Everything Worthwhile is Done with Others
Your journey to win the world you long for begins this Thursday, January 30th, at the Belonging Circle, a virtual gathering for visionary leaders.
TL;DR
8 Reasons to Join Thursday’s Belonging Circle
The On-Ramp to Winning Our Future
A Gift for You!
Gather with Visionaries
Upend Project 2025
Our Belonging Vision’s Promise
Actions You Can Take, Right Now
Who Do You Need to Become?
Clarify Your Belonging Vision
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These past few days have been a whirlwind, to say the least, and it’s clear this disorienting journey is just beginning.
Already those most vulnerable in our workplaces and communities have experienced harm including my own trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and gender-expansive siblings.
Feeling fear, despair, and uncertainty is natural in these chilling moments, and it’s critical we process these feelings. Yet, remember these feelings are not who you are.
1. The On-Ramp to Winning Our Future
You are a visionary leader. And you know the assignment. Right now, for those who care about building exceptional workplaces, we have two enormous jobs:
Collaborate across our approaches and build coalitions embodying Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Beloved Community Values to fortify the heart of our work.
Invite millions of co-workers, colleagues, and other employees willing to tackle the underlying causes of injustices and inequities into our circle of champions.
To succeed, we must take care of our health & well-being, and that begins by tending to our nervous systems, where our sense of belonging is found.
2. A Gift for You
Rather than talking about how to regulate your nervous system, I invite you to give this centering practice a try and then join our Belonging Circle community practice.
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Our Belonging Circle opens with a centering practice on Thursday to experience what it feels like in our bodies to be present, open, connected, and on purpose.
Centering, particularly under the pressures we are experiencing in our work & beyond helps us feel what it’s like to return to the present moment again and again.
Take a moment and feel in your body what it’s like to collaborate with fellow diversity, equity, and inclusion professionals as you invite more colleagues into this work.
What does collaborating from this place of center make possible?
3. Gather with Visionaries
At the Belonging Circle you’ll have the opportunity to explore this question, and many more in our community as you learn from visionaries.
You’ll have the chance to center during the first hour, and during the second hour, you’ll learn about how to overshadow Project 2025 with your vision for Belonging.
The last hour of the event features my masterclass, which is all about setting your Belonging Vision, which is an expanded offering sourcing material from this course.
4. Upend Project 2025
Project 2025 is a reckless and nefarious agenda designed to challenge, erode, and eradicate hard-won human and civil rights protections in the United States.
The agenda was created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank opposed to racial justice & immigrant, LGBTQ+, and reproductive freedoms.
The Project’s proposals have shaped the flurry of executive orders released over the past week since the Presidential Inauguration.
Project 2025’s Workplace Impacts
Project 2025 enshrines a radical, wasteful, and anti-human agenda that has already impacted the workforce. Specifically, this radical agenda recommends:
Eradicating Federal Programs. Eliminating all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.
Eliminating Chief Diversity Officers. Indefinitely placing essential chief diversity officers (and related positions) on administrative leave.
Establish Anti-DEI Task Forces. Creating task forces to determine the scope, breadth, and depth of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Shift Federal Funding Priorities. Divert federal funding for the diversity, equity, and inclusion programming of nonprofits and higher education institutions.
Prohibit EEO-1 Data Collection. Make it impossible to prove discrimination by prohibiting data collection, which is evidence used in disparate impact analysis.
5. Our Belonging Vision’s Promise
After last week’s executive order eradicating Federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, an Agency Administrator sent a letter from the White House.
I reposted this letter in a recent LinkedIn post and shared a sample rebuttal to educate those responsible for enforcing this dangerous executive order.
The purpose of the response was to help share some of the message-tested words and phrases that can bring together people from all different political ideologies.
We’ll explore how we can begin sharing these words and phrases to begin co-creating a shared vision for building a belonging society to overshadow Project 2025’s vision.
6. Actions You Can Take, Right Now
After November’s elections, I predicted that organizational and people leaders will need to take righteous risks, even in the face of pressure, uncertainty, and fear.
And that’s exactly the space we visionary leaders will need to occupy. Specifically, we must firmly uphold the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion and share:
Our Powerful Vision. Share the powerful vision for building spaces of belonging at work that is achieved by advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Communicate Our Successes. How have you benefited from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs? How has this positively impacted your team? Share!
Be Proactive. The time is now to have a strategy to fortify the successes you and your colleagues have enjoyed and to protect the plans you have for 2025 & beyond.
7. Who Do You Need to Become?
When building more belonging in our world, who do you need to become? I know I need to become visible, of service, and on purpose while tending to my well-being.
When I become these things, I begin mirroring the kind of world that I long for - a world where each of us can experience more safety, trust, belonging, and healing.
What world do you long for, and who do you need to become to win it? These are the kinds of questions you’ll have the opportunity to explore with peers on Thursday.
8. Clarify Your Belonging Vision.
Project 2025 offers one vision for the future, and we’ll explore how it impacts the heart of our work with Jess Pettit and Joel Brown.
To overshadow and upend this nefarious agenda, you’ll need a clear vision for belonging and a commitment statement to activate it, and my masterclass will help.
The course will also invite you to consider who you need to become to activate your vision and strategies on how to align with your vision throughout 2025.
Join Us!
Remember, everything worthwhile in this life is done with other people. To succeed in building more spaces of belonging at work & beyond, we need you in our community.
Together, you will gain a better understanding of what needs to be done and why this work is so urgently needed. With that kind of clarity, the how gets easier.
I look forward to connecting with you in real time on Thursday. Oh, and if you can’t attend live when you register here, you’ll receive all recordings & materials.
Thanks for growing our Belonging Movement!