5.13: Outside Tues + Tim - On emotional labour

Show Notes

  • Tim: We’re excited to do this little reflection pod where we get to look back on the last two pods around the “in the field” series where we spoke to some fantastic friends and colleagues.

  • Tues: We’re here to reflect on our reflect on the interviews we had recently with Natalie Williams with The Well Being Blueprint, Alex Schneider from Columbia Justice Lab, Quanita Roberson and Tenneson Woolf from QT Wisdom. Interestingly enough - this was not the idea when we booked those two sets of guests - but just to name the through thread is a black woman and a white man in both particular interview sets and you and I are a black woman and a white man and so I'm curious, because you had mentioned before we started,  there was a spectrum of analysis in these interviews.  I would say in some ways we fall right in the middle right. Natalie and Alex’s analysis around issues of equity is like front and center in how they lead their work, and you and I say systems change and equity, right? So we're holding both. And then I would say Quanita and Tenneson, while I don’t doubt that they have analysis and it came out through how they teach and what they're thinking about, is not at all front and center in what they do. So we were noticing these cross racial, cross gender teams, all of whom have a care toward racial justice, but the way we hold what we ascend and what we front is actually quite different. Did you notice that?

  • Tim: Yeah, and I wonder if we're working with different audiences? Juanita Brown, one of the co-originators of the World Café, used to talk about the central garden - this idea that all of these methodologies and approaches are really gateways into how we could be living the future now. How we could be giving people direct experiences, referential experiences, that allow them to say, “yeah, there’s something else possible other than the status quo and I've now got an experience that validates that. It’s a feeling. It's a knowing because I've felt it.” That kind of drives and encourages people to practice in their lives differently and so my instinct is that you know all six of us on that spectrum, that you laid out there, we’re probably holding different gateways but I bet the desired central garden is the same or the experiences we're giving people give them a sense of like, “oh wow, there’s a multiracial future possible.”

  • Tues: I love that! We're just different paths into the garden. I really like that imagery. It seems true for how we ascend or not, or talk or language equity but it also seems true about where our intervention point is. I would say Alex and Natalie’s entry point really is always big systems, right? Like the justice system, like the prison system, like housing reform. Whereas Quanita and Tenneson are doing small groups around ritual and personal. The thing that struck me that I'm recalling most is that Quanita and Tenneson were doing rituals, small groups, personal dialogue, personal reflection and we know that we straddle both. That's what we heard in our retrospective when we asked clients what they got from us. There was like this pull towards changing big organizations or systems but people also said they got personal transformation.

  • Tues: The thing that struck me, and I wanted to bring it up to you, because I was so interested and I think it's so controversial… and yet I friggin’ love it that Quanita said - when we were talking about equity work - that it doesn't bother her that sometimes she has to “carry the weight.” What she was saying was, when we talk about fairness and equity work some people do more emotional labor, some have to do less. The quote she came back with and I've heard her say it before was, “it is always the responsibility of those most healed to do more work.” That's such a flip on its head of a lot of the rhetoric these days which is like those who are marginalized shouldn't have to do emotional labor and she wasn't saying those that are marginalized should have to do more work but she was kind of looking in the face and saying… “but if I know more about race and racial healing than you, of course I have to do more work because I am further along the path. And so my job is to reach back and bring you along.” I'm not using her exact words but I thought it was such a provocative statement to say those who are healed have to do more work; that’s their responsibility. It felt like a very mature way of approaching equity work.

  • Tim: It's just such a recurring message or theme - the kind of emotional labor that BIPOC people have and are constantly called upon to have. There's something that people who I talk to about as unfair; an unfair, unwelcome burden that is thrust upon me by circumstance. We heard it in coaching groups this morning when we were doing the work in the leadership cohort. On the other hand, I hear in your quote of Quanita -  and at least how you're relating to what she said -  is that it’s just unavoidable. How did you reconcile that, though?

  • Tues:  We're on treacherous ground… I think there's such an accepted dogma that emotional labor is a bad thing… but I know it called up something in me and my own dignity that me just talking about how unfair it is that I do more emotional labor doesn't call up in me in any way. I'm not making an assertion here… but there’s something that when Quanita says, “the most healed” calls up my dignity and sovereignty and maturity in a way that when I say, “Oh my God, it's so hard being a woman of color, I have to carry everything all the time” feels a little victimy even if it has truth in it and it feels a little immature. Look, in my forties I actually don't look for fairness as the barometer anymore. I look for what is mine to do… which is a very different stance than how am I being oppressed and victimized by the system.

  • Tim: I'm trying to find a way to relate this to my experience as a white privileged fella, you know. Where do I do emotional labor? Where's the unseen? Is there emotional labor in my life in how I'm turning up? Is the emotional labor limited to those who are BIPOC or is there actual emotional labor that's distributed that is different?

  • Tues: We're keeping men from their vulnerability in very real ways - get out there and do that thing, go out and make money, go out and be the provider/protector. So men also have, what I would say, could be emotional labor or maybe an unequal access to emotion and that has its own kind of labor or its own set of ramifications.

  • Tim: Shit people, there’s work to do! You can't look at the world these days and say there's not work to do, you know? What's getting in the way of us doing work.? Let’s make sure that whatever we're holding on to tightly isn't actually restricting our ability to get good work done. The need for courageous, curious leaders is definitely upon us.

Resources:

The Outsideshared work, participatory leadership, systems change