The Six Stages Framework: Leading with Equity and Empathy

Dr Shungu Hilda M'gadzah
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This podcast explores our understanding and ability to engage and deal with biases, inequity and racism. Offering reflections on everyday psychology and explores the impact of discrimination and racism on different sectors of the community from schools to businesses and Universities Exploring challenges faced by individuals and organisation and offering ideas, support and strategies for equity and inclusion. The Six Stages Framework is an intersectional tool used to assess where individuals and organisations are in their journey and support them to grow in their understanding and actions.

  1. 1d ago

    My Dear White Friend – Letter Ten: Loyalty and Belonging: What Is the Price of Being Accepted?

    My Dear White Friend – Letter Ten Loyalty and Belonging: What Is the Price of Being Accepted? What happens when loyalty becomes an expectation of obedience? When belonging depends on keeping silent, agreeing with others or avoiding uncomfortable truths? In Letter Ten of My Dear White Friend, I reflect on the often-unspoken conditions we place on loyalty, acceptance and belonging. From childhood experiences within families and schools to friendships, professional relationships and wider society, I explore what happens when challenging someone's beliefs or behaviour is interpreted as disloyalty. I share personal reflections on being accused of disloyalty after raising concerns about a manager who had previously supported my professional development. I also consider the expectations of loyalty within Black communities and professional groups, and the extraordinary story of British boxing champion Bilal Fawaz, whose experiences raise questions about national identity and belonging. Drawing on the Six Stages Framework, I explore how our stages, emotional states and need for acceptance influence how we respond when our assumptions are challenged. Can we genuinely belong if that belonging depends on our silence? And when someone challenges us, is that necessarily disloyalty, or could it be an expression of care, accountability and commitment? This letter invites us to reflect on the relationships and human environments we create, and whether they allow people to be themselves without fear of exclusion. Listen. Reflect. Question. Build bridges of empathy. You can also read the full letter on the Six Stages Framework website: https://www.sixstagesframework.com/my-dear-white-friend-letter-ten-loyalty-belonging/ Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah Chartered Educational Psychologist | Creator of the Six Stages Framework – Building Bridges of Empathy #MyDearWhiteFriend #SixStagesFramework #LoyaltyAndBelonging #PsychologicalSafety #Inclusion #BuildingBridgesOfEmpathy

    My Dear White Friend – Letter Ten: Loyalty and Belonging: What Is the Price of Being Accepted?

  2. Sep 20

    My Dear White Friend – Letter Four: Please Don’t Make Me Your Textbook

    Episode description: Dear White Friend, When you ask me to explain racism, have you considered what that conversation might cost me? For you, it may be a fifteen-minute conversation. For me, it may mean reopening experiences I have spent a lifetime learning how to carry. In Letter Four of My Dear White Friend, Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah explores the hidden emotional labour of explaining racism, the importance of taking responsibility for our own learning, and what happens when curiosity encounters a boundary. The letter also asks a more challenging question: How are you with other Black people when I am not there? Does your allyship extend beyond the people you know and love? Does greater understanding lead to changes in how you behave? Through the Six Stages Framework, this letter invites us to move beyond knowledge towards reflection, accountability and meaningful behavioural change. Read the letter on the Six Stages Framework website. Read. Listen. Reflect. #MyDearWhiteFriend #SixStagesFramework #AntiRacism #EmotionalLabour

    My Dear White Friend – Letter Four: Please Don’t Make Me Your Textbook

  3. Sep 1

    My Dear White Friend — Letter Three: When a Story Arrives Before You

    Letter Three of My Dear White Friend, read by Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah. What does it mean to enter a new workplace believing you are beginning again — only to wonder whether a story about you may already have arrived? In this letter, I reflect on professional networks, reputation, belonging and the unsettling possibility that impressions can travel faster than context. I also ask what race adds to the experience of entering a new professional space. Do people see your qualifications before they see your race? Might confidence be read as arrogance, directness as aggression, or authority as something you have overreached to claim? And what is the psychological cost of having to anticipate those possibilities before you have even begun? At the heart of Letter Three is a different way of thinking about privilege: Perhaps privilege is sometimes most visible not in what you receive, but in what you are spared having to think about. My Dear White Friend is a reflective series exploring race, friendship, belonging, defensiveness, accountability and the difficult work of looking inward. Read. Listen. Reflect. What have you been spared having to think about when entering a new professional space? #MyDearWhiteFriend #Psychology #HumanBehaviour #RaceAndWork #Belonging #Privilege #WorkplaceCulture #Racism #SixStagesFramework #BiasDominoEffect #BiasDominoes

