Webinar Recap: Enabling a Truly Inclusive Culture – A Case Study on Stages Theatre
December 14, 2022 (Replay at end of page)
This year, ABA undertook an ambitious research project to determine what arts talent wants from their work as we emerge from the pandemic. One key finding from our quantitative survey work is that staff value an inclusive culture very highly and are willing to trade off other attributes of the employment offer to get it. To that end, we have written a number of case studies on organizations that have made significant progress on culture, the first of which we presented in our webinar this week on the Stages Theatre in Houston, Texas. We were delighted to speak with Katie Maltais, Managing Director of Stages to talk about their culture-building work and how it’s fueled a growth spurt at the theater.
Inclusive Culture: Yes, it really, really matters!
For those who missed our previous webinar on employee engagement, there we shared our research on just how critical inclusive culture is to workers in the arts sector. By performing a conjoint, or tradeoff, analysis, we were able to ask staff to compare several factors, and iterate through these combinations. For example: would you take a job with more pay, but fewer health benefits? Or a better manager but less flexible work? The results rung resoundingly for inclusive culture:
The size of the pie on the left demonstrates that employees see a lot of value in improving inclusive culture, and would trade off a lot to get it.
So… what exactly is inclusive culture?
Through our research we have identified six core tenants of inclusive culture:
Welcome Diversity: does everyone in an organization feel welcome
Encourage Belonging: do they feel like they belong – is there a shared culture or set of values
Disseminate Information: does the organization share knowledge rather than hoard it
Create Opportunity: does the organization value its people enough to equip them with the information they need; does it invest in them by finding opportunities for learning and growth
Enable Involvement: does the organization have mechanisms to support cross-functional work
Share Power: does the organization have mechanisms for sharing power, including the broad workforce in important decisions
While inclusive culture is nuanced, complex, and dynamic, this definition provides some functional markers for organizational and cultural transformation.
Case Study: Stages’ call to action
Pre-pandemic, Stages’ approach to inclusion focused on bringing in more diverse talent, establishing a BIPOC affinity group in 2019. They had monthly full-staff meetings to focus exclusively on DEI&A issues, conducted anti-racist training, and organized task forces to focus on things like non-traditional career paths.
With the onset of COVID and the demands of “We See YOU White American Theatre,” a new strategic plan, facility, and managing director, Stages was primed for a moment of big change. It began with a set of questions:
How do we strengthen psychological safety of traditionally marginalized groups?
How should we figure out which decisions warrant collective work?
If we’re replacing hierarchical approaches, who ultimately makes decisions?
As a result, Stages developed its Accountable Inclusion in Action in 2022. Let’s break this down into three main components.
Collective Processing: Empowering staff to use their voices
Stages developed spaces for collective processing – a crucial contributor to the staff’s sense of empowerment.
The first of these is “The Gathering” – a monthly all-staff session focused on EDI and anti-bias work. This was designed to digest feedback and enable genuine participation, mitigating hierarchical power dynamics. This can be applied to any organization through the lens of your deepest held values.
The second are their regular “Affinity Spaces” – meetings for collective processing, issue redress, and community building for BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA to provide a source of psychological safety for historically marginalized groups.
Rules of Engagement
Stages established a Community Agreement for the organization. This serves to give staff authority to participate and have a voice, give them a common language to talk about their interactions in a way that is deeply rooted in organizational values, and provides an accountability mechanism. Stages’ CA helps create an environment where staff feel empowered to participate in decisions across the firm by enshrining aspects of personal interaction – like a statement about pronouns, and commitments to honest feedback and schedules.
Co-Created Guide for Occasional Workmates
Stages celebrates and encourages cross-functional teams for any project that needs doing. It employs a chartering document to make sure diverse groups are able to come together, share power, and get things done. For any project, the group declares its purpose and establishes any group agreements. This collaborative work is also used to focus on advancing the company mission and values– for Stages, dismantling white supremacy culture.
These messages can resonate across genres with our member organizations, and in light of Stages’ recent accomplishments, provide inspiration for a reevaluation of what inclusive culture can be achieved in various organizations:
First, Stages staff is more than half BIPOC, triple the percentage a decade ago, and growing in the percentage of women and LGBTQ. In part, that’s because of an employee-led overhaul of the recruitment process by one of those work teams chartered using this document.
