Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

24 Jul, 2019

Try This: Find Your Unlikely Allies

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:43:06-04:00July 24th, 2019|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Human Centered Design, Try This|0 Comments

It might seem random, but it just might work.

July is Minority Mental Health Month, a time to bring awareness to the importance of achieving mental health and wellness in communities of color, along with addressing barriers that prevent people of color from seeking and remaining in care.

Let’s say you’re an organization interested in developing an awareness campaign related to positive mental health and wellness outcomes in communities of color.

Your organization’s expertise rests on the mental health side, but you identify potential barriers, based on feedback from your program participants, that may become a barrier to someone with a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issue staying in care.

When we’re not feeling at our best, many aspects of our lives take a dive. One of which is oral health. We don’t typically connect oral health to mental health, but some mental health conditions like dementia and schizophrenia have increased decay and gum disease as a consequence of bacterial infection rather than erosion, attrition, or abrasion. Also, people experiencing stress or anxiety may also experience higher levels of bruxism (teeth grinding), temporomandibular joint disfunction (TMJ), and gum disease due to life stressors.

Partnering with an oral health organization or your local dentist office to address this may sound like a completely random campaign, but it may be a powerful campaign just off the strength of how random it sounds.

Many nonprofits and community groups like to conduct SWOT analysis. If you’re not familiar with the practice, it’s a strategic way to identify what’s a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat to the organization, both internally and externally. One perceived weakness or threat is recognizing that there are others who have your characteristics, think the way you think, and are “already doing the work”.

That may be true. But how can this move from being a weakness or threat to being a strength or opportunity?

My suggestion: Find your unlikely allies.

An unlikely ally is someone that, on the surface, we don’t think can be connected to our cause, but they may have a particular strength we benefit from once we do a deeper dive into what their skills are and how we can marry them to our own.

While there may be others already doing the work, there’s a specific way you do the work that makes you stand out. Your unique perspective can be the deciding factor on how many people get onboard with your program, strategy or campaign.

Plus, when you think beyond the people and groups closest to you and start to identify the outlier people and groups who have different skillsets that you can benefit from, it brings you to the top.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone interested in creating a program, strategy campaign or initiative on a larger scale

Here’s what you need:

Sheets of paper or an erasable whiteboard
Post-it notes
Writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers, or dry erase markers)

The steps:

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10 Jul, 2019

Ask Nicole: My #1 Rule for Effective Networking

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:42:09-04:00July 10th, 2019|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to see answered? Let me know.

I (typically) don’t like networking.

I thought it was because I’m an introvert or that it seemed easier when I was in college, or that I’d say something stupid that would ruin my chances of making a great connection.

Some of my most memorable (and odd) networking experiences include:

A women coming up to me during an event, handing me her business card (for a service I didn’t need), and walked away.
A conference attendee watching me intently as I spoke, and I could tell that they were honing in on catching buzzwords they could use to determine if it would be worth their time to continuing speaking with me.
I was contacted about a potential collaboration with someone I’d never met before, and the only reason they were interested in working me was due to my location, but they didn’t know much else about me or if we’d be a good fit.

One day I realized why I don’t like networking: The focus is on what you can get from someone, rather than building an authentic relationship. The next time you have an opportunity to network with someone, ask yourself:

Would I care about this person if they didn’t have something I want?

I recently spoke to a researcher and evaluator. She contacted me, sharing how she and I were connected (we’re members of a few activists groups and listservs, and she reads my blog), and asked to have a conversation with me because we have many commonalities (being women of color with a passion for social justice and culturally responsive research and evaluation) and she’d like to be intentional in building relationships with potential consultants.

What I thought would be a 30-minute conversation ended up lasting a little over an hour. It was a great conversation where we learned each other’s work and the communities we worked with. We’ve decided to set up ongoing conversations to stay connected. I’m always excited to connect with another woman of color in the research and evaluation space to share advice and potential opportunities, but I’m actually more excited at the prospect of getting to know another researcher and evaluator in this case.

My #1 rule for effective networking is to focus on relationship building from place of really wanting to get the know the person as an individual, and less about what you think this person can do for you.

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27 Jun, 2019

Back to Basics

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:40:54-04:00June 27th, 2019|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, reproductive justice|0 Comments

It’s that time of year, where nonprofits, community-based organizations, and other entities spend down their budgets, finalize funding reports, reflect on their successes and create goals for the new fiscal year.

It’s a pretty hectic time for me as well. While most of my client contracts start on the calendar year, I’m rushing alongside them to get things done by the end of the fiscal year.

One of my goals for Year Four of my business is to go back to basics. Specifically in these three ways:

Blogging about reproductive justice and intersectional analysis was the initial reason people started following my work. While I’ve embedded RJ into the content I’ve created in the past, what I want now is to make more explicit RJ-related content by way of my blogs, future webinars, and trainings. There’s a major difference between learning about RJ and actually incorporating it in our personal and professional lives, and I want to help people bridge that gap.
After processing everything I’ve worked on in the past year with my clients, I’m noticing that there’s a greater need for me to strengthen how I teach and coach my clients, hone in on their learning styles and information retainment, and figure out how to best break down concepts into digestible and easy to understand formats.
When I say “raise your voice for women and girls of color”, how am I working with my clients to actualize this? What does this look like for them? How are they currently doing this, and how does my working with them as a thought partner help them reach this level of engagement with the communities they serve?

