notes on the birth center equity winter co-director retreat
02 Feb 2022backstory: in december, i facilitated a 1-day retreat for the co-directors (co-d: pronounced “coh dee”) of birth center equity (BCE). BCE “support[s] Black, Indigenous, people of color birth center leaders to access resources to improve birth outcomes and generate community birth center infrastructure that benefits everyone.” nashira baril, one of the co-ds, is a dearly beloved of mine and when she asked me to do it, i was honored and giddy at the opportunity. thank you, nash!
we had a beautiful day together and what i’m sharing here is two processes we moved through during our time. the first process is an annual reflection activity and the second is a feedback activity. they rolled nicely into each other. but for anyone wanting to try this out, they could be done separately. i am writing this up primarily as a next step from the retreat itself. but now that i’m here, i know writing about it will also serve my own memory. finally, i am writing about it to give credit to the nashira and leseliey for the cocreation of the annual reflection activity (it’s a “simple” thing but i often find the simple things are the best things). <3
annual reflection: the emotional story of your year
as a way to ground the day (after an actual grounding and calling in of some ancestors, of course), i prompted BCE to do a walkthrough of their year via story, taking care to highlight moments that felt most important. however, because they are in the practice of doing that all the time already, that didn’t land well. they pushed back and offered not just to tell the story, but to tell the story of the emotions and dynamics that were around/underneath each major moment.
turns out, that was a pivotal and excellent upgrade. as they told a very familiar, when they brought in how they each felt at each moment, a ton of new information came up. each co-d learned about the other and they collectively learned about the dynamics at play between them as well as between them and other people in or around the organization.
in some ways, this is reminscent of the critical moments reflection tool i learned from ceasar mcdowell. it’s not the same but i want to give a shoutout to that tool because it is a big part of why i am so excited to hold reflective spaces for organizations and teams.
offering feedback
anyway, after the reflection on the (emotional) story of the year, we began to transition into the feedback section. i transitioned by giving the co-ds an opportunity to name any other emotions or dynamics (between them, their colleagues, partners, communities, etc) that hadn’t surfaced in the story of the org/work.
the feedback process went in three rounds and each person shared during each round.
- round 1: appreciations - name things the other person does or is that brings value or good culture to the team
- round 2: constructive criticism - name places/behaviors you see where the other has an opportunity for growth. these are places where i want better for you because i want better for us both.
- round 3: more appreciations and dreams - name any appreciations you forgot. also, share any intentions or dreams you have for your collective future.
my role/stance was to simply be present, hold the energetic container, and make sure that each person was speaking as clearly as possible and that the receiver understood what the speaker was truly offering.
i could say much more about this process myself, but for now i’m gonna leave it here. if you’re a facilitator, i’m curious to know what you think about this and super curious to know how it goes if you try it out. :)
words / writing / post-processing
570w / 20min / 8min