Uncovering Privilege in your Business can be one of the most empowering things you can do as an ally of marginalised people. Knowing what you privilege is and seeing how it shows up in business can help you to know the spaces within your business where you can increase your inclusivity and innovate it in a way to be more accessible.
I hosted a FB LIVE on my Facebook page about Uncovering Privilege in business. There were 3 aspects of this topic I focussed on, which were:
1- How to determine your privilege in business
2- Critically thinking with marginalised people (who may be your potential clients) in mind.
3- How to decide what inclusive actions to focus on
If you want the watch the FB LIVE you can watch it on my Facebook page. WATCH THE REPLAY HERE
If you prefer to read, keep scrolling so I can give you a brief break down of each of these points.
1- How to determine your privilege in business
The privilege you have in your business is a flow on from your personal privilege, so that’s where we need to start. To define privilege you need to be placed somewhere along the privilege/oppression scale. That scale is made up of many privilege/oppression spectrums. Honestly, I’m not gong to attempt to give you a number on how many there are because there are SO many.
What we can do instead is look at some privilege/oppression spectrums that are large topics like sexism, racism, genderism, ablism, colourism etc
You can ask yourself “where do you do fit on each of these spectrums?”.
In any spectrum where you’re on the privileged and of the spectrum, that privilege also flows into your business. Thus also informing us on our business privilege.
If you need support with defining your privilege, I have a free video series on upleveling inclusion in business. Video one covers privilege and has an exercise that’ll help you define your privilege with the most common privilege/oppression spectrums. You’ll be emailed the videos when you sign subscribe to my mailing list here.
GET THE INCLUSIVITY IN BUSINESS UPLEVELING VIDEO SERIES HERE
2- Critically thinking with marginalised people (who may be your potential clients) in mind
There are 3 things that can help you think critically about your business with marginalised people. By critically, I mean from an informed and truth-based way and not one based in assumptions. Here they are:
1- Listening to marginalised voices
You’re going to hear me say this over and over again. I cannot emphasise enough, the importance of listening to the voices of marginalised people. Listen to their stories, listen to their experiences, listen to the changes they are calling for. This will open your paradigm of understanding of how the world is experienced by people from marginalised communities. Many of the ways of living that privileged people experience and believe to be normal standard of living, or being treated, are not the truth of a marginalised persons experiences and until we hear the stories form marginalise people, we cannot know any different.
2- Assessing your privilege
Assessing your privilege can help open your eye to the benefits you have access to because of your privilege. Not only does this give a great insight to what western society deems as “better” or “supreme” but it gives us clues to the spaces where you potentially have some unconscious biases, beliefs or behaviours that can be explored. When you have awareness of your privilege you can make a conscious effort and commitment to realising how those privileges express themselves on an individual and business basis. That awareness allows for critical thinking about the parts of your business that might need to be looked at in relation to inclusion, accessibility, and equity.
If you’re interested in exploring your unconscious bias in business I have an unconscious bias workshop bundle available. It has 10x workshops in it. You can also purchase the workshops individually too.
CHECK OUT THE UNCONSCIOUS BIAS WORKSHOP BUNDLE HERE
CHECK OUT THE WORKSHOPS INDIVIDUALLY HERE
3- Auditing how you’re upholding the privilege system
Based on knowing our privilege and oppress you can then do a self-audit of how you as individual and as business are contributing to the upkeep of the privilege system.
The place to start looking are the areas you are privileged in. I know this may be a little confusing or hard to conceptualise so lets look at an example:
If you’re an able-bodied person and you host in person events, you can start to ask yourself questions like:
– Are there ramps for wheelchair access or disability toilets avaible?
– Are there disabled parking with good paths leading to and from my event location?
– Are sinks, desks, and other facilities able to be accessed by someone who has a physical disability?
– Do the activities at my event allow for full participation of someone who is physically disabled?
Without even knowing it (or being aware of it) we can take our privilege for granted and do business in a way that is unintentionally exclusive and upholds the marginalisation of people, who may very well be our ideal soul clients. The people we’re here to serve.
If you’d like help with this, I offer 1:1 services and I host the Inclusion Creators Collective Membership where we can work through all these points, and more, together. To hear more about these services and to make sure we’re a good fit for each other, please book a 30min clarity call with me.
Last but not least, let’s talk about the final topic…
3- How to decide what inclusive actions to focus on as a business
There are a few factors to consider here but the MOST important is to listen to marginalised voices. What are they saying is the most important thing to do?
What are they saying is the priority?
What are they calling for you to do first?
Remember: The people who are closest to the solution are the closest to the problem!
-Louise O’Reilly
Marginalised people are experiencing oppression and exclusion first-hand. They see and understand the situation with all it’s nuances and complexities because they live and breathe it everyday.
So that’s the first decider of what inclusive action to do.
The next is to look at you business privilege and overlay what you’ve heard form marginalised people. Assess your business privilege to discover if there’s anything in your business that has the potential to cause harm or offence to marginalised communities. If there is, that’s something that needs prioritisation.
And third, if there are inclusive actions you can take in your business that are one-offs like turning the captions on your videos, or adding an inclusive action for your VA to follow in your standard operating procedures, do that. One-off inclusive actions, make inclusion part of your everyday business, right away.
If you’d like to know how else you can be more inclusive in your business, I have a free checklist on 15 simple ways to be inclusive. It’s a downloadable PDF that you’ll be sent when you sign up to my mailing list.
RECIEVE THE 15 SIMPLE WAYS TO BE INCLUSIVE IN BUSINESS CHECKLIST HERE
I hope you’ve found this blog valuable.
If inclusion, accessibility, equity or allyship is important to you and your business, I warming invite you to join me in my free weekly Facebook LIVES I host on my Facebook page. I go LIVE on Wednesdays at 11am AWST / 1pm AEST / 2pm AEDT.
Until next time, please know this is the inclusion revolution!
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