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19 Jun, 2019

Try This: Context vs Content

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:39:50-04:00June 19th, 2019|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Facilitation, Try This, Workshops|0 Comments

Like a glass of water, the content of your workshop is contained within the context.

Next week, I’ll be facilitating a presentation and discussion on the reproductive justice framework for a client organization that provides health services to underserved individuals and their families along with partnering with community-based organizations and government agencies.

The client’s project is a learning collaborative that brings together local healthcare providers to adopt best practices for the provision of contraception within primary care, post-abortion, and postpartum settings.

It’s been a while since I’ve presented on RJ for an audience like this, and I’m pretty excited about it. So much so, that it’s reminded me of my goal for creating a Try This blog around the topic of context versus content.

In short, content is what you talk about, while context is how you talk about it.

Think about a glass of water. The content is the water while the glass is the context. Like a glass of water, the content of your workshop (the activities, group discussions, etc.) is contained within the context (or topic of the workshop).

In my case, the content of my presentation is RJ, but I’m presenting the information within the context of clinical and primary care settings.

However, in the client’s case, the participants in the learning collaborative will be looking at how they can provide patient-centered care (content) within the context of RJ.

Another way to look at this consider context within the context (haha) of big-picture thinking. Context is the surrounding atmosphere, the circumstances, perspectives, and intentions that form the foundation of the topic. Content is the activities, details, and events.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone who has a workshop, presentation or training coming up and you’re tired of throwing together haphazard workshops, presentations and trainings

Here’s what you need:

Sheets of paper or an erasable whiteboard
Writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers, or dry erase markers)

The steps:

Take your preferred writing utensil and either a sheet of paper or erasable whiteboard and create a diagram, like this:

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13 Jun, 2019

Self Care Corner: Staying Friends with Your Ex (?)

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:39:20-04:00June 13th, 2019|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Self Care Corner|0 Comments

If being friends with your ex is affecting your ability to move forward, read on.

Nothing brings about a flood of emotions like our exes.

On a website and blog that focuses on workshops, research and evaluation, and program sustainability, why am I blogging about relationships?

Well, I promised myself I’d blog more about self care in 2019. More specifically, how we think about self care within the context of our relationships. This is something I want to explore, given that it’s something that we all face at some point in our lives.

I’m happy to say that the people I’ve had romantic relationships with are good people, and I’m at a place in my life now where I can identify the purpose each one had in my life and the life lessons I learned at those moments in time. I can think about the good times I’ve had with them and wish them all well. But are we friends to the point that I’d consider them part of my inner circle? Not really.

When identifying your “breathe” supports, one question to ask yourself is “Do you feel that the people you’ve chosen as your ‘breathe’ supports are sufficient or do you need to expand your circle of support?” For some, a former romantic partner might be part of that support system.

I never thought about being friends with an ex until I experienced my first heartache, about a year after graduating from college. He asked if we could remain friends, and I agreed. My rationale: I wanted to get him back and thought the best way to do it was to show him I could be a good friend.

I remember attending a party with him about a month after we broke up, and it was one of the most awkward experiences of my life. Not only did I feel uncomfortable, he and I barely spoke and when we did it felt forced. Plus, the people at the party were confused as to why we arrived at this party together in the first place. (It’s funny now, but at the time it wasn’t). Every communication I had with him was awkward and didn’t feel good. Even months and years later, most interactions with him felt forced and disingenuous.

I had to be honest about why I’d attempted something that in the end, didn’t make me feel good. First off, trying to get an ex back by being friends with them doesn’t work. I also thought about how I physically felt when interacting with my ex (shallow breathing, quickening heartbeat) and how I felt emotionally (defeated, and a loser).

So one day, I gave myself permission to stop trying to be friends with him because I needed to find some relief. This didn’t include an announcement that I would no longer be contacting him or blocking him from contacting me. I just slowly lessened communication with him. When I checked in with myself, I felt better physically, and not so much like a loser. But I had a nagging thought: He’s a good guy. We technically didn’t end on bad terms, so what gives?

If we’re honest with ourselves, not all romantic relationships are supposed to last, and not all relationships end on bad terms. But does this mean we have to remain friends with our exes?

I realized that I shouldn’t force myself to continue doing something I didn’t want to do, even if my intentions for wanting to remain friends weren’t exactly pure in the beginning. Plus, it was preventing me from moving on with my life.

If you find yourself contemplating whether to remain friends with an ex and it’s impacting how you take care of yourself, ask these questions:

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Try This: Find Your Unlikely Allies

Ask Nicole: My #1 Rule for Effective Networking

Back to Basics

Try This: Context ​vs Content

Self Care Corner: Staying Friends with Your Ex (?)

This Is A Custom Widget

Try This: Context vs Content