Further Stigma Mitigation

00:00 Moving into a deeper dive in the stigma mitigation, one of the main things that we should prioritize is Habituation of the Humanitarian Ethos and also Egalitarianism.

00:19 Knowing we should all have an equal fair chance to exist peacefully, right, even through our differences and that might help to mitigate bias not only in health education programs, but just in general.

00:32 Exposing ourselves to counterstereotypical examples what you've heard me mentioned before, but the more we hear these things, the more we can embrace and embody all these different strategies.

00:47 We talked about self-awareness is key, but how do I improve myself awareness? I might want to focus just on that for certain things and taking it one thing at a time because I realized this is a lot.

00:59 So if I'm trying to improve my awareness of bias, I want to focus on that until I can embrace that I do have biases and then think about some strategies for that.

01:12 When I think about how I stereotype or label people or stigmatize people, I need to make myself aware and that may require writing it down, but whatever strategy works for you because there's no one size fits all.

01:26 So I'd like to drive that home as well because I can give you some examples or some recommendations, but everything that works for me may not work for the next person.

01:38 The whole goal is how can I start the transformation? How can I sustain the transformation? So, if I need to take each concept in isolation, I need to do that.

01:50 Developing cultural intelligence not just thru watching these videos or reading stuff about it, but going through a structured training and then beyond the training I can't just have that as a checkbox.

02:03 Okay I did this now, I have arrived.

02:06 Now I have to intentionally work on application of it and I need to do that consistently because otherwise I forget it.

02:14 And just to use myself as an example, I do the trainings, I teach the stuff all the time, present on it all the time but I have to make a conscious effort to continue to improve myself and realize that I will never ever ever be perfect in it and that again is contextual.

02:32 So in some context I might have a high level of cultural intelligence, then I may have a lower level in other context.

02:40 Won't judge myself for it.

02:41 If I know I'm at a lower level, guess what it lets me know what I need to do to improve that.

02:46 And just because I improved it in this one situation, then maybe in the similar context to another situation but I'm still not quite where I need to be then I'm going to do additional work because again it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort but you have to be willing to change.

03:04 No one else can force you to do this stuff.

03:07 So sometimes this feels like it's forced especially when organizations are changing so rapidly and a lot of times people are so resistant.

03:15 It's human nature to be resistant to someone telling you what you have to do.

03:19 One of the things that I talk about with executive leaders and organizations who ask me "What do you do about people who are resistant to it or who don't want to get on-board?" Well, if overall and in general the organization is committed to inclusive excellence and committed to that transformational change, some things will have to be mandatory and you do have a choice.

03:42 Your choice is either to stay in that organization or to leave because if the organization is committed to the overall well-being of the majority of the population and I mean the majority of the humans working in that organization or existing in that organization in whatever way so whether you're a customer or an employee and people are being obstructive to that process, I say to those executives what you do is remind people that they have choices.

04:11 And if your choice is to continue on in this organization, then these are the requirements to work here because we do want everybody to feel like they belong and/or accepted in an organization and can exist peacefully, equitably, and also to have the opportunity to feel safe in that environment.

04:32 So, I like to liken people who are resistant.

04:36 I don't say just kick them out, we say this is where we're going with this and we do want to try to give people the opportunity to learn and change, but when people are constantly in opposition, that requires so much energy.

04:49 We could be using that energy for positive change.

04:52 So I'm thinking about the toxicity that often happens with people who the resistance is not necessarily the problem, but when you're trying to negate the work that everybody else is doing, I say it's like cancer, it metastasizes.

05:08 So we don't want consistent negativity going on and you do want to talk because people get afraid sometimes when I say that.

05:16 It doesn't mean you need to immediately fire people, but you do need to remind them this is where we're going.

05:22 And do you keep giving chances? No, but if you have accountability policies in place, what you do is say "Let's talk about this the first time then we may have to develop in a partnership a corrective action plan.

05:35 How are we going to move forward?" And you don't have to necessarily try to change people's beliefs, but we do need to change behaviors within the organization.

05:45 So once you leave, you can do what you want, but while we're at work these are the expectations and these are the consequences.

05:52 We want to develop empathy. We talked about that in a previous segment.

05:56 That's how important it is, we keep hearing it and we want to do perspective taking.

06:00 Use those skills. We don't have to try to change people's minds, but we do want to exist cohesively and respectively.

06:09 And I think that cultural intelligence is so foundational for that, not only because it helps you to understand who you are, but it helps you to be open to understanding other people.

06:21 And again, we want to name issues.

06:24 We have to put names and labels to those things so that we can figure out what they are and develop, I'm going to speak from my healthcare mind again.

06:33 We want to assess, we want to diagnose the problem, and we want to develop a treatment plan.

06:39 Because if I don't know when someone comes to me, another example I use, even though this is difficult and uncomfortable, when I have had to tell people they have cancer, so difficult for me to say because I can empathize with how that would make me feel. Right? If I don't say that it's cancer and then specifically what type of cancer it is, how can I develop a treatment plan? Same thing with this work about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, when we talk about microaggressions, we need to be able to call it a microaggression, we need to be able to talk about what kind of microaggression it is.

07:17 From before I talked about "Is it a general microaggression just based on human nature? Is it a racial microaggression? Is it an ability-related microaggression? Is it a gender identity-related microaggression?" Just thinking about all those different things that create the essence and the things that we used to discriminate against people, name them.

07:41 Even if it's uncomfortable, have those conversations.