81. Consent, Transparency, and Your Values with Stacie Lampkin
Consent and How You Show Up
What role does consent play in your life?
How does it affect the way that you show up? Consent plays a major role in visibility, from the use of your image, to the agreements you make–or don’t make–when you appear in venues like podcasts, to how much you’re compensated, and more.
Consent truly does impact so many facets of life, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
Stacie Lampkin interviews India about how consent, or lack thereof, has shown up in her life, from modeling contracts to healthcare and beyond.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How consent allows you and your collaborators to fully show up
Making your values transparent in your agreements
How consent impacts content creation and partnerships across industries
Suggestions for taking action on consent in your life and your business
Expertise, Experience, and Education
A pediatric pharmacist with a passion for education, Stacie Lampkin has spent more than 10 years providing clinical pharmacy services and supporting providers and families who care for medically complex kids and adolescents. Stacie also inspires and educates future healthcare professionals in both classroom and patient care settings.
In 2019, after experiencing first-hand the difficulties of navigating a new health issue, Stacie started sharing her knowledge about pediatric medications on a larger scale. Through Stacie Lampkin LLC, she combines her expertise, experience as a patient and parent, and interest in aromatherapy and herbalism to create digital resources, online courses, and personalized presentations. By learning with Stacie, parents, caregivers, patient advocates, healthcare professionals, and holistic practitioners will gain clarity and confidence in making medication-related healthcare choices that are right for the kids they care for.
Consent Allows You to Fully Show Up
On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, Stacie Lampkin (she/her) says that we often think of consent through a legal lens, as an “all yes or all no,” and as a static agreement that is irrevocable.
India Jackson (she/her) says that consent goes far beyond the legal conception, and it “has a direct relationship with our ability to feel safe and comfortable with showing up, as well as being fully ourselves when we do.”
She says that consent in how you show up is part of recording podcasts and hosting guests, because there should be transparency and consent in what will be discussed, how the podcast will be used, for how long, if a guest has the ability to go back and restate something or ask for edits, etc.
Having all of that agreed upon beforehand allows people to “feel more confident and fully show up as themselves.”
But she says all too frequently, when she’s been asked to speak on podcasts or at events, there is no agreement at all. She encourages people to consider creating these types of agreements and to dig deeper than a simple template to create a version that accounts for your values.
“If you value openness and a collaborative relationship with the people that you are interviewing or inviting to speak to your community, then you may approach that legal agreement very differently than someone who maybe doesn’t and is more concerned about profit…Those are very different approaches to the same, at the end of the day, ‘checking of a box’ that I’ve agreed to this before you record.”
India notes that neither she nor Stacie are attorneys or legal advisors. But in her experience, one of the things she notices is when you’re checking a box on a form, if your answer is a no, or a disagreement, is there a way to open a conversation or negotiation about that?
She also considers if she’s being asked to be a token Black person on a podcast, at an event, or in a community. Determining that can be subtle, but with her years of experience, India says that she is fairly adept at it. It can take the form of being asked by organizers who don’t actually know her work or being asked to only share about lived experiences or trauma, or during Black History Month or for Juneteenth.
One way hosts and organizers can protect themselves and their guests is to put their values into their agreements.
“Bake that diversity into the agreement, where it is literally putting in the agreement, we value diversity and we’ve agreed to having a full range of representation on this platform.”
And if those goals aren’t met, giving speakers and guests the option to not participate without being penalized financially or otherwise.
She says, “I don’t think there’s one answer to any of these kinds of things to consider, but having that transparency and consenting to this is what it is, and you legally know what is next if it doesn’t stay the way that you agreed for it to be, is so important.”
Making Your Values Transparent in Your Business
Stacie says that when people think in terms of their revenue balance, “sometimes people might think of consent as protecting revenue, and not thinking of it as the whole person in front of you.”
India says that leading with your values and prioritizing consent is often beneficial to a business’s revenue.
