway: Yeah. How do we get free together? It’s really the work I’ve been doing.

Michael: How, I mean you’re a black woman, but I’m curious to know what brought you to this sort of work? I mean how do you end up doing this?

Desiree Adaway: Well, I’ve kinda always done it, right? So, I was always the person when I was worked within institutions, organizations and then when I’ve been working for myself in almost the past ten years, I was always the person who would have the difficult conversations, and working with clients I realized that a lot of those difficult conversations were about race, class or gender, and around the institutions and organizations that we worked with. So, I help people, organizations, and institutions really understand, analyze and act to create systems that help us mitigate these multiple forms of oppression that effect our lives, and that could sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, language justice, abilities, all these different things. We all have these different identities and these multiple dimensional realities that we navigate work with.

Michael: Such a big conversation. How good are organizations at engaging in conversations like that? I mean, I’ve no doubt that there are people within them, you know, perhaps the people in some form or another, championing diversity and inclusion in the work that’s being done. People who bring you in to help them and do that work. But, just in general, I’ve found organizations, they’re just resistant …

Desiree Adaway: They suck at it.

Michael: They’re resistant to change. There’s this homeostasis, like, we like the way it’s always been. So, I’m just curious to know how you kind of start that process of liberation or those conversations about oppression within organizations.

Desiree Adaway: Well, it has to start with leadership. You know, I always told folks … so, normally, right, the conversation comes, “Oh, Desiree. Help us.” Basically help us with diversity. Help us hire … when people say diversity they mean it in the most basic sense of the word, right? So, what they’re saying is, “Help us hire more brown people” or some outward diversity, right, so we can check off these boxes. And that’s data. Inclusion is a feeling of belonging, of shared power. And I always tell organizations, you start with diversity but it actually ends with justice.

Michael: Nice.

Desiree Adaway: And so, I then help them see a pathway because this work is not optional. It’s 2018. The demographics is that the country is getting browner and younger, so organizations that don’t, they don’t crack this nut now, will be irrelevant 20 years from now.

Michael: So, I am a straight, white, over-educated, western, eloquent man.

Desiree Adaway: Funny man. You forgot funny.

Michael: Oh, okay. I’ve got a sense of humor as well. That is true.

Desiree Adaway: Yes.

Michael: So, I do a pretty good job at feeling included all the time because, you know, the …

Desiree Adaway: Because the world is built around you.

Michael: The world is built around me. If I’m not feeling included, I’ve done something wrong somewhere because the world is set up to make me feel included. How do you help people like me understand that the way I feel is not necessarily the way other people are feeling? ’Cause I get the feeling of inclusion, ’cause it’s with me a lot of the time. But how do I get that empathy for other people and go, “Well … “

Desiree Adaway: How do I teach you to be empathetic? Well, first I actually have help you … I use a model by this great genius woman called Barbara Love and it’s called liberatory consciousness. And at liberatory consciousness we really talk about the people who are the most marginalized, who are the most targeted, should always be at the center of the solution. So, say we’re in an institution or organization. Whoever your most marginalized staff folks are, if you are making sure their needs are being met, then trust me, Michael, your needs as the white, straight, heterosexual, English speaking, you know, upper middle-class man your needs will be met. So we have to flip that power structure. And, so, when we think of liberatory consciousness, it has four or five steps in awareness, so it’s us understanding, doing our work, processing how is this person not being seen, heard, or acknowledged. Really getting an understanding of that. And then we do an analysis. What are the norms, the policies, the behaviors that are maintaining this oppressive thing for these folks.

Then after that, you do action because you can not do the right action without the analysis. Action without analysis causes harm.

Michael: Right. It’s just like running around like a headless chicken.

Desiree Adaway: Check the headless chicken. So from that deep analysis, you then get to do the right action, the best, the next decision that will challenge and transform the policies and the norms and the culture. And then, from there is accountability. How do we know that it’s working?

Michael: It feels to me that this is process that takes me, you know, as a person right at the moment right at the heart of the way things work kind of through a process of shifting me a little bit or a lot so that, as you say, you get to put that person who’s been oppressed, most oppressed perhaps, right at the center of the way things are run now. And, you know, I’m like, I’m all for inclusion in theory, but in practice I don’t really want to give anything up.

Desiree Adaway: Right? Exactly. And this is what you have to understand. Michael, you are so privileged, right?

Michael: Right.

Desiree Adaway: But the thing about privilege is you can give it away all day long and you’ll never lose it. You, Michael, will never lose all your privilege. You can share it in all the amazing ways. You could wake up every morning and you can do something amazing for 18 million people and the next day you’re still going to wake up as Michael Bungay Stanier, white man full of privilege.

