Author Archives: jcravens

About jcravens

Jayne Cravens is an internationally-recognized trainer, researcher and consultant. Her work is focused on communications, volunteer involvement, community engagement, and management for nonprofits, NGOs, and government initiatives. She is a pioneer regarding the research, promotion and practice of virtual volunteering, including virtual teams, microvolunteering and crowdsourcing, and she is a veteran manager of various local and international initiatives. Jayne became active online in 1993, and she created one of the first web sites focused on helping to build the capacity of nonprofits to use the Internet. She has been interviewed for and quoted in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, as well as for reports by CNN, Deutsche Well, the BBC, and various local radio stations, TV stations and blogs. Resources from her web site, coyotecommunications.com, are frequently cited in reports and articles by a variety of organizations, online and in-print. Women's empowerment and women's full access to employment and education options remains a cross-cutting theme in all of her work. Jayne received her BA in Journalism from Western Kentucky University and her Master's degree in Development Management from Open University in the U.K. A native of Kentucky, she has worked for the United Nations, lived in Germany and Afghanistan, and visited more than 30 countries, many of them by motorcycle. She is currently based near Portland, Oregon in the USA.

Barriers to women’s leadership we don’t talk about

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Initiatives to encourage or cultivate leadership among women anywhere in the world, whether in the USA or Pakistan or anywhere in between, tend to focus on things like public speaking, how to prepare for and manage a meeting, how to build a strategy, how to manage conflict, etc. But they often avoid very complicated societal issues that often keep women out of leadership positions.

Take a friend of mine who lives in a “stan” country: she is committed to doing great work in any task she undertakes. She sometimes needs explicit examples of what is wanted in a task, but once she gets that, she can absolutely do most any task at hand, and it’s meant she’s accumulated responsibilities quickly. She enjoys working with people who are just as committed to doing quality work as she is and who also want to learn. She particularly enjoys working with international staff, because of the wealth of knowledge they have, their confidence and her perception regarding their openness.

But all of that commitment to hard work and attraction to learning and working with foreign workers often sets her up for hostilities with her co-workers, particularly other women. She struggles with the pervasive culture in her country that discourages women from leading or being ambitious. She must be very conscious of gossip, and I think she feels it is a constant balance between doing a good job but not “showing off” or trying to be “better.” because such could be seen as acting immodest or un-Islamic. There is incredible pressure in her country for women to appear gracious and modest at all times, and this can mean not being able to follow the advice she might find online about how to be a leader. She works well on a team and wants everyone to succeed and is very happy to help others, but sometimes holds back from offering ideas because she does not want to be perceived as pushy or arrogant – which she never is, but she’s afraid of the reputation nonetheless. A patriarchal society often has women among its most ardent supporters, and it’s the women she works with that are the most intolerant of a woman who seems to seek opportunities to speak in public and work with foreigners. I think she would lead more if she could see other women in her country doing so, on a day-to-day basis, and how they handle obstacles, challenges, criticisms and accusations of being too ambitious or immodest. That she has managed to be successful in her career to this point is a statement on her persistence and her care at navigating the cultural minefields of her country (and, perhaps, the literal ones as well).

If you doubt my colleague’s reasons for being timid in the workplace, then think about Malala Yousafzai: loved abroad, maligned in Pakistan. Before being shot by terrorists, Malala had been campaigning for girls’ right to education in her home village and was a vocal critic of Islamic extremists. She was praised internationally for writing about Taliban oppression in a BBC blog. After being shot and while in recovery, she has become an international icon of resistance, empowerment of women and right to education. Her continued work has prompted numerous international awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. But in her own country, she is derided by many, including women. Many in Pakistan accuse her of being a US agent, of being un-Islamic, of being immodest, and of trying to undermine her country and its culture. She is a frequent target for scorn, ridicule and hatred by everyday Pakistanis – if you doubt it, look at any international news Facebook page features her and read the comments. In Why Pakistan Hates Malala, Michael Kugelman of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars said,

Malala is no national hero. Revered by many abroad, she is reviled by many at home, including among middle-class Pakistanis one might imagine would be her greatest fans… 

As I noted in this blog from 2015:

There’s another reason that keeps so many women in (various) countries off of social media as well: the Tall Poppy Syndrome. People talking about an accomplishment can be seen as bragging, and many feel that tall flower has to be cut down to the same size as all the others. The phrase is particularly popular in Australia, though some people say it isn’t success that offends Australians but, rather, someone that acts superior. But in many places, a woman saying anything on social media, except for praising the deity of her religion, is seen as bragging – and she becomes a target for her “tall” reputation being cut down.

It can be just as bad anywhere, of course: it’s not at all limited by religion or one particular regional culture. I have witnessed in a variety of places, with a variety of women, even in the USA. For instance, see Why Black Women Love to Hate On Black Women. Or this article from a Latino woman talking about how to stay true to herself and her Latino identity at the same time. Also, see this article about racism within the American Indian community, which isn’t about just women, but about a kind of racial competition that can happen among native Americans – the sentiments are similar.

