Transcripts
1. Introduction: Communication is the foundation. It's essentially how we create, it's how we create
our relationships, it's how we create
projects together, it's how we collaborate. We want to make sure
that the communication that we use on a daily basis, with ourselves and with our colleagues or with
our collaborators, is communication
that's invitational. Communication
essentially is what lets people know that
they're welcome. Today's class is about
communication that prepares companies and
organizations for inclusivity. [MUSIC] Hello, I'm Yomi Abiola. I'm the founder of
The Fem League. I've come to this work through
my passion for curiosity, through understanding
people, through being able to communicate with people, and creating cultures
that flourish and thrive. The foundation of
the work that I do is in the understanding
of human behavior. It also comes from
my discipline and practices as a journalist. In this class, we
will touch upon identifying areas of avoidance, the difference between
facts and feelings, creating allyship, and also using clear
communication as a framework. I hope that people at all levels of your
organization take this class, be it team leads, be it HR professionals, be it the C-suite. Everyone uses communication so there's something to
glean for everyone. But ultimately,
the people who are interfacing and
leading folks day in, day out would benefit greatly
from taking this class. Your class project will be co-creating the language of
your company or organization. I would like you to leave
with two main things, a greater sense of awareness of how you use your communication, but also the ability to use
communication with clarity. Now let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. Identifying Areas of Avoidance: Identifying areas of avoidance is important because
it creates trust. Have you ever heard of
the elephant in the room? I'm sure many of us have. If there are things
that are unsaid, if there are sentiments that you feel that you can't express, then it's very difficult
for us to create foundations and then
cultures of trust. Being able to identify what it is that you are
avoiding is the first step to actually getting things
out of the way so that we can build from a
clean and clear slit. Many years ago, when I was
working as a journalist, I had the great opportunity to interview a high-profile leader. A high-profile
leader that had been accused of a number of crimes. I sat in front of an audience of a few 100 people
feeling very nervous because I didn't want
to confront this person or ask them about what had
happened in their lives. But I knew that in
order for me to create a foundation of
trust with my audience, I had to ask the
difficult questions. I had to ask the
uncomfortable questions. I had to verbalize the
things that I was avoiding. In being able to bring them up, to put language to them, to share them, I gained the trust of the
audience and we were able to have a conversation that
all of us benefited from, not just me or the person
who was interviewing, but all of the people
that were giving us their time and attention. Here are a few tactics
just to get you started. Let's identify three
areas of avoidance. If you want some help with
identifying areas avoidance, think about the things that
you really don't want to talk about and think about the things that you
don't want anyone to talk to you about. That will give you a
little bit of insight into the areas that
you may be avoiding. Write them down one, two, and a third and
see what you find. You may be surprised. Your student action
is to brainstorm around some of the terms
or the language that is used in your company
or at your organization to avoid an underlying challenge
that you may be facing. You might also want to take the opportunity to
brainstorm with some of your colleagues and see if some of those words are similar. In the next lesson, we'll talk about building
clear communication.
3. Building Clear Communication: Building clear communication
is important because again, it's building upon trust. It shows that you have a
relationship to your word. It shows that you know
what you're communicating, why you're communicating it, and what you intend to do. When we co-create cultures or we work in companies
or organizations, clear communication
allows people to be able to action in
the same direction. An example of this is you might go to a talk or a lecture. You might listen
to somebody speak. Then it's time for
questions and answers. Somebody from the
audience raises their hand saying that
they have a question. They ramble for
about four minutes and then they sit down. You may think to yourself, a little puzzled, "I didn't
actually hear a question." That's an example of
unclear communication. I'm sure if you haven't
experienced it at a talk, you've experienced
it in a meeting, or you experience it
in interactions with your colleagues where
the communication isn't clear because the
person isn't sure about what it is that they want to communicate and why it is
they are communicating. Here are some tactics to support you in the use of
clear communication. We call them the three Cs. Is your communication clear? Is it concise? Is it complete? Is your communication clear? Are you asking a question? Are you making a request? Are you making a comment? Is the intention of your
communication clear? Is your communication concise? I spoke about the
rambling earlier on. Have you thought about
what you want to say before you say it? Have you thought
about why you're saying what it is
that you want to say? What are the outcomes
that you would like to get out of
this communication? Is your communication complete? Do you have all the
information that you need? Are you informed
as you step into this communication and
have you asked for all the information that
would be valuable for you as you complete
this communication? Here's your student action. I would personally
like to challenge you to use the three Cs in
your communication. It's as simple as
asking yourself, is my communication clear? Is my communication concise? You can always catch yourself
when you're rambling. Is your communication complete? Do you have all the information
that you need to make informed choices and to
move forward accordingly? In the next lesson, we will talk about distinguishing
facts from feelings.
