Ep.27 Supporting Systemic Equity Part 1: What's mine to do?

Across these 3 episodes, Katie talks with Michelle Davis, faculty member and Director of Systemic Equity Initiatives at CRR Global, about supporting systemic equity. As humans, we have diversity – we think differently, hold different perspectives and ideas – that’s what makes us unique and different and should be celebrated. Once we start to create fear based upon those differences - we begin to dehumanize groups of people and lock them out of opportunities. This 3-part series builds along the lines of the 3-levels of intelligence (Emotional Intelligence EQ, Social Intelligence SI and Relationship System Intelligence RSI). In part 1, Katie and Michelle look at system 1, the me system and what's mine to do in relation to supporting systemic equity. Topics include:

• Why supporting systemic equity starts with the self: how can we see where we are blind?
• Slowing down and getting curious about our unconscious drivers
• The impact of fear
• Getting to know the true nature of who we are.
• Making the unconscious conscious so that we can be more at choice around our reactions

Michelle Davis is a faculty member and Director of Systemic Equity Initiatives at CRR Global. Michelle’s professional journey has included a season of providing therapy, as a licensed professional counselor, to the most vulnerable among us; a season of developing and delivering experiential learning events that challenge and disrupt the status quo when the status quo no longer serves; and currently, a season providing leadership coaching as a certified organization and relationship systems coach and leading diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as a professor and director. In her work at the University of Colorado and previous experience working with systemic racism in other university systems, Michelle was the principal developer of a coaching program focused on Race Intelligence (RQ(™)). This program seeks to increase Race Intelligence by guiding others to increase their capacity to lean into discomfort with the intention of becoming aware of race and racism and its influence on oneself, others, and societal institutions; and use this increased intelligence or awareness consciously to dismantle intrapersonal mindsets, behaviors, and systemic representations of racism.  Michelle earned her master’s degree in counselling at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and, as well as being an ORSC-certified coach, is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a trained Co-Active Coach, and a Certified Dare to Lead Facilitator.


For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Transcript

Key 

KC – Katie Churchman 

MD - Michelle Davis

[Intro 00:00 – 00:06] 

KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and across the next three episodes I’m talking with Michelle Davis, faculty member and Director of Systemic Equity Initiatives at CRR Global, about supporting systemic equity. As humans, we have diversity – we think differently, hold different perspectives and ideas – that’s what makes us unique and different and should be celebrated. Once we start to create fear based upon those differences - we begin to dehumanize groups of people and lock them out of opportunities. This three-part series builds along the lines of the three levels of intelligence - emotional intelligence, social intelligence and relationship system intelligence. And in part one Michelle and I look at system one, the me system and what's mine to do in relation to supporting systemic equity. Topics include why supporting systemic equity starts with the self: how can we see where we are blind; slowing down and getting curious about our unconscious drivers; the impact of fear, getting to know the true nature of who we are; and making the unconscious conscious so that we can be more at choice around our reactions. Alongside her roles at CRR Global, Michelle’s professional journey has included a season of providing therapy, as a licensed professional counselor, to the most vulnerable among us; a season of developing and delivering experiential learning events that challenge and disrupt the status quo when the status quo no longer serves; and currently, a season providing leadership coaching as a certified organization and relationship systems coach and leading diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as a professor and director. Michelle has guided transformation that enables systems to move beyond what separates them to what connects them. In that vein and throughout her career as a trainer, instructional designer, leader and coach, Michelle has engaged teams in practices that foster equity and cultural humility while helping to reduce the power and practices dynamics that inhibit appreciating and leveraging those differences. In her work at the University of Colorado and previous experience working with systemic racism in other university systems, Michelle was the principal developer of a coaching program focused on Race Intelligence, RQ. This program seeks to increase Race Intelligence by guiding others to increase their capacity to lean into discomfort with the intention of becoming aware of race and racism and its influence on oneself, others, and societal institutions; and use this increased intelligence or awareness consciously to dismantle intrapersonal mindsets, behaviors, and systemic representations of racism. Michelle believes courage through relationships is the way forward to begin addressing the systemic inequities inherent in organizational structures today. These systemic inequities are learned, most often inherited, and are consciously perpetuated. But what is learned can be unlearned and navigated through by harnessing the potential of person-centered, systemic focus coaching. So without further ado I bring you Michelle Davis, talking about supporting system equity and in part one, focusing on what’s mine to do. 

