Disrupting Our Practice

We are really thrilled to be joined by our friend and colleague Leilani Mañulu, an Intuitive Leadership + DEI expert, a keynote speaker, the author of “Paradox of the Water Bearer” (with another book in the works!), host of “The Intuitive Catalyst” podcast, and a shaman! We met Leilani a number of years ago at a program leaders event at the Whidbey Institute . Right away, we could tell we were in...

This one is personal. Having done some workshops to promote the Disrupting Our Practice: Understanding Whiteness program, and getting ready for the program itself, we’ve had some insights. Insights that hit home rather close. So close, that Greg gets to sit with a giant knot in his stomach in the middle of the episode. Today we’re exploring those insights, talking about the ways that we still – af...

This week we take you into a real experience Shannon had on a recent client engagement. It was an experience where it didn’t take long for race to become named explicitly, and Shannon was able to look at what she was, and wasn’t, tracking. We explore what came up for her, how she navigated it, and what some of the learnings she’s taken away from the experience. You’ll want to give this one a liste...

We decided we wanted to explore some of the topics we’ll be looking at in our 9-week program this fall , and decided to start with control. It just so happened that Shannon was on a family getaway, and some stuff was up for her, so we recorded part of our conversation. Join us as we consider the ways that control plays out in ourselves and in the rooms we facilitate. For those interested in taking...

We were both really struck by an interview with Resmaa Menakem , Báyò Akómoláfé , and Orland Bishop as they prepared for their event Three Black Men on June 24th and 25th. Their interview is far reaching, and it had us thinking about our work, what it means to facilitate, and how do we do this deep, uncomfortable work. We are incredibly grateful for these men, as well as those who are holding and...

We are excited to be offering a new program this fall - Disrupting Our Practice: Understanding Whiteness . In this episode, we wanted to talk about the program - why we are doing it, what you can expect, how it’s different than a lot of other programs out there. It’s a deep dive into the heart of what it means to be in this work, and what it is that we are trying to build. (Hint: it’s community, c...

We’ve been wanting to have Jennie and Dylan on since the beginning of this podcast. This is one for the books, friends. Dylan Wilder Quinn (they/them) founded TransIntimate in 2020, to build connection and skill-building for cisgender people who want to be close to transgender people to know us beyond our pronouns. Jennie Pearl (she/her) is on the team at TransIntimate, working closely with Dylan....

We started this conversation with an inquiry that Shannon’s been in for a bit: How do i build the capacity to really interrogate the tools I’m using? How do I develop a practice of looking at the tools and the ways that I use them that supports actually disrupting the norms that are making it so not everyone is heard? It ends up being a rather far reaching conversation that not only includes all o...

Reaching back a couple of weeks to when Greg interrupted Shannon’s thought to invite in the idea that maybe, just maybe, leaders should consider not making meetings, retreats, workshops mandatory —that’s what we’re doing today. What if instead of trying to figure out what to do next, we thought about what to stop doing? What if we gave people the freedom to walk away? What might we learn? And what...

Today we come back to a powerful question that we started working with a few years ago: “What’s on top about race?” It’s one we learned from our teachers and friends at Holistic Resistance , and we’ve turned to it again and again. This time, we were both swimming in some different types of issues related to race: from how do we support our friends and colleagues who are People of the Global Majori...

We were thinking about what it is to prepare to go into a space to facilitate—especially when we are pretty sure it will be a mixed space. What are the questions we should be asking ourselves before we go in a room like this? Or, more broadly, what are questions we might want to ask ourselves before taking on a project ? As we started this conversation, it became clear that many of the questions w...

We’re back! After taking a short hiatus for some rest and travel, we’re back and ready to dive into the conversations. We thought we’d start by reaching back to the experience of the workshops we did in February and March. The idea of talking about the workshops was first floated by a participant who was curious about how we experienced them, as well as what we learned. As we considered it, it bec...

