Episode 3: Telling Our Origin Stories w/ Yashna Padamsee
“Starting with a relationship instead of starting with a project is foundational, because relationships will continue even as projects and organizations close or change.”
-Yashna Padamsee
How do we fulfill our organization’s mission without sacrificing its people? And how do we support our people without sacrificing our mission?
For this episode, Mia is joined by Yashna Padamsee, a consultant with over 17 years serving social movements, to talk about the importance of sharing our origin stories when working together in organizations and collectives.
Relationships carry organizations and social movements forward: We can’t have people power without organizational trust.
Sharing the stories about what brings us to the work is key in building that trust.
Yashna and Mia discuss what it means to share our origin stories, how sharing stories fosters trust within an organization, why it’s important to prioritize relationships (even given the urgency of crisis work), plus the real cost of not prioritizing stories and relationships.
Listen to the Full Episode
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
[3:40] Why we can’t have people power without organizational trust
[10:10] How sharing our stories can intertwine with the urgency of crisis work
[11:24] How to fulfill our organization’s mission without sacrificing its people (and how to support our people without sacrificing the mission)
[16:50] What it means to share your “origin story”
[25:17] What happens to an organization when we neglect relationships
Featured On The Show:
Yashna Padamsee (she/her) is an organizational consultant for nonprofit organizations and social movements. She brings more than 17 years of experience in the fields of project management, event planning, radical operations, and movement infrastructure building. You can learn more about her work via Yashna's website, Instagram and LinkedIn.
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.
Additional Resources?
Eight Conversations that Matter Most for Shared Leadership by Mia Henry
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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'll 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 Yashna Maya Padamsee. Yashna is a first generation south Asian immigrant, queer femme raised just like me in the US South. Yashna has over 17 years of experience supporting social movements by creating innovative infrastructure and sharing liberatory healing practices. Now, after hearing about Yashna's deeply principled work from all my friends for years, I had the pleasure of finally working with her to build retreats and systems for an organization I co-founded that supports movement journalism in the deep south. Today, Yashna and I will talk about her approach to movement building work with relationships as the foundation. Together, we'll reflect on the invaluable role of sharing our origin stories when building organizations and movements for social change.
Welcome, Yashna. I'm so excited to talk to you today about how sharing our origin stories is important for us when we're trying to share power in our organizations and movements.
Yashna Padamsee: Thank you for inviting me in. I'm really happy to be here, Mia.
MH: Well, I first started thinking about this, actually. This is why it's so great to talk to you about it, because before we started thinking about task and, and work plans and, you know, workflows, you invited me to just have a one-on-one just to learn about who I am. And we had, we had heard about each other and known of each other's work for several years, but never had an opportunity really to connect on a personal level. So thank you so much for teaching me, reminding me, modeling what it means to share our origin stories. And yeah, I just wanted to have a conversation with you today, Yashna, about, what does this mean and why do you initiate those types of conversations with people that you are working with? Why is it important, you believe, to create this kind of foundation in our work?
YP: Well, first I'm just honored. I'm so glad that that had an impact on you and your work and forward moving, and I'd love to hear how that's going with your teams. But yeah, I think starting with relationships instead of starting with a project is foundational because relationships will continue even as projects and organizations close or change. The relationship is what carries those projects in the organization forward. And the relationship is the thing that's gonna keep going. And we can't have people power without relational trust. So, and in terms of the question of like, where did I learn that, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking even way back to my mom, always reaching out to any new neighbor who moved into the neighborhood. And especially if they were new immigrant families, she'd be like, welcome, let's talk. Let's learn about each other. Tell me everything about you. And I saw how that helped create a sense of community, a sense of connection and trust to get to know our neighbors and welcome new immigrants, people who, you know, we had just gone through this a few years before. She wanted to welcome people in a way that she hadn't been welcomed in. And so I think that's where it really started. And then through my training to be an organizer through my work as a healer, as a yoga teacher, both things require one-on-ones. They require building relational trust and doing so in a way that's about connection, and not about a transaction or what we're gonna get from each other or what we're gonna provide each other, but really about what's the connection here, what's the foundation here? Because when you boil everything down, this is what remains: people's love, people's pain, people's connection.
MH: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. As you know, you said you're organizing training, you separate that from learning from your mom, but what I hear is that your mom was your first trainer and organizer. I love that. I talk about my parents a lot as well as models of how I believe we should be towards one another, which is foundational to all the work that's worthwhile. And I have started to give them more credit for not just inspiration, which we always talk about. Well, not we all, we do always talk about it, but I used to just say, you know, my parents inspired me and you know. But now, I really try to dedicate my work to my parents because I do see them as like the OG you know, trainers for me. The original teachers of how to do all the work that I do because they taught me how to treat people.
