THE DOOR YOU THINK IS OPEN

Second in a series at the intersection of values-based leadership, identity-centered growth, and the Seattle nonprofits doing the hardest work in our region.

What if the barrier isn't the wall? What if it's the door you swore was open?

Every leader I know believes their door is open. We say it out loud. Come find me. My calendar is open. Reach out anytime. We mean it when we say it. And then we go back to work and never check whether the thing we opened stayed open.

I found out the hard way that mine wasn't.

A QUESTION THAT COST FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS

A few months ago, a student I had never met emailed me. A recent graduate headed to grad school, looking for someone who had walked the road ahead of her.

She tried to book time on my calendar. My booking link tried to charge her four hundred and fifty dollars.

Think about what that moment asks of a young person. She has no relationship with me. No standing to complain. Every signal in that transaction says you are not who this was built for. Most people would close the tab. Most people would decide the door was open for somebody else and quietly go find another one.

She wrote back instead. One line. What should my next step be?

I fixed the link. We got on the phone twice now and talked about resumes and the road and how to walk into rooms she has not stood in yet. That is the part of the story people like. Here is the part that keeps me up.

I had no idea the door was locked. Nobody told me. Nobody could have, because everyone who hit that page and walked away is invisible to me. I only know about the one person who knocked twice.

THE BARRIERS ARE ALMOST NEVER ON PURPOSE

Nobody set out to charge a student four hundred and fifty dollars to ask a question. That fee was the residue of a decision made for a different purpose in a different season, left running long after the reason expired.

That is what makes invisible barriers so expensive. They are rarely malice. They are almost always leftovers.

The hiring requirement that was reasonable eleven years ago and now screens out exactly the people you say you're trying to reach. The meeting where the real decision happens before the meeting. The application built for someone with a quiet house and reliable internet. The mentorship program that requires the mentee to already know how to ask.

Look at how much of your organization was designed once, by someone who is no longer there, for a problem that no longer exists. Then ask who is quietly failing to get through it.

Here's the leadership standard I'd offer, and it's harder than it sounds. It isn't enough to open the door. Doors swing shut. Mine did, quietly, and I went right on telling people it was open.

So don't open it. Take the door off the hinges.

A door you have removed cannot close behind you when the quarter gets loud. It cannot lock because a policy changed and nobody thought to tell you. Take off the door, then go stand where the outsider stands and try to walk in as somebody who isn't you.

TRY THIS FROM YOUR SEAT

You don't need a budget or a title to do this. You need thirty minutes and a willingness to be a little embarrassed.

Pick one way people are supposed to reach your organization. Your careers page, your intake form, your donation flow, your calendar link, your front desk. Just one.

Now go through it as an outsider. Not a walkthrough. Not a screenshot in a deck. Actually do it. Use your phone. Use a browser you're not logged into. Fill out the form. Try to book the meeting. Time how long it takes and count how many times you'd have quit if you weren't the one who built it.

Then find the last three people who made it through and ask them a better question than "how was it?" Ask them what almost stopped them.

You will find something. You always do. And you will have learned it from the people who made it through, which means you're still not seeing the ones who didn't. That's the humbling part. The door audit doesn't make you finished. It makes you honest.

WHO IS ALREADY DOING THIS WORK

Here is why this column sits where it does. There is a whole category of organizations in this region whose entire job is removing barriers other people never had to notice, and they do it without the headline.

After-School All-Stars Puget Sound isn't handing kids a program. They're removing the transportation, the cost, and the timing that keep a kid out of the thing that changes their trajectory. Rainier Valley Leadership Academy isn't waiting for students to arrive prepared for the door. They're building the room differently. UNCF, Community Roots Housing, Founders Live, and dozens more you haven't heard of are all doing versions of the same work: finding the fee, the form, or the filter that somebody left in the doorway, and taking it out.

Those organizations have been running the door audit for years, on almost no budget, in the parts of this city the quarterly reports don't reach.

The business community can learn the practice from them. And, if we're being honest about what partnership means, we can fund the people already doing it better than we are.

THE KNOCK YOU DON'T HEAR

The uncomfortable truth about invisible barriers is that the feedback never arrives. Nobody emails you to say your door was locked. They just go somewhere else and you get to keep believing you're accessible.

So you must go looking. That's the whole discipline. Leadership is checking your own doors, on a schedule, before someone has to knock twice to get your attention.

I got lucky. One person had the nerve to ask a second time, and she taught me something about my own house that I could not see from inside it.

Take a look at your door this week. See who has been standing outside it.

Then take it off the hinges.

Create Possibilities, Not Excuses.

~Jesse Rhodes Jr. 

AUTHOR BIO:

Jesse Rhodes Jr. is a speaker, author of Leadership Unlocked: Harness the Power of Your Ambition, and strategic advisor specializing in values-based leadership. He teaches at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, serves as Board Chair for After-School All-Stars Puget Sound, and is available for keynotes, leadership offsites, and Employee Resource Group (ERG) events. Reach him at info@jesserhodesjr.com.