Why do some women turn on other women at work, especially among women that are so disempowered in so many ways in their society? I’ve wondered if it isn’t rooted in that disempowerment, if a woman striking out against another woman, simply because she is a woman, is because it’s the only acceptable way in her society to exert any kind of power. because it’s the only acceptable way to show leadership: by tearing another woman down.

The price a woman pays for exerting leadership is not small: it can mean little punishments at work from co-workers, like being excluded from lunch invitations or outside-of-work social events that build comradery among co-workers. It can mean not being told about meetings and opportunities. Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s), and some psychologists believe that insecurity and a big drop in self-esteem arises when the “community” accuses a member of abandoning that group. The result can be gossip so vicious that a woman leaves a job rather than bring suspicion on her “honor,” something that can have dire consequences in her social circles and with her family.

How do we teach women to balance the demands of their culture’s view of women and the very real consequences of violating those unwritten rules with their own desires to lead and grow? Do we encourage them to try to delight in rebelling and to no longer care what their family, their tribe, may think? I think it’s reckless to encourage women to have ambition in developing countries and not also talk about what could be the consequences of such.

I’ve been trying to think of advice that would be helpful to women in environments that are restrictive regarding women’s behavior, particularly in developing countries, and it’s been difficult, because so much of the advice about helping women in the workplace are focused on women in the West, living in corporate cultures where, while there are substantial restrictions, they aren’t nearly Research hasn’t produced much. The best I can come up with is adapting some suggestions from How to Be a Workplace Ally from LeanIn.Org:

  • When you hear a woman called “bossy” or “shrill,” request a specific example of what the woman did to merit this label. Then ask, “Would you have the same reaction if a man did the same thing?” In many cases, the answer will be no. When you’re having a negative response to a woman at work, ask yourself the same question and give her the benefit of the doubt.
  • Look for opportunities to boost other women’s confidence. When you introduce female coworkers, highlight their credentials and accomplishments—for example, you might say, “Fatima was in charge of our last annual report, and it was more detailed than any report our agency has ever produced.”
  • Get together with other women, talk openly about this issue, agree to commit to being each other’s allies and agree to celebrate one another’s successes and to help each other address professional challenges.

And I’ll add three more:

  • Respect confidentiality of your women co-workers in particular. No matter how tempting, do not share information you know a woman does not want others to know, and respect anything you have been told in confidence.
  • When others gossip, do not respond at all, unless it is to say, “This makes me uncomfortable.”
  • Thank co-workers for all of their contributions, however small, to your own work. Thank them in front of an entire group, such as at a staff meeting.

What are your ideas?

Updated April 15, 2021: A comic strip demonstrates the challenges women face online. It’s developed by Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet). In a story of three differently aged, differently shaped and differently employed women, we see what violence can look like online, how the seemingly harmless can actually contribute to it, and what we can all do to prevent it and to create a safer space for women online.

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I’ve been trying to warn about “fake news” since 2004

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Since 2004, I have been gathering and sharing both examples of and recommendations for preventing folklore, rumors and urban myths from interfering with development and aid/relief efforts and government initiatives. And for years, I felt like the lone voice in the wilderness on this subject. It was almost my master’s thesis project, but while I could find examples of widespread misunderstanding and misinformation campaigns interfering with relief and with relief and development activities, and government initiatives, including public health initiatives, I could not get enough people to go on record to talk about these circumstances and how they were addressing such. For a year, I contacted numerous organizations, particularly organizations promoting women’s health and access to abortion, trying to get them to talk about how these misinformation campaigns were affecting them, but if they replied at all to my emails or phone calls, they said they didn’t want to bring more attention to the problem, even if that attention was in an academic paper that people outside the institution may never read.

I went with another subject for my Master’s project, but I had gathered a lot of publicly-available information, so I shared it all on my web site, and I have kept it updated over the years as my time has allowed. I have always easily found many examples of myths and misinformation creating ongoing misunderstandings among communities and cultures, preventing people from seeking help, encourage people to engage in unhealthy and even dangerous practices, and cultivating mistrust of people and institutions. I easily have found examples that had lead to mobs of people attacking someone or others for no reason other than something they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, to legislators introducing laws to address something that doesn’t exist, and influencing elections, long before such finally got noticed because of Brexit and the USA November 2016 elections.

In my original web pages, I said that this subject was rarely discussed, and for more than a decade, that was the truth: while I could find all of those examples, it was very difficult to find any online resources or published resources outside of academic papers about how to address or prevent misinformation campaigns designed to interfere with a relief or development effort, public health campaign, etc. Where was the practical info on how to deal with this? It was few and far between. For many years, mine was the only web site tracking such.

