Ep 04 - Black and White and Grey
The idea of finding common ground from a variety of perspectives is a foundational idea of "a THIRD place." However, not all truths are found here. Especially as we are wrestling with addressing racism in our country, it is clear that many ideas and truths are in fact found in the black and white. If LOVE and HATE are on opposite ends of a spectrum, our guide towards healing is not found in the middle ground. Leading with LOVE, which is on the far edge, is where we will find our true path.
Episode Resources :
Here is the link to the Harvard Business Review article Mary mentioned!
TRANSCRIPT:
David : Well you know what's caught me off guard is the tone is different. We haven't gone through our tone or voice yet and one of them is hopefulness. And I know that we will get to hopefulness at the end of this but it's with heaviness and we've not started a podcast with heaviness. That's why it's like..
Mary : So start there. Okay. Yeah, you know, we tend everything you've heard, we tend to lead with hope. We got to get real right now, you know, whatever that is.
[intro-music]
David : Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the third place podcasts. My name is David Gaines.
Mary : Mary Allard here with you guys.
David : So this podcast is going to be a little bit different. Mary and I were just talking about the seriousness of what we want to talk about today. And while we still believe in hope, and we see where we want to take this to a hopeful place. Almost always we come with this light hearted approach to conversation and dialogue. But this particular episode needs to begin with some heaviness. And we're not used to that.
Mary : Yeah, something that I wanted to name is right before we got on to record, I told David, I was like, gosh, I'm feeling nervous. And we've, I've honestly not felt very nervous to start talking with you all and talking with David because I talk with David every single day. And we even joked the other day that the podcast is a bit of just insight into our everyday conversations and our friendship, and our working relationship. But I understand the intensity of the time right now. And the weight and I, both David and I want to speak, and we want to speak up. And that's not always easy. And even though we're people that love to share our opinion and speak right now, I feel nervous, because I don't know all the answers. And we're going to have a dialogue around a lot of just that. And I felt pretty humbled.
David : Yeah. And honestly, this exact conversation is nearly the entire point of the third place. How do we create safety to have hard conversations? And how do we create safety for people to talk through their perspectives and ideals, and you know, this messy middle of right versus wrong, and everything is not black and white in this world, but it's truly a messy gray. And that's a third place that we refer to often, a third place, you know, being a physical place sometimes, or in a podcast like this, to have a conversation, where we don't know all the answers. So it also does make sense to have a conversation because it really is the heart of why we do what we do is empowering other people to have these conversations. But here we are, and we wanted to have a voice. And, again, we're not experts in this conversation. We've been really wrestling a lot over the last couple weeks. And I think I think it's important to even acknowledge like, we're both white, we are asking questions. We want to change and be a healthy part of change. And we're learning where we're continuing to learn to see where we have points of privilege that we weren't even aware of, me being male as another version of privilege that I'm learning about on a regular basis, so that I'd wanted to kind of call that out like, I'm coming from it from a very white perspective, but I also want to come as a humble learning perspective, too.
Mary : Something that you and I watched the other day, David from Twitch. Twitch is the cohost on Ellen DeGeneres’s TV show, and he said something that we both were like, oh, wow, it's stuck with us. It was like you don't have to be racist to be impacted or benefited by it. And I thought that was so powerful to point out that many people are saying I'm not racist, I'm not racist, but in actuality, there's there's the next layer that we're all pushing and my mom even told me that we're redefining what the word racism is right now that that's a part of it. And I was like, of course, we should be redefining words, or otherwise, all of the time. I mean, in my own personal growth, I feel like I'm redefining who I am or how I feel or what I think or who I'm friends with, or how I spend my time, constantly. So if we could find that new cadence and how we operate collectively, I feel like that's the beauty of what's happening right now. And I always tell people, it's like a pendulum, that our homeostasis was one way and that homeostasis was a bit out of whack. And in order to find the new homeostasis, you have to hit far on the other side of the pendulum, which can feel extreme. But that extremity helps to slowly find a new homeostasis that is a different center and a different way of being. And that's what we're doing right now. We're redefining and I am onboard.