KC – Michelle, welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast, I am delighted to have you on the show. 

MD – Thank you, I’m glad to be here. Excited for this conversation, I know it’s been a long time coming. But we’re here! 

KC – We’re here and we’re having a very important conversation over the next three episodes around how we can support systemic equity through the three levels of intelligence and today we’re looking at that me system, system one. 

MD – Yeah. 

KC – So I wonder if we can start with how the me system, how you feel this is so interconnected in the pursuit of supporting systemic equity. 

MD – Oh boy. There’s a lot of noise around us that points in various directions about how we need to address the inequities that live in our system. But we never point this way, at ourselves, we never look at our own level of comfort, our understanding, our level of awareness around these types of issues. So to me it’s like the question of how am I in relationship with these types of issues within my body, within my mind, my spirit, and if you can’t sort of source that here then it makes it nearly impossible for you to actually do the work horizontally, this is the vertical, the horizontal development that needs to happen for real true change to happen, has to start within us. The inner me. The inner parts of me. 

KC – That’s such a powerful point. I think it’s so true that it’s, it’s much easier to point the finger out there and call someone else out for being a racist, say, but not actually to look at our own biases internally because that’s more uncomfortable. 

MD – Exactly. It is more uncomfortable and we all have them. We all have them. I catch myself sometimes casting, in my frustration, in my less skillful self, casting frustrations on a group of people. However, because I’m more aware now than maybe I was 10 years ago or 20 years ago, I recognize where it’s coming from. It’s coming from a fear that’s inside of me, of someone taking something away from me, even my own inner power, taking that from me. So I have to work with that. And that’s the relationship part of me so that I’m not casting those stories upon other people, those stories may be real but I have to deal with them inside of myself first so that I can create more equity in how I look out at others when they are operating in the world, when they are just being who they are in the world. And sometimes that’s not good. And sometimes that’s painful and hurtful, but it has to start here, in recognizing and even owning my own part, and looking out at the world and looking out at certain groups of people and thinking of them as just that group. That creates empathy. You know when I do that I can then have empathy for, in small parts, and it’s not easy to go there but I can create a level of empathy for maybe the person that is completely clueless about equity issues, that they do not have, they’ve been walking through the world very blindly. Or even the out and out racist, the person that’s just mean spirited and hateful, that comes from fear. So if I can even tap into that there’s threads of empathy that I might be able to open up within myself and start to have that conversation with that person. So that’s the me work, in a way. 

KC – And that sounds like the most important part of all, because if it doesn’t start there then it’s not really real, what we do out in the world. 

MD – Exactly. Exactly. And it’s a frustration from me because we all often do things pointing this way. Let’s just change this policy, let’s just change this practice, and I’m always did you change the person that’s creating the policy? Did you change the person that’s doing the practice? 

KC – And I think as coaches we are in a privileged position in many ways, and sometimes when people put us on a pedestal we may stop doing the work ourselves.

MD – Yes. Exactly. 

KC – It’s important that we’re humbled, I think, over and over again and realize and recognize that we need to keep seeing the parts of us that perhaps we’re blind too, the parts that we’re pushing down and pretending aren’t there because the more we can hold that, I guess in ourselves, the more we can hold it in other systems and then reveal it too. 

MD – Right. Exactly. But stop being in denial about what’s really inside of us. Let’s just stop that and confront it. Get into relationship with it, invite it to sit down and have a cup of tea and get curious about why it’s there. Why is that in us? And I did a workshop a couple of years ago entitled what’s in us that wants to demean some of us. So what is that in us that sees others, see people, see people as others and then demean who they are. That’s the work inside of me, getting curious about that. 