How did I get interested in this subject? I noticed stories my friends and family told often turned out not to be true, everything from spiders or snake eggs found in a jacket of a friend of a cousin that lives in another state, to why a local store closed, to something they had heard about happening on a TV talk show but hadn’t actually seen themselves. Then, while attending Western Kentucky University for my undergrad degree, I took a very popular class, Urban Folklore 371, where we discussed these stories, how they were spread, how the story changes over time and why such stories are believed. I was hooked on the psychology of rumor-spreading.

When I worked at a United Nations agency from 2001 to 2005, I made a joke to a colleague about the outrageous mythologies about the UN that so many people believed back in the USA – I’m not going to repeat them here, on this blog, but they are easy to find online. She gave me a confused look and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I showed her various web sites that promote this misinformation. She stood there, with her mouth open and eyes wide, staring at the outrageous graphics and text. “Is this a joke?” she asked. No, I replied, this is very real. I showed her more. “I can’t believe this!” she said. I explained that we could stand there all day with me showing her these sites, and these were just ones in the USA – I had no idea how many there were based in other countries, in other languages. And I admit I was starting to get angry, because not only did this seasoned UN staff member not know about this, no one I worked with at the UN had ever heard of these myth-spreading web sites. Conspiracy theories, pre-social media, were already affecting our work, yet, I seemed to be the first person to be talking about it, at least at my agency.

We have a saying in English: closing the barn door after the horses are already out. It means you are too late in trying to address an issue. Now, all these many years after trying to sound the alarm, I fear that there are entire generations of people that will now never be convinced that global climate change is real and devasting to communities, particularly to poor communities, or that will never believe that vaccinations do NOT cause autism nor infertility, or that will never believe that condoms can prevent HIV, or that will never accept fluoride in their water because they believe too many outrageous things I can’t even begin to list here, and on and on. I fear these generations are lost forever in having basic scientific literacy. And I fear that if we don’t make a concentrated, sustained effort on educating young people about science and how to evaluate information they are hearing and reading, more people will die, more communities will be devastated, more lives will be shattered.

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What you don’t understand about UN Peacekeepers

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There is SO much misunderstanding about what the term United Nations Peacekeepers means, and what members of such a deployment can do – and cannot do. And I admit that, before 2001, I didn’t really know what it meant either.

Here are four facts about United Nations Peacekeepers that I wish everyone understood, and that I wish journalists did a much better job of explaining whenever they write about UN Peacekeeping operations:

(1) There is no standing military of UN Peacekeepers. When you hear the term UN Peacekeepers, it means men and women who are members of their respective country’s armed forces and are still entirely under the command of their own country’s military leadership. When you hear the term “a group of UN Peacekeepers”, it means a group of, say, army infantry from Nigeria, or the or India, or Belgium, or any number of other countries that may be participating. There is NO United Nations “army”. A person can’t sign up somewhere to be a UN peacekeeper – you would have to join your own country’s military or police and hope that, somehow, your country will choose to donate your unit to a peacekeeping operation.

(2) 125 countries contribute military troops, police, and civilian personnel to UN Peacekeeping operations, including 126 peacekeepers from the USA. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are among the largest individual contributors with around 8,000 units each. African nations contributed nearly half the total, almost 44,000 units.

(3) UN peacekeeping operations are deployed on the basis of mandates from the United Nations Security Council – and that mandate must be unanimous. If one of the permanent members of the Security Council – China, Russia, the USA, France or the UK – says “no” to a deployment in a country, even if they host country wants such, then there will be no UN peacekeeping operations in that country.

(4) UN peacekeeping operations cannot happen without permission of the country where they will be deployed. That host country must invite them, approve of their being there and approve the definition of what they do. Peacekeeping missions need the consent of the host governments to operate, cannot do anything beyond what their host country has agreed they can do, and can be ordered to leave by that host country at any moment. That means that, very often, those in command of UN peacekeeping forces will refuse to undertake a life-saving action protecting foreign refugees, an ethnic minority or even local women, because such actions might upset the host country. For instance, in 2016, local and foreign aid workers were raped, beaten and robbed in South Sudan, by South Sudanese government troops, just minutes away from the main UN compound in Juba, the capital. Despite desperate phone and text messages from the victims to those in command at that compound, the 2,000 or so troops never stirred. Most articles, including this one from CNN, never identify what country those peacekeepers represent, giving the false impression that these troops are under the command of the UN. The troops that ignored the pleas from aid workers in Sudan were, in fact, from China, India, Ethiopia and Nepal. Belgian troops, acting as UN Peacekeepers, stood by Tutsi people were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994, and a year later, Dutch troops failed to stop the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men by Serbs in Srebrenica, a supposedly UN “safe area.” It is up to those individual countries to discipline their troops stationed in these countries for not fulfilling their duties, and only IF it can be proven they did not do what they were explicitly mandated to do – all the UN can do is strongly urge them to do so.

