Ignite CSP

Spotlight on Ibram X. Kendi’s work

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Considering the events taking place around the country right now, I am using this time and space today to bring my readers’ attention to an article by Ibram X. Kendi, “The American Nightmare.” Kendi is the author of How to Be an Antiracist  and Stamped from the Beginning.

Here is a short excerpt from the article, published in the Atlantic:

“Americans should be asking: Why are so many unarmed black people being killed by police while armed white people are simply arrested? Why are officials addressing violent crime in poorer neighborhoods by adding more police instead of more jobs? Why are black (and Latino) people during this pandemic less likely to be working from home; less likely to be insured; more likely to live in trauma-care deserts, lacking access to advanced emergency care; and more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods? ”

You can find the entire article here.

How are you? What are you thinking about and feeling these days?

Being present when you’re not present

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Like many of us, I’m spending a lot of time with people who are in other places. One of the best things about this is that so many people are reaching out, looking for connection, making time to sit down and talk together.

 

Being present when you’re not physically present is hard. I have a couple of thoughts to share with you about how to maximize your presence.

 

1) Do one thing at a time. It can be tempting to scroll through email or check a text when you’re on a Zoom or phone call, but single-tasking is the name pf the game when it comes to being present.

 

2) Make the implicit explicit. Tell people how you feel, using descriptive words.

 

“I love seeing your face.”
“It makes me happy to connect with you.”
“I’m so sorry to hear you’ve had a hard week.”

 

Being present in 2D means we miss a lot of subtle cues; use words that do a lot of emotional work to make up the difference.

 

3) Listen and reflect back.

 

“I’m hearing you say…” 
“Let me make sure I understand…”
“When you say that, do you mean…”

 

Give space for everyone speaking to refine and clarify.

 

It can be hard to feel truly satisfied after a virtual connection. Slowing down and leaning in can help make the difference.

Waving

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Have you noticed that we’ve started waving to end video calls? As someone said to me yesterday, “I’d never wave when I left an in-person meeting; what is that about?”

 

My guess is that it’s closely related to this post from last week, about rituals. When you’re meeting in person and the meeting ends, people stand up, gather their things, and chat as they filter out of the room and disperse. There’s not a hard “button,” like a curtain falling or the lights coming up.

 

On a phone call, the participants say good bye and hang up. Hard button.

 

A video call is a hybrid we’re not sure how to manage yet. In some ways it’s like a phone call; there’s a button to disconnect us from the people we’ve been speaking to. But there’s a funky interim between when we conclude the business of the meeting and when we stop seeing others.

 

Imagine if an in-person meeting were like a video call. You’re sitting with other people around a conference table, highly engaged. At the end of the meeting, someone says, “Okay, everyone, thanks. See you here next week!,” concluding the business of the meeting. Now imagine you have to stand up and walk out of the room, and you’re not going to talk to anyone while you do it. That’s the situation we’re finding ourselves in.

 

In the four seconds while we’re finding the “end meeting” button and clicking it, the faces of the people we’ve been talking to are still looking back at us. It feels rude to do nothing, so we’ve taken to waving with one hand while we poke around for the red button with the other.

 

A way to begin and a way to end. They help us to structure our time together. We don’t have to wave, but it feels to me like we do need something to smooth our way out of our video meetings. Let me know what you’re seeing and experimenting with!

Endings, rituals, and intention

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I’m thinking a lot this week about how we mark endings. My daughter graduated from high school last weekend, and I was blown away by the thoughtfulness her school put into this rite of passage.

 

There were more than 200 students in her class, so there was no way to have anything approximating a traditional graduation ceremony. Instead, they created a short parade route through campus, with the graduates in their cars being greeted and cheered by the faculty and staff all along the way. At the front of the school, each student got out of their car, received a diploma, had their name read aloud, and posed for a professional photo.

 

Each student was honored. Each student was named. Each student was celebrated. The ritual had a beginning, marked with a giant balloon arch, signs, and cheering faculty. The ritual had a middle, with a single student stepping up to cross the threshold from student to graduate. The ritual had an end, with more cheers and signs.

 

In many ways, this graduation felt more intentional and deliberate than those I have attended in ordinary times. It was a perfect opportunity to reimagine what graduation could be and to create something new. This graduation held onto what really mattered and got rid of the rest. Bravo.

