Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

7 Oct, 2020

Ask Nicole: My Best & Worst Client Experiences

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:57:32-04:00October 7th, 2020|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, clients|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

As we head closer to the end of 2020, I’m starting to think about where I want my business to go and who I want to be, have, and experience in 2021.

Considering we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, it feels futile to plan anything out. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking about the types of client and partnership opportunities I’ve had in the past year. With each year that passes, my projects and client interactions become more complex. I’ve developed a routine that affords me to be more intentional about who I work with, but that didn’t come without any hiccups.

I took my own advice and evaluated each project using the following prompts:

How did I feel about this project overall?
How did I feel about my role in this project?
How did I feel while working with this client/partner?

As I reflected on this year’s projects, I also thought of prior projects and decided it would be fun to share two experiences that I consider my best and my worst time working with clients.

Because I’m focusing on me, I won’t be naming the specific clients nor the focus of the projects (because that’s messy), but If you’ve been a reader of my blog over the years, you should know that my client projects tend to fall somewhere in the sexual and reproductive health, rights, or justice space, young women’s empowerment, and the like. I’ll focus instead on what I learned during these processes and how they’ve shaped my process in being intentional of who I work with, what I take on, and how I choose to work.

Let’s start with the worst client experience:

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8 Jul, 2020

Your Plan B Should Be as Strong as Your Plan A

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:56:28-04:00July 8th, 2020|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: program design, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

I don’t like flying, but I do because I enjoy experiencing new locations, plus all of my family lives in Georgia and the majority of my current client organizations are not based in Washington, DC where I’m located.

It’s already unsettling being propelled through the air at 36,000 feet in a cylindrical tube, but one of the scariest aspects of flying for me is knowing that a twin-engine aircraft can fly with just one engine, at best, At worst, that aircraft can lose power in both engines and still travel for another 70 miles before reaching the ground.

Something like this should be scary, but what keeps me somewhat calm is knowing that pilots are highly trained and can handle most mechanical and weather situations (turbulence, ugh).

Can you imagine if pilots had to figure out how to land a plane without practicing? In addition to hours of training and the lessons learned in past aviation incidents, pilots learn how to communicate the relevant information to Air Traffic Control and flight crew.

So how does this apply to implementing your programs and services?

I once had a supervisor that would tell staff, “Your Plan B should be stronger than your Plan A”.

If your Plan A is strong enough, there would be no need for a Plan B, I thought.

As I move through the COVID-19 pandemic along with my clients, I see that my former supervisor and I were both right.

We’re living in uncertain times, and this was before the coronavirus pandemic. We’re used to routine and structure (Plan A). Even if everything is going well, there’s always something you can do to strengthen your programs and services (Your Plan B).

Planes are designed that in the event one or both engines fail, you can still glide and land safely. So, how can you build your Plan B?

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1 Jul, 2020

Ask Nicole: How Can I Raise My Voice When No One is Around to Hear Me?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:53:38-04:00July 1st, 2020|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism, Ask Nicole|0 Comments

I received an overwhelming number of responses from one of my recent blog posts, “Your Values Always Come at a Cost“. So much so, that the majority of that post’s comments came directly from subscribers to my Raise Your Voice newsletter via email replies.

This comment came from Amanda, a public health student:

One thing that’s given me solace during this time is that so many people are looking for Black voices, in all professional fields. And I want to capitalize on that! Your quote “There should be no question where you stand and you should only want to surround yourself with people who share the same values” really resonated with me. As I matriculate through my MPH program, I’m discovering the importance of raising my voice, as you always remind us to do. But I feel like, no matter what I try to bring awareness to, no one hears me. I know that I have to promote myself in creative ways outside of the traditional resume, and I’ve been utilizing social media to share my thoughts on issues I care about. But I feel discouraged because, between Instagram and Twitter, I don’t have many followers (combined it’s like around 700 total). How can I raise my voice when no one is around to hear me? Hardly anyone likes, retweets, or comments on my posts. Is it because what I’m saying isn’t resonating or that I’m not articulating myself in a way that would make people want to listen to me?

My consulting business began as a Tumblr blog. I used that blog as an outlet to share my thoughts on what eventually became my business’ vision, mission, and core services.

Over the years, I’ve slowly built up a social media following, where I’ve been more intentional about connecting, networking, and highlighting what I can do. But what I’ve learned along the way is that there’s more to building an audience than likes, shares, and retweets.

While these metrics can tell you how you’re resonating with your audience, unless you ask every single person why they’re following you, these numbers don’t tell the full story. Some of the most engaged followers you’ll have are the ones that don’t do these actions, but they’re still paying close attention.

I would consider myself to have a small social media following, but while promoting myself on social media as been part of the job, I’ve never landed a client based on something I’ve posted on social media.

How did they find me? They either asked around or they Googled something and came across one of my blog posts. Possibly an older blog post in which my voice and message weren’t as strong as it is today. They perused my blog and website and noticed how my voice has evolved and strengthened over time. I’m also sure my Raise Your Voice newsletter subscribers who have been around since my first newsletter have noticed this as well.

