Happy 2026! I hope the first month of the year has been kind to you despite the current state of global turbulence. See the blog below for my thoughts on surviving the times. As we head into February and Black History Month, I’d appreciate your help with the following:
- Registration is now open for this year’s In Conversation with Black Women in Leadership: Sisterhood and Storytelling, back in person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Vancouverites, please register to attend and/or share with others who might be interested. All are welcome!
- Buy my books, for yourself or for gifts for others this Black History Month:
- My short story collections-Identities, Ancestries, Destinies
- For yourself/friends and family interested in human stories of migration, identity and belonging.
- We Will Lead Africa book series
- For all looking for everyday African leadership stories to inspire further leadership action.
- Grey Zone Change (The blog below uses this framework)
- For those living, leading and facilitating transformational change in complexity.
- Transformation After Trauma: The Power of Resonance
- For the practitioners, scholars, professionals and leaders responsible for teaching and/or facilitating change and transformation where trauma is inherent and in psychosocial development spaces.
- My short story collections-Identities, Ancestries, Destinies
- Share my We Will Lead Africa call for submissions for a volume on Refugees, Peacebuilding and Security. We are still accepting submissions.
- Start an Identities book club! Access the 10-week book club outline and resources online free and I am available to join a book club conversation on request.
“January has been a long year.” A colleague said.
This year has started with a bang! But what year hasn’t lately. The 2020s will go down in history for being the end of many eras. I will not regurgitate the many reasons why, which you already know. We are living through these times together, even though we are having our own unique experiences in the midst of it. We are all definitely in what I call Grey Zone Change – that space between an old system and an emerging or envisioned one that is undefined and unknowable. Furthermore, it is evident that the envisioned world systems of the future are polarized and fiercely in opposition. We are all caught in the rupture that the Canadian Prime Minister recently called out at The World Economic Forum. This rupture is known in systems theories as a bifurcation—the point at which the old system no longer holds true, and a new system is emerging. We are in that middle space. We are in the throes of Grey Zone Change.
One of the core skills for surviving the grey zone is asking powerful questions to help make sense of its complexity and bring focus to the chaos. I join the many writers and storytellers who have said how difficult it is to write at the moment and yet how essential it is that we continue to do so, in whatever capacity we can. I certainly find my mind reflecting the chaos around us—often a jumble of tangled, cloudy, overlapping thoughts, quickly eclipsed by the next flood of news into another mangled configuration. But when I slowed myself down enough to think about what to write today, the questions that surfaced for me are:
How am I weathering these times?
What am I taking with me in the crossing of the eras?
And when I have the opportunity to look back, what footprints do I want to have left behind?
I am using the Grey Zone Change Framework to help me answer these questions.
When I pulled together my thinking and work for the Grey Zone Change Framework and Guidebook in 2020, I had no idea that I was preparing for an era where I would need the lessons of that framework more than ever. In the Grey Zone Change Framework, I combined ideas from systems thinking, organization development, and transformational leadership and change to provide guidance for leading, living and facilitating through it. It was an attempt to bring together my scholarship and practice from my published journal articles and book chapters, workshops and leadership and organization development initiatives I had led or facilitated over the 10 years prior. I wrote for an audience of leaders and change practitioners, but I am increasingly using it in everyday life and formal and informal coaching to help make sense of this world we are in.
Grey Zone Change requires movement through 4 subzones.
The subzone of transition calls for naming our losses and determining what we might keep, discard and/or need to create to survive and thrive in the emerging world. It is about taking stock of what is, or is no longer, and assessing what is possible in the new reality. It is where we draw lines, build bridges and create possibilities and visions for where we might go in the emerging future. For me, perhaps the shift I am mourning the most in the midst of our rupturing systems is the loss of empathy for humanity. I am deeply mourning that any calls for centering human rights and dignity and a world that recognizes and works for all humans are today conflated with ‘ideological political dogma’. I mourn that calls from those on all ends of the spectrums under debate are heard only in defense and opposition to those seen as other. And in a moment of synchronicity, as I drafted this post, I opened my inbox to a note by the On Being founder, Krista Tippett, lamenting the same. In this transition, we must accept current reality and mourn our losses, and we must also name what cannot be sacrificed on the alter of our changing systems. The line I am drawing for myself is this: human rights and dignity for all is non-negotiable. I will keep building bridges and I will keep calling for our collective human flourishing, free of the oppressions our world systems cause today. We are all hurting and as so many human rights and civil rights advocates have warned us, none of us are free until all of us are.