David : Yeah, one thing that we did in the recent episode was talk about how naming things helps. Like, with COVID, just for me, naming the word relentless was just a relief and weight off my shoulders. And that word has helped me and ground me. I mean, things are still relentless. I'm like, okay, when is this relentlessness going to end? Like, it's gonna end. But a new word that Twitch mentions, I was invited to a book study online that I think I'm going to participate in, is around this book called “How To Be An Anti-Racist,” and antiracism, this was a word that it had this a similar effect for me where it's like, right, because I keep saying, I'm not racist, I'm not racist, especially several years ago, is when I really started to unpack points of my privilege and, and even, like, a conference that I went to, that caused me so much anger that talked about this, and my anger was rooted in like, I'm not racist, that look at all these things. Like, I have my team, I work in coffee, which is completely global, and so many cultures that it touches. I'm not racist, I'm not racist. That word antiracist has really helped me. Because not racist is passive where antiracism is active. Yeah. Proactive. Exactly. So that that alone has given me just some new energy around like, passive versus active, has given me a new way to think about my role in this moment and towards racism.
Mary : Right. And I think part of what we want to touch on though, too, is that the third place, we've referred to it as the gray area, but we've been talking about how there's just some things that are just not that gray. And there are just some things that are a little bit more on the edge, like there are some answers to find on the edge in one or the other, but our human nature is to sit within dualism. And we talk about this all the time, where it's like, okay, you're, you're a good kid, or you're a bad kid, or you are this or that you're a Republican or a Democrat, or us versus them, you are racist or not racist. And I think that it's just it's such human nature, and that we've been trained to think in a dualistic way. And so it can, it can actually dualism can serve maybe in some aspects, but that it is much more challenging to sit in the space of gray and in, in a spectrum. And that's a lot of what I think is being challenged right now is a dualistic way of thinking,
David : Yeah. There's like this human evolution that's happening, I think, with regards to dualism and dualistic thinking. It definitely plays a role in survival. I mean, when you think about humanity 10,000 years ago, or whatever, that everything is moving from tribes to now a global human race. And tribalism is what led to this dualistic you're either with us or against us. And it was a survival technique. And really, when you think about the way, the ways that we learn dualistic thinking, it's still a version of survival. And the reason why our brain likes it so much is we're processing so much information so quickly, that the brain on the conscious level needs to kind of get through that information fast. So when I meet someone new, are you shorter than me? Are you taller than me? Are you a different color, race than I am? Are you the same and so that's where stereotyping comes in. And it's just a way to form these labels. And it's a survival technique. But where we're moving now is we're no longer at a point where we need to survive as a human race. And where we need to move towards is this one race of people this this, that when any one person hurts, we all hurt. And it's much more like. I mean, we talk about holistic, and when the way we talk about it is being one with yourself, like, and I think that's a way to fight dualistic thinking, but it's almost like we're now needing to apply holistic thinking, being one to humanity. So it's like a larger human consciousness conversation that we're entering into. I love what you say, like, you know, we do talk that here's this perspective, here's another perspective. And the answer most often is in the middle. But I think you're absolutely right. Like, the right answers are not always in the middle. And so while that might be often the case, it's not always the case. And what I think of right now, an example would be if you think of everything in the spectrum, on one spectrum, you have love, on another spec end of this spectrum, you would have hate. And so if you would say, the middle is the right answer. Well, the middle would include words like, like, or tolerant. And I would very much argue, and I would think most people listening to this podcast would agree that love is the right answer. So it's not in the middle that we're finding that answer; it is on the edge, and technically, an extreme position. But I very much believe in love.
Mary : Yeah. And it does feel like there are some things that are less dualistic, and there's less gray area, and it just is what it is. And to lean into that side of it. Even when you were talking about how you see someone, and we're in this, like, fast processing way. So we're always processing really fast. We're always trying to get through things. I also feel like maybe the timing of everything is that we've slowed down a little bit. And I'm wondering if when you slow down, I actually feel personally I've experienced this, that when you slow down, that creates space. So I feel like quarantine was actually priming us or this pandemic potentially priming us to have space to have a radical shift. Because without that slowing, and without that space, would we have ever even gotten to a place where we could start to recognize that we wanted to create a shift?