KC – Wow. And I’m wondering in terms of what creates these parts of self or what leads to these behaviors or patterns, obviously there are probably parts of us that are cruel, but do you think a lot of it’s down to laziness? Generalizations and assumptions that we just haven’t really tapped into, or do you think there are parts of us that are so fearful, perhaps, of other that it is our way of protecting? 

MD – I think it’s both. I think it starts, if we’ve tapped into the essence part of that I think it is fear. It’s the thing that no one really talks about, the unnamable feeling that you have inside that comes down to fear. And we’re like many of the other animals in this world adapt to fear, we have certain reactions and responses to fear. And one of them could be laziness. That it’s too much work and too much effort. Or it’s too big, there’s nothing that I can do to address what’s here. Or you don’t wanna give up. Because of that fear you put on this exterior armor to protect yourself and that armor comes in the form of power for the many that can grab it and hold onto it. So, those thoughts that are holding onto that power out of that essence fear, if they really tapped into why they speak the way they do, why they do the way they do, and got curious about that, man, what a shift that would make in just the human dynamic and how we interact and engage with one another. So I think it’s about power, I think it’s both the essence of fear, we drain that to what that fear is and what it’s going to do to us and what others are going to do to us, othering, so we put on this exterior, this armor that protects us. That’s the animal in us because all animals do it, have some form of protection. I was watching a show about octopuses and their colors switch and change in order for them to be protected from threats in the sea. I’m like how amazing is that? We kind of do that too. We switch our colors, we switch our way of thinking, we switch our mindsets out of fear and the desire to protect ourselves. From what we perceive as a threat. 

KC – And you’re right that is switches as well, like we might, maybe, catch ourselves in one way and work on parts of the bias and then it switches to something else. I had a friend recently who was quite upset and told me that he’d overheard his boss say that she didn’t wanna hire him because she didn’t wanna hire another white man and it made him feel like, he said ‘I didn’t feel like I was seen as the person that I am’. And I think it’s a great example of like this happens across so many different categories, we can just get lumped into a box and I think that’s so minimizing and it makes people feel so small. 

MD – Yes. 

KC – I mean maybe it’s dehumanizing, maybe actually we can go there and say it just takes away from our humanity. 

MD – Yes. And I feel like he’ll carry that with him forever. Hopefully he’ll be self-aware enough to recognize the intention, even though the impact of saying that might have been negative or disturbing, but the intention probably of the person that said that probably was to create more space, more opportunities, more equity. And that’s not wrong, but because of the way that it was stated and, you know, we probably usually don’t get behind the reasons that we’re doing those things, so I don’t want to hire you because, what I really wanna do is create more opportunity. And for others that have not had the opportunity. And having that conversation, if you’re self-aware enough to have that conversation with the person, you automatically start to maybe reduce their defensiveness and their starting to build this template that I’m not, I’m an endangered species now or I’m, I need to go find my power someplace else because it was just taken from me. And then once that happens you start to other, other people. You start to really other other people. So, I think that’s why it’s so important to become self-aware and that relationship piece, if I can do that like, like if I’m hiring somebody and I was in that position, if I was comfortable enough in fear then I could say those things to that person that helps them see and understand what’s happening behind the curtain. So that they don’t go make up stories about why they weren’t hired, but we don’t get into those conversations, we avoid it because we’re uncomfortable. 

KC – And it’s an interesting example because it’s talking to a group that’s typically had a lot of power, you could say, and I think that us/them mentality, whatever you want to call it, isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re so good at creating these broad brushstrokes, we put people into categories whether it’s their country or their culture or their religion or their skin color and it’s just not allowing us to be our full selves, like you mentioned the octopus changing color, you can’t just fix that into one box as one thing when it’s doing that. 