This blog also cites statistics from the official UN Peacekeeping website, from the UN Foundation blog 7 key facts UN peacekeeping, and from this article in the Guardian.

Should the UN Peacekeeping system be changed? That’s someone else’s blog to write… I just want who the peacekeepers are and what they can and cannot do to be better clarified, by journalists in particular.

Also see:

United Nations personnel system needs radical overhaul

International aid workers having sex with people in countries in crisis

Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN

UN Agencies: Defend your “internships”

UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others make HUGE misstep

My work in international development (including the United Nations)

online communities, sexual harassment & hate speech – UNESCO weighs in

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During the 62 Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62), UNESCO participated in an event exploring the role of online communities in relations to sexual harassment and hate speech. The event took place on 13 March at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations in New York and other partners were Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Finland, National Institute for Health and Welfare and Kenya Human Rights Commission.

Interventions to combat the online hate speech were presented including a guidebook, #WeWillNotBeSilent – What is hate speech and what it has got to do with gender? (PDF)

This multi-stakeholder effort raises awareness of the (sexist) hate speech and offers guidance for youth on responding and preventing (sexist) hate speech online.

Currently, 1 in 5 women using the Internet lives in countries where abuse of women is likely to go unpunished and 73 percent of women online have experienced some form of online violence.

Gender equality is one of UNESCO’s global priorities and well reflected in UNESCO’s interventions. These include efforts to counter online hate speech, empowering women and girls to harness digital and media literacy skills, promoting the safety of women journalists and gender parity in media. UNESCO is also addressing the issue through the development of international frameworks to build an open, human rights based, accessible and pluralistic knowledge societies and media environments.

Also see this publication, Countering online hate speech

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A lead from a friend online is still a lead from a friend

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When you see a list of how people find out about volunteering opportunities, you will often see the number one reference, by far, as from someone else already involved in the group. That gets categorized as word of mouth.

You might also see other highly-scoring references, like from a community of faith or from a local newspaper. And very low on the list of ways people got leads for volunteering will probably be the organization’s web site or Facebook.

BUT WAIT!!

There’s a big problem with the question and the way people were given to answer on these surveys.

For instance, I may have been referred to an organization to volunteer by a friend VIA FACEBOOK. So, is the reference from a friend, word-of-mouth, or Facebook? Which category does it go into?

I may have been referred to an organization via a newspaper’s FACEBOOK PAGE. So, who gets the credit – the newspaper or Facebook?

I hear a lot of people still dismissing the Internet as a tool for volunteer recruitment and they base it on things like this survey from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in the UK. But you need to be VERY cautious about such surveys. Remember: we think of messages on social media from friends as messages from friends, or from a church or temple, or from a newspaper, not from the platform itself. We might think of a message on Twitter from a newspaper as a message from the newspaper, not Twitter. If a survey asking volunteers how they heard about a service opportunity doesn’t also ask, for instance, in what context friends talked about the volunteering activity – face-to-face in a social setting, in a phone conversation (yes, people still have those), etc. – you can’t make assumptions about how that referral happened, that it must have happened face-to-face.

Indeed, word-of-mouth, in a traditional face-to-face setting or via a social media platform – remains the number one marketing tool for MOST things, not just volunteer recruitment. I’ve witnessed no better example of this recently than the reaction to Black Panther, one of the biggest grossing movies ever here in the USA. I have seen a huge number of people among my online friends post testimonials on Facebook about this movie, and responses from their friends saying they are going to go now based on that feedback. The people commenting have ranged from the wife of a local pastor here in my tiny town, both white and over 50, to friends that are teachers all over the USA. But credit doesn’t go to Facebook for the reference – it goes to the friends.

But with THAT said, here’s another consideration: the more sincere a word-of-mouth testimonial is, online or face-to-face, the more effective it will be in motivating friends. The more it sounds scripted, the more likely it won’t have as much effect. If a volunteer is sharing how great it is to volunteer somewhere, and is sharing that info – online or face-to-face – in a sincere moment of spontaneity and honesty and excitement, it’s going to have a much more impact than a statement an organization has given the volunteer to share with friends. A volunteer sharing a scripted message that an organization has asked them to isn’t going to have nearly the same impact – if it has any at all.

And one more thing: if you haven’t seen Black Panther, you totally need to ASAP. It’s awesome!

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Please do NOT stay in your lane (walking the talk on mainstreaming)

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logoWe have a saying in English: Stay in your lane. It means “mind your own business” or “keep moving straight ahead and don’t veer over into other people’s affairs.”

Unfortunately, in the workplace, it’s a mentality frequently used to pass the buck and avoid activities we should be doing, to avoid thinking about things that, for whatever reason, we don’t want to. It’s a strategy to avoid mainstreaming.