David : Yeah, that space, you know, it is a gift. One of the things that I think can really help this conversation is to sit with the other. So if we have the space now to do it, right, so to sit down with people that we don't understand. I mean, every time I've done it personally, or I've seen people that has actually formed healthy dialogue and conversations with someone who's very different from them, the humanity does eventually come out that what we find is not that we have all of these things different from one another, but we actually have way, way more things in common. So to learn from a black friend, what their life and perspective is, and to sit down and actually have real conversation and let friendship form is a fantastic way to learn about the struggles that someone different than you has. But then the commonalities within those struggles. Like we're all just trying to raise our kids and and better the next generation. And there's all these other things that show up that we actually have in common.
Mary : I think what we're both trying to do the most is be an ally and be more in the and space. So we've talked about dualism, it could be like a versus space or an or space. One of the practices that I loved, that I learned from a business consultant a few years ago was when you were having a tough conversation or conversation with a team or even a brainstorming session. It would be that when someone shared an idea or shared something, instead of saying no and or but, or not acknowledging it, it was as simple as saying “yes and” and acknowledging the the idea that the person had brought forth or the position that they had shared And saying yes, it's that, and this because everyone's reality is their reality. And we're acknowledging it and creating space for it. And instead of living in this or space, where things can't coexist, it's more of how can we merge those two together and bring to light both?
David : Yeah, boy, I think you really just uncovered a brand new third place. We've talked about it being a safe place for dialogue. We've talked about how it's this middle gray, but the word “and” creates a third place where it's not a or b, but it's a and b, and that that is another third place.
Mary : Right? And that the A and B can live together and be in unity, and that they both have their time in the sun. And yeah, and, and, and and.
David : Yeah. Like, it makes me think like, a visual for the way my mind works is like water is h2o. But it can show up and ice, it can show up and liquid, or like ice is solid, liquid, as water and steam as gas. So it's one element that shows up in three different ways. What the conversation we're talking about is how do we create equality. And I feel like part of the conversation is also recognizing that we're different and different is good. Like it's not equal versus different. It's equal and different. And that's actually one of my favorite parts of coffee and food. We celebrate cultures all the time. Like there's a coffee shop that we supply. That is, it's called Black Coffee. And it celebrates African coffees, it celebrates a black culture. And what I love about that is that I'm invited into that space. And I'm welcomed into that space. So like, the food analogy is, we celebrate culture all the time. Like when I go to an Italian restaurant, what am I doing, I'm really celebrating the way people group prepares food. And I'm invited in and it's shared. So the black coffee experience is a place where I get to be invited in and share coffee in a completely different cultural context.
Mary : Right. Right.
David : So yeah, the and word, it's not equal versus different. It's equal and different. And there's so much beauty and being different also. But how do we fight for equality? And at the same time?
Mary : Yeah, so I think that it would be helpful to share some of what I've learned even just in the last week, to try to put into motion like little new practices, or a new way of thinking or a new way of being, and especially in thinking of like, okay, I want this to be applicable to how people operate their businesses, because as a business owner, we have our customers and they pay the bills, and there's an element of power that comes from the customer perspective, because they come to you. So you are somewhat taking care of them, there's an exchange that's happening. And I found this amazing article from the Harvard Business Journal that was published a couple of days ago, it was talking about how to disagree with someone that was, quote, unquote, more powerful than you. And it was really talking about the dynamic of the boss and the employee. And I thought to myself immediately, just from the title, this could actually apply to how to disagree with someone that has a perspective that feels like you want to speak up to it, or that it's intimidating, or maybe it's a customer and you feel like there's a power dynamic, because if you don't have your customers, you may not have your business. Right. So in reading that I thought that it was pretty powerful to like get some practical tools around how to have these conversations because I think part of saying no longer I'm not racist, but I am anti racist is speaking up. It is acknowledging it, and it is having those tough conversations like we speak to every single podcast, immediately. And some of the things that they said was, be realistic about your risk speaking up is likely far less risk than not speaking up. And that by not speaking up Let's say that someone comes in and there's some tension between the customer and one of your employees. And you don't speak up, because you're scared of that powerful dynamic and you feel indebted to the customer. And instead, maybe you then lost trust with your staff member, because you did not speak up, because by not speaking up that's condoning that behavior. So what if we consider that one of the first layers of this is saying, What if we're realistic about that the risk is far greater right now for us to stay silent? And for us to do nothing, then for us to do something and be active in what we're doing?
