Founders, Lose Some Skin – Make Inclusion Personal

DaraRisk.2017

How the world views your purpose

As founders of technology companies/startups, society is drawn to your public intention to design, build, and fulfill a massive dream. To solve crucial problems and bolster the economy. Society looks to you as a reflective example of the “impossible” made real through full-scale software, teamwork and ingenuity.

You attract talent, resources, mentors and charismatic spotlight by your youth (or, maturity), drive, vision and capacity to prosperously execute business objectives.

People flock to your companies – not just “to get a job” – but to also help you manifest your dreams, so they can also manifest their own.

This relationship is meant to be a fair exchange of life force, enjoyment, great respect and intention to assist in each other's evolution. This requirement does not discriminate – and lays on every founder’s lap to deal with – no matter your gender, race, religious affiliations, skin color, hair texture, nationality, immigrant status, body type, language fluencies, age, sexual expression, dis/abilities, neurotype, education, family structure, etc.

The issue of rooting inclusive consciousness within the tech sector rests firmly on active choice and decision-making power.

As founders, you either act to grow an inclusive culture – disempowering the constraint of bias and abusive discrimination – or you don’t.

In truth, no founder (or, human being) gets “off the hook” of living inclusive principles – if they’ve committed silently or out loud to building a company (and their life) with local, national or global reach. People populate each of these locality spheres, and they reflect a limitless variety of identities. Growth for your purpose-driven mission, product, service, and investor expectations means every kind of person within your ideal customer/client category will be represented, or will be connected to someone who matches your ideal persona/customer. A network is only as strong and rich as the variable nodes of influence it contains and extends from.

Stalling on your inner work to remove obstacles toward leading from an inclusive view stalls the soul growth and evolutionary potential you’re each meant to experience now, through the building of your company.

It also robs opportunities from your team to tap into their own inclusive leadership powers (through your modeling), while gaining strength to sustain a generous space with each other in their contribution goals.

Customer loyalty, revenue, profit, investor satisfaction, prosperous IPO's, prestigious reputation or the “cool” factor are all just aftermaths – the basic residue – of heartfelt participation in encouraging diverse connection and true belonging on the path of entrepreneurship and long-term influence.

So, what’s the next step?

Put your skin in the game

Acting on the choice to make inclusion a value fundamental to how you live and lead requires:

Inner work remedies to explore, consider and take action on

1. Nix the expectation that becoming an inclusive leader is a “turnkey, done-for-you” event.

This takes patience, work, time and support. Your inclusion challenges are not just globally connected, historical and systemic, but also situational and specific to your own life history and conditioning. Your existence has unveiled the challenges, and will reveal the solutions, with guidance.

2. Surrender to the reality that People Ops/HR diversity compliance trainings, hiring and retention data gathering, metrics analysis, or ongoing D&I discussions will not produce deep, sustainable results – until you’ve done fundamental inner work around your own relationship to inclusion first.

Put yourself in the “lab”. Get used to discomfort as a sensation meant to inspire self-inquiry and obtaining all the help you need to grow. Assess the outcomes. Ideate new solutions.

Then: find allies who’ll help with implementing strategies – based on a fresh, inner understanding of yourself in relation to your personal values and company needs.

3. Release the fear that you’ll go to D&I Hell, or that you’ve permanently “failed” as a leader if you finally admit to operating your life and company expression from a place of bias.

Once you decide and act to take steps toward unearthing and transforming internally what’s caused bias to overthrow your best intentions – you're on the path toward becoming a deeply valued, respected, and trustworthy leader.

4. Learn to say the “words” out loud.

While “bias” feels less threatening to say when discussing diversity, inclusion and equity challenges, what we’re really talking about are systemic, historical, subconscious beliefs and destructive behaviors we’ve been enacting on each other for millennia. These are gross imbalances, cloaked in every one of our social interactions and institutions (at the public and private level), made out to be “normal” and supposedly beyond our human nature to transform.

“Bias” equals and shows up (whether silent or outspoken) as:

Subtle, nagging stereotypes and reflexive assumptions about any “other” not just like you, including within your own broad identity-communities.

Racism Sexism Marital, Intimate Relationship and Family Structure Discrimination Religious Identity (or, lack thereof) Discrimination and Persecution Ageism Homophobia, Gender and Sexual Expression Discrimination Classism Ableism Colorism Language, Immigrant Status, Educational Background Discrimination Xenophobia Misogyny Neurotype, IQ level, or Cognitive Learning Style Discrimination Eugenics Terrorism (domestic and global) Supremacy (in all forms)

Take the fearful sting out of naming clearly what these truly are. This helps to disempower and dissolve their hold on your emotional and psychic space, from your private life, and leadership expression – at gross and subtle levels.

As you evolve, you model alternatives of empowered living and communication to your team, peers, family, friends, children, and lovers. True and lasting influence starts with small, persistent and dedicated steps of progress.

Once you name the monster – snatch off the blanket and turn on the light – it no longer scares or can control you.

5. Practice shifting guilty feelings into productive, self-observation.

The aspect you find most shameful, irritating or frustrating concerning how you feel about your relationship to accepting difference and becoming more inclusive is the point of grace.

Step away from the emotions around it. See yourself as the teacher now, and the feeling of guilt, as the young student. What would you, as the teacher want your student to understand about their state of being?

What solution would you give to guilt to transform itself into a beneficial action (that you now can perform repeatedly, as a healing practice)? This the first step, and what it means to do our “inner work.”

Finally, another word on guilt:

Guilt as an emotion and state of mind is ultra-useful to measure that your capacity for growth is strong. It reflects remorse, and that you have an introspective nature. But after a certain point, you’re the go-to person – the leader.

Excessive focus on “feeling guilty” creates paralysis and becomes another emotional excuse to not take action toward healing, no matter how quiet, small or insubstantial that action seems to be.

Action creates momentum and draws more support to you.

Paralysis, in turn, creates fear-based apathy and numbness.

Move forward by releasing guilt into the committed action of deciding to do better. Know and act from the place of being deeply worthy of an awesome, fresh start.

#personalgrowth #leadership #tech #founders #deepinclusion #diversity #culture

© 2017. Dara Songye. Deep Inclusion.