Episode 10: Following Through with Morgan Mahdavi
“I understood that doing my work well made it possible for everybody else to do their work well.” - Morgan Mahdavi
In this episode, our very own Morgan Mahdavi joins Mia for a conversation about their working relationship and how they invite accountability in relationships through transparency, genuine care, and radical trust and grace.
Morgan and Mia have worked together in a variety of ways (including here at Freedom Lifted), and they agree that accountable relationships that encourage follow -through are important to shared work and shared power within the work.
Morgan shares how trust in their work opened the possibility for taking initiative on important projects, the most important ingredients for creating shared power, and how we can build a team culture that learns from past mistakes. Morgan ends with sage advice for leaders who want to focus on building teams that hold each other accountable.
Listen to the Full Episode
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
[6:45] How transparency within relationships invites accountability
[12:23] The role ‘caring’ plays in our ability to follow -through on the work
[18:45] Why accountable relationships require radical honesty & grace
[19:41] The importance of genuine space for making mistakes at work
[30:13] Advice for leaders who want to focus on building teams that hold each other accountable
Featured On The Show:
Morgan Mahdavi (they/she) is the Learning Lab Coordinator at Freedom Lifted. They began their journey in education by working as a youth worker and in higher education. You can learn more about Morgan right here.
Mia Henry (she/her) is the host of the Shared Power Podcast. Mia is the founder and CEO of Freedom Lifted, a training and coaching firm that supports leaders and organizations committed to justice and equity.
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Additional Resources:
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Full Episode Transcript:
Mia Henry: Welcome to the Shared Power Podcast, a limited series for organizations and leaders committed to collectively advancing justice and equity. I'm your host, Mia Henry. I'm the CEO of Freedom Lifted and the daughter of activists, educators, entrepreneurs, and survivors. I've had the honor of teaching, facilitating, and co-leading in nonprofits and schools for over two decades. I've learned a lot, but it hasn't always been easy. There are conversations that I had, or I wish I had, that create the conditions for more effective collective leadership. In this podcast, we will explore some of these conversations, diving deeply into topics that will help us learn to build trust, navigate conflict. And lead in partnership with one another. If you believe that relationship building is the foundation for effective work for justice, you are in the right place. Join me as we explore the ingredients of leading with shared power. Today's conversation will feature my colleague at Freedom Lifted, Morgan Madavi. As the Learning Lab Coordinator, Morgan helps clients enroll and get the most out of our in-depth training experience. Now, I met Morgan years ago when she worked with me at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College. She was, and remains, one of the most thoughtful, dedicated, and joyful people I've ever worked with. In this episode, Morgan will discuss the importance of caring and accountability for individuals and organizations. Together, we'll talk about how these concepts help create conditions for a cohesive team and make it easier for us to follow through on our commitments. Here's my conversation with Morgan about following through.
MH: Well, thank you so much, Morgan, for joining me today to talk about following through as a conversation needed between people who want to share power.
Morgan Madavi: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on the podcast and honored that you asked me.
MH: Yeah, well, you know how much I love you and have loved working with you now in a couple of different capacities because I have had the honor of seeing you, meeting you as a young professional in what I believe was like your second full time job? I don't know. Yeah, you can talk about it. And then yeah, when I charged you with project leadership in that work, what that experience was like, and how you have grown and evolved since then.
