Vanguard’s Ken Banta recently spoke with Donna Murray-Brown — president and CEO of the Michigan Nonprofit Association and chair of the National Council of Nonprofits — about what top leaders should and shouldn’t do in the pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion. In the highlights video below, Ken asks Donna how these largely white leaders can address diversity in a meaningful way, and her response, perhaps surprisingly, is that they need to look to themselves.

“It’s intuitive, I think, for people to say, ‘Because it’s racial equity, let me not take charge of this, because I’m not a person of color, and let me delegate that authority to a person of color that may happen to be in my organization’ — which I don’t think is necessarily a good approach," Donna says. "One, the leader is the one who needs to be leading that work, and two, it’s actually very much a burden for a person of color to have to hold, that and lead that work.”

Taking on that leadership yourself, Donna argues, calls for “understanding yourself as an individual,” including with your biases and “perspectives around race and equity,” and “really starting there” as you work with your team.

“I can’t underscore enough that you don’t have to have ‘the answer,’“ she adds. “In fact, demonstrating authentic vulnerability is really key, and the notion of creating a safe place to have those questions — not to confuse safe with comfortable: It needs to be safe, there shouldn’t be repercussions for what happens in the conversation — but it SHOULD be uncomfortable. And if it isn’t, and if you’re not exercising perhaps radical candor as a way to approach this, you’re probably going to not move the needle of diversity, equity and inclusion like you want to.”