Much of FSG’s work with companies focuses on advancing various forms of equity (especially racial and gender equity) through philanthropic commitments directly to social justice movements or as part of their business practices and strategy in areas overlapping their corporate domains (e.g., financial inclusion, health equity, retail services). Across those engagements, there is one common place where companies (and many leaders) are getting tripped up (or entirely overlooking): the inner work of reflecting on their personal position and privilege when it comes to inequity.

In our experience, people that are leading meaningful (racial) equity work within companies invest in inner reflection. From the HR official leading an effort to increase representation of marginalized (e.g., BIPOC, women, LGBTQIA+) talent in the workplace to the CEO embarking on a DEI change management strategy, companies see the most progress when leaders invest significant time into their individual journeys on learning and un-learning. In our experience, those corporate leaders who aren’t setting aside the necessary time for this deeply personalized reflection often struggle the most with the pace of change and are in danger of snapping back to a status quo where the company fails to create an inclusive culture, tokenizes employees of color and other marginalized employees, and does not consider equity as part of its purpose.

Equity work occurs at multiple levels. Many frameworks, such as National Equity Project’s Lens of Systemic Oppression or Change Elemental’s Systems Change & Deep Equity, describe four levels where oppression, such as racism, ableism, sexism, or homophobia, occurs and where the work to address it needs to occur: individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural or systemic.

Inner work occurs at the individual level and can often make or break a company’s equity work, underpinning the ability to succeed at the other three levels. It involves a deep reflection on the ways in which people have personally benefitted from, been harmed by, or perpetuated oppression. Inner work includes reckoning with one’s own internalized (and externalized) inferiority or superiority; with elements and experiences of individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural harm; and with our conscious or unconscious complicity with forms of oppression.

Read the full article about inner work for racial equity by Nikhil Bumb at FSG.