This kind of thing happens to me a lot: in a meeting with a group or initiative, we start talking about marketing, public relations, etc., and I bring up that we need to consider that outreach will need to done to target a specific group among our stakeholders because our traditional outreach might not reach members of that group. And someone will say, “Oh, no, so-and-so is in charge of outreach to that group. We don’t need to talk about it.”

For instance, say I’m in a community advisory group regarding a public library, and when the library staff says to our group that they want advice from us regarding community outreach about a new story hour, I ask, “What do you think could be done to reach out to Spanish-speaking residents specifically and make sure they feel welcomed?”, and the response is, “Oh, the city has a diversity specialist and she handles all that. You don’t need to consider it. It’s her job.” Really? I shouldn’t, just as a human being, have a commitment to making sure everyone is welcomed at the public library? I shouldn’t have a commitment to being inclusive? It’s just one person’s job to do that? You are going to cede all discussion and action for outreach to a specialized population to just one person, rather than relying on that person for consultation and guidance as we consider ALL of our actions? You are going to let the community advisory group off the hook in considering minority populations in it outreach entirely?

The job of specialized committees or specialized roles isn’t to be responsible for absolutely all outreach or engagement of particular groups – women, Spanish-speaking residents, people with disabilities, etc. Certainly they will direct specialized outreach or engagement activities, but they are also meant to support ALL staff, regardless of their job titles, in taking those particular groups into consideration in their work. It’s called MAINSTREAMING – where staff get guidance for making considerations about a particular issue, but still feel empowered to take action.

Back in March 2009, I wrote a blog on a now-defunct platform where I noted that I am not a gender specialist, however, that I mainstream consideration of women and girls’ needs into my international and local community work:

if you say in a report, “the majority of the community expressed support for this project,” I’ll ask in my edits how many of the “majority” were women and how their feedback was gathered. If you draft a proposal for a public event or project, I’ll ask how women and girls will be targeted and accommodated to participate in it (as appropriate; maybe it’s specifically focused on men, and that’s okay, provided justification for such is detailed). If you say in your evaluation report that the community technology center is always full with young people using the computers and attending the workshops, I’ll ask what percentage of users were girls. I look for the gender breakdown for any references to community, participants, students, patients, attendees and leaders in reports, and if I don’t see it, I ask for it. I also let community field workers know that they have to systematically collect relevant data/information regarding women’s participation just as they collect overall information…

You shouldn’t have to be a gender specialist to mainstream women’s issues in your aid and development work. Why is the gender specialist the only staff person who goes to gender-related meetings outside the organization, for instance? Why is the gender specialist the only staff member who is asked to write a report about how women’s issues are being addresses by a project — as an annex to the main report written by someone else? To truly mainstream gender, shouldn’t a project manager who is not a gender specialist be at gender-focused trainings every now and again? Shouldn’t every staff member in a development organization have to show how he or she addresses the concerns of women and girls in their work, and if not, say explicitly why not? Shouldn’t every staff member be held accountable for what they do — or don’t do — to address the needs of women and girls in their aid and development work?

Let’s use another example: on any project I’m on, as a paid employee, consultant or unpaid volunteer, if anything comes up regarding a website, I am going to ask these questions: “Has the website been/will the website be designed so that it is accessible to people with disabilities or people using assistive technologies? If it hasn’t been, shouldn’t we have a commitment to doing that?”

There is rarely anything in my job description about advocating for people with disabilities. I have no written mandate to advocate for this issue. But I do, every time. Because I have mainstreamed web site accessiblity into my life. I don’t wait for a web accessibility expert to bring it up – I bring it up. I’m not a web accessibility expert any more than I’m a Latino outreach expert, yet, I bring these issues up, because I have a commitment to inclusiveness. And I will happily consult with the official disability rights advocate on staff in advocating for these issues – but I am going to advocate for these issues, regardless.

What drives people to want to pass off consideration of communications or engagement that will target particular audiences to one specialist, or one entirely separate committee, to do all of the work him, her or themselves?  Perhaps someone thinks, “I don’t want to step on any toes.” Perhaps they are scared of the issue, afraid they will say or do something that isn’t welcoming to that minority group or to women. Perhaps they really don’t understand cross-cutting issues or cross-cutting considerations – I met someone today who has worked in community relations for decades and had never heard the term cross-cutting issue.

Of course, this kind of “we shouldn’t talk about this at all – leave it to the specialist” approach can also be driven by a silo mentality of an outreach specialist or particular committee that does want to collaborate with other individuals in the same organization – they don’t want to empower, they want to control.

Let me be blunt: the gender specialist shouldn’t be the only one promoting women’s inclusion in an initiative or project. The diversity specialist shouldn’t be the only one promoting inclusion of Latino members in a city’s activities. A commitment to inclusiveness shouldn’t be one made only by one staff member or committee. Everyone making a commitment to inclusiveness – mainstreaming – doesn’t mean taking anything away from a specialist or a committee with a designated role regarding specialized outreach. It also doesn’t mean you have to become an expert. A comment from someone who wants to be inclusive, who wants to mainstream, can be as simple as this:

Hey, we’ve got this proposal in front of our committee about where to locate the new public pool. How will the city be informing our Spanish-speaking population about the possibilities and get their input?

