In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis interviews Amelia Dunlop, author of Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. Amelia is the chief experience officer at Deloitte Digital and leader of the US Customer Strategy and Applied Design practice for Deloitte Consulting. Amelia speaks and publishes frequently on the topic of the human experience, strategy, and innovation. She received consulting Magazine’s Top woman in Technology Award for Excellence in Innovation in 2020 and she holds a degree in sociology from Harvard, a master’s in theology from Boston College, and an MBA from Cambridge University. She is enthusiastic about elevating the human experience and exploring how organizations can connect with the humans whom they call customers and employees.

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Working from home makes it difficult to stay connected and Amelia brings forward a larger conversation around how we need to connect on a deeper and more human level, going beyond strict professionalism, in any work setting. She advocates for promoting love and worth through creating positive work cultures that allow individuals to find meaning within their role and feel confident in their work.

Amelia offers three paths to creating this elevated human experience through Self, Others, and Community. She believes that love and worth have to begin at a personal level before they can be extended to those around you. She highlights the ways in which we can improve our own self-love and worth on an individual level through practices such as eliminating negative self-talk and speaking and taking action from a place of security rather than insecurity. The second path includes extending love and worthiness to others. The third path involves creating a safe space for everyone to show up as their authentic self and promote deeper human connection within a larger community.

Companies returning to in-person are still facing problems with connection because of masks and social distancing. Amelia offers that whether remote or hybrid, the main way to combat the lack of connection is to move forward with intention. To intentionally make new connections and maintain old ones by reaching out and checking in with those around you. Find ways to be more human and be more vulnerable within the workplace. Leadership plays a huge role in setting the tone for the rest of a company when it comes to connection. When leading from a place of authenticity, vulnerability, and humanness, others within the community will be able to show up as their authentic self and feel more valued.

Key takeaways from this talk include:

• Reflect on your inner dialogue and weed out the negative self-talk as a first step towards self-love. We would never speak to others as harshly as we speak to ourselves and eliminating that constant stream of negativity is something that can be learned and applied. (9:51) (33:50)
• Showing up authentically. Settings boundaries, and respecting others’ boundaries is a form of acknowledging their worth outside of their role. (20:31)
• Lead with vulnerability and humanize yourself as a leader. This sets the tone for those around you to show up in the same way, creating more worth, meaning, and connection in the workplace. (23:40)
• Extend kindness and compassion to those who may even be hard to work with. Humanize experiences and look at situations from a place of security where you can empathize with others. (38:28)

Through increased dialogue of love and worth, we can create a stronger sense of connection within our work community. Whether remote, hybrid, or in office, take simple steps to increase a sense of meaning and worthiness. It starts with showing up as authentic humans who all desire the same level of love and value in our work.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“I think we also have to be deliberately a little bit more human. So I often think about the idea that now is not all circumstances do we have to wear this professional mask anymore. We’ve seen into each other’s homes so, let’s not have that professional façade. Let’s actually acknowledge we’re human beings, you know, a kid could walk by at any point. Because that’s actually more normal than to think of people as the sort of robot workers in a corporate environment.” (16:15)

“Are there characteristics that lead to greater flourishing, greater love, or greater ability to show up at the heart? My hunch is that this is the kind of thing that does start at the top with the kind of leaders that are setting the tone. And that’s why I do believe a lot in humanizing leadership, and kind of leading with vulnerability, because I think if you set that tone, then you’re much more likely to get it back.” (23:40)

“Particularly for folks who are in those leadership positions, there’s a lot of power in leading with vulnerability and humanizing ourselves as leaders.” (23:40)

RESOURCES

Amelia Dunlop

Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Book: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:01
Hi everybody, welcome to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast we provide perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Amelia Dunlop. She’s the author of the new book: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. Amelia is the chief experience officer at Deloitte Digital and leader of the US Customer Strategy and Applied Design practice for Deloitte Consulting. She helps companies developing strategies that combine innovation, creativity, and digital strategy. She’s passionate about elevating the human experience and exploring how organizations can connect with the humans whom they call customers and employees. Amelia speaks and publishes frequently on the topic of the human experience, strategy, and innovation. She received consulting Magazine’s Top woman in Technology Award for Excellence in Innovation in 2020. She holds a degree in sociology from Harvard, a master’s in theology from Boston College and an MBA from Cambridge University. So gosh, thanks for being here. I know you’re doing a lot of these and to promote your book and it’s a pleasure to have you. And so I read your bio, tell us a little bit how you came to writing the book and how you came to this work?

Amelia Dunlop 1:12
Well, first of all, thanks for having me. So, let’s see, I guess maybe I would start by saying about four years ago, we set an aspiration to elevate the human experience. And I’ll tell you Sue, we didn’t really know what that meant at the time. But we had this, this sense that it was more than just about showing up as a customer, or showing up as an employee, that there was a much more human way to show up. And that a lot of organizations that somehow kind of forgotten that. So, we just had this idea of really focusing on what would better look like, what could we do to make each experience a little bit more human, a little bit better. And that’s kind of what started this whole role around, sort of being a chief experience officer, and then led to the book of the same name, Elevating the Human Experience. But I would say that, as you probably know that there’s a lot of me in this book, because I felt like if we’re going to talk about what it means to have a human experience, not only do I want it to be well researched, but I felt like it had to be a bit more personal and a bit more. I feel like I put a lot of my own sort of vulnerability and life story in the book as well.

Sue Bethanis 2:17
That’s great. Yeah, there’s definitely some great stories in there. So the book is called Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. I want to hear from you a little bit about how you define love and how you define worth. And as you’re talking about that, I just want to say I think it’s great you’re talking about it. I think that talking about love at work is not something we normally do and if there’s ever a time in our lifetimes, we should be talking about it…It’s probably right now. So, talk to us a bit how you just start defining those two terms, and we’ll move from there.

Amelia Dunlop 2:57
Yeah, no, I’d be happy to. So, I mean, I agree that even just using the word love and worth at work feels a little bit risky, a little bit provocative. But I felt like, first of all, I wanted to be deliberately provocative and talk about love and worth. Because when I thought about writing a book, I wanted to make sure it’s a topic that I would want to spend that much time with and would be that meaningful. I mean, I’m a strategist, I’m an innovator. I’m a marketer, but I thought about, what would I actually want to spend 200 pages with. And for me, that felt like the fundamental human need to feel loved and to feel worthy, even when we show up at work, I felt like it was really important. So that’s a little bit about the why, in terms of how I think about the definition of love, I feel like it goes back to the Greek word eudaimonia, where the Greeks have seven different words to our one for the word love. And eudaemonia really means flourishing, and who wouldn’t want to flourish in the context of our work. And so, then for the definition that I use in the book, also built on Erich Fromm back in the 1950s, he talked in The Art of Loving. So, I define love as the choice that we make to extend ourselves for either our own or another’s growth. It’s very kind of growth oriented towards this idea of flourishing. So that’s how I think about love. And the reason, one of the things I like about it is with that definition, you can go like oh, right, love is present at work, right? We don’t necessarily talk about it as much, but what would it look like for us to make it more present and kind of more kind of part of our normal discourse? And the worth part of that, I did some research with 6000 people in the United States across all different sort of walks of life and all different types of employment. And there’s many things that we learned, but the thing that most surprised me was that 9 out of 10 people said to them, that it mattered to feel worthy, but about half, myself included, so struggle at times to feel worthy, particularly in the work context. So, you’re kind of like, wait a second, if it’s so important to us, and it matters so much, why are we struggling? And so, I call that gap, the worthiness gap. It’s really just the this idea of intrinsic worth, which is before we do or say anything, that we have that fundamental kind of human need to feel like we are seen, we are valued, and we are heard.

Sue Bethanis 5:24
Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, feeling worthy at work, it’s got to be top one or two or three, for sure, in terms of why people stay or go.

Amelia Dunlop 5:40
Actually, the reason I’m nodding and smiling, because we all know that whether you want to call it the great resignation, or the great reflection or whatever it is, we are all really thinking pretty hard. Yeah, right, about the fact that we work now more than any other culture and more than any other time in history. And now it seems like, you know, not just working from home, but living at work. And so, we want our work to mean something and we want to feel like it’s a place where we can feel loved and worthy. I do think it’s a timely conversation.

Sue Bethanis 6:13
I think, having meaning at work, and it’s certainly different from worthy, but I think they’re tied. Finding meaning is going to be tied to being feeling worthy. Yes or No?

Amelia Dunlop 6:27
No, it’s true. I reflected a lot on that in the book, too. And there’s a little anecdote that I love that I can share with you, which is my daughter, who at the time was eight years old, I was putting her to bed one night, and she said, you know, Mama, what is the meaning of life? My first thought was like, okay, hold on, what shows are people watching on Netflix, that you have these like big life questions when you’re eight years old? Right? Like, clearly, I gotta monitor your consumption of media at this point. And then my other thought was like, okay, well, you know, this is one of those parenting moments, right? This really matters, don’t F this one up, right. But I just said to her that I feel like the question of a meaningful life is, you know, worth living your life to answer, but I can tell you my answer is the meaning is found through connecting with people who we love, who love us.

Sue Bethanis 7:33
Oh, my god, that’s exactly my answer too. I just say my answer is connection. That’s my answer. Yeah, I love it. Okay, great.

Amelia Dunlop 7:39
And so, we can find connection to ourselves, we can find connection to another being to a higher purpose to meaningful work, yeah, there’s something about connectedness that is where I think we find meaning. And so we can find absolutely a lot of meaning in the work that we do.

Sue Bethanis 7:53
Right? So your book, you mentioned, there’s 6,000 people that you interviewed, or did research with?

Amelia Dunlop 8:02
It was a quantitative study of 6,000. And then we also did ethnographic interviews for about 30 people in depth.

Sue Bethanis 8:07
Ok great. So tell us about the data. We can start with self-love and self-worth modeling. I’m gonna start with those. And what does the data tell us?

Amelia Dunlop 8:19
Well, I had hypotheses going in about what I expected to find in terms of differences between men and women and differences between different kind of intersecting identities. One of the things I was surprised by, is that there wasn’t actually that big a difference in the need to feel loved, or the need to feel worthy between men and women, for example. So I had anticipated there might have been, but there really wasn’t. But the places where the data did show some things that I thought were pretty interesting were in the ability to speak to ourselves with words of kindness, and the self-love as you talked about it. And that’s where I was definitely surprised that people who identified as Black or African American were far more likely to have this language of self-love and this language of sort of self-kindness than any other kind of racial identity groups. And you know, I had to dig into that one, because it was a little counterintuitive. And so when I did the ethnographic interviews, and I spoke to a number of people, they told me that in a world that may not be reinforcing that you are lovable, and you are worthy, and kind of handing you more and more and more privileges. If you don’t have that voice of self-love and self-kindness. You’re not going to get it from anywhere else. I feel like we can learn a lot.