Michael: I love that. It’s a really powerful insight. It’s that whole metaphor around light. That once you light another candle, you haven’t diminished your own candle you’ve just lit another candle.

Desiree Adaway: You don’t get diminished by being empathetic. You don’t get diminished by questioning the status quo. And no one is saying that difference, that by bringing in that voice that has not been heard, that you don’t get a say. That’s not what is being said at all. So what’s at the center of this work is actually you saying, “I’m not going to uphold the status quo that puts me at the top of this hierarchy.” It’s you saying, “I’m actually going to be brave in my personal life, in my professional life and I am going to push the status quo.” Because you know what’s at the center of keeping that status quo?

Michael: No.

Desiree Adaway: Fear, ignorance, confusion and insecurity.

Michael: Right. It does feel a lot safer hanging out with a bunch of other straight, white men. In my case.

Desiree Adaway: Which is why I actually tell people, “If you want to be safe, I’m not the person you work with. If you want to be brave, I’m the person that you work with.”

Michael: I love that. Well, let me shift the conversation to talk about you, because what I love about this podcast series is is when I talk to great leaders, great coaches, great thinkers, you know, you’re one of all of those, it’s not just what do you do and how do you do it. It’s like, what’s the journey you’ve taken to get here? One of the questions I love is, what’s the cross road moment or moments that’s brought you here? That moment where you’ve like, I could have gone left. I could have gone right. I went left and that kind of made all the difference. I’m wondering if you have a story there to share.

Desiree Adaway: Well, there are a couple of things. So, this is always been a part of my work. I over the years, I’ve always worked with activists, and with activist organizations and have coached activist leaders, have helped in terms of strategy and fundraising and kind of, you know, thinking of long-term coalition building. So, I had clients who were on the front line in Ferguson and in Baltimore and in Chicago and so, folks that y’all saw on the news getting tear-gassed and arrested were organizations and clients that I worked with. So, In working with those folks, the level of amazing commitment and bravery and just commitment to community and love of community I found to be wholly inspiring.

But I think my kind of cross road moment happened when Sandra Bland was murdered in Texas. I think it hit me in particular because I have a daughter who is exactly Sandra Bland’s age and who moved across country to take a job, just like Sandra Bland had done, and my background is also in international development and I did a lot of work living and working abroad and I understand and have lived in countries where people have disappeared. And so, when Sandra Bland was stopped because of … you know, how many times have you driven a car and didn’t signal when you were changing lanes, Michael? A million. Can’t even remember. And then when she was stopped for a traffic incident, ended up in jail for a weekend and was dead by Monday, when that video came out about how that all went down, I literally think something inside of me broke because I was like, “that could be my kid”, and for me, I really said, “Wow. We literally now live in a country where people are scooped up and disappear with the police over a weekend and then are wound up dead.” That is some third world regime.

Michael: Right. It’s like, That was happening in Chile or El Salvador in 1970.

Desiree Adaway: That is what happened in Apartheid. That is what happened in Apartheid.

Michael: Right.

Desiree Adaway: And it hit me that there has to be more urgency in this work. There has to be more urgency in this work and that social justice is not just a goal. It’s a process. And it means for me, full and equitable participation for all of our social identities, and that we need systems and institutions that meet all of our needs not some of our needs.

Michael: Thanks. Thank you for telling us that.

Desiree Adaway: Yeah.

Michael: So, as part of that journey, part of it for me is seeing those cross road moments, those moments that have sparked us into commitment or action or a kind of bolder step forward into whatever that journey might be for us, and I think part of what allows us to move toward mastery is, of course, not just the work we do for others, but the work we do for ourselves, our own work. As I say on most of these podcasts, I’m like, turns out that I don’t have a thousand lessons to learn. I have two lessons to learn 500 times each. It’s just the same damn thing just showing up in a slightly different way. So I’m always curious to know that people like you, who I look up as a master, you know, what’s the hard lesson you’ve had to learn along the way or maybe continue to learn along the way?

Desiree Adaway: That there’s always something else to learn.

Michael: Right.

Desiree Adaway: I wake up every day and I read. I had folks who were laughing at me because I was reading a book on critical race theories and then intersectionalities and oppression and then for lunch I was reading a book around conflict and how do you have conflict in ways that don’t necessarily trigger people so it’s not abuse. One, that there’s always something to learn, and then, for me, in my day to day in working with institutions, my language has got to evolve more. I use ableist and sexist language, gender language, all the time. I’m 52 and when I’m teaching or training I’ll use terms like, “guys”.

Michael: Right. That’s weird isn’t it, that one? I find myself doing that. I’m like, “hey guys.”

