Getting Unstuck: Facilitation, And The Work Of Values Alignment With Genevieve Smith

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Corinna Bellizzi (1:04)

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Corinna Bellizzi (1:07)

Where do you see organizations still hiding behind neutrality?

Genevieve Smith (1:12)

I mean, I think there are definitely, there are so many organizations that are still saying, but we're not political, so we're not going to jump in on that one. I will say the organizations that I work with, even if they're bored feels that way, like they might be in a really rural conservative area, and so they feel really itchy about funding an organization that supports trans youth. Staff that I work with have done a really, really great job of saying, well, yeah, it's not political. These are kids. These are kids that need help.

That's how we move forward.

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Welcome to Care More Be Better, a podcast for people like you who care about the social impact of conscious companies and everyday heroes.

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Corinna Bellizzi (2:08)

Welcome, Regenerators. Each week, we explore the intersection of sustainability, justice, and regenerative thinking so that we can build a better future for people and planet. Today's guest was also my second guest on the show. That's way back in the early days when this podcast was just getting started. Genevieve Smith joined me to talk about being a self-described professional bummer, the person willing to ask the uncomfortable question when everyone else in the room just wants to feel good about the work that they're doing. Since then, Genevieve has evolved her practice to help social change organizations get themselves unstuck. She facilitates the conversations that are too big, too tangled, or too full of conflict to really move through on their own.

This helps the teams that she works with navigate organizational grief, power sharing, and the gap between the values on the wall and the practices in the room.

Join me in welcoming her back. So glad to have you here, Genevieve. Yay.

Genevieve Smith (3:07)

Thank you for having me back. Good to be here.

Corinna Bellizzi (3:10)

Well, it's been almost six years since our first conversation. What's shifted in how you think about your work since then?

Genevieve Smith (3:17)

It's so wild. Congratulations on the podcast too. I think that's so cool. It's interesting because I think the heart of the work is the same. When you and I met, yeah, I'm still a professional bummer, but I think I have a lot more fun now. I think it was a little bit more serious back then. But when I first started my business about seven years ago, I was really focused on data and impact measurement in social change organizations. The professional bummer thing really came out of like, all right, we're saying we don't want to be extractive, or we're saying we don't want to surveil people, but we're collecting all of this information that we don't need and actually is really extractive. I quickly found out those are really hard conversations because they feel like, oh, well, you're telling me that I'm a bad person because you've just said something about how I'm doing my job, not the best way.

I think since the last time we talked on the podcast, I've been following that thread of these conversations of values alignment, but also navigating the shame that comes up and the conflict that comes up and just like deep, deep, deep humanity in the really frustrating parts of the work, which might be something about values alignment. It might also be like, yeah, we're all working to alleviate poverty or we're all working to further racial justice and we're pissed at each other. I can't look my colleague in the face right now, and so really like working with organizations to balance what some organizations I work with called the touchy-feely stuff, which is that conflict navigation, really navigating organizational grief, which I can say more about, but balancing that with really practical solutions design, and being able to say like, you know what? Actually, there is a process that could be easier here. It's wild how much of it is just like not reinventing the wheel. It's really like helping folks see like, you know a lot of this, and you've learned so much over the course of your career, over the course of an organization existing. Let's go back to that learning, and which requires spaciousness and a whole other host of conversations about trust. But yeah, the heart of the work is very much still the same, but now I describe it as organizational effectiveness work.