Right here good morning everybody happy friday good morning good morning we'll give a moment just for everyone to start funneling in if you can in the chat just share with us uh where you're tuning in from that way we know the chat is working and we can interact with all of you as well as.
Get to know where you're coming from in the world hi lee from oregon charlene in la you nicholas good morning catherine in san francisco hello good morning good morning all right we will go ahead and get started i know we still have some folks joining us um but thank you so much everyone for being here with brian lanier and i uh for our session our community event on allyship advocacy in the workplace.
We are thrilled to be partnering with brian um this month for black history month and for several workshops uh both community events and ask the expert sessions as well as full-length workshops um on topics of diversity equity and inclusion and especially in today's world just creating healthier more collaborative inclusive work environments so thrilled to be partnering with brian on on this initiative um february and really just.
Moving forward um so all of you if you're new to these sessions if you found us through eventbrite um if you're if these are new faces my name is carly i'm the director of community over at learn it um and we host these uh 45 to 60 minute community events every other friday morning so there's two a month um at 8 30 a.m pacific time and they're always centered around a quarterly theme so our kind of theme for january february and march has been around design thinking and specifically in february around designing more inclusive workspaces.
As always these sessions are based on full-length workshops that we offer so this session on allyship we're just we're just getting started with this topic in this session um but we do have a full-length workshop on that which we'll speak on more at the end of the session um and they're always led by subject matter experts and guest speakers um so a couple of housekeeping items just before i introduce you to brian this session will be recorded um as well as we'll make a few of the slides available in our community.
And with that i'm really excited to introduce all of you to brian brian is really our our anchor and our our advisor for all topics around diversity equity and inclusion and leadership he's been a leader for some of the biggest names um in america and really around the world he's worked for starbucks he's worked for kfc um and holds a master's degree uh in.
Business and also studied journalism at the university of houston but really has been instrumental in helping us um kind of address these topics with our clients and just thrilled to have him come and um be here with our community today so thank you brian for being here and i'll hand it over to you awesome great carly uh good morning everybody or a good afternoon depending on where you are in the world i always love i've had the privilege carlos invited me to do i think this is my fourth opportunity now to do one of these sessions and i love when people come on and hearing where.
They're from from all over the world i'm based in calgary alberta canada uh the picture you saw of my bio page a moment ago was literally out in my backyard i live here with my uh spouse yvonne in our what we call our forever house and uh it doesn't look like it did in the picture you know right now it's minus eight uh degrees uh celsius and uh i shoveled snow this morning and walked the dog but uh um happy to be here with you all now all right um our conversation this.
Morning is on allyship and um i intend to have it be as interactive as possible as interactive as we possibly can with me sitting in calgary and you being at home and me not seeing you um towards that end though i do want you to know carly is going to be my full partner here so from time to time she might interrupt me with what she sees in the chat or she might have something that somebody is saying that i don't see on the screen and she she has full freedom to uh to jump right in we're going to be.
Leading this together i'm gonna go through some slides here um let me just pull my slides up on the screen and uh let's make sure here carly can you come on commute please and just let me know that you can see the single screen that says allyship being an advocate for all yep we're all good thanks brian thank you so um in the teaser that we gave you about this course um i just want a presence that our program as carly said this is a.
Taste like i go to the ice cream store and get a taste of the ice cream we're not going to cover everything in an hour
But this is a taste of our fuller curriculum that we have on diversity equity and inclusion and in this course when we work with people we're looking at having you move from thinking about to acting for all thinking about what is it like to be an ally for one person to what can i do to take on being an ally for all people so our allyship learning session it actually prepares people in your organization.To intervene in situations where they spot non-inclusive behavior such as hearing a colleague unconsciously say stating a bias in a meeting or when you hear somebody when you're observing someone being constantly interrupted so our training is designed to equip you to act confidently as an ally in all situations not only for colleagues who are from underrepresented groups historically but for your entire.
Workforce so having said that what we intend to cover today are the following uh we're going to spend a little time up front actually setting the context for today's conversation um setting the table if you will if you can see over my shoulder in my house here we have our dining room and uh typically we have ivan and i have been married before we have adult kids we have grandkids so we have an extended family sunday dinner with nine or 11 of us depending on who's.
In town around the dinner and my job is to set the table if you will and i i'm very meticulous about setting the table so we want to spend some time up front on this conversation literally setting the context or setting the table for what we're talking about before we dive right in we'll also coach you on how to listen how to listen to the conversation in a way you can get the most out of it we'll also dig into allyship our definition and our approach i saw one comment in the chat already uh.
Saying hey allyship do you mean alliance does that mean the same thing no it doesn't so we're going to take some time to give you our definition there are a lot of definitions out there we'll give you our definition and there are a lot of different approaches out there to taking on allyship we'll give you our approach uh we'll engage you in a conversation designed to have you look at why allyship matters uh what stops people from being an ally in the first place and the three stages of growth as an ally.