YP: Hmm. I love that. I think you're right. My mom was my first training trainer to be an organizer. It's so true. And I feel like for folks who don't have that, you also learn what doesn't work in building community, and then what breaks trust. So I think it can work both ways and I'm lucky to have had such a beautiful example
MH: That is also part of the origin story, right? As who taught us how to treat people, right? Or how not to.
YP: That's right.
MH: I'm interested in how you develop the practice. You know, you've had all these incredible roles and opportunities to serve social justice movements in so many ways. How do you make sure that this is always a part of your practice?
YP: I try to always make room, which is counteractive to how we're trained to work in like rapid response situations and urgent situations. It's like, let's hit the ground running. Let's get right, dive into the project right away. If it's possible to slow down and make room for that one simple meeting, or lunch, or you know, even if it's 20 minutes of time to relate person to person, I try to make that happen. And I know sometimes it feels like a luxury, but I count it as an essential. You have to carve out that time. And I think if you can't do it before, then do it after. Like if there's the fire you need to put out, put out the fire and then pause and be like, wow, how'd you do that? And let me get to know you through that, you know? And how did we do that together? And what inspired you to approach it this way? There's always a way to – even if it's not the first thing you do, it can be the second.
MH: Absolutely. You know, that makes me think of a time when I was working in some political organizing, and I was working alongside someone who I liked and respected a lot, but we didn't know each other very well. I had just come to the organization, and I could tell that she had her doubts about me because I was so, you know, “How are you and let's do this,” and blah, blah, blah. And she was just like, we have strategies to plan things to do. And so we went on a trip together, and had to do some quick changes to deal with some shifts in campaigning. And so I quickly led a workshop to help everyone switch the strategy. And she watched me do that, and she really liked it and was impressed by it. And then, and then she was like, “Oh, I see you can do the things we came here to do, and now I wanna know more about how you came to be, which is so, so interesting.” It wasn't just a, “Oh, I like what you are doing, let's do more of that.” But a, “I like what you're doing and I wanna get to know you better because it's so you.” I love how you said that. It doesn't have to necessarily happen first. It's nice if it does. And some of us who are relational, which I am, like for it to happen first, but not everybody comes to the work in that way, where they wanna start sharing their origin stories in the first five minutes. They often do need to see that they can work with you. And that's okay too, right. As long as we don't skip it all together – being able to share who we are. I was talking to someone about this the other day too, around the urgency piece you mentioned, the urgency with rapid response. I think that we sometimes get tripped up on urgency being listed as one of those white supremacy characteristics. One of the characteristics of things and ways of being that uphold white supremacy. That's what I like to say. And I think that it's not that we are not urgent in our work, because many of us are working in situations that are important for survival. And if we are, if we are slow to respond, we might actually lose people. So it's not that doing work with urgency is a problem, but it's doing work with urgency at the cost of relationships.
YP: That's right.
MH: I just so appreciate you you saying that – that we can hold both urgency and relationship building together.
YP: Yes, absolutely. Because some moments call for that urgency, but all moments call for relationality.
MH: Exactly! One of the roles that I've seen you contribute to movement work is operations, right? And I know that you've said before, we're seeing more and more organizations shift from the language of HR to create roles in organizations that focus on people. Why do you think that this is happening, and how can origin stories fit into that shift?
YP: So yeah, I do think there's this shift of understanding. We're understanding that organizations are made up of people. They're not this abstract configuration. There's humans that make up organizations, and I like to say that organizations are vehicles for social movements, but someone's gotta be driving that car, those vehicles, and we gotta take turns driving. I can take this metaphor down a long road. The people drive the vehicles, people drive the organizations. And so I think that's where that shift is coming, is if we understand people and relationships better, we can understand how to build stronger organizations to build stronger movements. I think that's the chain connection right there. And we don't come to this work as a blank slate. We come with all of our baggage and we come with all of our talents. And both things are important. I think that culture of white supremacy is the perfectionism. So we wanna say, “Here's all my talents and that's all that's here.” But really we also have this baggage, this pain, this struggle that's actually equally as important because we can learn lessons from both of these things, from our strengths and talents and from the hard things we've gone through and still might carry with us. And so I think we're in this moment where organizations are figuring out how do we fulfill our mission in ways that don't sacrifice our people, and vice versa. How do we support our people in ways that aren't sacrificing our mission and our work? And that's a hard give and take, but I really believe that we can get there, and that there's organizations right now that are really testing out how to do some of this and how to create that balance. I think the piece about origin stories is that when hearing each other's stories, it places us not in the past, but rather in the current moment and what brought us here and how all of that can help move us forward together.