Sue Bethanis 9:36
I mean, you could write a whole book on that. That people who are more self-loathing is almost a privileged position to do that. Yeah, I see. I see that. That’s actually really interesting.

Amelia Dunlop 9:51
But it’s also I think, for me, it demonstrated that it’s learnable, right? I mean, so even having this conversation, I say this at some point in my book that the idea that you would say, “Hey Sue, how was your weekend?” And you’d say, “Well, you know, it was good. I spent some time figuring out how to love myself.” It’s like, no, that’s weird, right? We don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about teaching our children, what does it mean to love yourself? What does it mean to be proud of yourself and not need all these external validations? In order to feel okay, right.

Sue Bethanis 10:22
Great. That’s awesome. Um, before we get into how this is related to COVID, and the pandemic, and hybrid and the great resignation, and all those things. I want to just give the foundation for you if you talk about three paths to love, and worth. And so talk about those three paths, self, another, and community. And then we’ll get into how it’s applied to the now.

Amelia Dunlop 10:48
Absolutely. So I will say, what my training – I have a master’s in theology – and I did a lot of work with Hegel, and his whole sort of school of thought, but so it’s three paths. Because I really, truly believe that the first path is when we walk alone, right, we live inside our heads, we have the voice inside our heads that may or may not be kind to us and may or may not be loving. And so there’s actually a lot of work I know, I had to do, I continue to do, and many of us have to do about the narratives that we tell and the stories that we tell ourselves before anyone shows up and says something negatively or positively on our behalf. So it’s the work we do for ourselves to feel loved and worthy. Then the second path is that journey of another where we have friends, mentors, sponsors, and benefactors, and we are those things to other people. And how can we more consciously build those connections so that we see in another, the worth that they see in themselves, and that I talk about as mirrored worth, where we can play it back to another person very consciously as an ally. And then that third path is the whole community of work, where we’re going to come across hundreds of thousands of people who we may or may not have deep interactions with every day, but how do we create those spaces where people feel like they can show up with our authentic selves.

Sue Bethanis 12:15
In thinking about those three paths, let’s really focus. We’ll get people to participate here in a second. But I want to talk a little bit about hybrid and remote work. And I mean, any of it really we can talk about, but there’s sort of two things going on right now there’s a lot of people that are in my world, in tech, that aren’t going back to work yet. And there’s this, this waiting thing, like things are gonna be going back to normal at some point, we keep pushing back the dates, which we’re gonna keep pushing back the dates for a long time, I think. Because it’s going to be a pandemic for a while, it’s going to become an epidemic, and it’s not going to go away, because we can’t get enough herd immunity essentially. So given that, we’re going to be in what you’re in, a lot of us, where you can go into the office sometimes. And in your case, at Deloitte, you’ve got to be vaccinated in New York, and there’s still gonna be some of that going on. There’s also the connection issues with that, because even if you’re in the office, you still have your mask on some of the times and some people don’t, you’re still on Zoom. So there’s that situation, then there’s also the situation of people just going to be on zoom all the time, or whatever video, all the time. So both those situations are problematic as far as connection. So talk about this, here we are trying to talk about love and worth. And they were talking about like, the ways we were connecting human to human in real life have now been essentially thrown out. So talk a little bit about that phenomenon.

Amelia Dunlop 13:58
Well, what I’ll say is I actually, a couple of years ago, Sue, I actually wrote an article on something that I called, at the time human experience debt. And it was this idea that we have technical debt, in our organizations where we have these old legacy systems, and we have to pay down that debt. Or we have financial debt, where we all know what that’s like, both as a country and as an individual. But I think we have also been developing this human experience debt where we create a piece of technology, we use an AI because we can. And it takes a little while to think through like, “Oh, what’s the fullness of the implications of the experience of what it means to be human when we use all this technology?” And the example I like to give is a very simple one, but when we all have these virtual assistants in our homes, and our children are barking orders to this device, and I’m kind of pointing are they learning what it means to say please and thank you? Do they have a more human interaction in terms of how they get there needs satisfied? And so there’s very subtle ways in which really thinking about how are we creating more or less human connectedness. Then you kind of flash forward to kind of where we are now. And you’re not asking me to predict the future, but if I do kind of look ahead about it, I think what we’re all in right now is just a period of intentionality, right? Where if you want to see a loved one, if you want to see a friend, if you want to see a colleague, you have to be pretty intentional about it. Where you’re going to meet, where do they feel safe meeting? What are the protocols? So I think we have to be very intentional. And I think the hardest part with the intentionality is the new relationships. It’s much easier to maintain a relationship digitally or by phone than it is to make a new one. And so I found particularly in the workplace, actually just I did three just today, very short 20 or 30 minute conversations where it would have been a hallway chat, it would have been a kitchen chat, it would have been coffee chat, where I just try to kind of connect with and get to know people, even though we’re not going to bump into each other ever. Right. So I think we do have to be more intentional is one thing.

Sue Bethanis 16:14
I think that’s a great point. Yeah.

Amelia Dunlop 16:15
We play it forward. I think we also have to be deliberately a little bit more human. So I often think about the idea that now in not all circumstances do we have to wear this professional mask anymore. So we’ve seen into each other’s homes. So, let’s not have that professional facade, let’s actually acknowledge we’re human beings, you know, a kid could walk by at any point. Because that’s actually more normal than to think of people as the sort of robot workers in a corporate environment.

Sue Bethanis 16:46
Right, people’s humanity, like the Amazon person is gonna come any minute here, right?

Amelia Dunlop 16:50
Yeah, no, exactly. So we have a lot more empathy for that. Yeah. And then I guess my final thing is just that if I pay it forward, I do think that this format, where we can see each other digitally is just one of the variations of what we’ll have. I mean, the next one, obviously, is we’re going to have this conversation in the metaverse right? Where my avatar will be speaking to your avatar. What’s that human experience gonna look like? And I hope we don’t have all of our meetings in the metaverse. But it’ll be an option. Right? And what does that look like?

Sue Bethanis 17:17
I think it’s gonna be here, before we know it two years will be in virtual. Yeah.

Amelia Dunlop 17:22
So that’s my predicting the future. But the kind of the video aspect as well as the metaverse will be just other modes and other channels, but they won’t entirely replace the need to get together in person on occasion.

Sue Bethanis 17:35
Right? So we can talk about the kids because you have a 15 year old and 13 and I have a15. So we’re in the same boat as far as like, what’s happening with them. But I want to talk about this idea of not bumping into each other. So we’ve written and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the virtual water cooler. And the idea of lingering and like being intentional about like picking up the phone, or even slacking somebody right after a big meeting. So you’re trying to walk your person to the next meeting, even though you can’t, right, this idea of lingering. I’d like you to comment on that in terms of in terms of how we, as a way to stay connected, and what are some other ways we can be intentional, and how do we get people to be intentional?

Amelia Dunlop 18:26
Yeah, well, first of all, I love the idea of lingering, right. And it’s a great way to put it because does it imply a certain kind of human aspect of, the meeting is over, right? Like the content or the show or whatever it was has happened. So first of all, just I love the idea of lingering and what does it mean to kind of create more lingering in our lives. So that’s a good thing to reflect on. I’m trying to think. I don’t know, I feel like lingering is the hardest thing to do digitally, right? Because your eyes hurt. Like your voice hurts, speaking at a computer all day, like you don’t actually want to linger. So I don’t know if there’s a way that kind of, as you pointed out, sometimes you’d like to keep the chat going and you’d just drop two words in the chat for how you’re feeling right now. Right? Like, it’s better than nothing. Right? But it’s not the exact same, you know, as grabbing a coffee and walk into the next meeting together. Right?

Sue Bethanis 19:30
Yeah, or I think that people need to start thinking about the phone more. Like literally a hey, let me catch on the phone, can you call me right before we are going to the next meeting? I mean, I’m doing that a lot. Like I’m in the car, I’m always on the phone and just catching up with people. I have one client who said hey, in anticipating this idea of phone can we do our calls while I walk in my backyard, and she’s got a forest. And yeah, walking meetings and on the phone, of course, you know, so she asked for it. I’m like, of course we can. And so that’s a little bit different. I’m just wondering about whether people would do the pick up the phone after the Zoom meeting? I don’t think they do, because they’re on to the next meeting. So you have to have the, you know, 10 to 10:50 kind of meeting so you do have a little bit of time between.

Amelia Dunlop 20:31
Well, there’s that I mean I wonder if others have this experience of at some point, there’s the side chat overload, right. So like, let’s say, you know, you and I are in this very important meeting, there might be Skype going, there might be the Zoom chat going, there might be texts going, there’s still emails going. And at some point, as humans, it’s literally too much to process. Yeah, we’ve gotten to like peak efficiency or maximum efficiency, and we can’t sustain it. So I feel like both in this conversation about digital, but also in the conversation about showing up authentically and with love, we need to also talk about a conversation about boundaries. So I feel like it’s really important to, you know, to acknowledge that love in the workplace doesn’t mean you give things that you can’t afford to give, right. And it also means creating kind of clarity around

Sue Bethanis 21:20
Reciprocity too.

Amelia Dunlop 21:23
Yeah and also just boundaries around, I find, you know, with the working from home and the digital, being really clear about when you will or won’t take meetings, and actually following through with it, right. People might be surprised like, Well, no, no, actually not available. This is the time I spend with my children, or I’m not available, this is when I’m working out. And I think we have to honor each other’s boundaries. But also be clear about what they are.

Sue Bethanis 21:48
Yeah well I think part of the issue is that, one of the main reasons why this has been so difficult for people to transition, and they’re so burned out from Zoom is because there weren’t boundaries in the first place. So now, there were no boundaries at first, so now we’re trying to have boundaries around. I had six zoom meetings yesterday. And it was like, Oh, I could tell how burnt out I was from it. And that’s just six, which is by far the most I would do per day. I’m going on vacation days so I’m like, trying to get everything in, right. And like most people we work with have 8-10 hours of zoom.

Amelia Dunlop 22:25
Yeah, 10 hours of zoom about 16 different calls a day.

Sue Bethanis 22:29
Yeah, being able to process that is just is mind blowing. So yeah, there is boundaries. I was interviewing someone the other day, she’s sitting down getting texts, and I’m getting things from the boss at, you know, 10 o’clock at night. And you know, they shouldn’t feel obligated to answer it, but they do. So I mean, I don’t think we could do what Portugal does. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to do that. You know, they just instituted like, you can’t hear from your work after like eight o’clock or something. Yeah. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty interesting. Let me stop a second. We’re about halfway. And we have a couple people on the call, who might want to ask a few questions, or just be involved in the conversation. Okay, so the people that are on the call, anybody want to jump in here?

Guest 1 23:14
Hi Sue, Amelia, thanks so much for all this great information. And you know, kind of love or I think sometimes people talk about heart. Right, kind of revealing their heart or even noticing that themselves have a heart? Are there some cultures that make that easier or harder? Some company or organizational culture that makes it harder or easier?

