Principles for productive separation in multicultural/multiracial institutions
Last separation post for the week. This will be more generalist principles to be clear of during any kind of separation.
The biggest mistakes I see us make during separation are:
One, a lack of a power analysis. I think the fear I see for people with power in separation is that being in equitable relationship means they’ll need to be a pushover and overly accommodating. A give an inch and take a mile phenomena. This is because folks fear the social power of the person with less economic and decision making power. However, economic and decision making power matters. If you have ultimate decision rights and those rights determine another persons economic situation — you have more power and thus more responsibility. I tell folks this is a math equation: resources ➗risk = mobility. So if you are struggling with what your responsibility is, if you have more resources and less risk — you have your answer.
Two, I find when we are separating we want so badly to hold on in some way — when we hold on past the expiration date — we move from hurting each other to harming each other. This is usually a feature of institutional codependency. We want so badly to make the institution or professional partner believe what we believe we create a bajillion strawmen — “if you believe this you are terrible” “if you do this, you are going to ruin everything” “if you believe this you disrespect me/our vision/our way of doing this — we use these tactics as a way to doninate our way into partnership. It doesn’t work. Calling it when folks become clear there isn’t a world with reconciliation is the most important thing we can do to care for each other.
Three, I find we start talking about repair way tooooooo soon. Repair is important and healing and transformational. And no one wants it in the immediate fire. But we keep approaching repair conversations like folks don’t need a couple weeks or months to do their own personal repair before they do relational repair.
Lastly, make all the separation agreements up front when things are good. Talk about norms for separation — layoffs, termination, coalition or founding team separation — when you love working with each other at the beginning. Make expectations around timelines and communication. Separation will always be painful but I reject the notion it has to be harmful. We can be much more responsible with each others hearts and livelihoods then that.