More often than not, “you living through your values in action by having consent baked into your agreements, having consent baked into your conversations and the way that you literally approach everything, can potentially allow someone else to realize that this is a type of person and business and brand and team that they wanna continue to connect and work with. Because they are respecting them, because they're including them in on the process and because they're being transparent.”
There are instances where prioritizing consent can have a negative impact on revenue, or even just a neutral one.
One way consent frequently shows up is in how businesses handle online sales for products or services. Laying out the terms and conditions, how refunds are handled, etc. protects the business and is something that many small business owners don’t realize that they need. Making sure that there is an active checkbox may slow down sales, but it also creates an opportunity for the consumer to have informed consent.
Stacie points out that many of these terms and conditions documents that we encounter are lengthy and many of us click ‘accept’ without reading them. She proposes that one solution to the unwieldiness of terms and conditions is to ensure that your values as a business are clear on your sales page, so that “if you skip though that legal document, you still know what organization you’re working with.”
India agrees and says that businesses can also address key points of the terms and conditions in an FAQ area on a sales page like refunds and cancellations, how data is handled, etc. But even at that, she acknowledges that not everyone will read the FAQs or the terms and conditions.
Stacie says that she is less likely to fully read an FAQ if it’s a local business, or a business she’s already familiar with, but she will dig around a website to get a sense of their values before even getting to the point of purchasing.
India says that just illustrates the importance of showcasing your values and making them transparent on your website and in how your business operates.
“Some of this values-based work in how a company shows up can also create a certain level of safety and comfort in someone making that purchasing decision.”
How Your Image Gets Used
India says that pretty much every industry has room to improve in matters of consent. She reflects on her experiences in the modeling industry as a sphere that is particularly in need of more transparency and informed consent, especially for minors.
“Yes, you have to have a parent of guardian sign off on the ability to use your image before you’re 18, but beyond that, there is so much that happens behind the scenes that oftentimes the person who is in the modeling position doesn’t really feel like that have consent to say no to what is happening with their public image, what is happening with their physical body, what is happening with their hair.”
She says in an industry that is dominated by people between the ages of 14 and 21, it’s difficult to get truly informed consent because there’s so little transparency and understanding of how the industry works and what the long-term implications of signing away the rights to their image.
She continues that transparency is particularly lacking in how the modeling industry handles compensation, because there isn’t an understanding of how the money flows. What seems like a lucrative contract may actually be worth significantly more when your image or video can be used across multiple media and venues like print, web, video, and social media campaigns. Even the length of the contract on your image should impact how much you get paid.
“And then we have underneath that, all the other pieces of how was this person portrayed?”
When young models are aged up in photos or portrayed as sexy, “we’re talking about somebody who’s 17 or 18 that may not feel the same way about that video a few years from now.”
Stacie adds that it also intersects “with identity and that pressure maybe to say, I have to show up to represent a group.”
India agrees and says that these issues also apply to content creation and appearing in other business owners’ content, even if you’ve never thought of yourself as a model.
“Even when when we’re creating for ourselves, we have to be mindful of the question of how might taking on this project influence the way that I show up…If you are selling something at the end, it is worthwhile asking yourself, how can I still sell this thing and not compromise who I am or turn into someone else to sell it?...I don’t know if we all pause long enough to consider that, or if many times we are considering what is gonna go viral the fastest.”
Fired Up About Consent
India says that Flaunting Her Fire has evolved a lot over the last few years, but right now it “has really been exploring interdependence, what is possible when we all work together from a place of informed consent, and really find a way to have this community, collaborative, partnership-based relationship with one another.”
Stacie agrees about the importance of interdependence, but admits that she sometimes struggles with skepticism about others’ motives in her interactions.
India says that is a very human reaction to having had your consent bypassed or having been taken advantage of in some way.
She gives one example of considering how you use your email list and what your subscribers have consented to receive from you.
“How can you respect someone’s inbox like you would respect the mailbox of their house?”
That means not just having a general opt-in, but setting expectations for subscribers about what they will receive, and allowing them to opt out of sales campaigns.