Amelia Dunlop 23:40
Oh, wow. I mean, I feel like that would be like a good research question for another book about comparing the two. But I would definitely affirm, Michael, the point around equal parts head and heart. And I felt like that was something for me, that was a really big learning that I kind of shared in the book that it’s almost like if you’re just engaging people’s heads, they’re running at half speed. But only when we kind of engage people’s hearts, with whatever it is that they might be passionate about, do we have that full potential to flourish. So I definitely believe that, I guess I’m trying to think about are there characteristics that lead to greater flourishing or greater love, greater ability to kind of show up at the heart? My hunch is that this is the kind of thing that does start at the top with the kind of the leaders that are setting the tone. And that’s why I do believe a lot in humanizing leadership, and kind of leading with vulnerability, because I think if you set that tone, then you’re much more likely to get it back then, you know, leaders who make it seem like they’re perfect, and everything that everything around them is perfect. It’s much harder to measure up to that right. So then we feel like we can’t show up with our authentic selves. So I think, particularly for folks who might be listening who are in those leadership positions, there’s a lot of power in leading with vulnerability and humanizing ourselves as leaders.

Guest 1 25:01
Yeah, if I can just follow up to your talk about worth really struck me, there’s a woman that I work with that’s in a very tough culture I would say, a company I hadn’t heard of before, but turns out is a global zillion dollar real estate type of company. And I don’t want to overgeneralize, obviously, but I think real estate is kind of tough.

Amelia Dunlop 25:22
In terms of specific cultures, I mean, I imagine Financial Services is particularly or yeah.

Guest 1 25:27
And so she feels unworthy some days, and I just really wanted to appreciate you highlighting, kind of saying to me, or to other coaches or consultants, yes, worthiness, let’s really be okay about talking about that and focusing on that. I think sometimes people get a message in some cultures; we pay you a lot of money. That’s enough. Now, back to work.

Sue Bethanis 25:54
A lot of people like, suck it up, because they’ve been getting paid so much.

Amelia Dunlop 25:58
Yeah, I mean, one thing that you kind of put your finger on too, is the role and value that a coach or a mentor could have in helping people to feel worthy, but also to cultivate their own sense of worthiness, right, particularly when you’re in an environment that is really not supportive, because we’ve all been there, right? And we can talk about it from also from the perspective of different intersecting identities, if you are in an environment where you are black, brown, gay, you know, fill in the blank, and you feel like that is not supported.

Guest 1 26:31
She’s an Asian American female, born outside the states with an accent.

Amelia Dunlop 26:38
Right. Right. And I think just making it more discussable, that if you’re not sort of measuring up to what is considered to be the kind of normal and the kind of corporate environment that there’s always going to be those questions of, am I worthy? Do I belong here? One of the things also in the research that we found was really interesting about the extent to which people feel like they’re spoken over in meetings, and how the interesting thing there was for men and women, it was actually about the same, the more junior they were, you know, 18 to 24. It was about the same, like, okay, that’s interesting. It’s not just a female thing, right? It’s not men and women would have it equally. But what was interesting is that the likelihood to be spoken over for men dropped around age 35. But for women, it doesn’t drop until age 55.

Sue Bethanis 27:26
That’s interesting. That’s really interesting data.

Amelia Dunlop 27:29
And it goes back to you want to be heard. Yeah. To what extent do you feel like, in particular with an accent, do you feel like your voice is heard or not?

Guest 1 27:36
Thank you so much.

Guest 2 27:38
Boy, um, I’ve got so many thoughts about all of this, gettin older and reflecting on life. And here’s just some thoughts whether you agree with that or not, you know, again, I’m a corporate psychologist, I believe, over the years working with a lot of people that most people don’t have high self-worth. You know, they don’t, and I think a lot of that is because of what we’re talking about in this because you don’t have time to kind of catch your breath and just be with yourself, you know. So what I talked in my own life, okay, I feel sometimes I’m kind of the gentle provocateur. I’m not in people’s faces, but I come up with, some, maybe some different take on things. And so a lot of my clients, I’m not seeing that many people right now. But I’m really talking mostly about love. And I bring it into almost every conversation, you know, hopefully, appropriately, and so many people are receptive to it. And I have had CEOs, because our relationship and the trust, tell me that they love me. And I don’t frame it so much is like, you know, it’s almost like it’s got to be caring, or it’s got to be empathy. I did a workshop in the wine country one time, and someone said, Oh, the L word. You know, like, somehow it was the F word.

Amelia Dunlop 28:53
It feels like it can be very loaded. I get that.

Guest 2 28:58
Yeah. And a couple other real brief thoughts, too, is years ago, again, I was doing these stress workshops all over the world. And I got invited to Sorbonne, Paris to do this workshop on how to overcome insomnia, the workshop guaranteed to put you to sleep because I was working with so many clients, you know, who still had a huge problem sleeping. After the workshop, I went to this restaurant, I think it was before I was married. And I just observed and I thought this is really amazing. People are sitting and savoring their meal. Nobody’s running off to the next the next gig, you know, the waiters not coming up and we need the seat. It was a time of what’s called the French paradox was but the wine is curative for people. So I won’t go into all of this. But what I’ve come up with, you know, is basically that other cultures and certainly when I was in France that time is people work to live and we live to work here. I mean, that is what this whole conversation seems to.

Amelia Dunlop 29:56
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s there. It is absolutely true that we do. Probably the US labor statistics, we work more than any other culture and more than any other time in history. What is that doing?

Guest 2 30:07
On the happiness scale we are way on the bottom. You know, right?

Amelia Dunlop 30:09
Yeah. So that’s why I feel like taking the time to, you know, cultivate self-love, cultivate self-worth, understand the difference between self-love and self-care. Even like, there’s the whole industry around self-care, you can get yourself a haircut, take a bubble bath, and still not feel self-love, right? Like self-care is not the same thing as self-love.

Guest 1 30:33
Can I ask about what’s the main way that they’re different? I’m sorry, what’s the one main way that self-love and self-care are different?

Amelia Dunlop 30:41
So self-care the way I think about it, this is my perspective and I share it in the book, the way I think about self-care is these are the acts you do to look after sort of the necessities, right, whether it’s grooming, haircut, exercise, nutrition, these are sort of things that you can do, but that actually cultivating self-love is consciously speaking to yourself with words of kindness. And, and so it’s more than just the kind of those acts of self-care. It’s that conscious, you’re loving yourself like you would a friend.

Sue Bethanis 31:16
I want to pick up on that. When I was reading, talking about self-care, I was including emotional and, and physical. I think that when you’re talking about your emotional self-care, you have to be talking to yourself. Just like there’s that’s part of it. Right? I like the distinction that there’s a there is a difference. I like it. Do you have anything else you want to share?

Guest 2 31:38
Yeah, I was gonna say the most important conversation, everybody talks about all these conversations with other people. But I really believe that the most important conversation, which is exactly what Amelia said, is the loving, kind, compassionate conversation that you have with yourself each day. And most people don’t do this. So how could you have self-worth if you think you’re a schlep? Everybody’s better, comparing yourself to everybody else? Yeah, I wake up each day, and just a mirror. “It’s a great day, I love you,” you know, I don’t go to bed going, “Oh, my God, you know, your life sucks or something?” So I think a lot of it has to do with your self-talk. And what I talk about, you talk about lingering, in my own being with clients, or whoever I talk about a sacred pause, and I talk about, it’s not this thing: I don’t have time, I don’t have time. Well, I have a one-minute meditation, you can take a breath. Don’t get into these arguments, about I don’t have time I’m running off to the next meeting. You can close your eyes for a second. And you can take a breath. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 32:38
Very cool. Thank you. I’m, it’s great to see you. And thank you for your contributions and questions. So alright, so I want to pick up on this, Amelia about the self-love and self-talk. So I mean, we’ve been talking this whole time, gosh it’s been 40 minutes, about these concepts, and we’re pretty much in the same in the same boat on it. I want us to be more specific, even tactical around, alright, so somebody should be more kind to themselves. A lot of people get caught up in being an imposter. The imposter syndrome is alive and well, especially now. Let’s counter that and talk about how do we be kind to ourselves? What do we say to ourselves and not feel weird about it? How do we show that compassion, and sometimes it’s a reframe of the negative, we’re talking about the negative self-talk. And sometimes it’s a what I tell my clients is neutralizing the con, it’s neutralizing things. So that it’s like whatever is right now. And it’s okay, that that’s not really positive or negative. It’s more like just that’s what’s going on right now. That’s a very Buddhist way of doing it. So I do accept. Yeah, it’s acceptance. So I’d like to hear from you on some ideas around that.

Amelia Dunlop 33:50
I would say a couple of things. And I want to come back to this idea of the imposter syndrome. So let’s come back to that. But so I think, in terms of very practically, from a self-love and self-talk perspective, this the idea of the inner critic, and we all, I think, talk to ourselves in a way that’s way more critical than we would ever to a colleague, somebody we didn’t even really like, when you add like a child and somebody or someone who love and you just think like my inner critic still used to call me foolish girl. And I don’t think I would ever say that to another woman at work or any other any person. But like, why is it acceptable for my self-talk to be that negative? So I feel like that one of the first things we can do is really tackle that, like just listen to how you’re talking to yourself what tone you use, write it down even. Yeah, is this how your inner voice sound like? And the other thing I find is really funny is if you think about it, the words that we should tell ourselves, we think that they’re true, just because we recognize our own voice, right? It’s like “Oh, like that must be true because I thought it” and so one of the things I often try to do is challenge myself almost deliberately and you always have to feel this kind of grinding the gears What if the exact opposite is also possibly true? And so I find that one of the things I try to do is I know exactly what insecurity sounds like and feels like inside my head. But what might the opposite start to sound like? What would I sound like? What would I say? What would I think? What would I do if I was acting out of security, not insecurity? And it’s been kind of a fascinating little like, personal like science experiment, Sue, because when I act out of security, even if I don’t necessarily feel it in that moment, it’s like, oh, well, security would sound like this, the results I get back are way better than if I acted out of insecurity.

Sue Bethanis 35:34
What are some actual self-talks of security that you that you use?

Amelia Dunlop 35:37
So insecurity is this person hasn’t texted me back in two days. They must not like me. Security is “hey, I haven’t heard back from you, I guess you don’t have time to connect right now.” Right? And you have empathy for the fact that like, you don’t know, like, that person could have lost their phone, they could be, you know, suddenly, caught up in a huge kind of work commitment. So at least for me, the first reaction is like, they’re not responding, right? Or, you know my email got lost like that. And so I think security has to do with the…you know what, maybe it’s okay to extend the grace, that your email, may have gotten lost, or the text may not have gotten responded to, and to almost just to kind of flip it to invert it, as opposed to, they’re not responding to me, or taking it really personally.