I took the time to get clear on who I am and how I wanted to show up for my audience, especially my clients. I wanted to position myself so that a prospective client could look at me and say, “She’s the right person for the job”.

Raise your voice regardless of the size of your audience. Use this time to strengthen your voice and message for the followers who are here right now.

The last thing you want is to suddenly gain an influx of followers and you haven’t strengthened your voice and message.

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17 Jun, 2020

Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:51:11-04:00June 17th, 2020|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Human Centered Design, program design, Try This|0 Comments

Try this activity and let me know how it goes.

As the world began to shelter in place to flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic, I did what many social workers do: I checked in on my clients to make sure they were ok.

With the exception of one client, all of my client organizations turned their initial attention to orienting their staff to the world of working from home. So, naturally, most of their time was taken up with that.

My one client that was already working remotely before the shelter in place order didn’t have this issue. What they did experience, however, was a drastic shift in their programming.

To use the terminology we’ve been hearing on the news, this client (like all of my clients) had to figure out what was “essential” and what wasn’t in terms of how implementing their programs impacted staff capacity to support their program participants, many who support communities heavily impacted by COVID-19.

Putting on my social worker hat, we discussed how this organization makes decisions under normal circumstances given the work they do (abortion access and advocacy). What’s normal for them is operating with the understanding that anything (from policy introductions that can restrict abortion access, to cyberattacks and general anti-abortion rhetoric) can occur to undermine how they support their members.

So, in many ways, they’re used to being nimble. Trying to do this work during a pandemic is another experience entirely.

We talked about how this nimbleness can be applied to how they’re thinking about their programs under the pandemic. One process we’ve implemented over a year ago was the creation of an evaluation working group consisting of staff members from most of their departments who have a willingness and desire to add more intentionality in their program development, data gathering, and sense-making via evaluation. One first meeting as a group grounded the groups’ expectations as well as introduced the process of evaluative thinking.

Given that this client’s focus with me as been on evaluation capacity building, not much changed on my end in terms of still being able to engage staff, but as with all evaluations, I had to pivot the project to address this client’s emerging need: supporting their member base. The client informed me that they had to make quick decisions on which programs can still operate. If their programming could no longer operate as intended, 1) what can they learn from this, 2) how can they pivot programs deem essential to their work, 3) what qualifies a program as “non-essential”, and 4) how can they make a “non-essential” program more “essential” in the future?

I once had a supervisor that would tell staff, “Your Plan B should be as strong as your Plan A.”

I thought he was wrong. If your Plan A is strong enough, there would be no need for a Plan B.

As I move through the pandemic along with my clients, I see that my former supervisor and I were both correct. Your Plan B should be just as strong as your Plan A.

In response to my client’s needs, I created an evaluative thinking activity.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running, and evaluating programs and services
Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

Download the Evaluative Thinking Discussion Guide Download

The steps:

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10 Jun, 2020

Your Values Always Come at a Cost

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:50:15-04:00June 10th, 2020|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism|0 Comments

Image description: Two protestors in Washingon, DC, holding brown and white signs with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” written in black. Photographer: Yasin Ozturk

Over the last 3 months, I’ve been doing a lot of observation.

Observing the ways in which my client organizations have (or not have) been able to pivot their operations and programming while supporting their staff and community in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the shelter-in-place orders many states and countries are still under.

The coronavirus coupled with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Aubrey, Tony McDade and George Floyd in recent weeks have exposed what we already know: Our society is unequal and many of the systems and infrastructures we engage daily are not efficient, not accessible, and not equitable.

But lately, I’ve observed something else: Companies, organizations, thought leaders, and brands who have never spoken up about racial injustices before now bombarding our inboxes and social media feeds with solidarity statements and using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.

If you’re like me, you’re skeptical of what you’re seeing. While there are some companies that have made their stance known on current events and social justice issues for a long time, I’ve divided public response into five categories:

The ones that do care and always speak out on social injustices
The ones that do care but have never spoken up until now
The ones that may care but are unsure what to say because it’s not “on brand”
The ones that don’t care but also don’t want to come off as racist, so they speak up
The ones that don’t care and haven’t said anything

I’m seeing a lot of “I know this is important and I want to say something but don’t want to say the wrong thing/am not educated enough on racism and police brutality/don’t want to offend anyone” remarks. These comments are stemming from people and companies who would fall in the third category.

While I don’t believe that companies should be forced to make a statement on something they have no expertise in, many of these companies, organizations, thought leaders, and brands aren’t discriminating when it comes to who they get their money from. And since racism is embedded in many systems we engage with, these entities need to speak up about it.

When someone says they don’t want to offend anyone, who are they referring to? The people directly impacted by systemic racism, or the ones that aren’t? I’ve seen several people with large social media following focusing more on the number of social media followers they’re losing for speaking up.

If taking a stand against systemic racism and police brutality causes people to unfollow you or no longer support you, were they really your ideal people anyway?

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Ask Nicole: My Best & Worst Client Experiences

Your Plan B Should Be as Strong as Your Plan A

Ask Nicole: How Can I Raise My Voice When No One is Around to Hear Me?

Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

Your Values Always Come at a Cost

This Is A Custom Widget