    My Dear White Friend — Letter Three: When a Story Arrives Before You

  4. Aug 24

    My Dear White Friend - Letter Two: The Discomfort of Looking Within

    What happens when understanding racism is no longer only about recognising what happens “out there” — but begins to ask us to examine ourselves? In Letter Two of My Dear White Friend, I reflect on the discomfort of looking within. Having Black friends, loving a Black person, raising Black children, doing anti-racism work or considering ourselves an ally may all be meaningful. But none of these things necessarily makes us immune from bias. Perhaps the more difficult questions are: What have these relationships caused me to examine? What happens when someone I care about tells me something about race that makes me uncomfortable? Do I become curious — or do I reach for evidence that reassures me that the problem cannot be me? A central idea within this letter is: Proximity is not the same as reflection. When racial bias becomes associated only with being a “bad person”, recognising bias within ourselves can become psychologically threatening. Sometimes one person may be trying to describe an experience while the other is trying to protect an identity. Can we hold something more psychologically realistic? I can be kind and carry bias. I can love someone and misunderstand something important about their experience. I can oppose racism and still reproduce racial assumptions. I can do anti-racism work and still have work to do. Perhaps the question is not whether we can prove ourselves beyond bias. Perhaps it is: What happens when bias becomes visible? Do we defend? Do we retreat? Or can we remain curious long enough to look again? https://www.sixstagesframework.com/my-dear-white-friend-discomfort-looking-within/ https://www.sixstagesframework.com/my-dear-white-friend/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-dear-white-friend-letter-two-discomfort-looking-within-m-gadzah-fnhee My Dear White Friend draws upon lived experience, memory and reflective inquiry. Identifying details are changed, generalised or omitted. The “White friend” across the series should not be understood as one person. The letters may draw upon different relationships, encounters, conversations and questions that have emerged over many years. Read. Listen. Reflect. Lean in together. Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzahCreator, Six Stages Framework

    My Dear White Friend - Letter Two: The Discomfort of Looking Within

  5. Aug 12

    My Dear White Friend — Letter One: When Understanding Racism Becomes Personal Episode description

    Episode description What happens when understanding racism is no longer something intellectual or happening “out there” — but something that asks us to examine ourselves? In the first letter from My Dear White Friend, Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah reflects on friendship, White privilege, belonging, adultification, bias and the difficult emotional spaces that can emerge when conversations about race become personal. The letter asks what happens when someone we care about experiences a shared world differently because of race — and whether our relationships can remain strong enough to hold the discomfort that follows. At its heart is one unresolved question: What became so difficult that losing the friendship became easier than remaining in the conversation? This is not a letter about proving who is or is not racist. It is an invitation to consider what happens when the lens turns inward: What am I protecting?What might I need to reconsider?Can I resist defending myself long enough to become curious? My Dear White Friend draws upon lived experience, memory and reflective inquiry. Identifying details are changed, generalised or omitted, and the “White friend” across the series should not be understood as one individual. Read the full letter:https://www.sixstagesframework.com/my-dear-white-friend-understanding-racism-becomes-personal/ Explore the series:https://www.sixstagesframework.com/my-dear-white-friend/ Discover the Six Stages Framework: Read. Listen. Reflect.

    My Dear White Friend — Letter One: When Understanding Racism Becomes Personal Episode description

  6. Jul 23

    Why fear cannot build psychological safety

    🎧 New Episode Alert: Why fear cannot build psychological safety "You cannot build psychological safety with the same tools that created psychological harm". In this episode, we dive into Dr Shungu M'gadzah's powerful concept of the SSF Change Paradox. This paradox occurs when a system seeks a positive outcome—like trust, inclusion, and openness—while continuing to use negative methods built around fear, control, and punishment. Are you trying to fix your workplace culture using the very tools that broke it? Sometimes, organisations appear to be working hard to repair their culture, but using defensive and punitive methods is like discovering cracks in a building and repeatedly striking the walls with a pickaxe. It creates noise and movement, but the underlying foundations remain unexamined and each intervention just creates further fractures. Tune in as we discuss why meaningful change requires systems to set down the weapons of fear, status, punishment, and control before genuine dialogue can begin. We also explore three vital questions through the Six Stages Framework to help you identify if your stated destination and methods are travelling in opposite directions. Listen now on Spotify! 🎧👇 #SixStagesFramework #SSFLens #PsychologicalSafety #OrganisationalCulture #Leadership #SystemsThinking #WorkplaceWellbeing #Inclusion