Sue Bethanis 36:34
I was just going through all my books last week, and there’s an affirmation book, so this self-love and self-talk that’s positive is a lot about affirmation. Do you have a particular practice that you do, or you teach others? I mean, so this is part of affirmations, part meditation. I mean, I don’t really care what we call it. Yeah, just sit in the actual content of like, what is it that we’re saying to each other?

Amelia Dunlop 37:05
Yeah, I mean, the thing that I do, and I share in my book is just it’s you mentioned a Buddhist, it’s the loving kindness prayer. And it’s just the meditation. May you be happy, may you be at peace, may your heart be full of love. So if there’s any tweaks or variations on it, but the idea of some practice around loving kindness is important.

Sue Bethanis 37:33
You say your version? And I’ll say mine, it’s almost similar.

Amelia Dunlop 37:38
So it’s May you be happy, May you be safe, may you be at peace, and may your heart be full of love.

Sue Bethanis 37:44
Nice. Mine is May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe. May you live with ease, and may you be free. And the free one is, the last one is, you know, the hardest, especially right now. With our pandemic that’s creating lots of boundaries. But there’s some formula, there’s no right answer here. It’s like, it’s, it’s the idea of May I be happy. May I be safe. And then and then I say it for others. Yeah, I’ll say May Allison be happy. May Allison be safe. And then I say it with the people that I’m having a hard time with. Right? It’s not just the people that are my, you know, my go to’s.

Amelia Dunlop 38:28
No, and I think you’re right. I mean, that’s absolutely important, because it’s easy to love the people who are easy to love. And it takes a cultivated practice to love people. And also to acknowledge that, even if you’re in a sort of a challenging situation, you know, with someone at work, they are, you know, son to some father, father to some son, and it just humanizes people to be like, Okay, well, they might not deliberately be trying to be annoying to you personally. So that humanizes, and I love your reminder that we can extend loving kindness to them as well.

Sue Bethanis 39:05
Right? You said you wanted to come back to the imposter syndrome. So what did you want to say about that?

Amelia Dunlop 39:09
Oh, what I want to say about that is I sometimes I get asked about that and the relationship to kind of worth and I do not believe in the imposter syndrome. And there’s a really wonderful article that was written in Harvard Business Review, and I should, at this point, know the name of the of the author’s, but I think they just really brilliant job of pointing out that first of all it’s not a syndrome, it’s not medical. So like, let’s stop calling it that. Second of all, it was a completely manufactured mostly or to make for women. And, and just my, my one, my objective would be to just like, eradicate that from the dialogue and say, instead of talking about, “oh, Sue, I think you’re suffering from the imposter syndrome.” Like, why don’t we flip that and say, “Hey, what would it look like for you to feel more worthy and more loved? What can you do for you to develop that practice? Who were the allies around you to help cultivate to kind of help mirror back your worth, and feel like you’re in an environment that was, you know, let you show up authentically” like it’s just a different conversation then say you suffer from the imposter syndrome.

Sue Bethanis 40:11
Right? Right. I think that’s great. I think that I just love this idea of how we can find more love, more worth and more meaning in the workplace. Because it’s not like the workplace is over here. And then life’s over here. I mean, everything’s integrated, especially now. So I really, really appreciate you being here. There’s a lot of great overarching concepts. And also, certainly specifics about loving kindness, I think are really important. So appreciate you a lot for being here and for taking the time. Thank you. Yeah. And you can get a hold of Amelia with her website, ameliadunlop.com. Her book is: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work. You can also find her LinkedIn and you can also find her at Deloitte. Thank you again.

Amelia Dunlop 41:00
Thank you so much.

MORE

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis interviews Dr. Stephanie Pinder-Amaker and Dr. Lauren Wadsworth, authors of Did That Just Happen?! Beyond “Diversity”—Creating Sustainable and Inclusive Organizations. Stephanie is the founding director of the McLean Hospital’s College Mental Health Program and the McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer. Lauren serves as the Senior Advisor on the Anti-Racist Justice and Health Equity Team at McLean Hospital as well. Together they wrote this book as a resource to empower individuals and organizations to learn new tangible skills in how to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment in the workspace for marginalized individuals.

Listen to the full episode here:

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Whether companies are heading back into the office or remaining in a remote or hybrid environment, questions arise about inclusivity.  In either case, how do we hold a safe space for marginalized individuals?

Remote and hybrid models offer challenges and opportunities for inclusive behaviors. For some, there is a lack of willingness to return to in-person, especially from marginalized groups, because of the fear of experiencing identity-related aggressions that tend to occur in office settings. As remote and hybrid models can lack connectedness, it raises concerns about whether it can create more divide or provide a safer space for people to come forward. Sue discusses this double-edged sword with Stephanie and Lauren who provide insights into how we can promote inclusivity whether in-person or remote.

Stephanie and Lauren offer evidence-based practices of behavior change to promote inclusivity and foster diversity, including how to remedy mistakes in a manner that promotes introspection and paves a way for better connections. Stephanie and Lauren provide a few suggestions, one including a four-step process for how to respond after a mistake around inclusivity: retract, reflect, retrain, and re-approach (8:02). These are to be used primarily when someone shares their feelings of bias, discrimination, or marginalization. These steps provide a new framework for how to remedy situations with a sincere apology, unlearn biases, work towards increasing inclusivity, and limit identity-related aggressions moving forward. A few more of their recommendations for leaders and organizations include:

• Having a proactive approach to inclusivity rather than a reactive approach. Implementing training and models before issues ever occur (17:17).
• Encouraging leaders and managers to check in more often. Check-ins not only regarding how the employee is doing but also asking how the organization is doing and what needs to be improved upon (28:39).
• Learn how to listen and respond when receiving negative feedback and allow a safe space for that feedback to be given (12:53).
• Prioritize inclusion, diversity, and equity work and invest in trainings and programs for every level of your organization (34:02).

Responsibility needs to be shifted back to the organization and its leaders to pave the way for diversity and inclusivity. There are many opportunities for leadership to create a safer workplace through implementing training, providing new behavior change frameworks, allowing a safe space for feedback to be provided, and making a commitment for sustainable inclusivity. Stephanie mentions a shared responsibility model (34:02), which emphasizes that it is every member of the organization’s responsibility to think about how to improve inclusivity. Success is when everyone within the organization is wondering how they can make their department or team feel more welcomed and included within every interaction, and this success, in turn, brings about a more diverse and thriving workforce.

Stephanie and Lauren are optimistic that more companies are dedicated to fostering inclusivity and diversity and hopeful that they will utilize some of the behavior change models and recommendations they’ve provided. The goal is not to be perfect at doing this work, but to provide useful tools and support so that everyone within an organization can feel capable of committing to fostering inclusivity.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“I think one of the hardest things isn’t getting the feedback, which is very hard, but I think it’s really approaching and recommitting to the work when you’re feeling shame and embarrassment and guilt and committing to experiencing that again.” – Lauren Wadsworth (11:02)

“How do you get the organization and leaders and colleagues and members of the workforce to hear when people come forward to say that they’re hurt?  There’s a way that you can hear those kinds of disclosures that promote safety and makes a person feel like: I was heard, I was seen, that was really hard to say, but I feel validated. So I think that a lot of the responsibility, the onus is really on the organization to learn a new set of skills to learn how to hear when people come forward to share their experiences of bias, marginalization, any of the isms, and so forth.” – Stephanie Pinder-Amaker (12:53)

“Failure to respond when a person steps forward to share their experience of a bias and marginalization shuts down that dialogue. And when that happens, every single time that happens, you’ve basically lost an opportunity to build a more inclusive organization, because you’re not getting the feedback, you don’t have a chance to operate on it.” – Stephanie Pinder-Amaker (12:53)

RESOURCES

Dr. Stephanie Pinder-Amaker:

Website | LinkedIn

Dr. Lauren Wadsworth:

Website | LinkedIn

Book: Did That Just Happen?! Beyond “Diversity” ―Creating Sustainable and Inclusive Organizations

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis  0:00

Welcome everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast. We’re providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Dr. Stephanie Pinder-Amaker and Dr. Lauren Wadsworth. They’re the co-authors of the new book: Did That Just Happen?! Beyond “Diversity” – Creating Sustainable and Inclusive Organizations. For over 25 years, Stephanie has dedicated her work towards college student mental health. She’s the founding director of the McLean Hospital’s college mental health program, a professor of Harvard Medical School, and the McLean Hospital Harvard Medical School’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you. And Lauren serves as the Senior Advisor on the anti-racist justice and Health Equity Team at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is the founder of the Genesee Valley Institute of Psychology Clinic providing treatment for OCD, trauma, DBT, and a newly launched radical trauma and healing center. Thank you for coming. And I really appreciate having you both join us today. So, as I typically do in every one of these, as I’ve done for about 16 years now, is I just read your bio. They are both very interesting, but I am more interested in, and I know that people on the call are as well, to know a little bit about your journey, your personal journey. So, throw that bio out and tell us a story about how you got here and how you decided to write the book.

 

Lauren Wadsworth  1:36

I could start and then Stephanie, you can jump in with anything I miss. So, I had the great privilege of being mentored by Stephanie, early in my training at McLean Hospital for a clinical internship and placement. We had heard about each other long before we actually met, because both of us had been doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work at McLean Hospital, in separate ways, in small ways, and individual ways. And that is hard work, especially before the last two years where people really started talking about it a lot more. So as people that hold marginalized identities, in a workplace setting, we often were ascribed to the label of diversity expert just by having a marginalized identity. And that kind of formed into, over time, expertise which I think we both felt a bit conflicted about. And when we really started building our relationship, we would talk to each other a lot about the things that were hard about that work or about that role and being ascribed to that role. And one day, we were venting to each other, and after years of venting we finally said, you know, why don’t we put all this energy into something that we can control, and we can say everything we want to say in a setting where people won’t respond with negative feedback, at least immediately for defensiveness. And so, the idea of the book came up there, and we just poured everything that we were having a hard time saying out loud in our real-life settings. Our hope was that we could create a vessel of knowledge that people could use to anonymously give to their bosses as a way to say things for them, or create a safer way for them to communicate some of these points. And we just both found it really cathartic and learned a lot in the process. Interestingly, we started writing it before all the George Floyd and Breanna Taylor stuff happened, so all of that was unfolding, as we were writing the book – that was a journey in and of itself.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  3:42

I would just add, and that was a nice overview, Lauren, we were also really motivated in the book to say the things that are often, as Lauren said, really hard but that can also be dangerous to actually say in the workplace. And because we were being tapped over and over and sort of ascribed the role of, you know – X diversity expert. We also found ourselves beginning to repeat things a lot, which was another motivating factor. Like, maybe if we can get this in writing, we could share the information more broadly, and so that was another motivating factor as well. And then the other thing is that we were really dead set on the idea of being able to present accessible, practical, tangible skills that people could latch on to and quickly understand, grab ahold of and implement. So, a lot of that has to do with our training as psychologists as well because we’ve spent a career believing in the power of behavioral change, and we thought about opportunities to apply some of what we know from the field of psychology, applying some of our evidence-based practice, to this realm as well.