4. Distinguishing Facts From Feelings : Distinguishing
facts from feelings is important because it prepares us to be able to have the difficult
conversations. If we are truly going to build organizations that
are inclusive, then we need to be
skilled in being able to have difficult conversations. Conversations that both and
all parties can learn from. An example of this could be discussing a project
that's late with a colleague. It's very easy when our emotions are high and
when we are frustrated for us to go into the feeling
and not solve for the right problem or focus on the facts of
what is happening. In these times, it's
very important that we use the distinction of
facts versus feelings. A tactic that you can use is before your next conversation
with a team member, with a colleague, with whoever it is that you're working with, I'd like you to set
a 45 second timer, I'd like you to
draw two columns; One that says facts and
one that says feelings. In the facts column, if we take the
example that we spoke about where a project
is running late, you may have the project
is running late. That is a fact. You might
say how late the project is running when the project was
promised to be delivered. Those are all facts. How late the project is running, the promise of when the project should
have been delivered, and then you want to start
talking about your feelings. Obviously, I'm not used, so I don't know what
the feelings are, but I'll tell you some of the
feelings that I may have. I may have feelings
of frustration, I may have feelings of stress, I may have feelings of mistrust, and so we want to start
to continue to populate those columns and separate
the facts from the feelings. Because as I'm sure
you can start to see, when stress gets high and when things are
moving at a fast pace, it's very easy to collapse
both facts and feelings. That doesn't necessarily give us a space of being able to be inclusive in our
conversations and in our collaboration
with other team members. For the student action, I would like you to take
the tactic that we used. The two columns, the facts, the feelings, and have
your team do that. Then perhaps you all
want to share about the distinction and how
you've been able to separate facts from feelings. Maybe you want to even
go one step further, which is to discuss
that if you stick to the factual elements
of your communication, what could then be possible, not just for you, but also for your team. In the next lesson, we'll be talking about
responding versus reacting.
5. Responding Rather Than Reacting: I don't want to sound
like a broken record, but I have to urge
you that in creating company culture that is
inclusive trust is paramount, and that's why responding versus reacting is
very important. Response is our
ability to respond, and it actually
creates an opening for further
communication to happen. Oftentimes, when
things are stressful, when there's fast-paced growth, when there's pressure,
people react and reaction causes
others to shut down. When your communication
channels are shut down and you're no
longer co-creating, you don't have a culture
that is flourishing, because people are afraid, people are apprehensive, and people hold back. That's why we focus on the ability to
respond versus react. The foundation of cultures and companies that
thrive is trust, and responding versus reacting supports us in continuously
nurturing that trust. It's challenging to
respond versus react, especially if we're in
times of high-growth, high stress, heightened
responsibility, it's not always given that
we are able to respond. But if we do respond, if we're able to
observe ourselves, if we're able to reflect
before responding, then it creates an opening
for communication. Communication is essential
in everything that we do, especially in the
co-creation of a culture. Reacting, on the other hand, tends to shut people down, it makes people afraid, it makes people apprehensive, and it makes people withhold. They often withhold
essential information, which is a great
indicator that they don't feel included or invited. What's related to this
is one's ability, your ability, our ability to be able
to observe ourselves. I'd like to take you back to the last conversation that you had that was a
difficult conversation, and whether you were able
to observe yourself. Were you able to observe
your sensations? Were you able to observe
whether you were breathing faster or slower? Whether your palms were sweaty? Just the ability for us to be able to observe
ourselves as we're having challenging conversations is
a way for us to be able to slow down enough to
respond and not react. Oftentimes when we're
in high paced cultures, when we're meeting deadlines, when we're working
fast and as a team, we don't realize that
we can actually pause. That we can take
that time to say, "I need to get back to
you," or "I need to reflect on that," or "When
can I give you an answer by." We oftentimes think that we have to give a response in the moment and that response isn't actually a response,
but a reaction. Just allowing ourselves a
little bit of time to pause is what can ensure more of a
response versus a reaction. Now for the student action, I would like to invite us to
find some pause statements, whatever language fits for you. It could be, may I get
back to you on that, it could be I need a little
bit more time to think, it could be I'm not able to hear what you're
communicating to me. A neutral pause statement that supports you and being able
to engage with yourself, get in touch with yourself, and then respond as
opposed to react.
