Leading with Emotional Courage
Justin Reinert is an exceptional DEI practitioner-leader, and it was an honor to be a guest on his show, The Creating Belonging Podcast. I shared my personal narrative and delivered powerful insights on creating spaces where underrepresented voices aren't just present but are influential in shaping the culture of organizations. We navigated the complex web of power dynamics and organizational culture, and I elevated the often-overlooked facets of authenticity and allyship in the workplace.
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Understanding and being able to name the concept of emotional courage has been a journey of self-discovery for me as a Black woman. Emotional courage is the willingness to feel and open yourself to not just experiences but the unpleasant emotions that could come with that. That is why I love The Creating Belonging model as a guide for bold leadership.
For me, the model has everything to do with cultivating and nurturing environments that would welcome this type of mindset shift, honor it, and allow it to thrive. So not dismissing the idea of change but embracing it with open arms and leaders really modeling and advocating the self-awareness required to move the ball forward.
I am touching on this idea of superficiality and surface glances that many companies and organizations and agencies and leaders are driven and captivated by. The shiny object, but it's just the surface, it's the superficial piece of it. We are not talking about that, because that approach subdues the tough emotions. It's not digging deep and doing the real work to enact lasting systems change. In the absence of that, you're really speaking to this absence or void of emotional courage. DEI and belonging and justice work and efforts and outputs and outcomes - they will not be realized unless we dig deeper and give ourselves and our people permission to dig deeper.
The uncomfortable feeling that we get when we talk about race and social equity and equality and change, that means we’re on to something. If you feel tense and uneasy - well, that's emotional courage kicking in - you're engaging, and it should feel hard. It should feel hard to confront what's in your way. That is the advocate coming behind you, raising questions to disrupt what clearly isn’t working.
Ask yourself: what is the barrier, what is the obstacle, what is the impediment, what is the false hope, what is the misstep, what is the challenge? When you activate that emotional courage needed to lead, those hard parts become much easier. But it really is that emotional courage that's missing from leadership in many organizations, and I talk a lot about this idea of a ready-now leader. The readiness piece is often overlooked as part of the leadership journey. If you're not developing those readiness skills, you're not going to be able to create an environment that welcomes something like The Creating Belonging model.
In my opinion, in my experiences, belonging is part of inclusion - authenticity is part of inclusion – and there is connective tissue that brings these pieces together. As a DEI practitioner, I realize there are opinions about so many different things. People want to be able to define things in ways that make them comfortable. And how do we get to that unified place? How do we talk about bringing it all together so that people can operate cohesively? You can have your opinion, I have mine, and how do we bring those pieces together? How do we think about the diversity? How do we focus on representation or the composition of the entity? How do we talk about inclusion? How do we talk about those contributions that people make? How do we bring all of that together? With the presence of different and varying perspectives, people want to feel included and heard; and that, I think, is that common thread we search for when we talk about emotional courage.
We must set the stage and explore different areas that provide useful data: the ready-now leader who’s missing that readiness piece. The ready-now leader who's taking the job because of the higher salary. The ready-now leader who's thinking about career advancement, regardless of activating spaces that ensure their people are well looked after and are given access to opportunities to advance their own careers. Are they ready-now leaders …at all? The other piece of emotional courage is recognizing when the role isn't for you and you're not ready. Something that I talk about is understanding that leadership is not for everyone, stepping back and being OK with that admission and acceptance, having that self-awareness to be able to activate that type of emotional courage. Leadership requires a full scan of the whole picture. How do you bring your people along? A measure of selflessness is required to be able to ask: how do we make this something that everyone can feel good about?