 

Sue Bethanis  5:00

Right. Okay, that sounds great. Thank you. It’s always nice to hear stories of how you came together, which I really appreciate. And it’s nice to have both of you on the call.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  5:09

Thank you. We have lots of stories.

 

Sue Bethanis  5:11

Yeah, I can’t wait to hear them. I do want to frame the call by saying that we definitely want to get into the book and get into some of these practical ways of what to do about being more inclusive in the workplace, or just more inclusive in general. But also we want to talk about specifically what we’re all experiencing, and noticing is – we’re obviously in a pandemic, still – we are noticing a lot of the great attrition or great resignation that’s happening, and as McKinsey put it – do you want to work on attrition, or do you want to work on attraction. And so, I like that opposites, attrition or attraction, better than a Great Resignation. So, I want to talk about that too, for sure. But let’s start with just this idea that you guys are obviously working on creating and sustaining identity and forming workplace cultures, how optimistic are you in terms of whether this can happen?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  6:02

That’s a good question. How optimistic are we? I would say that really goes back directly to the question that you just asked, because as psychologists, we’re really optimistic about applying sort of evidence-based practices to behavioral change. So that was a lot of jargon right there. I’ll say it a different way, think about the quote Dr. Ibram Kendi says about racism and building an anti-racist environment, he describes racism this way saying that “it’s not about who you are, it’s about what you do.” And that really resonates with us because we think that it sort of frees people up to move away, in this realm of diversity, equity, and inclusion, to move away from blame, shame, and guilt, and to move toward focusing on behavioral change. Like, there are actually things that you can do to build a more inclusive environment, and we just think that that’s so empowering. So, we want people to feel empowered with the acquisition of the skills. I think we feel really optimistic about that. Because fundamentally, we believe that people are really highly motivated to do better, they want to do better in this realm. They’re just lacking the skill and the knowledge and the expertise.

 

Sue Bethanis  7:24

Yeah, I see the same thing. Exactly. To the point exactly where I say, people want to collaborate. I don’t know anyone that says they don’t want to collaborate, no one’s ever said ‘I don’t want to collaborate.’ So it’s very similar. Of course, collaboration is an aspect of inclusion, for sure, and so it’s just a matter of what are the skills? I know that you have a four-step process that you have talked about in the book – can you talk a little bit about that? That’s a four-step process to be more inclusive, and we’re going to say inclusive, and that means more than just inclusivity, but for the sake of brevity here, if you could talk a little bit about the four step process, that’d be great.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  8:02

Sure, do you want me to take this Lauren? I think the four-step process that you’re referring to is specifically when we focus on, first of all, the idea that no one’s perfect at this work, at building a more inclusive organization, right, that we’re going to mess up. And we sort of offer that upfront just to own that and recognize that there are going to be mistakes, that no one is perfect at doing this work. Being locked into that idea is often really paralyzing for people. So, we want people to sort of let that go and just admit on the front end, that you’re not going to be perfect, but we want to encourage people to be instead or to feel is that they are sort of perfectly committed to the work. And so, the four-step process that I think you’re referring to is specifically about what to do when you’ve messed up, because we’re all going to mess up, right, it happens. The four steps are retract, reflect, retrain, and re-approach. And of course, there are a lot of specifics and details that go into that, but at the center of it and one of the most important steps that we believe strongly across the board that we’re really not good at doing and that is to just know how to make a basic apology. What we refer to as an empowering apology, we really are lousy at that part, we often bypass that part and move to fix it mode, that sort of the re-approach. But we think that knowing how to make a heartfelt apology is really important. Another sort of fundamental principle of this work is that when we’re messing up and engaging, sort of reorienting to that four-step process, we invite people to think or sort of reframe how you think about critical feedback or negative feedback. We want people to recognize that when someone steps forward in a really courageous way to say ‘that really hurt’ or ‘what you did really felt marginalizing’ or you know, ‘I don’t care to be misgendered repeatedly in the workplace’ to sort of reframe and think about that feedback as a gift in this realm. So, it’s a real paradigm shift, you know, and that if people are coming forward within your organization to share that feedback, that is a real risk that they are taking. And so, we want to reward that risk by recognizing that if people are stepping forward, it could be a sign that you’re actually improving in the work because people are feeling that they can begin to trust enough to value that it’s worthwhile to take this risk, to take this chance to provide that feedback. So those are all some of the principles embedded in the four-step process.

 

Sue Bethanis  10:45

It sounds like there were four R’s, repeat them again.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  10:50

Retract, reflect, retrain, and re-approach.

 

Sue Bethanis  10:54

Okay, got that everybody? You got to remember that – write that down to retract, reflect, retrain, and re-approach.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  10:59

I love it. Yeah, Did I leave anything out Lauren?

 

Lauren Wadsworth  11:02

I would just add that the re-approach thing is key. So, I think it comes back to that point that Stephanie made that as we embark on this work, as we continue this work, we expect to keep making mistakes. And so I think one of the hardest things isn’t getting the feedback, which is very hard, but I think it’s really approaching and recommitting to the work when you’re feeling shame and embarrassment and guilt and committing to experiencing that again. Which I think is really hard, especially for white people to do when we’re used to getting awards and acknowledgement when we work hard at something or get better at something. This work often comes with getting more negative feedback, especially at the beginning, as you’re improving in it because people are trusting you more. So kind of flipping your expectations and doing what you need to do internally or with other white folks, or folks that hold privileged identities along with you, to work on that re-approach process. Because if that’s not there, the train stops.

 

Sue Bethanis  11:59

So let’s flip it a second and talk about the idea of being able to say you’re hurt. Whoever you are, that’s a big deal. So in other words, for people to even get to this point where they’ve messed up, some people many times don’t even know they’ve messed up, I would say most of the time they don’t. Right. How do we help people be able to say to somebody, ‘Hey, that that was a little off’ or ‘that didn’t sit well with me’ or something like that?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  12:32

It’s such a good question.

 

Sue Bethanis  12:33

I mean, I’m pretty open and pretty, you know, direct. So I think that for me, when I get hurt I try to own it and say like, ‘Hey, that was hard.’ It’s hard to do that as an eight on the Enneagram. But I think for others it’s even harder. So tell us a little bit about that.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  12:53

I would shift the focus slightly to think, instead of thinking about how do we get people to come forward to say that they’re hurt or to speak up in that way in the workplace, to really shift the focus on the organization. How do you get the organization and leaders and colleagues and members of the workforce to hear when people come forward to say that they’re hurt? There’s a way that you can hear that those kinds of disclosures that promote safety and makes a person feel like: I was heard, I was seen, that was really hard to say, but I feel validated. So, I think, and we talk about this a lot, that a lot of the responsibility, the onus is really on the organization to learn a new set of skills to learn how to hear when people come forward to share their experiences of bias, marginalization, any of the isms, and so forth. Because that is a real skill set. And without that skill set, failure to respond when a person steps forward to share their experience of a bias and marginalization shuts down that dialogue. And when that happens, every single time that happens, you’ve basically lost an opportunity to build a more inclusive organization, because you’re not getting the feedback, you don’t have a chance to operate on it.

 

Sue Bethanis  14:18

Yeah, I like that shift a lot. I mean, I think that is psychological safety, how we build psychological safety in general, I actually think that it takes an extra step. There’s a lot of things that are going on right now because of COVID. And that people are not feeling heard about or feeling not able to come forth about because of their circumstances at home. There’s a lot of things right. And so what we’re trying to do in general is create psychological safety for people to be able to talk about some of these things. Someone’s had COVID, someone they’re taking care of that no one knows about, you know, they don’t know about people’s home life. So people getting people to encourage them to talk about their home life and how that’s affecting their work. But I guess what I would like to know is how do we go that extra step needed for people of color, for women, for marginalized people? So I’m talking about, specifically now with COVID, it’s already difficult so I think that it’s more difficult for people of color. Like I have a four part – but I’m not gonna do that.

 

Lauren Wadsworth  15:20

One thing that I think goes along with that context that you provided with this question is that a lot of folks, we’re seeing stats showing that a lot of people of color, especially women of color, are preferring to not be in the workplace. Because the workplace came about with more water cooler microaggressions, or identity-related aggressions, as we call them, and that was an added level of stress that was removed when remote work began. So we’re seeing extremely high numbers of women of color, considering leaving organizations at this moment, this juncture, where they’re being asked to come back into the building. So I think that’s in my mind, as you’re asking the question, there’s been a benefit to having more space away from harmful colleagues. And there’s more room to react, there’s the ability to turn off a camera to shed a tear,  to process only to walk away to get a cup of water that we don’t have when we’re in person. So I think that there have been strengths there. And I think the question that we’re asking now is, how are we going to get our shit together for people to be safer to come back into the office? Right? And then there is work that can be done remotely, right. But there’s also yeah, there’s danger. And there’s a big decision to be made at this juncture.

 

Sue Bethanis  16:39

There’s an article in Harvard Business Review today about zoom fatigue, and the Zoom fatigue is more about being on camera than it is about how many zoom meetings we have. And then they also pointed out that people of color, women especially, are more prone to this. And so it goes totally along with what you’re saying. So it’s like we’re already perpetuating the problem. So how do we get off that road? How do we make this better? Like we messed up, there was no psychological safety in the workplace for a lot of people, but especially people of color. So as we’re going back, and not everybody is going back, but as we’re going back in, we’re in hybrid situations. Now, how do we take the steps to make it better?

 

Lauren Wadsworth  17:17

Yeah, I can give some tangible examples of what we’re doing at my Clinic in Rochester. So we have a team that’s partially remote and partially in person right now and that’s been important to us because we’ve actually been able to increase the diversity of our team by allowing for that model. Which I think maybe speaks to, or is a reaction to, or factor of that point we were just making, and so there are a number of things that we’re doing to try to not create marginalization within the hybrid model. Yeah. So examples of that include, everyone that’s at the table brings a laptop, so everyone’s on the screen and the same size, there’s not a difference there. Being really thoughtful about audio and making sure there’s a microphone that picks up everyone so that those on the screen aren’t not hearing half of the conversation and then set up to not be contributing as much. We also have gone through training together to become more empowering listeners and more justice-oriented in our response to feedback. So after that training, we each put posters up in the conference room and shared them in the Zoom link so that everyone has access to these posters that say things like: feedback is a gift, and then has a whole breakdown of seven steps for when you get feedback. So that when someone says, ‘Hey, that thing you just said – you said the parent is cow-towing to that person, can we not say that?’ Or ‘Is there another phrase we could use instead of that?’ The person that gets the feedback picks up that seven step model and it’s normalized to do that, take a deep breath, say thank you, right. And it walks us through it in a way that acknowledges the awkwardness, acknowledges that these are new skills, but normalizes pausing to use a framework in that moment, as opposed to pretending, oh, we’re going to be fine. We’ve got this, we’re going to be masters of this right when we go back in because we had this training, right. I think the acknowledgment that we are going to be imperfect at it, and we do need support is key. So workplaces saying, Okay, we’re about to go back in person, let’s invest in some training right now. And let’s acknowledge that these microaggressions are going to start happening at a higher level. So let’s do something about it, as opposed to having a reactive approach to diversity training.