David : Yeah. We can attach a link to the article in the show notes. And so people can review it. But I think that that's really a great point. When I think about people who start their business, sometimes people are like, I just don’t want to have a boss, I want to be my own boss. What's interesting, when you want to build your own business, all sudden, really the customer is your boss. So there's 1000 bosses. But I mean, part of that is standing up and taking a stand is you do have power to choose your customers. You can't please 1000 people, so be your truest self in business. And maybe now's a great time we've talked about in the past about your brand voice or your company voice. And being clear on that. So that helps you attract your employees, now might be a time to take a look at that and make sure you're holding true to is anti racist part of your voice or how you address inequality within your brand voice. So they can be clear to your customers right away. I think what's hard is when you try to manipulate your customer, because you're trying to just to get any symbol you can, or trying to have that thousand customers, like let's lose that. And let's just have 700 Ultra loyal customers instead. But the employees when they see you said that that example is just a critical component as well. And let's be real that if by taking a stand, you could risk losing employees in this process that might have differing opinions.
Mary : you could definitely lose an employee or you can lose a customer. I mean, but I think that that's where it's like, in back to the survival conversation, like the survival is we have a natural bias to want to avoid harmful situations. So what could be deemed as harmful as the loss of an employee, because that means that you then have to hire and that's a very strenuous process. Or it could be the loss of a customer, customer. And the impact of a lost customer, as we all know, is tenfold because of how much negative comments or negative situations are shared far greater than, than positive ones. So it's not abnormal, and it's fully expected for you to avoid or anyone to avoid a situation that feels threatening. And both of those are very clear threats. So acknowledge that. And then, like I said, Be realistic about the risks, and what are the risks and weigh those risks and see which one serves the collective far greater. And on many occasions, what I found when tough conversations happen, is, from my experience, when I ran a coffee bar for I guess it was like five years it was coffee, tea juice bar. And we had conflict on the daily with the customer with customers. But when I would address it full on and be honest and come from a calm place and a sacred place and also not judgmental, but allowing them to, you know, permission to disagree and just come from each other's own perspective. I ended up having the most loyal customers and the most loyal staff members, because there was trust that we could go there and still be okay.
David : Yeah, well, and that's definitely one of the first principles of third place and creating that safety. What you did was create safety emotionally, for your customers. I mean, that's why we wanted to produce this podcast, we wanted to address it head on, even if it's a little bit uncomfortable, but in the very first episode, creating a safe place for hard conversations, and being okay for levels of disagreement.
Mary : Well, I mean, I always say like, like the customer's always right. I mean to me, that's a short way of saying like the customer wants to be heard. And like, I think that what worse, if you distill it down, we all just want to be heard. And that's, I want to hear, like, I want to really hear, though, not just this superficial listening style in authentic leadership training they talk about, you know, there's such a difference between just listening and conscious listening. And sometimes it takes some intense and dramatic action and words and companies and so on and so forth to inspire people to consciously listen. And I think that what we're shifting into is conscious listening, and what we're both also trying to embody, because with conscious listening, you can truly learn.
David : So practically speaking, it's not going to be if a customer or if an employee says something that's going to be inappropriate, we know it's going to be when. So one thing that you can do right now is to create that plan and be prepared, because one of the things that gets our brain into that whole dualistic thinking mentality very quickly is when emotions take over, right, we get into that fight or flight. And so if something is inappropriate, and it's not calculated in plan, and most importantly, calm and response, immediately the other party is going to go into a fight or flight. Or you might go into a fight or flight if you don't have this prepared thing. So I think a great practical takeaway would be so and so customer just said this to my employee, and it was really inappropriate. What do I do? And what is your plan?