MD – The idea of the infinite diversity, infinite combinations, when I first heard of that I’m like I don’t really know what that means but as I, over time it’s like we’re infinitely diverse. I mean down to our DNA. Our DNA distinguishes one person from another person, even with twins their DNA is distinct. So there’s so much within us but if we gave ourselves the opportunity to put down our armor and just be in realizing with ourselves and with others, it just what change the human dynamic, and I know that sounds altruistic and it feels like an impossibility, and of course probably it is in our current lifetime, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t try, it doesn’t mean that we can’t start changing systems one relationship at a time which is a fair global tagline. 

KC – I guess I’m wondering then, around tactics, because when we have a primary identity that’s really strong, one that says I’m a good person, I accept all people, and I think a lot of people within this community will hold that in their primary, looking at these parts of selves kind of goes against that. It tells us that, oh, I’m not that though, there’s part of me that tells me I’m something else. So how can we help ourselves across that very uncomfortable edge? 

MD – I love that question. I think we have to slow down. We have to skip, get really curious and bring what’s unconscious, that secondary, into the primary. Get really curious about it. If we walk in fear if not in willingness to examine those things about ourselves then they’re never gonna change. But if we slow down and really got curious about why did, why did I call the police on a man that was just watching birds? What happened in me? What was the fear response that had me do that? Why am I fearful? Where does that come from? Who told me that I should be fearful? What did I do that caused the fear to come up in me? What did my body say to me? Like if we can slow down and get really curious about all of those people, let those unfold and unfold and unfold, there’s wisdom there and for those that really want to change and shift their mindset, action from that wisdom takes time. We move so fast in our society that we don’t slow down to think about our actions and reactions. But if we just slow down and got really curious, maybe even journaled about it or had a conversation with someone about it, what might unfold is what’s really the truth. What’s really the truth about the way that you reacted. Oh, I know why I was scared, I was really kind of told, socialized in a way to be scared of this person. Once you’re aware of that, now you’re more at choice, you’re more at choice to say it may still happen, it may still come up but now that you’re more conscious about it you can say ok, this is not a scary situation. Let me stop operating in my amygdala and start operating from a place of wisdom and fight. I wanna say relationship, more at relationship with myself and who I want to be and not who I will want to pretend to be. 

KC – Yes, and I think that’s a really important distinction for us to make for ourselves and society from the systems in which we live. This is hard, uncomfortable work and this is the work. 

MD – Yeah. 

KC – I did a really powerful retreat before Christmas and I think what I find with awareness is we often focus on how it would be wonderful, you start to see parts of yourself, strengths you didn’t realize, but there’s also a horrible side to awareness where you see all of those, well not all of them of course, but blindspots, oh God, and you start to feel like this terrible person and lots of the secondaries start showing up and that’s where the real work happens, and I wonder how do you stay with that when you really start to feel like I don’t know if I want to go any furher, or how do you help your clients stay with that? 

MD – I think there’s, I was talking about self-compassion the other day and as you’re going through the work it’s important to have some self-compassion. To have a forgiving and graceful nature towards yourself. You’re not perfect, none of us are, none of us are ever gonna get this right perfectly. No one will, but are you on your journey? Are you at least on there in a way that you can start to unfold or unwrap all of those things for yourself and really get to know for yourself the true nature of you and not who you want, who you’re pretending to be. 

KC – I was wondering, in terms of that pretense that we often put on the show of to kid ourselves and other people that we’re a certain way, what were your thoughts around early on in the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyd's death, people put up the black square – for me it felt like quite a big performance, and it’s not that it’s wrong that people are supporting this, I just wonder how many of those people have done this work that you’re talking too, and I wanted to find out how that landed for you. 

