Show up and show out for your organization’s values: Advocacy and inquiry

2020 is a wild time to be alive. I’m thinking about how leaders in organizations can act on the emerging opportunities to create a more equitable world.

One shining opportunity in the work of leaders in organizations is a new expectation to talk about the ugliest and most broken parts of our society. In a matter of days, that old barrier between professionalism and activism, the “we don’t talk about that at work” politeness that keeps racist and inequitable systems in place, all but disappeared. Suddenly, that taboo looked like what it was, an avoidance mechanism that maintains unfair and racist systems. I wonder for myself: How did I go along with that silence for so long? It’s an important and very uncomfortable question.

With that barrier to real talk and meaningful action gone, we are left with the question of what to say and what to do, both within our organizations and outside of them.

This is the first of a series about the ways activism fits into the leader role, and balancing activism with the other responsibilities of leadership. Big ideas in short posts!

This article is about externally-facing activism, using the concepts of Advocacy and Inquiry. These thoughts come from my own journey in management and leadership, and from the wisdom and examples of clients and peers in the leadership development field. (Special thanks to my brilliant and generous friend Mary Gelinas of the Cascadia Center for Leadership for a comment that gave this article shape.)

Advocacy and inquiry are matched together in the literature of leadership, and are useful in thinking about purposeful daily communication. Here, I apply the distinctions between advocacy and inquiry to the role of a leader in an organization, when there is work to do with powerful people and organizations outside our own, in order to meet our goals.

Advocacy: This is the approach that first comes to mind for me when I think of activism. One person, standing tall with a strong clear voice and one specific demand, like, oh, “Arrest the police who killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment.” To make this one important thing happen, you show u by making a speech or starting a petition. You “show out” as the kids say, meaning you make yourself visible as you take your stand. Alone or in a group of fellow advocates.

For leaders of organizations that relies on outside funding, a common use of external advocacy is lobbying for the funding you need to do your work well. (Internal advocacy within an organization is the subject of the next article in this series. An example of that is the recent walk-out of Facebook employees.)

Inquiry: In the context of institutional and social change, inquiry shares the vision of advocacy. The distinction is that inquiry is exploratory, collaborative, and facilitative, where advocacy is action to achieve a specific demand and course of action. With inquiry, you have a goal in mind but there’s not one specific short-term change that you demand. You want progress toward a big goal, like law enforcement reform or protecting the voting system. It’s a journey you are committing to. You approach decision-makers, peers and  stakeholders with a value or goal. A decision to use inquiry in your change work is a commitment to longer-term leadership and to grappling with complex changes and group decision-making. Community organizing through coalition building is built on this kind of inquiry.

A friend and former colleague is starting her next phase of inquiry as a leader right now in her local health care delivery system. She is saying, “High-quality health care for trans people is important to me and it is a value of my organization. What do we need to do to improve health care for trans people in my local system of care, between the local government, Medicaid health plan, hospital, and primary care offices?” That is complex change work in multiple organizations. She understands that she needs to commit to leading this work over time.

I am in inquiry mode when I think about police reform (or pre-inquiry, really, since I am not doing much yet). Everybody says social workers and community groups should take over much of the role that has fallen to police. I’m a social worker and I agree, but the steps and specific long-term changes needed are unclear. How would we change the existing, uneasy alliance between social workers and police? I am starting this inquiry by looking for existing leaders in social work and community organizing to signal-boost. (Know somebody? Let me know.)

Now is a good time to pause and think whether Advocacy or Inquiry are the approach you need to represent your organization’s values in the larger ecosystem where your work happens. These questions can help:

- What change do you want to lead, between your organization and other organizations in your larger system?

- Is it one specific action now (“preserve our budget”), or is there a longer process of big changes?

- Who has the power to move in the right direction on the changes or change process you want to see? Is your organization at the table? If not, could you be? To be effective, inquiry requires access to decision-makers.

I hope this distinction between Advocacy and Inquiry is useful.

Future articles in this series will talk about the use of Advocacy and Inquiry inside an organization and how to pick a powerful course of action when the uncertainty and the opportunity are paralyzing.

Big ideas in short posts! What you think? What would you add?  Let me know, and I will weave your thoughts in.