“There’s gonna be so much more respect [and] appreciation for your brand…People don’t buy from people they don’t trust.”
In Stacie’s experiences working as a pediatric pharmacist, consent plays a huge role in what she does, and it tends to be very legally driven in terms of consenting to a procedure or treatment. Those consents can be very technical and aren’t always easy to understand, so Stacie’s passion is centered around educating parents and patients about what they are really agreeing to when they sign for a medication.
“And as a pediatric pharmacist, I get really fired about including kids in that healthcare decision-making process as much as possible and giving them a voice. Yes, there’s gonna be instances where they really need something from a lifesaving measure, but if there is something where they get to choose the flavor of the medication, that will help them out. So I like to pull in those decisions and get the family comfortable with asking questions and including kids.”
India says that bringing that kind of transparency and collaboration to industries like healthcare that almost have their own languages is especially important, because not everyone will be comfortable enough to ask for clarification when they don’t understand.
“Part of consent is also leaving and keeping the dialogue open. Like, hey, if there’s anything you’re not sure about or don’t understand here, please ask.”
She says that issues of consent also frequently come up in the marketing industry or when we interact with software and apps. “When the service you are using is free, you are the product. And is that being made really clear to you?...It’s not common knowledge.”
Take Action on Consent in Your Life and Your Business
India says to take action on consent in your personal life, review your app settings for what you may have consented to without realizing it, and make changes to your settings if you can.
For business owners, she suggests making sure that you have clear agreements in place with anyone you’re collaborating or partnering with.
“Being able to have those agreements be really, really clear of what happens not just when everything’s great, but also if something unexpected happens as well.”
Stacie suggests evaluating how you model consent for the kids in your life, and how you allow them to consent to what happens to them and give them agency and autonomy in that way.
“I would love to have us be more aware of how we consent and what we’re consenting to, and model that for children.”
That might mean not just automatically signing a permission slip for a field trip, but making sure both you and the child know about and consent to things like photographs being taken and shared. “Have that conversation with them and just keep that dialogue open with kids.”
She also reminds everyone that if you don’t have agreements in place, or you do but they need updating, that’s okay.
“It’s not permanent, you can evolve it. It’s your business.”
How Stacie Flaunts Her Fire
Stacie that Flaunting Her Fire right now is about reclaiming her personality.
“I was so tunneled into being this perfect healthcare provider based on going through that pathway of being a professional and being this elite person…[but] where’s my personality? Where are those values?”
She says that in the course of her education and training, “nobody’s teaching you about everything else that’s going on in your life, you’re just so focused on the learning, the books, [that] I lost personality along the way.”
India adds that in an industry like healthcare, it can be difficult to disrupt the culture and norms because there is so much bureaucracy, so she asks Stacie what keeps her fire going without burning out.
Stacie says that she keeps her fire going by “revisiting my whole life values,” and making sure that her work and her life are somewhat in balance.
“I get energized really quickly, so I give myself 48 hours to say no or yes to anything.”
When she does have time and space to commit to a new project, she tries “to surround myself with other people that, in or outside of the industry, are trying to make change, and celebrating those small wins keeps me going.”
Connect With Stacie Lampkin:
LinkedIn: Stacie Lampkin
Resources:
Pause on the Play Ep 176: Legal Agreements: Integrating Your Values and Creating Consent with Autumn Witt Boyd
Pause on the Play Ep 185: Autonomy, Personal Ownership, and Consent: A Conversation With Shannon Collins
Ready to Dive Deeper?:
Posting photos or stories about the kids in our lives has become habitual for many of us. We need to move away from making assumptions and move towards a place of consent and autonomy with children.
Inside The Pause on the Play Community, Stacie Lampkin and Shannon Collins’s workshop Sharing About Our Kids Online: Do You Have Their Consent, encourages you to reexamine your approach to how we share about children on online spaces.
With space for education, reflection, and accountability, this resource is part of our evergreen library of workshop replays within the community.
Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/community