MD – Mm, I really love that question. Probably say something that’s a little unpopular, but I would say no, they haven’t done that work. That, again, is operating out of fear. And when you’ve been a marginalized group, when you get a little bit of power, you wanna take that power and amplify it, that’s what that square was. You wanna amplify it and say see, I’m here, I’m on stage, I matter, I’m important. All of that’s good but we, it only goes so far. It only goes so far until we do some, our own relationship work with ourselves in a way that can liberate us from even needing to do that or even needing the validation of others around our own sense of worth and value and power. It’s very, it’s like a Ying & Yang in a way. It’s like you want that, we want validation, we want a sense of our own autonomy and it has been taken away from us, and when I say us I say African American or Black people, so in cities in this country it has been taken away so many times throughout the history of this country. So I get the want to assert your power where you can, I completely get that because I live in that daily, and what am I doing when I do that? Is that sustainable? Am I in a space of revelation when I do that? I’m reacting. I’m reacting to what’s happening in my environment. And to me liberation is I don’t have to react anymore, I’m whole and authentic within myself. I am, I am the being that I was created to be, and when you go there I think you still may wanna put that square out there but it has a different meaning this time. It may have a different meaning, it’s not about me trying to have power over, it might be about me just asserting my liberation and showing it in a way that says you do not have control over my happiness, my joy, my life, even though you’re still trying to oppress me. You don’t have the choice over me, even though you’re still trying to oppress me. 

KC – I was living in the US at the time and I remember being amazed by the amount of energy, there were marches in Charlotte where I was living. And I sort of sensed that the momentum started to shift and I wonder that there was this initial rush of yeah, supporting this! And actually the work hasn’t really been done, and maybe now we’re focusing elsewhere, maybe on other important issues but maybe on not important issues at all, we’re just distracted because there are so many things that are really good at distracting us from what really needs to happen. 

MD – Yeah. That’s so true. It becomes window dressing. Let’s show, let’s put on display that shows that we are, we are in integrity with this movement, with this shift that’s happening in our country, but if you look beneath the iceberg what does that look like? Are you in integrity with the choices and the decisions that you’re making? How are you in integrity with the policies that need to change and that stuff probably is happening in the background, but the energy of it, the emotion that grabbed people, that put them out to walking, you know, walking in the streets, protesting with the signs, the energy of that can only sustain us for so long, that after that dissipates what do we do? Where’s the work there? And what it may look like to the world is ok, everything’s calmed down, let’s go back to normal, let’s go back to doing what we used to do. And there are probably many thoughts that are operating in the background, trying to change policies, trying to redirect how we are with one another, that stuff’s happening in the background but that doesn’t hit the news. So there’s this perception that oh, it’s gone away, things are quiet, it’s ok, we’ve normalized, we’ve created equilibrium. My hope is that those who are doing the work in the background are doing the work on themselves as well, and I’m sure a great many of them are but there’s also a great many that have not, that creates the window dressing. For companies and corporations to say that we are behind Black Lives Matter or were behind racial justice or now hiring all these diversity and equity officers, that looks really good and I’ve talked with several that have been hired over the last couple of years but they have been window dressing, and how bad is that? It makes me sad because it’s just the company saying we are committed to this but not putting the emphasis and the infrastructure of their commitment, not every company but I’ve talking to enough that tells me they haven’t done their work. The CEOs, the hiring managers for those positions haven’t done their work if they’re just wanting it to be window dressing. 

KC – You’re right, they commit to it but they don’t really care and I think this conversation is making me realize if we don’t start with that first system, the emotion intelligence system, then it doesn’t really ever translate to the social intelligence and the relationship systems intelligence because it’s empty, it’s hollow and there’s nothing there to really ground us in this. 

MD – Exactly. Exactly. one of the things that I was reading, My Grandmother’s Hands, this past summer, and what illuminated for me is the dominant group outside white people in this country, probably have never done their own trauma work, but they come from a history, many of them come from a history of oppression as well. If you think about Scotland or Ireland the in-fighting with the dominant group within England, I read something, they have the same skin color. I read something about ‘the Irish don’t deserve to eat’. Some quote some general in an army said that. So there’s that level of history for them that they forget still lives within their body, and if they can tap into that what kind of creating empathy for what it looks like in this society right now, so that’s part of the me work, I think as well, is to recognize that on a human level you’re fighting to sustain and maintain your own sense of authority and power, maybe because in your body you recognize that you didn’t have it at some point ancestrally. But use that for medicine, don’t use it to harm, us it for medicine, but you have to start with the me in order to get there and I think there’s just too many people who are too armored up and have their weapons out that it’s hard to get there, it’s hard for them to get there, but that’s part of the work, revealing that. 