MM: Our time working together at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership – it was my first, I would say, career role, or role that was not just a job. It was shortly after graduating from college. Though I’d spent some time teaching English abroad and I'd been working since I was 14, it was such a shift to working as part of a team, and rather than just doing tasks, but having leadership. And I've told you this story before, but I remember really clearly one time early on in my time at Arcus. You know, we had these weekly meetings where we would talk through different projects we were working on, and I would give you updates on what was going on. And I remember in one meeting early on, I was reporting back on something I was doing, and I think each step of the way, I was looking for your approval or sort of waiting for you to give me directive or tell me what to do. And you stopped me in the middle of the meeting and said, “Look, I hired you and advocated for you to be in this role because I trust you. I trust your thoughts. I trust your ideas. I trust your leadership. I trust your work. So I really want you to take ownership over this and bring the information to me, not to sign off on it, but to share what you've been doing so that I can make sure that I'm aligning the other projects that are connected to this with your vision.” And that was so freeing for me. At first, I think I was a little overwhelmed by it coming from having been in positions where I was just given the task and told what to do, and then do the task and report back, but even just to hear from a supervisor, you know, “I trust you. I believe in your work.” When you gave me that level of trust and leadership, I wanted to be accountable to that trust. Because it felt like such an offering, I wanted to really be accountable to it, and honor the trust and the leadership that you had given me. So that really – it no longer was like, let me just do this task or do the bare minimum, but really create quality work so that I'm taking good care of the trust that's been gifted to me in this position.
MH: In this meeting, in this time, we're having this conversation, I understood that you didn't know that I trusted you. I hadn't communicated that, right? And so that was important for me to do. And so I think about that because I do believe following through and accountability, conversations about accountability are mutual. It's both ways, right? So there's the, you are stepping up, right? But there's also the embrace of the work that you do and create.
MM: Absolutely. I've been in positions, after leaving the Arcus Center, I was in a variety of positions and there were a few where I took that level of initiative. I was like, I know that I have these skills, or I can see how we might be able to do these things different or more effectively to reach our goals, and stepped up, and it often felt like bumping up against a ceiling or something, or bumping into a wall. And at a certain point, I was like, well okay, I'll just go back to doing the baseline, because if I'm putting my heart into this, and I'm really putting thought and care and feeling proud of the work, to then either have it be pushed down or just ignored… Offering something to people in leadership saying, here's an idea that I have around my responsibilities or how we might be able to improve things based on conversations we're having, and then having it go nowhere really, it took the wind out of my sail. And even, there've been times in our work where I may come up with an idea or think of something that ultimately doesn't go anywhere or that you say, you know, I appreciate your work on this, but we're not going to move forward for it. But you communicate that to me, you explain it. You know, I think there's a transparency in our working relationship, organizationally and on our individual work projects, that invites accountability and makes us feel very much a part of it, a part of your thinking, and allows us all to be steering in the same direction.
MH: So I really appreciate that you see that. And transparency, I think a lot of people bristle at transparency, especially if they work in large organizations, because they're like, “We can't tell everybody everything.” And I always push back and I say, “You don't have to tell everybody everything.” And of course, there's going to be privacy issues and confidentiality. That's not what transparency is. Transparency to me is offering a rationale behind decisions that are made, especially if they're not made collectively and people don't know why. So we understand that in organizational structures, formal and informal, and of course, I love collective leadership, but collective leadership, and I want to write about this at some point – the myths around collective leadership – one big one is that everybody makes all the decisions. We can't collectively lead because everybody, you know, we can't have everybody make all the decisions and that's not it, right? Like it's actually people making big decisions together, right? And being able to walk together towards the same vision, but people have all their different roles and in the spaces that they inhabit towards that path, and they are making decisions all the time about their own work and how that work serves a larger mission. So there's individual decision making, but there’s rationale shared when we have to talk about why we've made decisions, right? And that rationale in a collective leadership structure should be rooted in a collective vision. We are all doing our own work, and of course communicating with each other, collaborating and asking for advice. But at the end of the day, some things, not everything, we do embrace consensus based decision making again on anything that impacts the direction we're going in, but we have to be able to again, trust each other to make decisions on a daily basis that help us achieve our goals and our work. And so just being able to, if asked, why are we doing it this way? Not being defensive, but being open about the why. So what are some of the other ingredients? We've talked about trust – keeps coming up in all all the podcasts. I think that's because shared power requires trust. You know, this is easier said than done, but not negotiable. And it requires communication. Mutual communication and transparency.