That doesn’t mean your committee suddenly becomes experts in Latino affairs. Rather, it means you are bringing up an issue that needs to be addressed by someone.

Another example: a nonprofit wants to create a community technology center in a poor community, to give people experiencing extreme poverty access to critical information and communications they need online or via a phone. Any staff member should feel empowered, even encouraged, to say, “We need to make sure women feel welcomed and safe here. What resources can we access to make that happen?” Again, that staff member is probably not a gender specialist, but he or she has made a commitment to make sure gender issues are considered and addressed by someone.

 

The cost of my greatest weakness

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logoIf you have ever been interviewed for a job, you are familiar with some version of the question “What’s your greatest weakness?”

My greatest weakness is the couch and a great day’s lineup on the classic movie channel here in the USA. But I know that’s not what someone in a job interview is wanting to know. Rather, they want to know what my greatest weakness is in the workplace.

Of course, so many people answer this question with, “I love to work! I’m a workaholic!” Spoiler alert: I don’t say that and saying it doesn’t make a person a good candidate. A workaholic is unhealthy for both employee and employer.

The reality is that “What’s your greatest weakness?” is a bad job interview question. All it does is make interviewees nervous and set them up for failure later. The potential hire is declaring to a potential employer, “Here’s what you need to be on the lookout for if you hire me!” And the employer WILL remember the declaration and be on the lookout for it – and probably be hypersensitive to any hint of a new employee showing it, in fact. Were it to be a truly fair question, everyone in the room would share their biggest weakness with each other, so the potential employee could decide if it’s the right office culture for him or her.

When I am interviewing candidates, I never ask that question. Instead, I ask “What frustrates you most in the workplace and how did you address it?” I’m not looking for a “Oh, nothing frustrates me, I love work!” answer. I’m not looking for a red flag either. What I’m trying to do is to see how self-aware someone is and trying to just get a feel for what kind of person they are. A red flag would be “I’m never frustrated in the workplace!”

But, with all that said, when I’m asked that “What’s your greatest weakness?” question in a job interview, I am honest. And my answer is this:

I ask a lot of questions and, often, this really frustrates my co-workers. 

When someone introduces a new project, or when I join an initiative, even one that I’m familiar with, I ask a lot of questions. I’m not trying to be critical and I’m not trying to play “gotcha” – I trying to understand an activity as completely as possible. I don’t just ask if something happens, but how it happens and who is responsible for different pieces of a project. The answers help me be clearer in my communications, help me know my own responsibilities and help me to be able to better support co-workers. It also keeps me from making a lot of mistakes that can hurt a project later.

Unfortunately for me, people often find my questions annoying. So many people see questions as criticism, even as a personal attack, especially if they cannot answer all of the questions. People starting new projects or people who haven’t introduced someone new to a project in a long while often haven’t thought about some of the issues I raise, and I think they feel called out when I ask my questions. People managing established projects are often shocked that I have questions, especially if it’s a project that has existed for several years. Again, I’m just trying to understand so that I can do the best job possible and prevent avoidable mistakes on my part.

In an effort to not seem critical, I often find myself prefacing my questions with apologies, something so many women do in order to try to head off any feelings that we’re “too aggressive.” Apologies I find myself making are statements like “I’m so sorry to bother everyone with this, but…” or “I’m sorry if the answer to this is already on your project web site but…” or “I hope everyone can be patient with me, but I don’t think I’m clear on some things…”  These kinds of self-depreciating apologies that women are conditioned to do are not something most men are conditioned to do. Women are conditioned to want to be liked and to assume responsibility for others’ feelings. Women apologize for being direct in an effort to somehow justify our questions, even our opinions. Professional women are told in so many ways: be assertive, but only if it doesn’t upset anyone else. It doesn’t matter how calm a woman remains, how civil a woman’s demeanor, how cool and collected she remains: it DOES hurt to ask when you’re female in the workplace.

Dr. Robert Alberti and Michael Emmons, authors of Your Perfect Right, provide a few questions to consider before choosing to be assertive, as quoted in the blog “Quit Being a Pushover: How to Be Assertive“:

  • How much does it matter to you?
  • Are you looking for a specific outcome or just to express yourself?
  • Are you looking for a positive outcome? Might asserting yourself make things worse?
  • Will you kick yourself if you don’t take action?
  • What are the probable consequences and realistic risks from your possible assertion?