MH: I'm telling you, I have talked about driving as this metaphor for leadership. I think it's one of the best lessons that we teach as a society, as a collective society is how we teach people how to drive. So we'll have to talk about that later because there's a whole thing of like observing and then getting in the driver's seat, right? And we know the only way to learn how to drive is to drive. So I love how you talked about that. We have to switch drivers, right? Oh my gosh. We need a whole thing on that. I'm not kidding. Part two.
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@freedomlifted.com.
MH: So yeah, we've been talking so much about building trust. I've been telling people that maybe I need to rename this podcast, The Building Trust Podcast, because that is the theme of shared power: trust. It’s foundational to be able to share power. And you've talked about this throughout this conversation in the times we've known each other. And so can you tell about how the origin stories really help us build trust and how they foster trust?
YP: Yes. So, many people come to movement work, myself included, through very personal reasons. Through living through (past tense) or currently living through oppressive conditions, and living through and fighting through the oppression that we're fighting at a organizational or movement level. So we come in with personal reasons, why not use that, if we're continuing with this vehicle metaphor, to fuel us, to drive us further, to continue fueling us and to continue inspiring us forward. I think that hearing each other's stories can place each other in a context in both our struggle and our resilience stories. By telling my story to you or to others. I get to place myself in this long arc of justice and help my sense of belonging in the struggle. And by hearing your story, I get to understand you as a person and place you in a context. And not to fit us each into boxes, but rather just to deepen our understanding of each other. I think in terms of an example, one powerful practice we did with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, we have a campaign called the Beyond Survival Campaign, which works with survivors of labor trafficking. And one of the key practices that we did with multiple cohorts of survivors with storytelling. And them getting to share their stories with each other instead of with the press, instead of with their organizers, instead of with doctors, like sharing it with a peer, someone who's been through a similar experience, as I mentioned before, both helped place themselves in a place of belonging and helped them rewrite their own stories towards, “I've survived this,” versus, “I've suffered through this.” And from that, I think they can more authentically organize others, talk to the press, build stronger people, power through getting to do that first authentically.
MH: For those who are listening to the podcast and they're like, okay, Mia and Yasha are just wanting me to tell my whole life story every time I start a job, or or start working with anybody. And I think it's really important that we make sure that that's not what we're recommending. And on the other hand, we're not recommending a script either, right? So every telling of the story will be different depending on who we're talking to, where we are in our lives, and the work we're here to do. So that's, I think, really important. There's no script and this is not a request to share beyond comfort, out of obligation, right? Or to tap into or to move from vulnerability to oversharing, right? Because that's what we think people expect us to do. I don't know if you wanna comment just on what the difference is between telling one's whole life story every day, and throughout the time and, you know, being completely kind of closed off and not necessarily willing to share anything about one's self. What's the in-between there, and why is that important?
YP: Yeah, I really appreciate that. I agree – that is not what I'm saying. You don't have to divulge all your secrets, tell all your stories, but it really is from a place of choice. And I do think there's an in-between. I've been part of a collective early on in my twenties, bless us, where we spent the whole two hour meeting doing check-ins, and then didn't have time for the agenda. And then I've been part of collectives that just jump right into the agenda, and nothing about like even how you doing today. So I think there is an in between where yes, there is a balance where it's like even in a staff meeting or a member meeting, there can be literally like drop in the chat, how are you doing today? What's on your mind? And that's one brick of the foundation that might build into two bricks and next time you see that person in person. But I think there is that in-between and we can't erase each other and just pretend there's the work, and we can't come completely unbridled because this isn't therapy, or this isn't community around the fireplace. We are coming together to move something forward, but there, there has to be a balance.
