Activism Vs. Advocacy

As a leader, how do you reckon with that? How do you change your mindset and adapt as a leader to these transitioning expectations from the people who work for you?

The reality is I believe that as an organization, we will speak out on things that affect the values that we believe as an organization. For instance, when there was issues about the migrant children being abandoned, we spoke out on that. When the Black Lives Matter issue and George Floyd issues happened, we spoke out on that. When the Asian Hate issue, we spoke out on that. There are certain things that are negative issues that happened and put a span between what we believe as an organization, we will speak out on that, not everything, although folks will want to speak out on everything. But there are some things, our voice will be there.

There's also this issue between -- and I was talking about this just yesterday with my Leadership 18 Group, which is a bunch of CEOs that get together, between activism and advocacy. And that line is becoming blurred now. But advocacy, absolutely want to advocate for the kind of policies and perspectives that we believe, advocacy means getting in the street, joining, wearing the logo. And some of our staff blurs the lines quite a bit. And I do think we're seeing more and more about it. It's becoming a very interesting part of leadership in moving forward, so to speak.

So then how do you work through that, because as a company or an organization, your employees may want to be out there in the stands taking positions, but maybe is not representative of where the company stands, where the organization stands.

It's a very difficult process for us, because it's hard to regulate the Y brand, somebody can put on a Y t-shirt and be out there doing their thing, right? We spend a lot of time internally, there's three or four main areas that we have — our communications folks, we have my perspective, we have our board, and we have our Washington office. So when there's issues come up, all four of us get together and talk about how we should respond. The board has given me and the organization a lot of leeway, as long as we try to do things in a non-partisan way which today is extremely difficult, as long as it relates to the values that we hold as an organization, particularly as it relates to children and families and communities. But it is not easy and there is no right answer, there is no right answer. What you do is take into each situation and try to figure out the best response or non-response, if you will, from an organization perspective. And I got to believe that that is going on all the time in organizations.