The subzone of learning and synthesis has me leaning into layers of learning, unlearning and relearning for our emerging world. Whether it is reading about and testing various artificial intelligence tools or relearning how to show up in high-stakes conversations as a leader, or at a dinner party, there are continuous developmental moments for me and for all of us in these times. In it all, I am finding that I am merely returning to the basics—Afrocentric and Indigenous wisdoms and human development/hierarchy of needs 101. I am taking care of my body, mind, spirit and emotions more intentionally than just because it is a new year’s resolution. In this, the overarching lesson of these times has been returning to personal accountability for how I choose to live, what I choose to respond/react to, how I take care of myself, how I choose to engage with others and where I spend my time and energy. Maya Angelou’s words in Letter to my Daughter, one of my favourite quotes and book, have been instructive: “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” We may not control world events, but how we respond to them matters. I remind myself that every action/reaction in every corner of the world is what will accumulate into the world that is emerging. I am trying to choose wisely. I am staying focused on the things that keep me grounded to our shared humanity: hugging my husband and children, an intentional act of kindness toward a stranger, dinner with a friend, listening to the playlist that gives me joy, prayer, writing as a my act of meditation, resistance and transformation, sitting to listen and learn in community. I look for the moments that remind me that all over the world, in homes and warzones, whether living in poverty or wealth, we humans still do and want the same fundamental things…these things are worth fighting for.
The subzone of group/systems development is the realm where individual accountability and learning meet collective action. It is the space where we choose what to do together to influence the emerging shared future. This is the space that is most challenging for me today. The loss of human empathy has led to a kind of vigilante censorship on all sides that is toxic. We have lost sight of the humans behind the data, stories and words we hear in the public sphere, meant to share perspectives that might help us understand divergent experiences. We have even lost sight of how to engage across difference in order to be heard, while preserving and honouring the shared humanity of everyone. In today’s drama triangle there are only villains, victims and heroes. We have forgotten about the corresponding compassion triangle that calls us to action that empowers both ourselves and others. Name-calling and cancelling abound. In this environment, many are retreating into silence and as I’ve written, that is also a valid survival strategy for these times. We must all know it’s ok to exit the public square, hand the baton to others and rest when we need to. However, for me, even when I choose silence and rest, experiences present themselves that call me back to the crossroads of whether and how to keep sharing stories that illuminate the realities of the marginalized communities I represent. In the past year in my family alone: my children have dealt with being called the N-word; a shop owner tried to subject them to forced search because someone falsely accused them of shoplifting (later apologizing after proving otherwise); and a racialized incident led to a restaurant full of allies walking out in solidarity with one of us. These incidents and the toll they take on me, my family and my communities is why I will keep telling these stories that are symptomatic of larger systemic discrimination and inequities in my speaking, writing, teaching and facilitating. It is doubly painful when these realities are continually denied, but as the saying goes, the one who feels it, knows it. Wishing these experiences away or being goaded into silence will not help. Indeed, it never has.
Which brings me to the subzone of possibility and courage. Here, I say simply—choose your battles wisely. Know which lines to cross or not to cross. And when you feel your courage failing, ask yourself, what legacy do you want to leave being when we look back at this crossing. Your words and actions may seem futile now but know that we all never know what will have an impact. I hold hope that on the other side of the chaos is the transformation possibility for humanity. I will keep looking forward to the petrichor—that sweet earthy scent—after the rains. There may yet be another cliff after that. Because maybe that is also the nature of human existence, that we keep finding equilibrium until the next disruption. And perhaps it is always courage and hope in the possibilities for humanity that sees us through to each new horizon.
So, how am I weathering these times?
- I am taking care of my body, mind, spirit and emotions more intentionally than just because it is a new year’s resolution.
What am I taking with me in the crossing of the eras?
- human rights and dignity for all is non-negotiable. I will keep building bridges and I will keep calling for our collective human flourishing, free of the oppressions our world systems cause today.
And when I have the opportunity to look back, what footprints do I want to have left behind?
- I will keep telling these stories that are symptomatic of larger systemic discrimination and inequities in my speaking, writing, teaching and facilitating.
How about you?