 

We can all take this unusual global moment as a chance to examine our own traditions and routines.  We can ask, how does this serve our purpose? What is this for? What is the most important aspect of this? And we can decide how to move forward. Do we go right back to the type of graduation that has been held for generations? Or do we learn from this experience and embrace the chance to combine the old and something brand new?

The Slog

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My daughter and I were talking this week about how hard it can be to start something you know will be difficult. Okay, we were talking about exercising.

 

She said, “There are days when it’s fun, but often it’s just a slog. How do you make yourself do it when it’s just going to be hard? What’s the reward?”

 

I couldn’t bring myself to say what I know is true–the Slog is present in so many areas of life (nearly all of them, really.) And I didn’t want to parrot the advice that often comes up in relation to this topic, things like “find joy in the process” and “hard work is its own reward.” It’s not that those sayings aren’t true, but that I think there’s more truth to be found in grappling with the Slog as it is, no cheery reframing applied.

 

The Slog is the Slog. It may be a workout you don’t like or a school project you have to do, cleaning out the attic or filing your taxes. The Slog shows up over and over, at work and at home.

 

It’s natural to prefer some activities over others, and to think “I wish this were over.” You don’t have to find a way to embrace it, to make the Slog your friend. But you can’t avoid it. You have to find a way to get through the Slog regardless.

 

I learn a lot about myself when I do things I don’t want to do. I watch myself put it off, resist doing it, bargain, then begin. I see myself start, notice I’m starting, wonder when I can stop. Is this something I can get someone else to do? Can I quit early?

 

Then somewhere in the middle, I notice that I’ve stopped wondering when I can stop. I see that I’ve made some progress. I congratulate myself. (This immediately makes the whole process start over again.) But after a few minutes, I’m back in the flow, and soon I’m finished, or at least finished for now. The Slog is over.

 

You may find, as I have, that choosing the Slog over and over again brings a familiarity with this process. I might be preparing a presentation or filing the stacks of papers in my office, but my way of navigating it is the same. I can move more quickly through the bargaining and resistance phases, to get to doing the thing. I’ve found a certain pride in my ability to show up and gut it out. (That said, if I never had to deal with taxes again, that would be just fine.)

 

How do you navigate the Slog?

You know that person who monopolizes your Zoom call?

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Most facilitators are familiar with this experience—you’re running a meeting, and one person keeps piping up. They have an opinion on everything, and once they take the floor, it’s tough to get them to give it up.

 

When this happens in person, there are a few tricks you can use to rein the monologue artist in. But now that we’re all meeting via Zoom, what can you do?

 

I got a chance to try this out recently, and here’s what worked. As the long-winded participant went on, I looked right into the camera, smiled, and nodded repeatedly. My eyes were wide  and animated, and I opened my mouth a little bit, like I wanted to say something.

 

This posture of engagement drew the speaker’s eyes to me, and he paused. That gave me a moment to jump in. “Great! Thank you so much for that insight,” I said. “Let’s hear from some other people on the call as well.” Then I asked another person, by name, to speak.

 

Most people are not looking into the camera, and the speaker is searching for connection. Making yourself the person who is most visible gives you a chance to get their attention and to kindly bring their speaking time to a close.

The button.

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I went with my son to see some of his friends and their parents for a socially-distanced picnic. We visited for a couple of hours, and then it was time to go. Normally we would have hugged and walked back to our cars, but instead we kind of stood awkwardly, trying to figure out what to do next. The absence of hugging left us with no ritual to close out our time together.

 

In theater, we talk about a scene having a “button.” It’s a moment or a beat that ends the scene, punctuates it in a way that drives home a thought or a laugh. It tells the audience that the scene is over. A button helps us finish one thing and move to the next.

 

People have talked and written a lot about the death of the handshake, and I think that’s probably right. But a ritual of acknowledging other people in a physical way at the beginning and the end of an encounter is pretty baked-in. It gives the experience a shape—it begins when we move into each other’s space with this handshake or high five or hug. It feels like we do this to say: “I’m here with you now. My attention is on you and what we’re doing together.” And when our time together is done, we release each other with another physical touch or acknowledgement.

 

My theory is that we need these rituals. They’re part of the rhythm of our lives. I’ll be curious to see what develops over time to replace or supplement them. What do you think? What are you seeing and experiencing?

Just start.