KC – So beyond this us and them mentality because we can just see how it can shift to another, pointing fingers over there, we can point fingers at another group and it doesn’t really change the way we operate. What would you like to see happening differently so we can really move this into, we can have a paradigm shift essentially into a new way of being with each other. 

MD – I think that is one of the things that really drew me too systems work. What I like to see is people get honest with themselves, to really get honest with yourself and let go of the idea that you’re doing the right thing, let go of the need to apologize if you step on someone’s toes, yes apologize but don’t just stop there, don’t just say I’m so sorry I didn’t mean it, don’t just stop there. Be curious about why that’s in you so you can be more authentic within yourself, particularly around inequity issues. Don’t hide from them, they're real, globally they’re real. They may look different and manifest differently in different lands but they’re real and what are you, what’s your call their responsibility? Even if it’s very small, to do something, to heal the fractures that exist within the relationships that we have with one another, and there’s something that every one of us can do. We can’t change whole governments in a day but we can change the way that we interact with each other and that’s a choice that we have, and allow yourself to be moved, and what I mean by that is don’t cut off the aspects of your body that emote. They’re there for a reason, allow yourself to be moved and use that information about why you’re moved and lean into that to shift the things that are inside of you so that you can be in more relationship with people around you instead of othering the people around you. 

KC – It’s such a powerful call to action to all of us, because I think quite often these big systemic issues we put them out there because oh, it’s too big for me solve, I can’t do anything about that so not mine to bother with, and actually we all have that power, we have that locus of control in that system one that then will create ripple effects within our families, within our societies and who knows how far that ripple will go. 

MD – Exactly. That’s my high dream. That’s my high dream. Is just to have people in the experience and to feel moved to emote, to say ok, no more. One of the things that coaching does which I think is amazing, at least when I start to get into it, you can take your three-figure CEO and say this is no longer fulfilling for me, I don’t wanna do this anymore, and so they leave that position to go and find something else that’s more fulfilling, maybe painting, maybe playing the guitar, whatever it might be, maybe it’s coaching, but that’s the power of coaching, if it can take someone out of what’s not fulfilling for me then it has the same power to take that someone and shift the way that they are in relationship with other people, if we allow it too, if we really allow it too. 

KC – Coaching is that great mirror and this has been a hugely revealing conversation for me. Thank you so much Michelle, I’m looking forward to continuing on when we look at social intelligence in our next conversation together. 

MD – Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it as well. 

[Music outro begins 30:55] 

KC – A huge thanks to Michelle for that really useful conversation – here are some of my key takeaways. Systemic equity must start with the self. It’s much easier to point out there, to blame other people, processes and systems, and avoid doing the work ourselves. What parts of ourselves are we blind to? Let’s stop being in denial about what’s really going on inside of us so that we can be in relationship with these parts and understand them better. When we become more aware of the unconscious mechanisms that drive us we can be more at choice in our lives. This work is not always easy or comfortable but it’s what needs to happen for us to create real systemic change. If we don’t start with the first system, the system of me, the work can never really translate to other levels of intelligence. Become aware of where you are window dressing as opposed to really doing the work. What lives within you that might be creating unconscious drive and reactions in your life? Us/them attitudes keep us stuck in fear-based reactions. As opposed to blaming outside of ourselves, how can we get curious about what’s driving our reaction so that we can change the way we interact with each other? This brings us back to our locus of control, the place we have the power to create impact and send ripples into the world. Michelle and I will be continuing on out conversation across parts two and three which build on this conversation around supporting systemic equity, looking at social intelligence and relationship systems intelligence. Thank you for listening to the Relationship Matters podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with your colleagues and friends so that we can continue to spread these ideas across the globe, and if you haven’t already, do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And for more information on the ORSC courses please visit CRRGlobal.com. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole. 

[Music outro 33:38 – end]