 

Sue Bethanis  19:32

Stephanie, I definitely want to hear from you on this. Before we go on though. I heard you use the word microaggressions a couple of times, Lauren, and I mean, I know what microaggressions are, but I think it’s important that we say what the microaggressions are to the people in the audience and people who are going to be listening in perpetude. So because you mentioned the idea of the water cooler and how there is microaggressions that people now can avoid, which is good, we get to avoid those, but also we’re losing connection too in other ways. So if in fact we are around the water cooler and not having microaggressions what does that look like?

 

Lauren Wadsworth  20:02

Well, that would just look like human connection with an acknowledgment that there are biases built into us, and we need to filter those. So I think what’s important about, so microaggressions are usually unintentional slights that come out are usually phrases that have been said over and over and over, so something like, ‘You’re really beautiful for a black girl,’ or ‘Wow, that was so articulate what you just said.’ These are very common statements. Noticing, so if we practice this awareness and critical self-reflection, we have a culturally humble approach to this work, we acknowledge that: for me, as a white person, I’m going to have those kinds of phrases come up to my mind, and I need to notice them and be become increasingly aware of what they might be, and then filter them out. And not just rush into saying this funny thing that comes to mind, because I’m used to taking up space, I need to take more time to pause when I’m talking with people across different identities, to filter out those biases that are inherent in me, they’re trained in me. I was socialized that way, we all were. So that comes to mind. I don’t know, Stephanie, what do you think?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  21:12

Just to add, the term microaggressions, we propose using the term identity-related aggressions. There’s been discussion and discourse in the field of late about sort of maybe taking out the micro part of it, that aspect of the word seems to minimize the impact. And we know that the psychological and physical impact of being on the receiving end of identity-related aggressions time and time, again, is great. It comes at a significant cost, which is why it’s so important that we’re paying attention to some of the emerging data. I think this is just fascinating, what we’re learning, and of course, we’re still learning, about what the impact of that new hybrid or remote models will have on inclusivity. But it’s really important that we’re paying attention to some of the early findings that Lauren just mentioned, suggesting that people who hold rising identities or people of color are really valuing the opportunity to be out from under the recurring experiences of identity-related aggressions, as well as discrimination, and so forth. That this is both so revealing, and yet an opportunity to underscore, I think that those findings underscore most poignantly how it’s important, perhaps more important than it’s ever been before, that we think in a much more intentional way about how to address these things, like identity-related aggressions, to create more inclusive workplaces. I also think that we can learn a lot from the work of the workplace equality leaders. That’s the phrase that Tim’s from the research really focused on women in the workplace specifically, because we know a lot of data about the droves of women from the Deloitte Global Report, surveying 5000 women across 10 countries finding that about 50% of women are less optimistic now about their career paths, and they were pre-pandemic. Now, 21% are contemplating leaving all together, right. And we know that those numbers, as Lauren was saying earlier, are even greater among women of color, and our LGBTQ+ individuals. So I’m thinking about, look at the workplace equality leaders because they know how to do three things they know how to: recruit, engage and retain diverse talent. And they do that in three ways by supporting work-life balance, which I think is more important in the context of the hybrid, and remote models, more important perhaps, than ever before supporting work-life balance. They know how to present growth opportunities so that people feel that their careers are moving as expected. And importantly, I think we’re going to keep coming back to this issue because it’s popping up through the research literature all over the place. Workplace equality leaders know how to listen and respond when an employee comes forward to share an experience of sexism, bias, or marginalization, such that that employee does not fear backlash.

 

Sue Bethanis  24:24

Mm-hmm. Wow, okay. So many directions I can go right now. I’m gonna stop actually, because there’s someone on call that may want to jump in here. Oh, here’s a question: ‘My question is about the ways hybrid workplaces or all remote for that matter, may make it harder or easier to identify and observe what is happening regarding inclusion. Visibility is literally limited when people are not together in the workplace. It is harder, for example, to tell whether one has been included or left out of meetings, conversations and other interactions when they happen, either offline or when one is not on site.’ Yes, great question. There’s a lot of questions in there a lot of concerns, but can you speak to that in terms of, like, its out of sight out of mind. I mean, just that alone is a problem. So let’s speak to that a little bit.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  25:14

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so think about it. But as we were just saying earlier, we’re still learning so much about the impact of hybrid and remote workplace models on inclusivity. Right. So this is just a great time to pay attention to what’s happening and what’s emerging, and we’re gonna find out new things, you know, with every passing month, it’s interesting. I’m really interested in studying how identity-related aggressions play out in a remote space or within a zoom grid, it’s been really fascinating to see how those behaviors can in fact, still be identified and named. And that this other term that keeps emerging in this time where people are talking about the ‘empowered employee’, one experience that we’re documenting is that when people are sort of physically distanced from one another way that they’re feeling, yes, less of a sense of connectedness, on the one hand, and that’s a concern, right? Because anything that threatens a sense of belonging, you know, is not going to be helpful for building an inclusive workplace. Right. So yeah, feeling less of a sense of connectedness, but that less of a sense of connectedness is also making it easier for people who hold rising identities or to have experiences of bias or marginalization, to feel empowered to name those experiences and come forward and share them. So I think they’re going to be so many things like this, where we’re really going to see like a double-edged sword, a real opportunity to learn.

 

Sue Bethanis  26:55

Yeah I mean, there is a double-edged sword. There’s some evidence that being in boxes, we’re all in the same box, you know, so that’s democratization. But I think as a general rule, what we’re experiencing as coaches is that there’s a lack of connectedness and a lack of belonging, and I think that for everybody. And so it seems is, what I’m assuming – and this is an important assumption I want to check out with you guys- I should probably stop calling you ‘guys’, right?

 

Lauren Wadsworth  27:21

We’re working on that one too, it’s hard.

 

Sue Bethanis  27:23

I think that what I’m wondering about is, is the more pronounced, and I’m wondering, but that’s the case is it seems like we’re all striving for trying to be more connected and have more sense of belonging. So what is the answer to that? So we’re encouraging leaders and managers to check in more often, to have, what one of our clients called ‘half and half,’ which I love. Instead of doing one on ones, they do half and half, which means that half the time so for 15 minutes, they’re talking about the person, how they’re doing checking in with them, and the other half they’re doing operations. Every single meeting, this guy does like that. And I think that that’s amazing. That’s fabulous. So what that is speaking to is this, we’re trying to get to humanity, we’re trying to understand and be connected to people because we don’t have the water cooler, we don’t have a lot of things. Forget the water cooler, we don’t even have you know, going out, nothing. We have nothing. So this, I’m wondering how it’s even more pronounced even as a double-edged sword? Because there are some things that are positive about it too. And what are some practices that we can address that are particularly focused on inclusion?

 

Lauren Wadsworth  28:39

Yeah, it’s interesting. I have a couple of thoughts bubbling around right now. But as a leader of an organization, I noticed that I felt very disconnected from folks that I’m not meeting with on a one-on-one basis regularly. So just this week, I started doing 30-minute check-ins with all the people that are on that list, and in framing that, coming up with ‘what are they going to be? What’s the structure of that meeting?’ I tried to make it a different kind of half-and-half, which is half: ‘How are you doing? What are some of your accomplishments? What are some of your struggles?’ And then half: ‘How are we doing? What are the goals you have? But then what supports do you need from us to meet those goals? How are we doing related to inclusion? Are you noticing culturally humble practices in your team? Are you noticing issues?.’ And expressing that as a leader I want to defend the safety of this team to the death, that’s my number one priority and making sure that there’s always time and a container for that conversation. And then ‘What feedback do you have for us?.’ So making sure that we’re empowering the employee by not only checking in how they’re doing but how are we doing? And how could we do better and it’s subtle, but it disrupts the power imbalance, right? And I think that’s inherently tied to identity-related differences and conversations, more we can say, I’m assuming I can do better as a leader. We’re undermining that hierarchy.

 

Sue Bethanis  30:08

We need to do a third-and-third, I guess now, huh?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  30:10

Yeah. It’s so interesting about this, the idea of check-ins. One thing that I’ve noted a lot, there’s been a lot written about, in some cases, early people/ early-career individuals feeling really eager to get back to the workplace because they feel like they’re missing out so much on this opportunity to be connected and to network within the organization and everything. And I’m certainly seeing that in our organization as well. And what I’ve noticed, as we’ve started to do the check-ins, and we’ve done also some other zoom related behaviors to combat burnout in this time, and one of those as people are commonly practicing is to reduce the one-hour meeting to 50, or 45 minutes or so forth. So then you further divide that with the check-in time, it’s like a third, 15 minutes, of check-in time. What I’ve noticed, that I think is so interesting, is that the early career folks sometimes are really locked into that process. And if something happens, say the process begins slightly like an informal check-in before everyone shows up on the meeting, they will call you on the carpet every single time, say, we need to go back over and start over so that everyone has a chance to check-in. Or if there is a real sort of crisis in our work, there are many crises, and so many things pulling us in 100 different directions, they are not willing to forego that check-in time. And I think that says a lot about how important that practice is. I love how you’re doing it in your organization, Lauren. The other thing that I’m noticing from early career folks, another practice that we’re trying to just be more nimble with is, there has been a recurring request to have staff retreats. And in our organization, we’d love retreats, Lauren, and another staff member of ours, we would actually go away to do work together for you know, a weekend period of time. And I personally was really locked into that model of what a retreat looks like, you know, but some of the newer hires in our organization have really been pressing for staff retreats. And I was feeling a little stuck, like, well.. how do we actually do that, in this time of remote work, or even hybrid mode, we can’t be physically in one space together. And they’re like, We don’t care, we’ll do a zoom retreat. Which to me just sounds like, more time on Zoom, right? But they’re like, listen, we need to build this sense of connectedness it’s really important. And so we’re willing to do it on Zoom, it’s that important to us. I think that’s fascinating. And that’s what we’re gonna do.