MM: Something that stands out to me when I think about our early work together, again, especially as an early career professional, for entry level position, I was never made to feel like my work was less important or less than. It was very, in the way that we worked, it was very clear that I was part of an ecosystem and that my work and my role was tied to everything else we were doing. And because I believed in the work we were doing wholeheartedly, and I was very excited about it, I never felt like the things that I was doing were of any less value. Which is a really hard thing because we do live in a society that tells us that some work is good and some work is bad, some work is valuable, some is demeaning. But I was never made to feel that way, and I was very clear that doing my work well made it possible for everybody else. Whether that was you, who was my supervisor, or my colleagues, or anybody, it made me doing my work well, made it possible for everybody else to do their work well, and then for us to do what we were able to do. You know, I think fondly of our staff meetings, which I've said this before, and people are like, what is wrong with you? But I look forward to our staff meetings every week. We would come together. We would talk about ourselves and our lives. We would share what was going on. We would talk about, you know, everybody would talk about what they were working on. We would talk about our shared projects. It was just very cohesive and it always made me feel – I never felt alone or isolated. I was very much part of the team. Made me that much more accountable to the work that it was – I wanted to do what I was doing so we could continue to produce excellent work, and because I knew it would benefit my colleagues who I had immense care and love for, because of the trust building that we did, and the time we took to check in and meetings. I remember sometimes at our staff meetings, you have to cut off the check-in because we would just start talking about life and movies and what we were up to.
MH: Take it to lunch. Take it to lunch. Well, you mentioned it just now. You said the word care, right? And I think that sometimes, I feel may be lost when we talk about team building with groups and like, you know, what's the point of team building? Oftentimes, we might think it's just so we understand each other better again so we can produce better. But I often do think about team building, and I talk a lot about sharing stories with one another, does help us actually see people. That means that we care about them. And I've heard you talk about that, the role of caring. What role do you feel like caring has in our ability to actually follow through on the work?
MM: I think that that's everything, right? If we don't care about what we're doing, if we don't care about the people we work with, if we don't care about the mission of what we're trying to do, then we're not gonna follow through. What's the importance? So we have to care about the work that we're doing. We have to care about each other. We have to pour care into what we produce, and that's easier said than done, but I've heard people push back lately around check-ins at meetings or sharing personal things and we don't have to share beyond what we're comfortable sharing, but this move beyond this idea that we're just workers, and being able to show up with our whole selves, or at least the parts of ourselves that we want to share. I don't think we can be our entire selves everywhere or anywhere all the time. And recognizing that there are different levels of safety and comfort for different people in places. I recognize that as a white racialized person, I often can show up with more of myself. I'm rarely feeling unsafe around my racial identity in places, so I can show up with that wholly pretty easily, and not have that challenged. But yeah, I think gratitude is also an important part of this. Expressing our appreciation and gratitude to each other, expressing when someone's done a good job, whether that's like gifts at holidays, or writing words of appreciation. We would sometimes do check-ins that were just sharing an appreciation to someone to your left or something. And I know some people can look at that and think it's trite or forced. But we need to express that.
MH: And we can never have too much. There's like literal studies about gratitude improving our health, right? And the world can be so overwhelming and the issues before us feel so intractable that gratitude to me is not just saying what I'm thankful for, but it's a check-in on what is going well. And we used to say this a lot. My family would say this, right? The elders in the family are like, thanking the Lord that we woke up this morning and our right bodies and our right minds. If nothing else. So, I think it's really important, and to dismiss it as trite, because it is always so hard for us to bring it to the surface, is dangerous because then we might dismiss its importance at all and it really can't be overstated. So I definitely hear you in that. Sharing gratitude, expressing gratitude. Tapping into gratitude is one of those ways we can have people show care.
MM: And I think for the people we work with and for ourselves, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, I think is also internalized. Whether it's imposter syndrome, or I think something I've bumped up against is my own internalized ideas about what work is good or valuable or important. And what work is not, and feeling sometimes like the work that I'm actually pretty good at is a lot of behind the scenes work and that's not important or valued. And I've had to spend some time really thinking about why do I like this work and understanding it as the ecosystem.
