Leading Consciously From Hardship to Allyship: The Value of Chronic Unease - A Conversation with Mark Hays, Pt. 2
In Part 1, Mark Hays described how a challenging childhood fostered in him the desire to serve as an ally to foster racial justice. If you haven’t looked at Part 1 yet, I suggest you do so. It paves the way for this, the second part of the conversation.
Here are excerpts by Mark from the conversation.
On being a White male as an advocate for persons of color: “I pretty much learned that my shelf life on having a friend who is a White male might be four or five months.”
On diversity: “Diversity has been a shell game.”
On his role: “I want to be the guardian angel giving people safety. If I wasn't going to do this after all I learned from Mary [Harlan]and the faith and trust she had in me, that would just be a ridiculous thing.”
On chronic unease: “It's maintaining that sense of chronic unease to make sure we're doing everything we can do to not have those kinds of organizations that hurt people. And so that's become my theme for how I describe what I do.”
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Jean Latting is an organizational consultant, inclusive leadership coach, and behavioral scientist.