Thread by @ShannonDea1

Friends, I have some advice to offer. If you find it helpful, I hope you'll share this thread. The advice is a principle I have dubbed #MaskIn. It's all about letting the folks furthest from the centre of power feel supported wearing masks. 1/n

Last week, my province dropped all COVID public health guidelines. Maybe yours did too? In workplaces and public spaces, folks are suddenly having to decide whether or not to wear a mask. Just like in spring 2020, only now we know a lot more about transmission & VARIANTS! 2/n

Lots of folks are feeling super anxious about this shift... for various reasons. Maybe they live with unvaccinated kids. Maybe they or loved ones are immunocompromised. Maybe they're freaked about recent evidence from Israel that mRNA vaccine effectiveness declines over time. 3/n

Also, COVID has been and continues to be genuinely traumatic. Everything changed! People died! Getting back to normal feels scary and wrong. My @UofRArts colleague @gjgasmundson has done brilliant research on Coronaphonia. It is real, and making it hard for folks. 4/n

Further, we don't know each other's vaccination status, and in most Canadian workplaces, it's illegal to ask. And many of us have only seen each other Zoom for 16 months. All of this is making the social cues super hard, and given the political polarization, kinda high stakes.5/n

I'm going to suggest that when things are scary, hard, dangerous, fraught, etc., etc., etc., folks with less systemic and institutional power have it harder than those with more. Therefore, we ought to #MaskIn. 6/n

So what is #MaskIn? Let's take a moment and visualize systemic and institutional power as concentric circles with the most power in the innermost circle and decreasing power as you move out from that circle. 7/n

Hold up -- what's this systemic and institutional power of which you speak? Ok, roughly, systemic power = syuff like race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, wealth, immigration status... And institutional power = stuff like whether you're management or labour... 8/n

...like, how much power do you wield in a particular institution in virtue of your role within that institution? Me, I'm an academic dean. So, in my institution, I wield a good bit of institutional power. A couple hundred employees report to me, directly or indirectly... 9/n

Directly or indirectly, I make decisions that bear on those members' ongoing working conditions, including compensation and future opportunities. 10/n

Now, imagine that I have an employee who is really uncomfortable being around someone who is unmasked, and who is auper duper uncomfortable taking her mask off around other people. 11/n

Now, imagine I call an in person meeting that includes that employee, and I don't wear a mask to the meeting and I impliciior explicitly encourage others to follow suit. 12/n

What an awful position for that employee to be in!! She doesn't want to unmask or be around the unmasked, but she doesn't want to risk offending her boss or endure the social discomfort of being the only masked attendee at the meeting.13/n

Adopting #MaskIn saves her that distress. Here's how it works.14/n

In any group setting, visualize the distribution of systemic and institutional power as concentric circles with the most power in the innermost circle. Which circle do you occupy? Is it an inner circle, or at least not the outermost one? 15/n

In that case, turn your gaze towards the circles further out than yours and if anyone in thpse circles stays masked, you stay masked. Anyone?? Why should just one person's choice determine yours? Excellent question! I will answer by way of an example. 16/n

The other day, I was at a meeting. We all showed up masked, but then a couple of senior folks took their masks off and others started to follow suit. One person asked "Are we taking our masks off?" When no one answered, she took hers off. That left only two of us masked. 17/n

I was in an inner circle. The other masked person was on one of the far outer circles. She looked at me and conveyed with her eyes real worry. I had already been feeling awkward and uncomfortable, being in the small still-masked minority. Against my better judgment, I was... 18/n

...tempted to unmask because it felt so socially awkward being masked. Then, I saw her look and realized how much more pressure she must be feeling. That sealed it for me. I had to keep my mask on to make it a tiny bit easier for her to keep hers on. 19/n

Ack! Dinner bell! To be continued in about an hour...

I'm back! Just a couple more thoughts on #MaskIn. 20/n

You might like #MaskIn in principle, but worry that it's hard to apply. You don't know everything about people's systemic and institutional power. You can't tell everything about their identity at a glance, nor do you necessarily know how high up they are in the org. 21/n

How can you #MaskIn if you can't be sure who's in the inner circles and who's in the outer ones? The truth is -- you can't know for sure. That's ok. You can safely assume that most folks -- especially more rank-and-file folks -- feel less powerful than you think. 22/n

So, guesstimate their circle just a bit further outwards to ensure that you don't misjudge in the other direction. 23/n

Another worry you might have: even if you're in an inner circle, you may not have much influence over folks in the innermost circle. What if you #MaskIn, but they keep their masks on? Doesn't that perpetuate an environment in which folks on the outer circles are vulnerable? 24/n

It's true.The fact that you #MaskIn isn't going to perfectly equalize an inequitable environment. But look -- that's true of pretty much everything you do to try to make your organization a little more just. Your individual action won't fix everything. That's ok. 25/n

You may not make an imperfect situation perfect, but you can make it incrementally a little bit better. And do you know what? Your model could have influence. Consider that example I shared earlier. Remember the co-worker who asked "Are we taking our masks off?" 26/n

She was clearly uncertain what to do in the situation. But attending a meeting in which two other people kept their masks on may have given her the confidence to keep hers on next time if that's what she wanted to do. Thus, we can incrementally normalize mask use. (AGAIN!) 27/n

And of course, we can discuss #MaskIn with colleagues. (Hint: that's why I gave it a name and a hashtag.) Name it, act like it's a thing, tell others that you're doing it and why you're doing it. Others will follow suit. I promise! 28/n

And if, like me, you're in a position of authority (i.e., in one of the inner circles), you can ask your team members to #MaskIn too and you can let the whole team know that's the approach your unit will be taking. 29/n

Can you force folks to #MaskIn? Probably not. But if you model it, and name it, and explain it, lots of folks will follow suit. That's a small thing that folks in power can do to make the "return to normal" less stressful for folks on the outer circles. 30/n

Oh! One final thing! You might think "My colleagues trust me. I know that I can just ask them if it's ok for me to take my mask off, or count on them to volunteer that they want me to keep it on." Nope. Sorry. That's not going to cut it. 31/n

Some of your colleagues may feel confident enough to do this, but not all will & the trick is that as the person who wields the power, you don't always know which of your colleagues doesn't feel confident standing up to you. Don't assume that every1 finds you unintimidating. 32/n

That's why it's #MaskIn rather than "AskOut." Let the folks on the outside set the tone without putting them on the spot. It will make an already too stressful time a bit kinder for those who could use some kindness. 33/n

So, that's it! #MaskIn! Thanks for reading & sorry for the typos! :) FIN