MH: Just a quick break to note that the Shared Power podcast is sponsored by Freedom Lifted and our flagship training program, Justice at Work. Justice at Work offers blended learning and professional development. For organizations and individuals who are strengthening their commitment to justice and equity in their workplaces and in their communities. This training combines discussions with online modules that teach frameworks and critical history to help you examine the relationship between identity and power. You'll even have opportunities to join live group discussions facilitated by me, Mia Henry. Go beyond diversity and inclusion to find your role in building a more just and equitable world. Learn more and sign up at freedomlifted.com.
MH: What about mistakes? We've talked about this before too, and how important it is to have space for mistakes in relationships of accountability. I'll just speak for myself in trying to define accountability. I think early on, it was this making sure everybody was doing everything right. My thinking around it has since evolved into just, I think going back to the communication piece, is just making sure that we're doing the best we can for each other. And when we can't, communicating that to each other, because we care about people. And we don't let our own shame around maybe not being able to finish a project or do it to the level of quality or standard of excellence that we want to do it. I'm very much speaking very personally right now. Feeling that shame and then just wanting to like cower. You know, hope they don't notice. And instead, how powerful it is to just really be able to say, look, this is where I am with this project. This happens to me often as I can't see clearly the “why” here, and so I'm struggling, doing my best. Or I've got a lot of family things happening right now, and I can't show up. Like I thought I was going to be able to show up when I first committed. Being able to actually communicate that. It was funny, we were putting together some values for an organization I'm helping to found right now. And the values just went kind of on and on. We got really deep into this issue around care and space and giving people grace and all of this. And at one point, and this was important, but at one point, I was like, well, part of it, if we create some, if we believe in radical honesty with one another, then that's the other part of offering grace, right? You can't offer me grace if I haven't told you what's going on. If I'm just ghosting on a project, or if I'm not doing a good job, but I'm not explaining why. You can try to give me grace, but I'm gonna just be honest. That gets old after a while when you just, you know, when you don't know what's happening with someone. And it's just more and more ask for space and grace, but then you don't know why. So it might be difficult for us to share what we're going through, and that might be what we need to do in order to, to me, fully be accountable to the people that we're working with.
MM: Yeah, I think I have a lot of different thoughts on this. I think from the beginning of work together or just continuously being upfront that mistakes are okay, modeling apologizing and taking accountability, and really talking about what do we do if we're not able to deliver on a project or do something in the time frame that we said. Does that mean sending out an email? Does that mean texting? Does that mean asking somebody else to step in? How do we go about doing that? Because things are going to come up. There may be changes; life happens. And so setting expectations early on about, how do we go about this, right? I think we have a very clear system through a variety of different channels, but when we're going to be late to meetings, when something comes up, when there's a change, how we communicate. And it happens all the time, you know, things change all the time, or we have meetings that we move around, or things that we're not able to deliver in the timeframe we expected, but we have very clear communication channels and patterns and systems around it, and so we adapt. We also have very generous deadlines and timelines that are flexible, and when we have something that we need by a specific time, we are very clear about it. And I think to do that requires consistent goal setting and planning and big picture thinking because we're able to understand how each thing that we're working on fits within the larger picture and timeline and flow. And that can be hard because taking time out to pull back and look at the calendar and look at the timeline for work we're doing together sometimes can detract from actually doing the work. But if we don't take the time to do that, then we can be running kind of on a hamster wheel, right? Working on projects that are not priorities based on what are our goals for the quarter or what's next. Working on things or putting a lot of time into something that actually has medium impact or is for a longer term project. We're not able to refine as things come up. So I think that's really, really important because we're constantly moving deadlines. I think also just generally having systems in place – we've done a lot of work in the past year around refining our systems and project management