Mary : Yeah, and I mean, that speaks to that. This is a time for introspection, and to do your own work, so that you can be so rooted in the way that you operate, that it comes from a pure, calm place, because that's a productive place. And it could even be okay, you are embarking on a business partnership, and there's tension there that just doesn't sit right, you want to address that tension, and you want to address it in a productive way. Well, when you spend so much time mental, physical, spiritual, emotional energy, rooting yourself and grounding yourself in the perspective you hold, and the and place that we talked about, it'll just flow out of you, I think of like some of the hardest conversations I've had, I have usually had time to prepare for where let's say a boss was sort of pushing boundaries with me. And I wanted to set a boundary, right. And anger comes from a place of wanting to set boundaries. So a lot of what's happening right now is like we're setting new boundaries, I would spend so much mental space. And I would sometimes even write a script, just so I felt like I had things to come back to to be routed back in to return to the original point or the original essence, or the pure space that I was trying to come from. And that served me well, in every challenging conversation, I had time to prep for what we're talking about right now, there's not time to prep. So you want to be able to have that preparedness, when it just comes up because it's not if it's when.
David : At the end of the day setting the example, if you own this business, I, again, so many people that own community minded businesses, I'm sure that you're already wrestling with creating conversations, these are the topics that you're resonating with. But living your best example. Best life and using your life as an example to live is going to be really helpful. And that will speak way more clearly to your customers and to your employees. So that holistic, integrated, ideal of love, you know, how do you continue to push into that? And if there's adjustments that you make in your belief system, how do you acknowledge that? How do you acknowledge where you started? Do you come from points of privilege or not, and calling it out?, I think are things that can be really good in terms of setting an example.
Mary : Right, just like we always say just naming it and being humble with it. I think even in those conversations coming from a humble space can be so impactful, because from my experience, when I feel humbled by something, I actually feel like the other party is receptive. And just earlier today, I had to have an uncomfortable call with a partner that is definitely in the position of power where we won't get our goods produced for one of my clients and the goods won't get produced and in the time that we need to, and we will run out of all inventory. And what I had to do was come from a place of, can you break this down for me, and immediately and starting from a place of being humbled and saying, you know, something, I don't know, I want to know what you know, I also know some things you may not know. But I want to first lead with the fact that you have something I want to learn and I want to absorb, it disarmed the conversation entirely. And we walked away from this conversation, feeling more confident of our working relationship than I have, in the last few months just from coming from a place of feeling humbled, and naming that I did not know something.
David : You know, what you did. And it's another word that has come up often, for me over the last week, is you became allies with that person, all sudden, you became on the same team? And I think that word ally? Like how can you be an ally for your staff? How can you be an ally for all your customers? How can you be an ally for your community? And where the word carries so much weight today, how do you be an ally for those that are in the margins who are without who are being hurt? Like, how do you be an ally, and if we can align ourselves and show that we're all on the same team, and we can live that example. There's so much power there. Like he's said in your example, that was very practical, all the sudden, you were able to talk through it and realize that you were working together and learn so much from each other.
Mary : I think that sometimes I've confused that being an ally means that I need to empathize with people, which means I need to take on their experience and understand their experience. And I've actually started to shift in the last couple of days, or maybe even a couple of hours that empathizing and being an empathetic person has been something I've been very, very proud of. But I realized that right now, I don't want to negate or distract from someone else's experience by empathizing too much, that sometimes it is not mine to own but it is mind to own, how their experience has impacted my experience and vice versa. And what's more powerful sometimes then empathizing. Because that cannot always be good for the party that's trying to empathize either. It's like why always take on what's happening around you? Why not instead try to understand it, and try to hold space for it?
David : Yeah, that's definitely a tension. It feels like passive versus active again, they are the one my one of my coworkers and I were talking about this and I made the statement, I think it's true. One of the things that breaks my heart is that as a society, I think we've lost how to empathize. So I do think that empathy is really great quality and something you should be proud of. But it also is a little bit of a posture of passiveness where ally is much more active. It's kind of like the, I'm not racist, versus I'm anti racist. Right. So being an ally is much more active. It's taking that stand with someone, even if you can't empathize with them, you can still be that ally with that person.