 

Sue Bethanis  32:58

Well, you guys got to get going back there, because it’s gonna get cold, do it outside. I couldn’t do it all the way around. But I mean, a lot of our companies we’re working with, they’re doing outside retreats. And certainly California, I think, you know, ours is more stringent in terms of being inside. People have to be vaccinated, there would have to be masks. So a little bit more, a little bit more safe. But yeah, I understand what people want to get. I mean, we’ve seen it all over the place there’s the wanting connection, wanting belonging, wanting to feel like they’re a part of things. There’s a lot of FMS, fear of missing something. And so, we’ve talked a lot about how do you influence? How do you influence in this kind of world in terms of promotions, things like that, you know, how do you get to know the people you need to know to get the promotions, things like that. So that’s a different world, that you can’t just bump into people, doesn’t happen anymore. Okay, I want to talk more about practices. You mentioned the idea of empowered listening, you talked about feedback, are there some other practices that we can point to that are focused on belonging and inclusion?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  34:02

Yes, lots of them. So some of these are going to be, you know, they’re going to sound so obvious, but so often we find in organizations, they’ll skip some of these steps. Like one is, if you’re concerned about challenges to inclusivity, and sense of belonging right now, then name that the organization is really focused in prioritizing inclusivity right now, like state that on every possible platform that you have within the organization. Make that clear, verbally, and then also elevate. What we often describe as you want to elevate and center diversity, equity, and inclusion work. We want to resource the work, which is another really important step that often gets missed. Like, yeah, this is so important. It’s a priority of the organization, but we don’t have proper funding to support the sustained level of training that we need in the organization. So resourcing the work is really essentially putting your money where your mouth is. And again, when I say elevate and center the work, I said that it’s important to make sure that if this work is a priority to become more inclusive, then start to develop what those inclusive practices look like for your organization. We’ve loved the idea of cultivating what we refer to as a shared responsibility model, which means that the work isn’t marginalized, it isn’t siloed, it is every member of the organization is responsible for thinking about how are we doing in terms of inclusivity? And where are our growth points? What do we need to do in order to change? And specifically, what’s my role? What can I do? Across every mission element, every person in the organization needs to be thinking in this way. And so we really think a solid practice is to promote the idea of shared responsibility and to operationalize that, get people to think in a real practical, tangible sense, what it means to wake up every day to think about: ‘Oh, is I’m going into the finance department, what’s my responsibility for fostering a sense of belonging and inclusivity?’

 

Sue Bethanis  36:20

And Lauren, any other practice, specific practices, an individual can do? I mean, certainly, there are some things that organization can do that we’ve talked about, but I’m thinking more in terms of actual practices an individual can do. So for a person: ‘hey, I want to be more inclusive. What do I need to do?’

 

Lauren Wadsworth  36:35

Yeah, so first, to jump off of what Stephanie was saying. And one thing I’m kind of developing in my head today is a phrase like ‘Ask not what can I do? But what can I offer?’ So instead of saying, ‘hey, person of color, how can I make it more inclusive here?’ Thinking like, go through my offer? So do I have connections? Do I have access to mentors that might be useful to people that are newer in this organization? Thinking about your own socio-cultural identities. So the first step of this whole process is understanding what is your positionality? What is your race? What is your ethnicity, your gender, sexual orientation? And what areas do you hold privilege? What’s your ability status? In what areas do you have more barriers? Or have you experienced marginalization? And how do those intersect with each other to make your life more difficult, more easy? So understanding how do you identify? And then in what areas – we used the addressing framework, it’s the world’s longest acronym to cover all the socio-cultural identities that we have. In what areas do you think about on a daily basis? For me, I think about gender on a daily basis, I’d say, and most days race because of my work with Stephanie and others. But I don’t have to think about race on a daily basis. What areas do you think about less? Okay, for me, that would be ability status, and then what reading do I need to do to get better at that? Reading about common microaggressions, for areas that you’re less familiar with. Another practice that we love to encourage is pronoun practice. So I’m practicing using they/them pronouns for everyone. Or saying, ‘When I have my Wednesday call with Stephanie, we’re both working on that.’ So let’s make it a commitment in our meetings to always use them for everyone just so we get used to how to incorporate that into our language. Identifying learning cohorts within your group, who do I feel like I can mess up in front of and get feedback from and accept it? And how can we set goals together of saying, hey, every time I say ‘Guys,’ can you just like, raise a finger and this helped me become more mindful of that. And then celebrate that work together and get that positive feedback from your learning cohort as opposed to the random person of color down the hall that you’re hoping will acknowledge your good work. Those are just some thoughts. Oh, one other really quick one I think it’s important to note is the empowering apology is a quick apology. I think, as people that hold privilege, for example, being white, they often will start to apologize in a way that’s really long and then becomes about our own emotions. So for forgiveness or reassurance. So making sure that your apology is about the person you’re apologizing to both in terms of focusing on their emotions also, and not asking anything of them whether it’s forgiveness, or for them to take care of you or teach you anything. So ‘I’m so sorry. I recognize that was a statement that came from racism. I’m going to work on that. And I’m open to any further conversation if you’d like to have it, but I just wanted to say sorry,’ done. No puppy dog eyes, though. Crying, you know.

 

Sue Bethanis  39:46

Did you say you’re sorry? I know it’s unheard of. Okay. Okay. I love it, those were all amazing. I asked the question now in a different application. Which is that- I think that the remote has actually both hindered and helped recruiting of people of color. Tell us how you see that. And I’m talking mostly for organizations. I mean, it could be any organization, but particularly businesses, but it can be also schools as well. But I wondered how you look at that?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  40:17

I think one thing is that in this time, in this moment, that people of color and others who hold rising or underrepresented identities within an organization, they’re looking for how the workplace, how organizations are moving beyond the verbal commitment to becoming more inclusive, they’re looking for accountability, and they’re looking for actions. And so I think for organizations who are prepared to do that work and to do some of the things that we’ve been talking about here today, that those organizations are going to position themselves most effectively to both recruit and retain people of color in this environment. And the important thing to remember is that diverse talent doesn’t have to settle for anything less than that at this point. And so in that is both, you know, a challenge and an opportunity. And so organizations that really seize the moment and step up to that opportunity, to figure out how to become and actually operationalize on a day to day basis, what it looks like to cultivate a sense of safety, belonging, where all members of the workplace feel seen, valued, heard, they feel increasingly like it’s safe, to bring their full selves to the workplace. Those are the organizations that are going to be more successful in again, both attracting and retaining diverse talent at this time.

 

Lauren Wadsworth  41:44

And it’s really exponential. I mean, people talk, that’s one thing that I’ve noticed in our clinic is that as we’ve had more folks with rising identities here express feeling that they can bring their full selves and feeling empowered and feeling like this is the first place they’ve worked like that. They’re talking to their friends and inviting them to work here. And that’s the warmest lead you can get as an employer. Right. And it’s an awesome lead for sustainability, too, because they have asked their friend, all the questions of what is it like to work there, right. And so I think to invest in this work and to do a good job will save so much time resource and energy in the recruitment process down the line. If you’re really doing a good job, the work will do itself. The recruitment will do itself.

 

Sue Bethanis  42:30

Yeah. I love that answer. I’m also want to add, I’ve found it in our own company, but also in companies we work with, is that because companies can use remote work as an advantage now that they can recruit anywhere. So what used to be the way you had to recruit, you know, when you’re in the Bay Area, or trying to get engineers in the Bay Area, for example, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s super competitive.’ But now they can go to Howard University and get engineers. They can go to primarily black colleges. They can go to a lot of different nooks and crannies that they weren’t doing before because they couldn’t, because it was impractical, obviously. So now you can really open it up, what do you all think of that?

 

Lauren Wadsworth  43:13

I have a quick thought and then I’ll hand it over to Stephanie. It’s just that I would just say, beware. So be aware in that if you haven’t done the work to create it or build the horse before presenting the cart, you could be inviting a huge number of people into a very harmful organization, which will then result in a backlash, both in reputation, because people talk, and in that will cause harm to people. So making sure that as you’re embarking on this new, incredible access point, you’re creating, you’re doing the work to make it safe for when people arrive. As opposed to asking them to be the wave that’s breaking against the shore and holding all that pain. Okay, Stephanie, what were you going to say?

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  43:55

Yeah, I would say related to that, I was gonna go back to what you’re saying earlier, Lauren, because I love that you’ve framed that in the positive: that people talk. So if you’re really working to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment, then that’s the best promotion that you need. But to remember that people will talk and do talk about organizations that do not feel safe. In which the environment is not really one that’s growing towards inclusivity, where it spreads rapidly. And so we really encourage organizations to shift the focus instead to looking internally doing a little bit of self-examination. First, to figure out, if we historically have not really been all that inclusive, why? Ask the question, rather than saying, ‘Oh, now we’ve got, you know, remote opportunities to suddenly recruit people diverse talent from all over the country.’ It begins with the question of this internal self-interrogation. We haven’t historically been able to recruit and retain diverse talent, why is that? Because really seeking to answer those questions and then addressing what those answers to those questions are is what’s going to make it more sustainable over time.

 

Sue Bethanis  45:16

Right. Okay. Anything else to add? Right? We’re actually out of time, which I can’t even believe but we are.

 

Lauren Wadsworth  45:22

A quick thought, you asked about optimism. And I wanted to say earlier that I’ve been hearing for the first time people say things like, they’re starting to be these conversations in my workplace, and I’m starting to feel safer talking about them, or feeling like this organization is acting in line with anti-racist policies. And I can’t tell you how energizing it is to hear that after not experiencing that for years of doing this work. So I do think that change is happening. And I think we shouldn’t slow down the investment or the work or the energy or the effort, we’re going to need to do exponentially more than we’re doing now. And it’s worth it. And it’s working, at least in some places.

 

Sue Bethanis  46:04

That’s great. I’m with you on that. I’m seeing the same.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  46:06

Can I add one thing? I would just add that related to that, that it’s been so inspiring to see when you really try to put into place and promote a shared responsibility model. It just blows my mind to see the innovation, like what people are capable of doing in clinical work, in research, across mission elements. Like people no longer have to consider themselves a diversity expert in order to do something really impactful in this space. And it’s been just phenomenal to watch the opening and the spreading of that under like a growing sense of shared ownership responsibility and excitement, passion for doing this work.

 

Sue Bethanis  46:48

Right, thank you. I really appreciate having both of you on and just wanted to, again, say something about your book. Did that just happen?! Beyond “Diversity” – Creating Sustainable and Inclusive Organizations you can find Stephanie and Lauren on LinkedIn it’s Stephanie Pinder-Amaker and Lauren Wadsworth. Thanks again, everybody. Bye now.

 

Lauren Wadsworth  47:11

Thank you.

 

Stephanie Pinder-Amaker  47:12

Thank you.