and communication flow at Freedom Lifted. And I think of it as like, you know, you have a river. And there's sometimes rocks in the river that might be there that are the waters diverting around, and it can do that it goes around the river, but then if you move the rock out of the way by putting some kind of system in place, it takes some time and energy to lift the rock and move it out. But then things flow so much easier and faster. And so carving out the time to move the rock, whether that's doing annual planning or refining the systems. And we have that built into the calendar at Freedom Lifted. So there are times where I know that we're not going to be doing as much client facing work. And I have larger projects that I know will allow things to flow with more ease, and I save that work till those times. In terms of mistakes, I think rather than fixating on the mistake itself, both for ourselves and for people we work with, rather than fixating on it and chastising ourselves or others, asking the question of what can we do so this doesn't happen in the future. In preparation for this, I think you asked me to give an example of a time where I made a mistake in our work together or something, and I really couldn't think of any. Not that I haven't made mistakes by any means, to be very clear on that, I know I have. I don't have any memories of that feeling of what you're talking about in our work together, where I was cowering in fear out of a mistake that I made. Because while I know I have made mistakes many times, the approach has always been, what do we need to do to manage this mistake? And what do we do so this doesn't happen again in the future? And I think the last thing I'll say about mistakes, or just building a culture of accountability and follow through, that is okay with mistakes, I think it's important to be realistic that there are things that we're not naturally good at. All of us are inclined towards certain kinds of work and certain things that really are challenges for us. And I think it's important to build a culture that recognizes that and is okay with that. It's okay with saying, you know, this is not something that I am naturally inclined to do, and finding a way that that task or work area can be reassigned or shifted, and also recognizing that in our colleagues and peers. Now that's not to say not pushing ourselves, right? Because we don't want to do something or it's challenging, but just having a culture that is not trying to fit everybody into one size fits all positions, but is adaptable to responsibilities and positions that help us produce our best work. One of the ways we do this at Freedom Lifted, we do the Colby A report.
MH: I was going to mention that earlier.
MM: Yeah, and which is about – maybe you can explain it better. I still have not totally wrapped my mind around what it is, though I find it very helpful. It's our, what is it?
MH: It's a leadership assessment that doesn't measure strengths in the sense of your intelligence or personality or social style, but it looks at the ways we take action. We talk about it not replacing other strengths assessments, but being a compliment to it, because it's like, here are the ways that you show up. Here are the things that you might be naturally good at, or you're drawn to, but then here's the ways that you approach.
MM: Yeah, so we've taken the Colby A, all of us, and have shared our results with each other. Just being able to share, here are the things I'm naturally inclined to do, and the things that I'm not as much, and seeing how that plays together, and then being able to draw, when certain things come up, to think about people's Colby A, and who may be the strongest person on the team for that specific task. So it's just one tool, but I think the larger point is encouraging organizations to build cultures that recognize people's differences and that work to reflect and adjust and be creative in aligning people with roles and responsibilities that fit their skill sets. Another example is, in the fall of this year we brought someone else onto the learning lab team at Freedom Lifted. Shout out to Sayantani. She is incredibly detail oriented. It is absolutely amazing. And the way that we complement, both in our differences and similarities and working together, it has just, I feel that our work in the Learning Lab and my work has just blossomed in the past six months. Enjoying it so much more. I mean, I was enjoying it before, but there were certain tasks that I had to do that were draining a lot of my energy and I was not doing particularly well because it was like swimming upstream. And bringing Siyantani in, the tasks that I was struggling with, they really aligned for her and she brings such incredible detailed thinking to them that we've been able to implement improvements that make it easier for systematizing. And we've been able to do so much more and so much better together. And that came about, that position didn't exist, but through some creative thinking on your end, and Siyantani was already part of the team and was looking for some more responsibility. And we were able to – you thought creatively about how we can make some adjustments here based on these people and their skills, and it's just been wonderful.