Mary : Right? Because trying to empathize with, let's say, it's a black woman, my same age, also a mother, but she is black and I am white. I can't empathize. I mean, truly, I cannot empathize. Right. I can sympathize. But it's been interesting to me to think about that word empathy and how I've felt like it's been such a gift, but also realizing that I don't need to assign my emotions around how the collective grief right now and the collective intensity is impacting me. This is my opportunity to hold space. And this is my opportunity to educate myself as much as possible. And this is my opportunity to take ownership over my experience, and to then do what I can to do my own work so that I'm prepared in those conversations, and to also be prepared as a mother to teach my three year old son who's white, to be able to understand why he thinks the way that he does and, and help him navigate a way to think that is more in the flow of where the pendulum is trying to find its new homeostasis.
David : Wow, well obviously, again, a heavy conversation, but like that word ally and so many pieces of this conversation, do you still bring me so much hope. I think we have an amazing opportunity to see real changes happen, we're seeing real changes happen right in front of our eyes. And I think one of the biggest opportunities is exactly where you're at in life. And mine too, as parents like we get to invest into a generation that teaches allyship from a very young age that teaches healthy racial dialogue from a very young age and my work and around the ideas of social enterprise. Like I get so excited, and ramped up with hope, when I interact with the students that are in college today, because they believe in different ways of doing business and 10, 20 years from now they're going to be leading us. And I can't wait. And I think that this is just another thing that they get to tackle and wrestle with. And there's really the start of a new age where we can see equal and different as being really good. There's a quote I want to read, but do you have any kind of final comments or thoughts?
Mary : Something again, to refer to and that I heard was that it's, it's less about saying the exact perfect thing right now. And it's more about just saying something. And so I just wanted to express my gratitude to our audience and also to the human race right now to allow David and I a platform to just say anything, and that it's humbling to say anything, that it's terrifying. And I want to be able to not say the right thing and and feel like that's okay, because I'd rather say something than nothing.
David : Yeah, I was on a call last week and they were like, so many people started out 2020. Like 2019 was horrible. But 2020 is a year of vision. And there was so much hope and excitement. And the reality is the first part of this year so far has been very, very heavy. And in that moment, was like, you know, sometimes the clarity comes from the pain. And so maybe 2020 is that year of vision, but we still needed to uncover so many issues, to really see what needed to be addressed. So maybe it's still your vision. But we had to go to a darker place to even see what needed to be addressed. I would love to end with a quote that I thought, because this year has been so heavy. Again, it acknowledges the heaviness, but also ends with hope. This is from Sonya Renee Taylor. And she says “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal, other than we normalize greed, inequality, exhaustion, depletion, extraction. We should not long to return my friends, we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment, one that fits all of humanity and nature.”
Mary : I love that quote.
David : The thing that sticks out to imagine a new garment. Well, thank you for your support of this podcast. So far, we are planning to make a brief announcement, we have had a lot of really great feedback on our podcasts. And Mary and I have been starting to get into a rhythm of what this looks like. And we wanted to bring you up to speed with just what you can expect from us. We're gonna take a couple weeks off. But moving forward, our podcast is something that you can expect to be published every other Tuesday. I would imagine, we'll take some breaks from that. But we'll be clear with that. But generally speaking, our podcast will be every other Tuesday. We've had a lot of really great feedback. And again, thank you for your words of encouragement. And people are asking how we can be supportive. And obviously, by listening, you're giving us already one of your greatest gifts, your time. And so again, huge thank you for giving us that. We're just humbled to be in the space with you and to lead some conversations. And we want to be able to have those conversations with you at this point the dialogue has been one directional. So we created a website, just thirdplacepodcast.com. And we'd love to have you check that out. In addition to the podcast, you can find some of these resources that we've referred to or links. That's a great way to support us. We have a third place podcast Instagram and Facebook page, if you follow us there, we can share things like that quote that we just read more in real time and engage in dialogue in that way.
Mary : Yeah, and from the bottom of our hearts, a huge thank you for supporting us. You’re giving us the greatest gift of listening, of your time. If you can share the podcast with your family or friends, anyone you think may be interested. And then of course, like and comment on all the platforms we just laid out we would be extremely grateful and honored.
David : Again, thank you for this topic. By listening to our dialogue, is a version of being active. Creating that space for difficult topics is amazing. We’re just so humbled to be here.
Mary : Be well everyone.
