Elevating Lived Experience In Our Hiring Practices

In my work of leading social impact efforts for the past 20 years, I have received numerous comments about the diversity and untraditional makeup of my team. This was true when I was leading a counseling firm and was especially true while leading holistic neighborhood change. At the last organization that I founded and led for thirteen years almost 70% of our employees in the history of the organization were people of color and almost half had grown up or lived in the neighborhood we were serving. The Director of HR for a very large organization that we were partnering with once asked me how we were so effective in attracting and retaining such a diverse workforce. Initially, I thought this was an odd question as I didn’t see it this way. But then I realized that our practices were all too uncommon. 

Having entered into the work from a decade of community organizing, I never considered or even knew what credentials or degrees those who I worked alongside held. The only thing that mattered was whether or not they cared about the people we were working for and had a passion and drive to find a solution. So, when I was in the position of hiring, I naturally always looked for people who demonstrated such care and passion. However, as we became more understanding about the characteristics a high-quality employee needed to have, we began to intentionally put greater value on the prospects’ lived experience vs their formal experience. Time and time again, it was clear that in change work having people on the team who have the skill and knowledge of what effect various efforts had on those whom we were attempting to impact and who personally understood the struggle and pain of our people yielded such treasured and important insights that it forever shaped our work going forward and was a key part of the success we experienced. In short, it was almost always easier to support employees to gain the technical skills necessary to perform in a role, but it was nearly impossible to teach compassion and understanding. Our lived experience greatly impacts our insights and knowledge of what it takes to succeed and the complexities of the challenges we are attempting to address. 

The challenge, however, is that we have often over-professionalized our work and our organizations. We put pre-requisites that often make the bar of entry too high to access. Instead, we should think about what is really required and what is truly needed. Most of the problems in our communities were compounded if not caused by those who hold the power of decisions and those with that power are too often void of lived experiences that would provide the insight necessary to solve problems. We see this very frequently in philanthropy and government but it is too frequently the case in social change organizations as well. 

When we place a high value on the lived experience of those whom we hire to help advance our impact and create the culture and space for that experience to be leveraged, then we position ourselves to the possibility of solving the social challenges we endeavor to truly address. And, if we are leaders who do not have such lived experience, we should ensure that those on our team who have this lived understanding feel safe to share that experience and supported to challenge our beliefs and assumptions. But we can also do more. We can commit to coming alongside, being proximate - listening and observing - so that we can humbly challenge our own biases and assumptions. It is critical for those of us dedicated to social change to see the impact we are asked to lead.