When we first met our teachers Aaron and Porsha from Holistic Resistance , they invited us to track our capacity. Being in this work is challenging, they reminded us. And to not have capacity to be in the work can make us, well, dangerous. As we’ve been exploring this over the past few years, it’s become a central part of what we are up to in our work. Helping people—together and individually—buil...

At a recent workshop with our teacher and mentor Aaron Johnson of Holistic Resistance , he mentioned engaging wtih “next slide culture.” That professional type environment where even when something deeply human and emotional emerges, the facilitator simply says, “next slide,” and moves on. In this episode, we explore how we’ve experienced and perpetrated next slide culture, why it might exist, and...

Both of us were at a loss about what to talk about. That is, until we realized that we actually wanted to talk about what it could look like to disrupt our own pattern of record and post at all costs! Will we take a break? No idea. But probably. It’s edgy for us, and maybe for you as well. How are you trying to disrupt the patterns in your life? What does it look like for you to get ‘off the beate...

We all do it. We’ll all continue to do it. The thing about us white-bodied folks is that we often go so far out of our way to avoid it that we end up not doing the things that help us learn and grow. The reality is that we can’t avoid it. What if, instead, we worked to develop the capacities necessary to ‘step in it’, and not break relationship? Not leave? Not disappear down a shame spiral? That’s...

In this episode, we’re returning to where we thought we’d go a couple of episodes again - talking about how the methodologies, processes, frameworks, theories, etc. are influenced by the dominant culture we live in. By this, of course, we mean white supremacy culture. We’re not here to reject everything about our industry. Hardly. We recognize (and have experienced) the benefits of many of the way...

We decided to move some things around in our queue. We recorded this one after Greg had a little exchange with someone on LinkedIn (in private messages, so no need to go looking for it if you’re curious 😉). The back and forth with someone who, let’s say, wouldn’t agree with the premise of this podcast highlighted some things. As a door way in, we decided to use a ‘classic’ Holistic Resistance que...

Well, this one was an interesting one—for us at least. We decided to talk about organizational culture, and it was the first time that we recorded while being in the same room together. At some point along the way—really, during the listening sessions we decided to use to get the ball rolling—the whole thing pivoted. We found ourselves slowing down and diving into topics such as: How do the Charac...

One of the things we’ve done in the past couple of years is run a program called Understanding Whiteness. The thing is, we each ran one separately—Greg ran one for men and Shannon for women and those socialized females. In this episode, we wanted to share a bit about how it was we came to run those programs, as well as why we did them as we did. We explore a few our learnings and continue some of...

Following up on our conversation in Episode 13—Our stories aren’t being told properly, with our friend and colleague 'N’—we thought we’d once again pull back the curtain a bit and do some debriefing. N shared some vulnerable stories with us, which got us thinking about our experiences, and the ways we often center ourselves. We also explore how easy it is for us white-bodied folks to never actuall...

Once again we’re reaching into the vault to an episode we recorded a little while ago. That said, it’s an evergreen topic for sure. All too often, we find ourselves contemplating the question of “what’s my role?” As white-bodied folks, this can be a complex enough question. Throw in the role of facilitator (or other holder of space), and things can get real tricky. We wanted to grapple with this q...

In just about all of our programs, usually pretty early on, someone asks, “When are we going to get to taking action?” It’s certainly an important question, but perhaps it reveals something about the way we’ve been conditioned. What if, instead of jumping right to action, we did some foundational work first? What if we wrestled with some hard questions, developed our capacity to be in the charge o...

We had a little technology glitch, and Shannon dropped off right at the top of this call. But the energy was already rolling and so we decided to keep going. This week, we are joined by our teacher, mentor, and friend Aaron Johnson of Holistic Resistance. It’s a wide reaching conversation with Aaron modeling how we can disrupt our bios, introducing ourselves to one another in a deeper, more meanin...

We found out what happens when we both come in with a lot of capacity - we dive in deep! This week, we thought we would turn to the practical question of designing in light of the things that we’ve been talking about. What does it mean to tak what we are learning, understanding, unpacking, and hopefully feeling into designing our facilitations? We highlight one of the Characteristics of White Supr...