Note that this blog is from the blog The Art of Manliness, not from an article to help women… the advice for women trying to be assertive is far, far different. Google it for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Still, I find these questions helpful to me. These qeustions have often kept me from asking a question I really wanted to, but didn’t, because the political cost will be too great. It hurts not only to bite my tongue, but weeks or months later, watch someone have to deal with something that could have been prevented, and perhaps my question could have prevented it – but I chose not to speak up because the consequences for me in terms of hostility or defensiveness by co-workers just wasn’t worth it.

The other frustrating thing I do in the work place is to take notes. Later, I sometimes refer to those notes when there is some disagreement on what was said or decided. Again, I’m not trying to be hurtful or critical but, rather, to be clear. And, to be honest, I’m often trying to cover my butt, as we say in American English. If I’ve done something wrong, I will absolutely take responsibility for it, but if I’ve been directed to do it that way – sorry, but I’m giving credit where it’s due. It’s not an easy strategy because no matter how diplomatically or gently I try to reference decisions from a previous meeting, my thorough note-taking does sometimes end up making people angry – they feel called out. And, let’s face it, who likes to be proven wrong?

Perhaps my weakness is that I like things explicit and transparent.

I offer this blog both as sympathy and encouragement to others like me, as well as a warning to potential employers of me. But before you shrink away in horror, I also ask this: wouldn’t you rather it was me, someone on your team, asking tough questions, rather than a potential funder or member of the press? Bridges are supposed to be stressed tested. Think of your project as the bridge and me the test…

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Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN

Nonprofits: volunteers can caption your YouTube videos

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I had never captioned videos ever until recently, and in the last eight weeks, I’ve captioned four, via YouTube’s free tool. My conclusion: there is NO reason that your organization’s videos should not be captioned. None. Zilch. Nada. If I can figure it out, anyone can.

Why caption your videos? So that people with hearing impairments will be able to experience your videos, because a lot of people that want to watch your video aren’t in an environment where they can politely listen to your video (for instance, at work in a cube farm, or someone in a coffee shop that forgot his or her headphones), and because you may want to use the narrative of a video or phrasing from such in other ways (speeches, grant proposals, etc.).

YouTube’s captioning tool can be used multiple ways:

  • from scratch, meaning a user can go through a video and type in what’s being said, easily syncing it to the sound
  • from an upload, meaning you upload the text from a script you used for the video, and then sync up the text to the sounds
  • and the way I do it: wait for YouTube to automatically transcribe the video, and then go through the text YouTube has generated and correct it (and have a big laugh over some of the way it has mistakenly interpreted what’s being said).

Here is the online document from Google, the owner of YouTube, telling you how automatic captioning works. There are lots of online tutorials that are really easy to find as well. One caution: If automatic captions are available, you’ll see Language (Automatic) in the “Published” section to the right of the video, but it may take several minutes to appear. I uploaded a video that was more than an hour long, and for 15 minutes, this automatic link didn’t appear, so I thought the video was too long. But after 15 minutes, it appeared. GIve YouTube at least 30 minutes after going to the captioning function for it to figure out your video text.

Examples of some of my videos that I have captioned myself:

Knowbility 2018 OpenAIR Kick Off Event (1:12:35) – in case you’re wondering, I edited this myself (down from more than two hours) and I start talking at about the 14:50. If you watch, notice how we integrated videos from other people into this onsite event, which was live-streamed.

Human rights, the digital divide & web accessibility (4:39)

Nonprofits, non-governmental organizations, community-focused government programs, schools, charities: GET YOUR YOUTUBE VIDEOS CAPTIONED. No excuses! If you don’t have time to do it, recruit online volunteers to do so. That’s going to mean giving an online volunteer your login and password for your YouTube account – if you are uncomfortable doing that, then require the volunteer to come onsite to your organization and provide him or her a computer or laptop at your agency to use, one where you login to your YouTube channel for the volunteer.

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Transcribe & Caption!

AccessU: three days accessible design courses

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Accessible online design – design that welcomes people with disabilities – is a part of addressing the digital divide and meaningful digital inclusion.

John Slatin AccessU is an interactive and communal conference where attendees learn everything needed to integrate accessibility into online products. Presented by the nonprofit Knowbility, AccessU provides methods and resources that can immediately be put to use by designers, developers, project managers, administrators, and anyone who is responsible for online content and development.

Classes at Knowbility’s AccessU include:
Accessibility 101: Beginner’s Basics, Annual Accessibility Legal Update, Accessible Office – Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Accessible PDF Documents, Accessible iOS Development, Building Accessibility into Design, Designing Accessible Forms and Tables, Mobile Accessibility, Accessible User Experience Design Studio, Practical Accessibility Testing Tools for Everyone, Usability Testing for People with Disabilities, and much more.

John Slatin AccessU
Mon, May 14, 2018 – Wed, May 16, 2018
Austin, Texas
https://knowbility.org/programs/accessu/

More than 49 million Americans have some type of disability. One in five people will experience a disability at some point in their lives, and those numbers are sure to increase as the population ages.