    Why fear cannot build psychological safety

  7. Jul 19

    Why We See Different Realities: Unpacking the Psychological Lens

    Have you ever wondered how two intelligent, well-meaning people could witness exactly the same situation and come away with completely different conclusions?. Where one person sees courage, another might see recklessness, and where one sees hope, another perceives a threat. In this episode, we explore why this happens by diving into the fascinating concept of the psychological lens. None of us experiences the world exactly as it is. Instead, we interpret everything around us through lenses that have been shaped over time by our relationships, culture, education, fears, and hopes. Just like a car windscreen that gradually accumulates dust, rain marks, and road spray over weeks of driving, our psychological lenses slowly gather residue from difficult conversations, headlines, and painful disappointments. Because these changes happen so gradually, we often stop noticing them, but together they heavily influence what we believe to be true and who we empathize with. Drawing on the Six Stages Framework (SSF) developed by Dr. Shungu M'gadzah, we discuss how to stop instinctively trying to decide who is right and who is wrong. Instead, the Framework invites us to ask: What lens might this person be looking through, and what experiences have shaped it?. This essential shift in perspective replaces assumption and blame with curiosity, which creates the possibility of genuine dialogue. Tune in to learn how to clean your own psychological lens, and remember: Before changing the world, pause and check the lens through which you're seeing it. Key Takeaways: Why our psychological lenses shape what we notice and what we overlook.The power of perspective and how our daily experiences quietly influence our judgment.How to build bridges of empathy using curiosity and the Six Stages Framework. To learn more, explore Dr. Shungu M'gadzah's work at sixstagesframework.com.

    Why We See Different Realities: Unpacking the Psychological Lens

  8. Jun 14

    📖 SSF Weekly Reflection #1: Moving from Certainty to Curiosity

    Welcome to Through the SSF Lens, a podcast from Inclusion Psychologists Ltd. hosted by Dr. Shungu Hilda M'gadzah.  In our very first weekly reflection, we pause to explore a critical tension: how do we remain open to complexity when we feel pressure to choose a side? This episode dives deeply into the "Cave of Simplification"-our tendency to use simple, comforting narratives to explain away complex human experiences.  We discuss how to hold multiple truths in public debates (using the Henry Nowak case as an example), overcoming organizational defensiveness (looking at the BBC equal pay discussion), and rethinking SEND reform and school attendance. Stability doesn't come from individuals standing alone; it comes through connection. Discover why true progress happens only when we stop asking "What is wrong with them?" and start asking "What is happening around them?". Key Takeaways The hidden roots of behavior (Anxiety, Neurodiversity, Trauma, Identity).Why empathy and critical thinking are not opposites.How to examine the gap between intention and impact in organizations.Question for our listeners: What are you looking at-and how does it look through the SSF lens?. Message from Dr Shungu This week I launched the first in what I hope will become a regular series of SSF Weekly Reflections.The purpose is simple:To pause, reflect, and make sense of the conversations, ideas, challenges, and learning emerging through the Six Stages Framework.This week's reflection explores:🔹 Henry Nowak and holding multiple truths🔹 BBC Equal Pay and organisational defensiveness🔹 SEND reform and Educational Psychology🔹 School attendance, belonging, and the Cave of Simplification🔹 Building Bridges of Empathy and the Matopos reflection🔹 Psychological safety, leadership, and systems thinkingA recurring theme emerged throughout the week:We make progress when we move from fixing individuals to understanding systems.The reflection also introduces this week's featured cave:The Cave of SimplificationThe tendency to explain complex human experiences through simple narratives.When attendance falls:"Children lack motivation."When organisations struggle:"The problem is that individual."When systems come under pressure:"There are not enough resources."But what if the deeper answers lie beneath the surface?If you are interested in educational psychology, SEND, leadership, equity, inclusion, workplace culture, psychological safety, or systems thinking, I hope you find something that resonates.🔗 Read the full reflection here:SSF Weekly Reflection #1 Cave of Simplificationhttps://www.sixstagesframework.com/ssf-weekly-reflection-1-the-cave-of-simplification-moving-beyond-simple-explanations/ As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.What are you looking at- and how does it look through the SSF lens?#SixStagesFramework #SSF #WeeklyReflection #ThroughTheSSFLens #BuildingBridgesOfEmpathy #ComingOutOfCaves #EducationalPsychology #SEND #SchoolAttendance #Belonging #MentalHealth #Neurodiversity #Inclusion #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #SystemsThinking #WorkplaceCulture #AntiRacism #Equity #ReflectivePractice

    📖 SSF Weekly Reflection #1: Moving from Certainty to Curiosity
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This podcast explores our understanding and ability to engage and deal with biases, inequity and racism. Offering reflections on everyday psychology and explores the impact of discrimination and racism on different sectors of the community from schools to businesses and Universities Exploring challenges faced by individuals and organisation and offering ideas, support and strategies for equity and inclusion. The Six Stages Framework is an intersectional tool used to assess where individuals and organisations are in their journey and support them to grow in their understanding and actions.

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