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A good friend and I have been saying this to each other lately—“just start.”  There are a ton of quotable quotes with this idea at their core—

 

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. (Lao Tzu)
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. (Twain)
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. (Disney)

 

And perhaps the pithiest of these:

 

To begin, begin. (Wordsworth)

 

To be clear, it’s not that this idea is new to my friend and me. But knowing that you should “just do it” and being able to step into that unknown are two different things. When faced with doing something new, or scary, or that may fail, it can be natural to hesitate. Often that hesitation takes the form of continuing to gather information. “I couldn’t possibly start until I know this…and this, and of course that…” Then we need to think some more, and maybe run an idea or two past friends and family.

 

At some point there is nothing more to be gleaned, and we have to actually do the thing we set out to do. “But I’m not ready!” a voice inside cries.

 

When will you be ready? The answer, for the voice inside, is “when it’s safe.” But venturing into the unknown is never safe. It’s unknown—we don’t know what’s going to happen.

 

We don’t know what we’ll learn and uncover simply by beginning. That’s the real information gathering that we need to do.

 

(This one goes out to Connie.)

When you’re talking to no one

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I participated in an online cooking class last week. A chef was leading about 50 of us through cooking a meal (fish tacos and margaritas) that had many steps and a lot of chopping. I think the whole class was about 90 minutes.

The chef is a woman who usually teaches in a big kitchen, in person. Instead, of course, we were all on Zoom. It was fascinating to watch because I could see that her natural teaching style was to make conversation as she cooked and demonstrated. However, we were all on mute, so her little comments and questions were met with silence.

With no casual back and forth in her kitchen, she lapsed into a monologue, and she would say, every so often, “Any questions?” I imagine that when she’s teaching in person, questions naturally arise and she can move around the room to see how people are doing. On Zoom, I would have had to indicate that I had a question, and then get unmuted, and my hands were covered in fish so I didn’t want to touch my laptop, and what would be effortless in person became a multi-step ordeal. Unsurprisingly, few people asked questions.

Video platforms work best when they’re replicating a situation when one person is speaking to many people, who are passively listening (like a TED Talk). They are much less effective when they are standing in for a situation when there would normally be conversational flow, question and answer, side comments, etc. I felt for this chef–she did a great job despite the odd circumstances, but the camaraderie and buzz of her normal classes was completely absent from this experience–for us, and more importantly, for her.

If you’re launching a  Zoom/GoToMeeting/WebEx for an occasion that would usually have mingling and informality, spend some time thinking about how you might adapt. In this case, she could have had someone from her family with her also on camera, serving as a conversational foil for her, and perhaps being an audience stand-in for the cooking techniques she demonstrated.

Talking to no one is harder than it looks. Give yourself an advantage by thinking through what might be missing that you normally rely on.

 

Kind of

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The phrase “kind of” or “sort of” has crept into the common lexicon. I know I say it, and I hear it frequently in conversation, presentations, even from radio and TV announcers.

 

What does it mean? Literally, it’s a modifier. “It’s kind of green” tells you that the color is green, but not completely. But the way “kind of” and “sort of” are used more frequently is to downplay something the speaker is saying.  On a call today, I heard people use the following phrases:

 

It’s been kind of exciting to see
I’m part of sort of a tech startup
We sort of integrated it
if I can provide sort of any guidance
I sort of sense what the community may be needing

 

Why not “It’s been exciting to see”? Or “If I can provide any guidance”? My guess is that those statements feel too bold, too assertive, too earnest. The “sort of” gives us an  out, a little disclaimer that, while we mean the thing we’re saying, we don’t mean it too much.

 

Why does this matter? Well, all vocal habits and tics matter when we’re unaware of them. We want to be able to choose our language and have it accurately reflect us. I am sure that most of the people I hear using “sort of” and “kind of” did not consciously choose to include them, they crept in.

 

So when it really matters, what do we find ourselves saying?

 

“I’m kind of the team leader” is quite different from “It’s kind of green.” Why would someone say (and I have heard this), “I’m kind of the team leader”?

 

“I am the team leader” may feel too bold. It may feel like bragging. It may focus more attention than you want on you. It may feel uncomfortable to claim leadership.

 

But if it is true, and you are the team leader, you need to be able to state that without the “kind of.” If you tell people that you’re kind of a leader, what does that tell them about following you?