Episode 3.05: Classy
THE PODCAST: December 1, 2020
ON NAVIGATING CLASS, WEALTH AND SHARING POWER
Tim & Tuesday dive into a conversation on class spurred by a recent conversation with an Outsider and the use of the term delegation. Join in as we explore wealth, equity, unconscience bias and the structure of The Outside.
Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.
3.05 — SHOW NOTES
Tim: This conversation started with a text over the weekend and now it’s ending up here. One of the things that happens at The Outside is we often have people working on teams who are at different pay levels within the organization but we’re asking them to collaborate, to work in partnership, and sometimes to directly co-lead our work but there is different pay levels among those people. There is a level of uncomfort that has come up. My response was that we are paying the person who is getting more to have the ability to delegate to others, to have an ability to distribute the work and not just take it all on themselves. Tues’ response was that this is a total class thing.
Tuesday: This conversation that we are in is playing out on our teams - people are unwilling to delegate because they feel like the pay scale is so lopsided. Delegation is a skill but not something you pay a magnitude for. That felt like it comes from a place of asking people to do work for you. This idea that we pay people to delegate feels quite ruling class to me.
Tim: How do you understand the logic of the difference in pay that we give people in TO?
Tuesday: People get paid different rates at TO for a couple of reasons - level of experience, level of responsibility, level of risk, expertise to deliver what they are delivering, loyalty over time.
Tim: I don’t think that delegation, on its own, creates a new order of magnitude in terms of how much you get paid. If someone is stepping into a senior leadership role, within The Outside or anywhere actually - their ability to delegate - their ability to let go of control and distribute responsibility to others becomes really important. Often people are promoted through organizations because of their ability to deliver, rather than their ability to lead. Delegation is a key element of a suite of skills that we look for at The Outside. It’s about making sure the work gets done by creating the conditions for the work to get done.
Tuesday: That really fits for me - creating the conditions for others to step into their leadership. There are two patterns/things that I want to talk about here: (1) What is our responsibility, as people who are committed and want to embody equity in our relationship to watch that… when we have different pay scales - what is our responsibility? (2) As we look at the different levels of Outsiders, we have to be careful that our lowest paid people are not people of colour.
Tim: There is also a question for us about how we accelerate people’s promotion through The Outside as a deliberate choice to level the racial playing field within our organization. Why did my response around delegation trigger a reaction that relates to class for you?
Tuesday: Wealth and money are so tied up into worth for all of us but it is much more likely to be exploited if you don’t have much money. One of the things I learned around gendered pay equity is not to ask people what they expect to be paid because women will always ask for less and men will always ask for more.
Tim: We have to stay alert or we risk: (1) Unwittingly perpetuate the society we are trying to transform, and (2) Unconscience bias leads to exploitation of those who are more vulnerable financially.
Tuesday: This is just another way of us learning from each other. We need the lived experience to come together.
Song: “Uprising” by Antibalas
Poem: “Fragile,” by Nic Askew
‘Fragile’
We are fragile. You and me.
Though we act strong,
our lives are
held together with
thoughts of where
we might be tomorrow.
And of disappointed
yesterdays.
At any moment we might shatter.
We might fall to our knees
weighed down by the terror
of being so far from
our own control.
Dare we look up, we’d not know
where to go or what to do.
We are fragile. You and me.
If we were to turn to each other,we might see the whole world
on their knees.
Hurting, and seemingly
alone.
But none of us are.
We are fragile together.
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Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.
Duration: 52:18
Produced by: Mark Coffin
Theme music: Gary Blakemore
Episode cover image: source