Second, Stages is growing by any measure. Attendance is up more than 50% since 2014. Revenue is up, and they've just completed a new $35 million venue called the Gordy after a very successful capital campaign.
Stages has proved that inclusiveness contributes to productivity when you are clear about group commitments, where staff expect to contribute, and are accountable for moving the work forward.
Takeaways from our Conversation with Katie Maltais
Values-First
On taking up this new position, Katie had an idea of the progress that needed to be made around culture and “connectiveness.” They were tremendously aided by their leadership, who are incredibly values-driven. They trickle down and permeate these values through every layer of the organization by truly leaning in to those values at every meeting and asking – how does this contribute to our values?
The Importance of Community Agreements
How do you infuse inclusive culture in your organization? It starts with community agreements. Stages took inspiration from Ars Nova and community agreements from artistic teams – but exploded them across the institution. The drafting of a community agreement is a deeply collaborative process. At Stages, they draft the agreements together as a staff by defining their values and what is important to them, then word-smithing later. They do this for each production. With regards to these agreements, it’s important to remember that they are not written in stone - you can keep reworking and reviewing these agreements. They are a work in progress. Take the time as a team and organization to reaffirm these agreements, to reevaluate them, and to address moments when agreements are broken.
Group Work
Stages uses its group spaces for many purposes – processing, problem solving, learning, and action. In practice, they have provided critical forums to process and take action on issues within the organization.
For example, a year ago there was a call for pay transparency. They produced a pay transparency report delivered to the full staff as a presentation and discussed. Two weeks later the staff meet for a Gathering meeting, and it was in this space that the pay transparency was processed, and where they worked together to develop ways to address concerns over the next year.
Not all Gathering and Affinity Spaces are for processing and problem solving; Stages makes a point of creating Learning & Action Spaces, such as the Learning & Action Space for white colleagues, which enables them to learn about anti-racist work without relying on their BIPOC colleagues.
Efficiency through Inclusivity
When disrupting hierarchical patterns, how are you able to act with efficiency as an organization? For Katie, the answer is charters. These enshrine the values of the institution, but also the accountability of the individuals to uphold them. But inclusivity does not undermine leadership. In fact, Stages work groups are used to give people leadership opportunities, and Katie is quick to make the distinction between power sharing and leadership sharing. When power is shared, you lead with input, and make all decisions with inclusive feedback. For example, at Stages the season programming is the ultimate decision of the artistic director; however, they have assembled a season selection committee of diverse staff members from across the organization, and the artistic director makes his decision with the youthful and diverse perspectives that reflect their community and organization.
And when in doubt, slow down. Katie holds that they make better decisions when they slow down and include other perspectives. “We refuse to move at the speed of white supremacy.”
Recruitment Processes
An inclusive work environment begins with the recruitment process.
At Stages they developed their recruitment process through a working group, which laid out a process that was affirmed by multiple layers of staff, and now trialed with each subsequent hire. They had a handful of takeaways:
With job descriptions, lead with your values.
Let your values lead the process. Stages’ final interview is a culture & values panel from staff across the organization, who give feedback to the hiring manager. Katie also begins each interview with the candidate’s questions, to establish their power sharing values.
Start with a diverse pool of candidates. If the application process is not yielding diverse candidates, take more time and put the application out to a wider audience.
For Stages, this means the recruitment process includes multiple cross-functional teams representative of the organization.
Measuring Success
Stages’ reputation as an excellent workplace and culture draws many dynamic candidates. Katie says, “this is a place people want to be.” The perception of success helps, and it is due to their culture.
What’s Next?
The Advisory Board for the arts is hosting three upcoming webinars showcasing organizations that have addressed challenges associated with “moving toward the right” on the inclusion framework above.
In January, Emmanuel Maxwell, Chief Talent Officer at the LA Phil will share his organization’s portfolio approach to talent management that distributes opportunity and reward strategically rather than in reaction to “squeaky wheels” or threatened departures.
(Members click here to learn more about LA Phil’s portfolio view of talent)
In February, we’ll examine the McCarter Theatre’s clever use of User Guides, “operating manuals” that individuals write about themselves to help colleagues interact with them more effectively. These guides have been shown to increase the psychological safety needed to reach higher levels of performance.
These case studies bring to life efforts of arts organizations to move beyond traditional interpretations of inclusion to foster an inclusive culture truly worthy of employee expectations.