Hold people accountable for their actions with grace and forgiveness, rather than anger and punishment. This approach avoids using punitive techniques that contradict your values and acknowledges your own fallibility.
Before reacting to perceived wrongdoing, pause and give the person the benefit of the doubt, considering misinterpretation, misstatement, or past regret. This allows you to ‘peer into their heart instead of just react to their words’ and fosters grace.
Use a simple phrase like ‘I beg your pardon?’ and a pause to prompt someone to reflect on their words without directly accusing them. This indicates that something didn’t land well and allows them to self-correct without a full ‘call out’.
When confronting offensive remarks from family or friends, use a ‘calling in’ approach by expressing personal hurt and appealing to the relationship. This addresses the issue without blowing up the relationship or dinner, assuming you care enough to treat them with respect.
Differentiate your engagement strategy based on the group’s alignment and intent. ‘Call in’ those open to dialogue (50%, 75%, 90% circles), and use a ‘call out’ strategy for those actively harmful or manipulative (25%, 0% circles) who are cynics or manipulators.
Adjust your communication style based on the audience’s familiarity with jargon. Use values-driven language and avoid insider terminology when speaking to ‘middle of the roaders’ (50%ers) to connect and influence them effectively.
Actively engage with and influence ‘middle of the roaders’ (like parents) using their value system (e.g., religious background) to prevent them from being swayed by extremist views. This protects potential allies from being pulled towards harmful ideologies.
Reflect on your childhood experiences with accountability and how your fight, flight, or freeze instincts were formed. Recognizing these patterns helps understand the roots of your reactions and enables conscious choices to change them.
Make conscious choices to protect your own peace, happiness, and sanity by understanding your patterns and choosing different responses. This helps avoid self-inflicted unhappiness and fosters personal well-being.
Self-reflect on the effectiveness and personal cost of holding grudges, blowing up relationships, or living in fear of being called out. This evaluation helps determine if current patterns serve your well-being and motivates different choices.
Prioritize protecting your personal integrity over your reputation. Your integrity is what you know about yourself, while reputation is what others think they know, and ultimately, you live with your own choices.
Trust people’s demonstrated behavior and actions, especially when they reveal harmful intentions. This helps you avoid being manipulated and recognize when a ‘call-out’ strategy is necessary.
Recognize that genuine change in deeply entrenched beliefs (like hate movements) must come from within the individual, as external persuasion alone is insufficient. This helps manage expectations and understand the limits of external influence.
Avoid punishing people for past mistakes, especially from their youth, assuming they have grown and learned from them. This acknowledges personal growth and gives grace, rather than weaponizing old information.
When past wrongs surface, investigate the person’s current character and growth before weaponizing that information against them. This gives grace and expects growth, rather than immediately condemning them for teenage errors.
Separate ideologies (like white supremacy) from immutable characteristics (like skin color) to engage in more effective anti-oppression work. This avoids dogmatic binary thinking and focuses on dismantling harmful ideas rather than blaming entire groups of people.
Focus on stories of ‘white courage’ and white abolitionists/allies in history, rather than dwelling in ‘white guilt and fragility.’ This inspires positive action and helps overcome injustice by learning from examples of white people who fought against oppression.
Prioritize doing the work (e.g., social justice) to build relationships and trust, rather than waiting to build bonds of relationship and self-disclosure before starting. You will discover people’s true character and your own through shared action and responsibility.
Ground your actions in your personal integrity, using it as a compass for who you choose to work with and care about. This ensures consistency between your values and your behavior, fostering broad collaboration.
Focus on nurturing the positive aspects in others and encourage their growth, rather than acting as their judge. This fosters a collaborative environment where everyone can contribute positively, reducing internal conflict.
Identify situations where you wish you could speak up, understand the barriers, and recall past instances of bravery. This process helps build confidence and develop the courage to address issues and speak your truth.
Actively strive to see the humanity in all people, even those caught up in harmful systems or ideologies. This avoids dehumanization and maintains a capacity for grace and understanding, even while criticizing systems.
Extend basic human compassion (e.g., throwing a life raft) even to those you strongly disagree with or dislike. Focus on your own moral integrity rather than their perceived deservingness, as your actions define you.
Embrace a realistic perspective, seeing things as they are rather than as you wish they were. This enables effective action and helps build desired outcomes by grounding efforts in reality.
Approach attempts to change hearts and minds with a scientific, experimental mindset, accepting that many attempts may not work. This fosters patience, persistence, and helps avoid frustration, viewing the process as an ongoing experiment.
Cultivate and promote hope, especially when facing adversity, drawing strength from historical resilience. Hope is essential for survival and for continuing to work towards a better world, as demonstrated by the speaker’s ancestors.
In times of loss, choose to celebrate the life and positive experiences shared with the deceased, rather than solely mourning their passing. This helps find resilience and joy amidst grief, focusing on gratitude for the time had.
Maintain hope and belief in collective human resilience, even when facing widespread challenges and tragedies. This fosters collective strength and belief in the ability to overcome adversity in astonishing ways.
Reserve judgment of individuals based on their social location or privileges until you understand their personal history and how they’ve responded to it. This allows you to appreciate unexpected kindness and avoid prejudging people.