Nobel winner Wangarai Maathai died on Sunday, 25 September. She leaves a bountiful legacy. This week, I am thinking of the paths she chose, the adversity she faced, the courage she lived, the dedicated Hummingbird she was. 

She inspires me to nurture my passion to seek clarity of my values and live by them, to work hard, to wear bright colours, to smile, to laugh, to give and receive constantly, to share, to think and do.

I thank her.

"I will be a Hummingbird" - the video.

I got up this morning and on the news I was hearing that the Lib Dems want to diversify, meaning they don’t want to be – as I call it – so Vanilla or as the radio commentator was saying, ‘White, male and pale.” It seems that they are taking action by setting up an ethnic minority leaders programme. I share the cynicism people have about the idea that any political party should seek to get more ethnic minority voters by getting more ethnic minority candidates; at the same time, I can see the logic there – not that ethnic minority individuals better represent ethnic minority individuals, but that the absence of them/us in any Party suggests some sort of lacking when it comes to equality.  And as one interviewee rightly summarized, some ethnic minority individuals will welcome proposals for an ethnic minority leaders programme and some will be totally – and understandably - be put off by it. 

I laughed when I was listening to all this because I was thinking of my fleeting encounter with the Lib Dems. At the end of 2009, I decided I would like to work with them. This was after attending a Democrats-Abroad UK event where Nick Clegg spoke  - I liked what he said. I approached him afterwards and was quickly pointed to one of his special advisors – who, I’m guessing was about 26, blond, definitely middle class (if not higher). A young, bright thing – as the label goes, though I discourage anyone from calling anyone else ‘thing.’ He gave me his card and said to send in my CV with a few sentences about my interests.

I did just that and I mentioned two interests (1) localism and asset-based community development and (2) diversity in relation to public procurement and commissioning. I emphasised that my interests are in policy development. Eventually I got a meeting with someone whom I was led to believe worked in policy. I turned up at Lib Dem HQ in Westminster. We went somewhere else to have a coffee.

And then it became quickly apparent to me – they had me meeting a British Asian person (I’m of Indian descent) who was part of their ethnic minority outreach team – with a remit of trying to attract ethnic minorities to support the Lib Dems. He (I’m not worried about keeping this person anonymous, because he wanted me to tell this story back then - so if you work with the Lib Dems and his gender and ethnicity give him away, well....so be it, as long as this is not held against him in any way!) immediately realised what was going on, after hearing my introductory spiel. Maybe I was being sensitive, but here’s how it read to me: young, bright, White advisor sees the color of my skin and/or my name and blanks out everything I say/write. He never heard/understood that I was interested in policy – let alone my specific areas of interest.

This in mind, I felt very irritated with the Lib Dems and in that meeting.  The person I met with said this was pretty standard Lib Dem practice and asked me to write in a complaint to raise the issue more widely. At the time, I didn’t have the energy/inclination for doing that.  I regret this omission. Change happens through awareness-raising, which requires people speaking up.

My advice to the LibDems (and any Party) – if you want to outreach to ethnic minority individuals in different ways, e.g. as voters, as potential candidates, and potential staffers/advisors:

1. See us as individuals who, like everyone, have diverse interests and backgrounds, which means…
2. Make no assumptions about us based on color, name, religion, ethnicity etc.
3. Constantly ensure you are reflective – checking your assumptions and beliefs and how they influence your interactions with people who do not look and/or speak like you or have a non-Anglo name.
4. Recognise and act on the fact that ethnic minority individuals  - like everyone else – want political representatives who share their principles and policy positions, across a range of issues, and not all of us want to spend energy talking about ‘diversity’ (though I happen to be one that does, but only as one of many political and social interests I have)
5. Constantly keep thinking about diversity of experience and perspective generally – I imagine it would be a useful exercise, for example, to reflect on how diverse Lib Dems are as simply as a community of White people.

I’m sure there are more tips I could/should be giving you….but this feels like a good start.

And I’m glad I’m finally telling this story – because at the time of the incident,  I was really quite angry about it – as Party leaders were saying today: the Lib Dems claim to stand for fairness and equality, but their appearance says different. But let’s be clear here – appearance is merely one indicator and also is not the best performance measure.  Ultimately it is behaviors and choices in relation to public policy that tell the story -  not speeches, sound-bites and promises – and it is by their behaviors and choices in public policy that any political party should be measured on its performance in promoting equality.

When I was a senior policy advisor in the British Government, I saw first-hand how poor communication was a key barrier to development and implementation of transformative social policy (as opposed to policies that just kept resulting in the same old outcomes). People would be in meetings with their own agendas - or at least an agenda; a lot of frustration - sometimes to do with the subject at or hand and/or with all the happenings from their office; a defensive posture, and more often than not, a sense of exasperation - 'Why are people always asking me to do things that I can't do and getting mad at me for something that isn't in my control?'  Perhaps, needless to say, meetings with such participants can easily become exercises in futility. This experience played a significant role in my deciding to turn my professional focus on engagement and leadership, asking questions such as 'How can we engage with each other more collaboratively and creatively?' and  'How do leaders nourish more positive connections between people and encourage us all to see situations differently in order to create a different future?'

It would be false to suggest that my time in government began this shift. I started out my career as a projects director in a think tank, then I moved to a national advocacy organization where I set up a Human Rights Programme.  As someone who tended to play the role of 'Bridge', I was struck early on by how entrenched people could be in their positions. And how 'us' and 'them' didn't always mean 'Government' and 'Campaigner.'  Some of my biggest challenges in delivering success were with other social justice activists. Over time, I would see how in all spaces people were adopting roles, postures, and reflexive - rather than reflective - approaches to their work. From early on, I began developing a sense that some critical fundamentals in our working relationships were askew.

A key lesson, which grew and grew for me over the years, is that people have reasons for the roles they play and the stances they adopt. If you want them to alter their role or stance, understand their reasons for it. This being the case, when we are in situations where the task at hand is to work together – amidst differences – to find solutions to social challenges, we will all benefit by pausing, reflecting and taking time to consider the issues at hand from multiple-perspectives. That is to say, it is worth taking the effort to understand the ‘why’ underneath the ‘what’ of people’s roles and postures.

However, asking ‘why’ is not something we are often encouraged to do, or know how to do – particularly in sensitive situations. We are also often discouraged from stepping out of our ‘understood’ roles – we might be told we would be ‘traitors to the cause’ or even just ‘foolish.’  Or we fear a loss of status and credibility. Well, my journey to date has led me to believe firmly that we need to create more spaces for asking ‘why’ – asking that both of ourselves and each other. We need to be prepared to let go of the familiar beliefs and roles holding us back.

The aim is to see and connect with each other and the challenges at hand differently. This is essential if we are to collaborate and create in new ways – leading to substantive and sustainable change.  Albert Einstein once said: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Entrenched beliefs and roles are locking our thinking into narrow parameters. They are often unwittingly generating behaviours which undermine our shared values and our shared potential. If we avoid questioning ourselves and each other, then our thinking and behaviours are unlikely to change and we'll continue to make the same mistakes.