MH: Yeah. It really illustrates your point so well. I think you all’s skill sets fit together like puzzle pieces. That to me is what shared power is – is recognizing, and you're hitting on another topic. Another conversation that I feel is important for shared power, which is this embracing our zones of genius piece. And so really understanding ourselves is so important so that we're able to communicate what type of work does bring us energy and what type of work is draining? Just like you said, and I thought about it earlier in our conversation because you were talking about how important it is for you to understand a vision and seeing your work as part of that vision. And that's something I really learned about you, even after years of working with you. After we did the Colby A, and your first number was around needing to see the big picture, like leading with vision first. Made sense after I learned it, but I wasn't consciously aware of it. And then other people I work with who really need the details in order to feel like they understand the direction we're going in. So for me in our meetings, I think it's even more important. Well, you know, I have to have the balance, but for you and I in particular, I was like, Morgan is a vision person. And you really challenged me to think about what is the larger reason for us to be doing the work we're doing, and in the way we're doing it. So what you said before, too, reminded me of the book Essentialism, which I love so much by Greg McCowan. That whole, like, do we even need to still be doing this anymore? Let's check in around, are these tasks even necessary? Or what's a different way we can do this so that it's easier on everyone or it takes advantage of everyone's gifts. Certainly Siyantani has done things that I didn't even know needed to be done. But I was also just like, do your thing Siyantani, live in your element, you know where we're going. So it's a really beautiful thing and I think it's a really critical piece of the shared power of really understanding shared power. So, Morgan, just to wrap up, is there any advice that you'd give to leaders who want to focus on creating cultures where teams feel accountable for one another, hold each other accountable, and follow through as they attempt to share power and collectively lead?
MM: Yeah, absolutely. Have humility for everybody in all of the roles. Be open to learning from everyone. And know that everyone has valuable ideas and contributions. Slow down, make intentional time and space for trust building, for gratitude, for connection and reflection. I think we often move really fast and feel like we have to produce at high volumes and it becomes quantity over quality. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to our end goal is by slowing down. Know when it's time to go or to let go. Follow through on accountability. If it's continuing to be an issue, sometimes it's time to step away. We're not meant to do anything forever, or be in one organization forever. And I think that at the times where I think about where I've had the hardest time with follow through and accountability, it's often a symptom of a deeper issue. Sometimes, something that can be changed and addressed, and sometimes it's been that it's just my time to leave, whether that's because the work has shifted, I'm ready to move on, or it's not the right fit for me. And I know you have shared that sometimes in having to shift people off of the team, that often one of the signs is a follow through, that follow through starts dropping and then no longer being inspired or caring about the work. And that's okay. It's okay to say goodbye. It's okay. The last thing I'll say is I encourage leaders to be creative. We're building something new in this shared power thinking, and this commitment to justice in our work. And that's bigger than just about shifting some language or asking check in questions, but we're really doing something new. And so I encourage people to be creative in how they do this work. We're fighting against capitalism and fighting against a lot of systems that encourage us to stay small and play it safe. But we need courage in our trust, in each other, in our care for each other, and in our work together to make this change.
MH: Thank you so much. And in that very last thing you said too, in capitalism and in racial capitalism in particular, is we encourage certain people to cower and play it safe, right? And so much of that depends on identity and social hierarchies that we have. So some of us have been encouraged to take risk and be visible, right? So very interesting there and thinking about that, that we are definitely trying to do this from bottom up. And that's the assumption around shared power.
MM: Thank you for naming that. That's so true. Some people do not have problems with playing it small.
MH: No, and I've never been told to do so. Oh, I just love talking to you. I appreciate you so much. I have deep, deep, deep caring and love for you.
MM: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been so wonderful to reflect on all of our work together and to think about these things.
MH: All right. Well, thank you so much, Morgan. This brings us to the end of this season of the Shared Power Podcast. I am so grateful to all of my guests. Not only for joining me here, but also for the work we've done together in the past and the change they continue to create in the world. And thank you for being a listener, for your attention and time with us this season. May we all continue to work for communities that build and share power. This podcast is a production of Freedom Lifted, a company that provides training, facilitation, and coaching. For leaders rooted in justice and equity. It is produced and edited by Cassandra Sampson at It's 97. Production support also provided by Alicia Tate, Amber Kenny, Alicia Bunger, and the AK Collective. For more information about our work, visit freedomlifted.com or follow us at Freedom Lifted on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.