People with disabilities want to be able to learn online, to work, to buy things, to attend online classes, to volunteer, to donate and to contribute to their society just as everyone does. And just like other people, they want to use the Web and other online technologies to access information and network with others.

Also note that Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in all services, programs, and activities provided to the public by State and local government. That has been interpreted by the courts to include online services and programs.

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If I can’t find what I’m looking for on your web site, who else can’t?

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I saw an online article about an initiative in Afghanistan and I immediately wanted to donate money to it. So I followed the directions in the article, went to the web site, and looked all over for the promised “donate” link.

It wasn’t there. I even used the “find” tool. Nada.

Test your web site to see if anyone coming onto the site can find what they might be looking for. This is a great test to be undertaken by new volunteers. You could get a group of volunteers to use their smartphones or laptops (you should have a mix of devices and browsers being used) to go to the home page and try to find:

  • your information on exactly what services or activities your organization provides. They should rate how easy it is to find and how easy it is to understand.
  • your organization’s physical address.
  • your hours of operation (if applicable).
  • the “donate” link, and if they do, to click on it and see if they find all the info they want to donate to your organization. They should rate how easy it was to find the information on how to donate and how easy it is to donate (you do allow for online donations, right?!?).
  • information on what a donation pays for. They should rate how easy it is to find this information (if they ever do).
  • the “volunteer” link, and if they do, to click on it and see if they find all the info they want to donate to your organization. They should rate how easy it was to find information on how to volunteer and on what volunteers do at your organization, on how easy it is to use your online application process (if you have such), etc.

Here’s another test: ask them what they think, based on looking at your web site, your organization’s attitude is regarding volunteers. They could rate, on a scale, what messages your web site information regarding volunteer engagement says:

  • We involve volunteers because we don’t have to pay them; they are cheaper than paying people.
  • We involve volunteers to do the work staff doesn’t want to do.
  • We offer a variety of opportunities for volunteers, in terms of the amount of time they have to commit, the nature of the service they will provide, where they will provide service (onsite, online, in the office, in the field, etc.).
  • We value our volunteers.

You also want to hear if the web site works well on desktops or laptops and smartphones.

You could have volunteers do this from their home, over a week, and have an online survey for them to fill out, or you could have volunteers come into your conference room for an hour, bringing their devices, serve them some cookies or pizza and have them do the testing and feedback together, in-person.

On a related note, someone from your organization should also see how easy it is to find your organization online at all. Go to Google and Bing (yes, do it on both), and search for:

  • the exact name of your organization. Is your organization’s web site the first in the search results? Does it come up at all on the first page of results? If it doesn’t come up at all, or doesn’t come up early, it’s probably because you don’t have the exact name of your organization on several pages, if not every page, of your web site. Make sure you have this full name on “about us” on your Facebook page as well.
  • the acronym of your organization and the name of your city. Is your organization’s web site the first in the search? Does it come up at all? If it doesn’t come up at all, or doesn’t come up early, it’s probably because you don’t have the acronym and the name of the city where you are on every page of your web site.  I’m stunned at how many nonprofit web sites I find that never say what city (or state) they are in nor what cities they work in.
  • the word volunteer and the name of your city, and, perhaps, a word related to your organization’s mission (children, arts, homeless, dance, teens, women, etc.). Does your organization come up at all in the results? If it doesn’t, or doesn’t come up early, it’s because you don’t have the word volunteer and the name on your city on various pages on your web site.

Also try to find your organization on Twitter, if your organization has a Twitter account. Use a variety of names and acronyms that people use for your organization in your searches. Can you find your organization’s account? If not, then it’s probably because of how you describe your account on Twitter. Your account description also should have the full name of your organization and your acronym – do NOT use your mission statement instead! If you use your mission statement instead of your organization’s name, then it probably won’t be found by people looking specifically for your organization on Twitter.

If you have room in your Twitter description, you can also put in keywords to help people find you. What keywords? It depends on what your organization does, or the target audience for your Twitter account. For instance, in my own, personal account, I use these keywords, because I want people that are interested in these subjects to be able to find me when they do a search for such:      , , ,  

In your Twitter description, if you have room, you might want to put the hashtag for your area, if you want people in that area to find you. For instance, if I wanted to target people in Portland, Oregon specifically, I would put in #PDX in my Twitter profile (instead, I put it in tweets that target people in Portland specifically). If I wanted people in Oregon who wanted to volunteer to find me easily on Twitter, I would put #volunteer and #Oregon in my profile (again, instead of doing that, I put those keywords in tweets that relate to that subject specifically).

You can apply these recommendations for Twitter to your YouTube channel as well, to increase the numbers of people viewing your organization’s videos (if you have such).

Altogether, these are things your nonprofit, charity, NGO, school, government agency or other community initiative can do in ONE day to immediately improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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