Speaking up | The School of Visibility

The Visibility Compendium, July 2019

We covered some juicy topics in July; the one thing you can’t be doing if you want to call yourself an intersectional feminist, the visibility flavour of entrepreneurship, the value of listening if you want to be a good leader, and one key action to take if you’re feeling depleted, particularly as a mother. Below is where you can scroll through everything we shared and catch up on all the goodness. So grab a cup of tea, wine, or kombucha and let’s get into it!

FROM THE BLOG

Failure to act
[Topics: visibility blocks | women speaking up]
‘…in encouraging you to take action, I’m not suggesting you quit your job and spend every waking minute initiating conversations about race or class or sexuality.

I’m saying, when the situation arises, have the courage to speak up.

I can think of many people in my life who haven’t spoken up in

… [Read More...]

Failure to act

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time arguing with people.

Mainly white males.

I’ve argued with them about racism in Australia. I argued with them about politics. I argued with them about sexism and homophobia. And for many years, when they’d discover that I’m a vegetarian, invariably they wanted to argue about factory farming as well.

It’s been tiring for sure. And a lot of times I haven’t handled the arguments very well. I’ve become upset that people would say things that I found so uncharitable or ignorant or out and out dangerous. My heart has broken more than once at how little compassion some people have for the rest of humanity.

But while all of that arguing has been emotionally exhausting, it’s also taught me a lot about how to speak up effectively and it has convinced me of the absolute necessity of speaking up.

In the … [Read More...]

Entrepreneurial visibility has a flavour all of its own

Visibility challenges are not all created equal.

Here’s one big difference; what it takes to speak up and feel confident talking about things you don’t have a personal investment in, versus speaking up about your own work (programs, services, products that you’ve created and nurtured into being).

If you’re an entrepreneur you’ll know what I mean. There’s a level of courage and vulnerability that’s needed to put your work into the world, to declare it worthy of consideration – not because someone gave you a seal of approval but because you know it to be so. There’s a level of confidence that’s needed to continue to tell more and more people about your work and not feel like you’re harassing them, or ‘being a bother’, or being scammy.

Entrepreneurial visibility requires a type of courage that – as women – we’re not conditioned to feel comfortable with.

As a gender … [Read More...]

The Visibility Compendium, June 2019

We covered a range of topics in June; visibility upper limits, visibility lessons for business, Below is where you can scroll through everything we shared and catch up on all the goodness. So grab a cup of tea and let’s get into it!

FROM THE BLOG

Are you fully expressed?
[Topics: visibility blocks | upper limits]
‘…if you’d asked me before doing the ‘I am fully expressed’ work whether there was much room for movement in this area, I would have said no. I felt good about my self expression.

And the shift that’s occurred has been in the form of a refinement, or redirection, rather than a radical 180 degree turn around. What it has done – and this has made all the difference in the world – has been to bring my method of self expression more fully into alignment with my visibility desires.’

Read the rest here.

… [Read More...]

If you’re a coach or mentor interested in women’s empowerment, this is for you

‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.’ Lilla Watson and Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland

What do you think of that idea?

Personally I’d like to see it used as the guiding principle for anyone who feels called to coach, mentor, and/or support, motivate, empower, inspire, or facilitate healing for other people.

It takes you immediately from an hierarchical basis for your relationship, where one person is superior to the other in some way, to recognising that human evolution and liberation is bound together in a web of complex interrelations. Or an a more pragmatic level, it reminds you that when you teach, you learn and when you learn, you teach.

The other quote I’d love everyone to post in plain sight so they might be reminded … [Read More...]