And then lastly in our hour together or less we'll coach you on how to apply all of this to your life how to apply being an ally or allyship for what we're offering how to apply it to work how to apply it to your organization or how to apply it to your life okay now with that said um i want to start off with setting the table if you will so let's look at allyship as an inquiry versus allyship as the truth.
What do i mean by that well i've been doing this work for a long time i still put myself in in other diversity equity and inclusion seminars and training courses myself and i'm an avid breeder and i believe in continuous lifelong learning and when you google the topic when i google the topic allyship i got over 800 million there were so many numbers you know it was even more than that but i'm not sure if it's a trillion or not so it's or a billion or not but i got over 800 million hits on.
Google alone about allyship so this conversation you it may trigger something for you i might show a slide or i might have a conversation you'll say no no no that's not right and then you'll tune me out so i'm inviting you to participate in a way that has you listen and as you interact in this conversation not as i'm giving you the truth like a tablet like you know like from mountain on high here like you must follow this no no no nothing of what i'm saying is.
The truth nothing of what i'm saying is the answer i'm sharing with you what i've either researched myself and i'll i'll cite where i got it from as we go through our session today and or what i've seen work with our clients or other case studies that i've looked at and if by the end of this session if you don't want to try it on you're under no obligation to try it on okay i mean offering it to you to try it on uh and even practice it more importantly after our tower to get today.
So this is allyship as an inquiry not allyship as the truth or the right
Answer all right so i want to start off with an invitation and this is an invitation on how to listen to the conversation to get the most out of it so this is an invitation to uh brave space and some of you that have participated in sessions with me before know that i uh get a lot from mickey scott bay jones she's a poet.She is an author keynote speaker huffington post recently acknowledged her as one of the up and coming uh leaders of her generation and of her niche and uh i'm gonna read a poem on the next page and the poem is an invitation to brave space because i'm inviting you to listen to the conversation in a way that has you step out of your comfort zone i'm inviting you to listen and participate in this conversation in a.
Way that has you step into what she is distinguishing as brave space at the end of the poem i'm going to ask you to come and let carly and i know what resonates about this poem for you i'll ask you to let us know what if anything jumps out at you okay so here's mickey scott bay jones's poem on an invitation to brave space and i'm inviting you to take that on for our time together so together we will create brave space because there's no such thing as a safe.
Space we exist in the real world we all carry scars and we've all caused wounds in this space we seek to turn down the volume of the outside world we amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere we call each other to more truth and love we have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow we have the responsibility to examine what we think we know we will not be perfect this space will not be perfect.
It will not always be what we wish it would be but it will always be our brave space together and we will work on it side by side by mickey scott bay jones so an invitation to brave space i'm inviting you to stand there today so i'd like to hear from you you can put it in the chat let carly know what about this poem resonates with you and also are you willing to practice brave space for the balance of today's session in other words.
These are parts that resonate with me are you willing to turn down the volume of the outside world are you willing to not multitask and actually be present for this call are you willing to examine what you think you know about allyship versus be defensive are you willing to have today not be perfect are you willing to actually allow us to uh experiment here and inquire so i'd like to hear from some people carly what do we have in the queue.
Charlene and a couple of folks are sharing the idea of that there's no such thing as a safe space or the difference between brave space and safe space um another uh case also shared that we all carry scars and have caused scars so sharing that empathy is super important um yeah brilliant great thank you and then i'd also like to know how many of you are willing to participate today coming from brave space whatever resonates with you.
You know you can just say yes or no or or you can even write it down on your own piece of paper so that you have something in front of you yes i'm going to participate in a way that i don't normally participate i'm going to actually stay present i'm going to actually turn down the volume of the outside world do we have any comments about people's willingness to participate today from brave space yeah a cup a lot of yeses in the chat and agreement that um that will be this and also you shared that it's it's our responsibility to.
Examine kind of how we show up so a lot a lot of agreement on that as well great thank you carly thank you everyone of course well i'm glad somebody uh touched on safe space and brave space let's take a moment uh and and look at that a little bit deeper so with safe space because we're talking about we're gonna move into allyship we're just shaping how we're listening today so safe space make no mistake we're not saying brave space is better than safe space safe space is a space where there's.
Dignity and respect and there's emotional and physical and psychological safety and comfort and it's fundamental to survival so make no mistake we're saying job one you want to make sure you your employees your team workers your families always have fundamentally a safe space now there's a difference between how we're relating to safe space and how we're relating to brave space i'm inviting you to consider that while.
Safe space is fundamental to our survival not only our physical survival but our survival in society you know making sure that we have the experience of being treated with dignity that we treat others with respect etc it can also be a limit on our opportunity to grow and develop now why would i say that safe space well it's it's foundational somebody put in the chat why would i also say in the next breath that it can be a limit to our growth and our.
Development somebody do we have any comments in the chat carly about the limits why safe space can be a limit to our growth and development yeah i think a couple people dorothy said it nice and succinctly she says comfort isn't linked to growth staying in the safe space limits your growth gloria echoes that as well brilliant thank you dorothy thank you uh gloria.