MH: Yeah, absolutely. When I ask people to consider telling their origin stories as a critical component of sharing power, it is about telling how we've come to this work. So how even we talk about our mothers being teachers of us and organizing – we're not talking about any other things about our moms. You know what I mean? We're not going through all the stories about our mom that we ever had, every conversation. We're talking about what our parents, or our mothers in this case of our conversation, taught us that we use in organizing. So that to me is what's really important, is like we're telling our path to where we are in this moment and recognizing and honoring the experiences that have shaped that path without necessarily sharing types of details that are not immediately relevant or even maybe even appropriate for the moment in and of itself. And also not pretending, and I love how you used the word erase, not pretending that there's no history to our path to the work. So thank you so much. I think that's just so important, and thinking about why origin stories are so critical to building trust in this work. And as I said before, again the sharing that I have when I was working with you at the organization we were working at that was supporting journalists, right? Is very different from the sharing that I had when I was supporting these political campaigns. You know? I'm gonna be reflecting on, you know, what media has meant to me and how it shaped me, and why I believe it's an important lever for change when we're working on media justice things. I'm gonna be thinking about, you know, how actually I have deep distrust in politics. It is so funny that I was working for this organization, because I really did not have a lot of faith in elected office at all going into it or leaving. But that kind of cynicism worked for what I was doing in that organization. So I actually needed to be clear and transparent about the cynicism I have and how that was shaped, right. How I felt betrayed previously by elected officials, you know, there's so much there. So yeah.
YP: Yeah. What you're saying makes me think that by reflecting on why you're here or there at that particular organization in that particular time, you're actually building a relationship with the organization and the mission, and that's what's relational also. And that's so powerful. Whereas this isn't a transactional job. We do movement work because we want to move something forward, because we believe in something. And so I love that it's about the relationality between you and the work too, not just you and the other workers.
MH: Yes. Are you comfortable sharing when you've seen it not work? I mean, you did mention before how you've been in meetings and it has just been like straight to the task, straight to the work, and not even checking in on how people are doing that day, much less, you know, having space and time for people to tell how they come to the work. Right. I guess my question to you is, what's the cost if we don't do it? And have you seen that firsthand?
YP: Now that I've had some time away from an organization where I experienced pretty severe breakdown that was rooted in the distrust that festered, that was rooted in connections not being built, is that when people suffer and when relationship suffers, the work suffers, and all of the resources – time, money, consultants, staffing, board – all went to repair instead of towards the programming, just to keep this afloat. And some of that conflict at the time was irreparable. And it was really disappointing, I think, to everyone involved, that all of the resources had to then go towards repair versus the programming. Everything had to be put on hold. So that's the expense of, if you think building relationships takes too much time and energy upfront, like this is what happened on the other side, is like all of it went there. We had to stop everything to fix this. And so I think that's the cost and it was really disappointing, I think to everyone. Those issues, if the relationships had been there, if the trust had been there, could have maybe been communicated about, talked about, before it erupted into something that really caused a massive break. I think it has such an impact.
MH: Absolutely. That's the theme I think of our conversation of the moment versus the movement, right? The long arc of things versus, you know, what's happening day to day. And that's, to me, why the origin stories, although not guaranteed to completely prevent conflict, but to even invest in having a foundation where we are able to touch back on that foundation when conflict arises, and give each other the benefit of the doubt. And be able to both work on resolution and repair and still continue to do the work because it's not taking all of the resources. Yeah, I do believe that the investment in building relationships on the front end certainly helps us be able to build the strength to repair in a way that doesn't cost us that moving forward, as you so eloquently say. So to end, I again wanna thank you so much. I just love talking to you and particularly about this because you were such an inspiration to me around it, and a teacher. So in that vein, is there any advice that you'd like to leave the listeners around how to incorporate origin stories and movement work?
YP: Yes. As Octavia teaches us, God is change. So we are continually changing and evolving. There's not just one origin story. This moment right now could be the origin story for something in my future. So just to remember that, that we're always beginning anew and one time origin story is good, but it's not enough. It's really about the relationship-building and that we get to continue making space for this. And that can really be woven into strengthening the organization, that as we plan and build towards an event, a campaign, a project, that building can include relationship-building. As we debrief from that event, project, or campaign, that can be an opportunity to learn each other as well and to learn ourselves. So just to continually weave it into what you're already doing.
MH: I love it. Absolutely. Thank you again, Yashna for joining me today, and reminding me of your brilliance, and encouraging me to keep those origin stories woven into my work.
YP: Thank you so much for having me. I am ready to come back for conversation number two and I really believe that committing to relationality is committing to the work. And so thanks for being in this commitment together.
MH: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Shared Power Podcast. This podcast is a production of Freedom Lifted, a company that provides training, facilitation, and coaching for leaders rooted in justice inequity. It is produced and edited by Cassandra Sampson at its 97 production support, also provided by Alicia Tate, Amber Kinney, Alicia Bunger, and the AK Collective. For more information about our work, visit freedom lifted.com or follow us at Freedom Lifted on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Join us next time as we continue to unlock the ingredients for leading with shared power.