The power of knowing your narrative
Bryan Simmons
Vice President Communications
Arcus Foundation
Key Takeaways
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Let people tell their own stories, instead of these important voices getting lost or changed in translation.
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Organizations should have regular, planned conversations about equity, diversity, and inclusion issues, and ultimately, how these issues impact the effectiveness of the work.
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Leverage staff diversity and education to improve the bottom line of an organization’s work by hearing what is needed, rather than providing what you think is necessary.
Overview
“We communicators are the people who generally stage things, and who shape the executive speeches and blogs,” says Bryan Simmons, Vice President of Communications for Arcus Foundation. “We determine who the guest speakers are and who is on the panel. We get to send the message, and consciously or not, we are often the ones who determine whether inclusion happens or not. That is power, and it comes with responsibility.”
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With this statement, Simmons underscores the powerful role of communications in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (E-D-I). The problem, Simmons adds, is that communicators often do not have the lived experience to adequately inform the narrative that they are trying to share. “We are sometimes trying to produce content about people without knowing them or being deeply familiar with them,” he says. “There is opportunity for much to get lost in translation.”
To address this issue, the Arcus Foundation, which works in the social and environmental justice space with a social justice focus on LGBTQ equality, endeavors to ensure people can tell their own stories. “We try to meet them where they are,” Simmons says. “We go to conferences and convenings.
We find opportunities to interact with, interview, and film them and support them in sharing their stories as they want to tell them. Many have a grant with us and thus a relationship with someone in our organization, and we piggyback on that.” Arcus also works to educate staff, and do trainings on race, class, and gender. Simmons said this is critical because being afraid to make a misstep can keep staff from diving into E-D-I communications.
“Part of [our training and education] is keeping current with standards of how to write about people and their identities in the LGBTQ community and how to speak about the issues.”
“We go to conferences and convenings. We find opportunities to interact with, interview, and film them and support them in sharing their stories as they want to tell them. Many have a grant with us and thus a relationship with someone in our organization, and we piggyback on that.”
Simmons notes that part of this organizational work is also thinking about the inherent structural power that comes with being a funder. “Some of the people we work with on the front lines are people with very different means than staff, and resources vastly more limited than hours,” he says. This goes beyond personal interactions to organizational dynamics, as some grantees operate out of someone’s home because they can’t afford office space. “We are in conversations with them, but we have to be very conscious,” Simmons notes. “We need to make sure they do not feel unequal in our partnerships and that they aren’t just doing things because we, as the funder, suggested it.”
Simmons notes that Arcus also works to ensure that their staff is representative of those whom they serve. He recommends that organizations and foundations pay close attention to the diversity of their teams because an organization can lose significant ground, depending on its size, with just a couple of staff departures. Beyond just representation, however, Simmons suggests some important analysis. “We should ask: What lived experience do we bring to our work? From a brand experience, we need to think about all the interactions we have where diversity and inclusion could be playing an enhancing role, or conversely where a lack of diversity and inclusion could be playing an inhibiting one.”
Simmons suggests having regular, planned conversations about diversity and periodic learning as an organization about race, class, gender, age or identity, and how this plays out in an organization’s work and ultimately, its effectiveness. “Diversity and inclusion deficiencies can play out in terms of the impact that you have,” he says. “How good are you at really incorporating the feedback of the people you want to serve in terms of the products you provide them? I would encourage communications teams to look at the integrity of their feedback loops. Feedbacklabs.org is actually a great resource for developing this capability. Listen to the people you serve, truly hear them, and let them inform you, rather than imposing on them what you think they need.”
Q&A: BRYAN SIMMONS
Ask Questions, Get Answers.
What E-D-I problem did you identify in your communications practices?
The most significant problem that we’ve identified is that of avoiding the portrayal of courageous activists or stakeholders as victims rather than as the courageous actors and advocates.
Why is it a problem, and how did you identify it?
It is very easy as chroniclers of a movement or communicators supporting fundraising to exploit the very people our organizations seek to serve by casting them as victims to be pitied and who offer an opportunity for their supporters to feel good about themselves for helping them. This mischaracterization of people who are strong, principled, intelligent, and deserving of respect, even as they face marginalization and discrimination, is too often the default.
We have faced a similar issue in our conservation work as regards the world’s apes. There too, we must avoid portraying them as victims to be pitied or as being happy and comfortable in captivity. Research has established that seeing other apes in human clothing and domesticated settings diminishes the awareness of their endangered status.
How did you come up with a strategy to address it?
We will likely have to continue addressing this challenge over time, but the best strategy we’ve determined to date is to actually put energy into two steps: 1) establishing the relevant guidelines and 2) ensuring the discipline of multiple content reviewers. We have confronted the issue in part because colleagues spoke up when they thought they saw this unfortunate scenario playing out. Instead of rejecting their concerns, we have engaged them in our review process.
What obstacles did you face in approaching the issue?
In honesty, I would say that our defensiveness and subjective nature of the problem were initially challenges. It is difficult to confront one’s unintended diminishment of others. You just have to remember that someone else will always have thinking to enhance your best ideas and intentions. If you find them, you are the lucky one.
What specific things did you do to shift your communications process?
We have instituted more consultation across our team throughout every step of content development to maximize the number of perspectives informing our content development and the likelihood that someone will catch us when we move into a blind spot and falter.
What did you learn from this?
We have reaffirmed the importance of listening and learning – so cliché but no less true for it.
Where do you want to go from here?
I want to widen the scope of our vigilance regarding E-D-I beyond the realm of content and into the realm of experience. We communicate in many ways – written of course, but also in other ways such as architecture, lobby greetings, thank you notes, rejection letters, automated reminders etc. Mapping and designing all of the experiences that one’s key stakeholders have with an institution is the work of communicators, and all of these junctures are opportunities to enhance E-D-I success.
What advice can you give other communications teams?
Don’t underestimate the pervasiveness of E-D-I issues. It’s always worth asking oneself the question, am I working on something that has an E-D-I dimension that I’m forgetting?