So when we look at brave space the way we're looking at it yeah it does take being uncomfortable uh when we work out you know no pain no gain if you if you're not getting some uh outside your comfort zone there's no growth and learning and we appreciate that it takes courage even courage to come off and and put something in the chat on a call today and brave space is your discovering examining what we think we know.
It also requires that we be present so we took this time we're setting the table we set the table so far by asking you to consider we're not giving you the truth or the right answer about or the only answer about allyship and then we are giving you an invitation you can say no you can say yes the invitation to step into brave space we want to make it clear we're not saying to be stupid or silly you know you do want to be safe obviously and where one grows is.
With brave space okay now with that said let's look at uh allyship here as i said at the top of the call there are over 800 million things that come up in under one second when you start typing the term allyship so allyship being an advocate for all is the name of our course we're giving you a taste of it today every single word that we use is here deliberately and we want to take a.
Moment to actually give you our definitions now again a caution i can't see you so i i don't know that this is going to be the case for you sometimes when we do our sessions and we give people our definitions sometimes it can drive up that fast brain thinking no that's wrong or yeah that's right or i agree with it again i'm inviting you to try on what we're offering and i'm inviting you to.
Let go of anything that comes up like oh no i don't agree with that just try it on so this is a definition of ally and this is a definition that we've borrowed from research done by uh the racial equity institute an organization dedicated to anti-racism and ending systemic racism they're based out of greensboro north carolina they've been around for years a very good organization that does a lot of research and we're going with their definition of an.
Ally an ally is someone who makes the commitment and effort to recognize their privilege based on gender class race sexual identity etc and work in solidarity with oppressed groups and the struggle for justice all right so we're going to say more about that when we get into um later on in our our conversation about the three stages of allyship what we wanted to have you get that's our fundamental definition of what it is to be an ally then the next part of our the term that.
We use in the name of this course is being so by being an advocate for all what do we mean we mean it's distinct from doing when we use the term being we mean someone who's authentically and naturally being an ally as their true self-expression so although we will give you the three stages if you simply write them down memorize them and try to be a robot and repeat them it won't it it'll be fake.
So we are offering that this is something to be practiced this is something to be ultimately if you take on being an ally at the third stage that we're going to get into but before the end of this call it takes on a natural self-expression and then advocate so an advocate is a person who publicly support to recommend a particular cause or policy and for all is we mean our focus is having all people experience being included with a.
Sense of i do belong here i do belong here exactly as i am and i do belong here exactly as i'm not so when we say the title of our our training program is allyship being an advocate for all this is what we mean this is what we mean by ally this is what we mean by being this is what we mean by advocate this is what we mean by all i know that's a lot there so another way of summing it up for us we want to borrow from a gandhi gandhi uh it civil rights a leader you.
Know stood for uh uh india being uh independent and nobel prize peace prize winner and he said this is uh uh slight modification of his exact quote but he said be the change you wish to see in the world so when we talk about being an ally we're talking about not doing something to help somebody else out we're talking about actually being the change that you wish to see in the world and carly anything on the chat or am i.
Going to keep going here we're good to keep going yeah we're going to keep going thank you shanette i'll uh i'll address that you can put your question in the chat as well but brian for now i think we're good thanks great thank you okay so uh i am going to ask uh for some people just to think about well why allyship matters so i do invite i'd love to hear from one or two people why does allyship matter.
Why do you think being an ally or allyship matters somebody yeah gloria says um because you need to stand up for others when needed carlotta says to make change in the world and uh carol also says there's there's a lot coming through the chat but that that in order to influence change um it's important to be an ally okay got that thank you.
All right again we're in the inquiry so even if your chat didn't get read please uh stay engaged and keep looking and our approach is one of um it's extremely important to create an organization where everyone feels included as we said a moment ago so um this first quote here is from um thomas schelling he's an economist who won the nobel prize in economics in 2005.
And he actually observed that large social consequences can flow from small adjustments in individual behavior and that actually came up you know as he was was studying what had people get along and cooperate and what had people go into conflict so this aspect of allyship you know a small group of people can evoke a large amount of change uh it starts with our individual.
Behavior uh an expression of what he's pointing to is if you think of uh george floyd's tragic murder you know one person and then people literally got protested and people that hadn't even considered before took on being uh allies of people that uh were from a diverse group than they were and that came from people taking on uh social consciousness and that came from people's expanding their awareness.
So that's what we're pointing to when we say large social consequences can flow from small adjustments in individual behavior so another aspect that we're asking to consider why allyship matters is allies are seen as being more effective than non-allies and this is from a variety of research that's been done so allies actually um are seen as being more effective when they stand up to confront non-inclusive behavior in other words if someone is walking the.
Talk of being an ally as we're going to distinguish what it is to be an ally then when they go to confront some non-inclusion inclusive behavior they're much more effective than someone who is quote-unquote quote-unquote a spectator you know and kind of jumps in or jumps out but they don't walk the talk allies are seen more as being more effective than non-allies when they advocate for diversity so again when they're actually you know they've they're uh taking on being an.