Rita Sever - Leading for Justice: Supervision, HR, and Culture

PRAISE FOR LEADING FOR JUSTICE

Rita Sever combines personal insights and relatable experiences with practical and implementable recommendations in Leading for Justice, to create an immensely readable book on how to create an equitable, mission-driven, and high performing organization. Every manager who wants to sleep better at night and wake up excited to face the challenges of a world in dire need of change, should buy this book.

DONNA NORTON, Executive Vice President, MomsRising

In this clear-eyed, practical guide, Sever, an HR professional, urges managers and HR teams to take the time, energy, focus, and leadership to ensure that organizations committed to working for justice in the world develop a culture and practices that also foster justice within the organization itself. Leading for Justice offers insights and advice that would benefit any supervisor or HR professional committed to an inclusive workplace. This vital guide, peppered with provocative questions and insights, will aid any supervisor or organization eager to work to live up to their mission.

BOOKLIFE REVIEWS

Leading for Justice is a timely business guide for leaders looking to develop awareness around equity issues, both in themselves and in their organizations.

FOREWORD REVIEWS

Rita Severs Leading for Justice provides us with a roadmap to know when to step up and when to stand back when supporting, mentoring and uplifting our BIPOC team members while striving to dismantle a system created to sustain white supremacy. Leading for Justice is a treasure trove of resources to be incorporated into our leadership repertoire that can be referenced time and time again.

HEIDI STRUNK, President and CEO, Mental Health America of CA

Leading for Justice

Copyright 2021, Rita Sever

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-140-3

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-141-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021906579

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names, situations, and organizations are pseudonyms or composites when I write about my work with clients to protect their privacy.

To Mark, who created space for me to writeliterally and figuratively.

And to Barbara Love and Roberta Hunter, past coworkers in the field of social justice and personal mentors in the power of speaking truth and love in the face of structural injustice in the world and in organizations. Barbara, a Black woman, and Roberta, a white woman, first introduced me to white privilege and invited/instructed/encouraged/exhorted me to use my power and privilege for justice.

Authors Note: I am not an attorney, and therefore nothing in this book should be construed as legal advice.

I have chosen to use the acronym BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) throughout the book. I recognize that language, context, and understanding changes. At the time of of writing this book, BIPOC is the most frequently used term within the groups with which I work most closely. It is reflective of this time and this context. That context and that language may change.

, by Mala Nagarajan

by Mala Nagarajan

R ita and I met in 2017 as members of the RoadMap consulting network, an incredible treasure trove of movement activists, organizers, academics, and strategists turned organizational consultants. In fact, ever since my wife and I joined the network and connected with other network consultants, Ritas name came up repeatedly. Her reputation preceded her. Seasoned consultants like Brigette Rouson, our transformational JEDI warrior and cross-network pollinator, or Margi Clarke, who published RoadMaps People-Centered Supervision Practices and Salary Policy Discussion Guide, would all refer me back to Rita as the HR expert in the network. So I was part of Team Rita well before we formally met.

Ritas previous book, Supervision Matters, was the go-to supervision resource that RoadMap consultants would send to their clients. I soon got to witness her wisdom and counsel firsthand, when our colleague Nijmie Dzurinko encouraged a group of HR consultants who were deeply interested in racial justice to organize. I was nervous and excited at the same time to get the chance to work with Rita.

The thing about Rita is that she is incredibly down-to-earth. As I read through this latest book, I was reminded of the bite-size kernels of wisdom she would share in our working group. She practices the partnership role she speaks of here in Leading for Justice, and she helps us walk with her as she weaves together poignant stories, her breadth of experience, her lessons learned, and her curiosities.

Rita tackles the historical shackles of supervision and invites us to reconceptualize super-vision in perhaps its lesser-known root form where super means beyond, besides, in addition to (vs. above, over, on the top of). How would we experience supervision if its meaning were not to oversee, but to see beyond? That leads to her inviting supervisors and managers to see themselves as partners to staff, with different roles and different responsibilities.

Rita sets forth the larger context for leading for justice, highlighting how to make mission, vision, and values the connective tissue that feeds and unifies the work. Rita the trainer appears throughout the book, wherever she shares how she infuses group exercises with fun and creativity. And she demands we not abandon the need to balance the seeming polarity of serving our people and observing the law, both of which are critical to any of our efforts to move us toward justice.

Rita reminds us to not just teach the job or position, but to set staff up for success by investing time with each direct report, respecting boundaries, and focusing on what is impacting the workwhether in person or remotely. She emphasizes supervision as a team sport, and the need for a unified organizational approach to supervision.

Rita begins to break down the importance of developing self-awareness and self-reflection about how your identity shows up, especially in places where you have privilege (as a white person, as a man, as an able-bodied person, etc.), and about our implicit biases and tribalism (that we tend to recruit and hire people who remind us of ourselves).

The book is chock-full of practical advice, such as how to set up candidates well from the get-go, letting them know to expect explicit discussions about racism and explaining that if the candidate is not comfortable with that, they may not be comfortable working at the organization. Or, as another example, letting candidates know the extent to which statements regarding your organizations values and practices are aspirational, in progress, or integrated.