Inclusion and the Individual
This week I gave a training on inclusivity in meeting facilitation, and asked the group what “inclusive” meant to them. I got a lot of responses about how inclusivity means “everyone” feels safe or welcome. The complex topic of safety I will leave for another day, but “everyone” is a tall order all by itself -- thank goodness “everyone” on earth is never attending my facilitations! However, we do often find ourselves facilitating diverse and complex groups with varying needs and preconceptions about one another. When participants brainstormed a definition of inclusivity using the word “everyone” I understand it as short hand for “everyone who might show up.”
This is a staggering mandate when one considers the variety of experiences and needs that exist inside just one community. For example, a support group for students with disabilities or differently abled might include members with visual impairment who need brightly lit spaces as well as members with light sensitivities for whom bright lights could cause migraines or even seizures. The disability justice community is far ahead of most spaces in discussing these “competing” needs, but they occur in every organization that commits itself to being welcoming.
Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that “everyone” doesn’t just mean marginalized groups. Working for a publicly-funded mediation institution meant having a mandate to serve all county residents, on all sides of a political spectrum and from every class, race, and religious background. Organizational practices which were affirming for some groups, like pronoun introduction, were confusing or alienating to others. The job of inclusion is to thread the needle, in a complex and heated socio-political climate to make a space, if not safe, at least “safe enough to try” as my mentor Michael Fraidenburg of The Cooperation Company would say.
That means we cannot welcome groups of people with assumptions about their characteristics – because no group is a monolith – and we cannot ostracize people who have a variety of needs or paradigms. This can be a paralyzing conundrum for organizations committed to welcome. The answer, for a facilitator, is the individual. (Policy-makers have the much harder task of creating generalizable guidelines.)
It is the role of the facilitator to welcome the individuals who arrive with an open mind. We must have compassionate curiosity about the lives and experiences of the people in the room, and encourage them to share with one another. It is not our role to ignore difference, or to be “colorblind,” but to recognize that difference comes in many varieties, both seen and unseen. As useful as it is to learn “cultural competence” – that is, to know more about people different from us – we need to temper the confidence of our knowledge with humility. For a facilitator, humility means inviting every individual to share themselves and their needs authentically, letting the individual be the expert in their own lives, and gracefully navigating where those needs diverge from those of others. As the disability justice community has long known, it may not be possible to make all spaces and events equally welcoming and accessible to all people, but that is no reason to give up the good work of meeting people – individuals – where they are, with open minds and open hearts.