The power of the uncomfortable keynote

I was privileged in the last 48 hours to attend two of the best keynote presentations, actually no, the two best keynote presentations I’ve seen in my twenty years of attending education-related conferences. Three things made them stand out for me:

  1. Diversity: Neither of them looked like me, sounded like me, or had grown up in a world that I have any meaningful knowledge of;
  2. Quality: Both were inspirational in their contributions to society, and spoke from the heart with passion, expertise, wisdom and eloquence; and
  3. Dissonance: Both made me feel, at times, quite uncomfortable within myself as I listened to their stories.

I want to touch on all three of these, but devote more focus to the third.

I should first introduce both keynotes, of whom I am ashamed to admit that I had not heard of before this conference.

The first was Amna Karra-Hassan, a young Muslim AFL player from the Western suburbs of Sydney, and the second was Dr Tracy Westerman, an Indigenous psychologist from the Pilbara region in Western Australia. I could attempt to describe them in more detail, but I’d never do either of them justice. Google them, watch their videos, explore their ideas, and go see them if you ever get the chance.

So, the three points, starting with diversity.

I’ve seen a lot of keynotes over the years. Maybe two conferences a year, each one having two or three keynotes, spread out over twenty years makes in the order of maybe 100 of them I’ve sat through. Some have been great, some not so much, but as I think back, there was definitely an unhealthy majority of them who looked way too much like I did – middle-aged, white, male and from a privileged background. And yes, for those of you who know much about my background you might be raising an eyebrow at the ‘privileged’ comment, but put it down for now, I’ll talk more about that comment later.

Now it’s not to say that the guys I’ve watched keynote over the years have been all bad, far from it, some have been excellent, but as I look back I know that there have been too many of them that are cut from a similar cloth. Perhaps it’s just age and weariness talking, but I’m a bit over hearing from people who remind me a bit too much of myself. I hear enough from my own incessant internal chatter to not need to hear it from another person who looks at the world through a similar lens to the one I do. 

I have to give kudos on this point to the organising committee of this week’s conference for finding two such outstanding keynotes who brought two very different life experiences to the stage to share with the 800-strong crowd. Having organised keynotes myself in the past, it can be all too easy to end up with the dreaded all male panel

On to the second point, quality.

I could talk in platitudes about the speakers, but as I said earlier, I couldn’t do either of them justice in describing their achievements, so I would recommend you do some research on both instead. What I will say is that the reaction of the audience in both cases was enough to confirm that I wasn’t the only one in the audience who felt the impact of their words.

So finally, the one that truly interested me, dissonance.

I’ve felt for a long while that we’re getting more and more ingrained in our conscious and unconscious beliefs as we engage with a social media world where the whole experience is designed to tell us more of what we want to hear. If I browse a cycling website on my laptop, then I can be sure that the next time I log in to Instagram on my phone I’ll get ads slotted in to my stream from cycling stores. LinkedIn continually asks me if I want to refine my feed, which I do based on what I’m interested in, and conversely I shut out anything which I’m not interested in, which no doubt includes plenty of things that I probably should actually pay attention to. The more I engage in the social media world, the more I reinforce the interests, attitudes and undoubtedly the unconscious biases that I have within me. If I start to feel uncomfortable about something, then no problem – unfollow, refilter, block, delete. Done.


…unfollow, refilter, block, delete. Done.

This week’s sessions, at times, made me feel distinctly uncomfortable, but unlike a social media feed, I couldn’t easily disengage (without walking out, which is never a good look). What’s more, they actually made me want to engage with my discomfort even more.

I’ve had experiences in the past where I’ve felt frustrated with the ‘shock jock’ tactics of getting people to engage with sensitive, confronting topics, no matter which perspective it represents. Whilst it makes for great angry reacts, I’ve yet to see it actually help to bring people closer together on any subject – race, gender, religion, whatever. What’s more – and I speak as someone who has felt this myself – the feeling of being attacked for an (often unconscious) bias tends to lead to either a strong reaction, or complete disengagement. For me, it has usually been disengagement 
– unfollow, refilter, block, delete.

But probing these unconscious biases that we all hold in some way or another is important if we want to live in a more equitable world, and I include myself in that statement.

Earlier in this post I made reference to myself as being privileged. This is in spite of me being raised with a sense of relative disadvantage compared to many I saw around me. It took me many years to reach the level of self awareness needed to accept that by virtue of being born white, male, 
with a strong connection to one supportive parent, a safe if not salubrious home environment, access to clean drinking water and a free education  I had been playing a game in which the deck had already been solidly stacked in my favour. It is quite a sobering moment to realise that your career success might not have been entirely due to your own brilliance…

Which brings me back to today’s keynotes. Two very different people from very different backgrounds from each other, and from me – one filled with raw passion, tenacity and charisma, the other with a world-class research background and a profound understanding of the history of invisibility of her people in a European world.

I listened to them both talk about the power of personal connection and dialogue, of the need for strong, diverse role-models, about the need to redefine societal norms and to focus on looking for opportunities rather than purely focusing on problems. I listened to them both talk about approaching life with an abundance mindset and an unflappable sense of optimism, in spite of some of the patently unjust barriers that were before them. Quality.

As I said earlier, I had moments during both of these keynotes where I felt uncomfortable within myself. As I listened to some of the assumptions that both speakers talked about I realised that I too carry some of these unconscious biases that help contribute to the self-fulfilling prophecy of inequality, even if only through inaction and complacence. Perhaps albeit in relatively small ways, I could still work to identify and change some of my unconscious biases, and listening to these speakers made that hit home.

But I want to finish up what has been a rather self-reflective post by pointing out the one common thing that these two speakers did so beautifully.

Both of them made me feel uncomfortable, but not threatened.

Both of them made me feel like there are probably still things I could work on within myself, but that through self-reflection, conversation and separating the unconscious bias (the thing) from me (the person), that they could be shifted in time. Even those two simple words – in time – have power, the power to grant acceptance that the imperfections in myself and the world around me don’t have to be fixed right now. Yes, working on them is important, but like many worthwhile things, they won’t get fixed immediately.

Both of them made me feel like moving outside of my self-reinforcing social media feeds, and shining an honest light on my own beliefs, and I felt this way because they both exuded a sense of safety and acceptance through their approach. Both of them made me feel like I could, if the opportunity arose, talk about my unconscious biases with them without judgement, and that they would help me work towards shifting these – in time. To me, this was what took them beyond good keynotes to being truly excellent ones.

Perhaps the true art of the keynote is to make an audience feel  uncomfortable, but to do it in a way which makes them want to engage more deeply with that discomfort rather than to disengage from it. In return, perhaps our challenge as an audience is quite simply to avoid the temptation to unfollow.

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