Desiree Adaway: Yeah. Or I’ll say something like, “They were totally blind to this,” and I’m like, that’s sexist and ableist language and there are better ways for me to say these things. And so, when I teach, I will say to a group, “Let me tell you one of the things that I am currently working on. It is my language, so as I’m teaching y’all today, as we’re working through these things, if I use ableist or sexist language and you hear that” I say, “throw a piece of paper at me. Wad it up and throw it at me.”

Michael: I like it. I like it. Thank you.

Desiree Adaway: ’Cause I like to be called out in those exact moments. And that way I can model how to apologize and how to move forward because in this work we all will make mistakes, and I want us to learn how not to throw people away when we make the mistakes.

Michael: And what I love is I can hear you banging on the table as you’re talking.

Desiree Adaway: I get too angry when I use them when I’m like, “Ahhh, I know better.”

Michael: Yeah, I know. I hadn’t thought about the “I’m blind to you.” I know that I occasionally go, “Hey guys, why don’t we do this?” And I’m like, that is such a weird thing to be saying to a room that’s like half women typically. So yeah, it’s very confusing like that sometimes.

Desiree Adaway: So I use the term “y’all” a lot.

Michael: You do?

Desiree Adaway: Um hmm.

Michael: I was wondering whether you needed to call that out as being some kind of weird Southern Texas thing or … I’m sorry. That not allowed either.

Desiree Adaway: Yeah, it’s a weird Southern thing, but it works in a room like that.

Michael: That’s very good. So, let me tap into your expertise as a coach and a facilitator because part of what I love about this podcast series is I get people to share the tools that they love, the tools that they work with, the ones that are kind of their go to tools or processes or models because the people who are listening who, I’m going to guess that not many of them are actual coaches, but there’s a bunch of people committed to being more coach-like. And they’re always looking for the best tools and the best processes to use. So, do you have a default beloved tool or process or model that you find you use consistently in your work?

Desiree Adaway: So there’s a professor, Bobbie Harro, who has two pieces that I always use, foundational pieces that I always use in my work, and they go together, and Dr. Harro created the cycle of socialization and then the cycle of liberation. And the cycle of socialization basically shows how all of us are biased, how all of us uphold the status quo. How we are socialized and then how if we don’t follow the socialization we get punished. It’s a circle and it talks about the people who first socialized you and then how systems and institutions, churches and music and language, you know, how you’re socialized into that. And then it talks about how we hit dissonance, right? Like how something happens and we have a choice and that choice is … and that’s one of the questions I ask people is, you know, what actions are you doing to uphold the status quo? So, are we going to stay and uphold the status quo and then just continue with that cycle, or we can step off that cycle and step into the cycle of liberation.

And the cycle of liberation talks about how, then, we relearn, how we bring in new communities, how we share our learning, how we expand our view of the world, and so I use both of those pieces quite often as foundational pieces to how do we get where we need to go. We first need to understand how we all got here, and how getting here does not make us … there’s no guilt that we need to bring with that, but there’s responsibility and now how do we take that on and move forward?

Michael: Kind of like you’ve got your version of the red pill, the blue pill there. Like, do you keep circling the circle of socialization and go, “I’m fine. It’s fine. We’re all fine.” Or step into the red pill or whatever, and cycle of liberation where you’re going, “and here’s how we disrupt the status quo to bring forth, you know, equality and liberty for people.”

Desiree Adaway: Yeah. And while at the center of that status quo is that fear, ignorance, and confusion and insecurity. What’s at the center of liberation is joy and love and community and, you know, all the things. It doesn’t matter what oppressive system you are fighting, if we don’t build this new vision with joy and community and love and balance then we’re just going to create some other oppressive system.

Michael: Desiree, this has been a great conversation and there are going to be people who are really interested in finding out more about you and the work that you do and kind of connecting with you in ways. So, thank you. And I’m grateful for the work you are doing in this world. For the people who want to find more about you, can you point them to where they can find you on the web or somewhere?

Desiree Adaway: Sure. Desireeadaway.com. d-e-s-I-r-e-e-a-d-a-w-a-y.com. I’m on Facebook. I love friending and connecting with folks on Facebook and I’m still one of the few people who still love Twitter. I love me the Twitter.

Michael: Oh, that’s great.

Desiree Adaway: I still use it because, I actually use Twitter to follow some of the brightest minds I know; writers and journalists and activists, and keep abreast of what’s happening that way.

Michael: That’s brilliant. So Desiree Adaway. I love the rhythm of your surname, A-d-a-w-a-y. Perfect. Desiree, such a pleasure. Thank you.

Desiree Adaway: Thank you. I appreciate it.