6. Creating Allyship: It's important to create
allyship because there is no great goal that is
achieved in isolation. We need allies to support
us along the way. In using communication, we want the people who are allies
to know that their allies. That is why we communicate it, not just for ourselves
but also for them. As part of my work and the
work of The Fem League, I know that the
communities that we build within organizations,
within institutions, and even our home community, would not be able to
exist without allies, people with whom we
share a language, we share an ideology, we share a vision, and they know that
they are allies because we communicate
this to them, time and time again. In that communication, they are able to step into
their agency and to also support us as we create a culture that is inclusive and a culture
that flourishes. An example of this
is the work done by Shiara Pyrrhus in
which she talks about allyship and
active participation. She talks about how allyship
needs to be practiced. She talks about how allyship also supports in
forwarding the mission. When we talk about communication to create
inclusive cultures, what we want to do is
also name our allies. But we also want to communicate what we require from our allies, how they can support
us in making our cultures consistently
and continuously flourish. The tactics that further support
us in creating allyship. Name your allies. Who are your allies in the
organization and who are supporting you in co-creating
inclusive cultures? Know your allies. What motivates them, what
are their interests, what gets them activated? Then finally,
activate your allies. How can they support
the organization in flourishing and
upholding its intention to be more inclusive? The student action. Have a conversation with
your team around allyship. How can allyship support your company culture in
being more inclusive? Put it in words, put it in language, and then talk about
your commitments. What are you individually
committed to, and what are others individually and
collectively committed to? Again, put it into language. In the next lesson, we'll talk about taking your
next steps towards progress.
7. Taking Your Next Steps: Taking your next steps
towards progress is important because that's what
keeps the vision of life. Oftentimes we talk
about milestones, but we don't talk about a
specific type of milestone, which is momentum milestone. With momentum milestones,
it supports us in moving forward because of course we know that co-creating cultures, especially cultures of
inclusivity and cultures where everyone thrives is not
for the faint of heart. It takes something,
but it is possible. In making progress
towards our next steps, it gives us the energy to set our sights on the vision of
what we want to co-create. An example of taking steps
towards progress quite literally is if you've ever
seen a toddler learn to walk. There's a lot of falling, there's a lot of stumbling, there's a lot of
crying sometimes, but some way somehow, which is how many of
us learn to walk. They get backup and
they make those steps. It's the encouragement,
the communication of yes, you can do it, yes you're
on the right track, yes, this is the way forward, keeps them incentivized
and excited on the path. That is the momentum of the milestones that you
will reach on this journey. But what is essential is that you do use
communication as a tool. How do you know that
you're making progress? How do you know that
you're growing? How do you know that you're thriving if you're not
communicating around it. That is how communication
can support your organization in sharing where it is on the
journey to inclusivity. Here are the tactics to support you in taking
steps towards progress. It's a very simple
progress report. It doesn't actually
have to be long, or you could call it
a progress inventory. It's just two guiding questions. What is the progress
that you see, so your personal progress
and how you see that? What is the progress
that I experience, the progress of
your surroundings, the shifts that you're
seeing in your organization? The student action for this
lesson will be for you to come up with your three
momentum milestones. Of course, in every
organization there are milestones that you want to
meet as an organization. But in your team, discuss what your momentum
milestones will be. Momentum milestones, a milestones that will
move you forward, that will activate you, that will energize you, that will support you in
fulfilling your vision.
8. Final Thoughts: Thank you for taking the time to go through
this journey with me, and for taking this class. We've covered a lot
of information. Be sure to share your co-created language in
the project gallery, and do ask any questions
that you have. I want you to know
that language is not just what we say
or we don't say, it's in our intention, it's in how we use
communication, it's what we choose to highlight and what we
choose not to highlight. I hope these skills
and these tactics, will support you in creating a company culture that
is more inclusive.
Yomi Abiola, Founder & CEO of The Fem League