 

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In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts talent strategist and company culture expert, Steve Cadigan. Steve has been at the forefront of global talent strategy and company culture for the past 30 years. Most famous for scaling LinkedIn from 400 to 4000 in 3.5 years, Steve also led the development of LI’s legendary company culture. Today, as Founder of Cadigan Talent Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based talent strategies advisory firm, Steve helps organizations worldwide develop winning talent solutions. With more than 25 years of leadership and executive experience in global Human Resources, Steve has practiced HR in the US, Canada, and Asia-Pacific within a variety of industries. Through leading worldwide HR efforts for more than 60 M&A transactions at three global organizations since 1998, Steve has cultivated a deep understanding of business cycles, patterns, high growth, and the key elements required to forge an organization’s sustainability. Over the course of his career, the teams, cultures, and organizations he has led and helped build have been recognized as exceptional, “world-class” performers by the Wall Street Journal and Fortune Magazine.

Listen to the full episode here:

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Covid has changed the way we operate. Looking deeper at some of the new trends that have appeared during Covid, we are seeing a faster employee turnover, more competition in hiring, people turning towards independent work, and a large shift in company values in terms of culture. With such fast turnover, Steve provides some insights for both employees and employers on how to navigate the new era.

The pandemic has caused a huge shift in employee values leading to individuals wanting more autonomy, freedom, and independence at work. Many employees are leaving roles because these new values are not being met. We are seeing job security move from a place of stagnation to movement. Steve’s advice for employees is to embrace this movement and adaptability. Step into new roles, learn new things, take on the tasks that you don’t feel prepared for because that is the only way to grow in this new climate.

On the other hand, employers are feeling extremely stressed by the rapid turnover. Steve offers multiple ways for companies to retain their talent by stepping away from how we used to operate and restructuring to emphasize employees’ needs. The fact is the shorter tenure trend is not going anywhere. It’s time to look at an employee’s entire career path, even outside of your company, and help them along the way. Learning velocity and the number of new experiences and skills a role offers are extremely valuable to potential employees at this time. Steve recommends that organizations need to stop creating employment packages and bonuses around long-term stability, and instead offer employees the freedom and growth they are looking for.

Within remote and hybrid, we are seeing a lack of connection and lesser ability to network. Steve believes it’s time to be more intentional in our communication and find new refreshing ways to connect. He highlights companies that have found creative ways to foster connection through virtual games, chess tournaments, randomized virtual coffee meetings where people can connect to someone they’ve never met within the organization, and more. It all comes back to adaptability, creativity, and looking for connections outside of where we used to normally find them.

Key takeaways from this talk include:

• Employee rapid turnover rate is a trend that we should not expect to stop anytime soon. It’s time to embrace it, rather than fight it, to recruit sustainably. (27:16)
• Employees value their freedom, independence, and humanization more than ever and will thrive if they focus on learning and applying new skills. (9:27)
• Your network is larger and more valuable than you may realize, you can find connections in the smallest of encounters and unpredictable places. (44:32)

Although there have been many downfalls, we have also seen so many positive changes, new trends, and shifts in ideology around the workplace due to Covid. The momentum is only going to continue. It’s time to approach this new era with adaptability and readiness for change. It’s time to evolve into a better model of working by thinking outside the box and restructuring the workplace as we know it.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“People are leaving faster; nobody believes it’s going to change. It’s not temporary. Everyone I talk to, every business leader in every geography, every industry, that’s the biggest problem, as you’ve already pointed out, and nobody thinks it’s going to change.” (15:18)

“I think that’s the most important element of the new compensation stack if you will, is autonomy, freedom, independence, but also what we call learning velocity, the extent to which the job itself delivers new experiences and new things.” (15:18)

“I think we’re very close to a breaking point where a lot of people are really stressed out because we’re still stuck on ‘I need someone and they need to do this job’. Maybe we need to reorganize how work gets done in different ways and sort of deconstructing jobs so that it’s not – one person is going to do all this.” (25:27)

RESOURCES

Steve Cadigan:

Website | Linkedin

Book: Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to wise talk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today, I am excited to have my good friend Steve Cadigan. We’ve known each other for a very long time, and I’m so excited you’re here with us today. He’s been at the forefront of global talent strategy and company culture for the past 30 years. He’s most famous for scaling LinkedIn from 400 to 4,000 in 3.5 years. He also has led the development of LinkedIn’s legendary company culture. Today he’s the founder of Cadigan Talent Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based talent strategies advisory firm, and he helps organizations worldwide develop winning talent solutions. With more than 25 years of leadership and executive experience in global human resources, Steve has practiced HR in the US, Canada, and Asia Pacific within a variety of industries. And we’re going to talk about your new book today, which is called WorkQuake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working. That’s a lot. We’ve got a lot to talk about, don’t we?

Steve Cadigan 0:59
We got three hours? Is it?

Sue Bethanis 1:01
Alright. So I just read your bio, which is very fine. Tell me a little bit more about, tell us really, because I know you, but tell us a little bit more about who you are and why you wrote this book.

Steve Cadigan 1:15
Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, I’m someone who had a pretty eclectic childhood, I grew up in South Africa for five years, we were kicked out when I was seven, grew up in the US, had to practice speaking American as a child. So adapting at a very early age was something that really shaped me and I think may have been an early signal that I was going to use those in later years. I’ve been in California since I graduated college, except for two years in Singapore, four years in British Columbia. And I found HR when I was like two years out of college and just recruiting and fell in love with it. You and I crossed paths when I decided, probably in my mid-30s, that I wanted to be really great at this and went to grad school and you’re one of my professors and still are a professor for me. Yeah. And then, you know, moved in 6 different companies about five different industries. And really just grew to love the, what I think is the greatest art form that is the art of helping people learn how to do greater things together. And I have a huge passion for sports, not just as a participant, and I’m very, very competitive. My whole family’s competitive. But not just to be an athlete, but to watch how people handle situations in competition, how you handle victory, defeat, how you handle being behind, how you handle crazy coaches versus coaches that don’t say anything. I just that, that joy and love I have for sports has really translated well to just in the organizational setting. Yeah, and so I’ve loved it. And today, I’ve got three teenagers, I remarried four or five years ago, and my wife has two girls. So we have like The Brady Bunch three boys and two girls. But I’ve coached my boys’ sports since they were able to be in competitive sports, soccer, baseball, basketball, they’ve all sort of fallen in love with basketball, which is a joy to me because I did play one year in college, I was not very good. I stayed on the bench, but I love that. And so today, I stopped working for an employer about 10 years ago at LinkedIn after that crazy four your ride, which felt like 20 right, it was probably the best hair color treatment. If you want to go gray just go in a hypergrowth organization right?

Sue Bethanis 3:30
God that was 10 years ago you left. That’s amazing. Okay.

Steve Cadigan 3:35
Isn’t that crazy? So since then, I’ve just been working with a lot of organizations. I mean, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Honestly, when I left LinkedIn, I had no idea other than, I’d like to take a breath and I had a chance for about a year or two just to reconnect with people I really missed. And because we sometimes get so hunkered down, that you cross paths you work with, and you meet people and I sort of reconnected with all these people. And over that year, started to get a sense of what I really wanted to do. And that was definitely heavily weighted towards teaching and coaching. And not professional coaching. But teaching and helping people solve talent problems, whether it’s hyper-growth or whatever. And, so that sort of led me to find my own firm and to do this, I’m not a long term, consultant, I’m more like call myself a flash advisor. I want to go in and shake you up a little bit. And then you say, well, Steve, how do we make that stuff happen? I go, here’s Sue, she’ll come in.

Sue Bethanis 4:33
I like it. Flash advisor. I love it. And so the book I know has been sort of something you’ve been wanting to do for one time. What amazing timing that you when you wrote it, and you had kind of rewrite it a little bit I bet.

Steve Cadigan 4:46
I did. I was 80% done when the pandemic hit and had that moment of, Oh, no, maybe everything I’ve been focused on is going to be worthless if the world is going to be upside down. Right. And then thankfully, I woke up one morning and said to my wife, you know, I actually think my book stands up even more. And a lot of what I’ve been talking about is just accelerated and introduced even more new things. So had to write a new chapter, had to infuse COVID into the book, and in ways that it was still, gosh, it was still unfolding. We were only about six to nine months in when I had to submit it to the publisher. But yeah, I was, you know, very fortunate, I got a big assist from the pandemic for people’s raised awareness of how the future of work is just radically, radically transformed.

Sue Bethanis 5:34
Every day, it seems like something. Okay, so let’s get right to the great migration. Yeah, let’s get to it. Because it’s, we couldn’t have seen this coming, really. But there’s a great migration, what are you seeing, what’s happening?

Steve Cadigan 5:47
I’ll tell you the thoughts that are hitting me this week, here we are about 20 months into the pandemic. And I feel like we’re just hitting a point now, where most business leaders are going, huh, I guess we’re not going back to that anymore. And my whole book, my whole life and yours Sue, is about, you know, its adaptability. It’s building cultures of change. It’s about not building for consistency. It’s building for adapting to inconsistency and unpredictable moments. Most, especially the larger organizations, non tech-driven companies, whether it’s consumer goods or distribution deal with all kinds of industries, and they’re not comfortable with experimentation. And when they don’t have a huge base of software developers, who are all used to experimentation and how they build and develop products that can migrate easy to culture, and these non tech-oriented organizations, they’re like, wow, I guess the new normal is never normal, we’re gonna have to reconsider it. So that’s what I’m seeing now is we’re finally hitting that point. Yeah, it’s just been an absolute brutal period for talent leaders, and business leaders, everything from you know, we knew that we could create value when everyone was together. And we don’t know that we can create value in this new framework. And human nature is: in a crisis revert to what you know, revert to your strength, right? And that’s where we’re seeing this real pullback to, and fear, especially my senior executives. I mean, think about it, if your careers are on the line, and you don’t know that you can produce in this new complex puzzle of hybrid and from home and some in-person stuff, like, what do you do? And how do you approach it? Meanwhile, you know, attrition continues to climb. You and I were talking about this a few months ago, I think we’re gonna see it even escalate, because the early movers are the people that have no kids, and no mortgages and no homes and no major bills, people that have all those are taking their time. They’re seeing what’s out there. Yes. And the markets are on fire. I’ll give a story for you, listeners, I was telling you right before we went on air. I was in Durango last week. I have never been to Colorado before. And I was invited there by local economic forum there, about 400 business leaders. And the business leaders that have workers who can work for them from home, are terrified because their workers are getting phone calls from companies all over the country and beyond, including the business owners are getting phone calls from people for opportunities. And they’ve never played in that, you know, we live in Silicon Valley-ish area where the war for talents just been, of course, all kinds of creativity for years. And if you’ve been working in a space where you haven’t had to do that and think about the Durango businesses that have this beautiful landscape of outdoor activities. Now, they don’t know how to recruit without that in their back pocket. And so I think that all these, call it hospitality, are terrified right now. And we’re seeing all kinds of what I would call irresponsible knee jerk, panic moves, you know, ridiculous signing bonuses, all kinds of things, you know, money, usually money related to try to buy their way out of this problem.

Sue Bethanis 9:05
Right. Right. So and then that’s sort of the gist of it. I definitely wanna talk about it from the employee’s perspective. And I also want to talk about it from the employer’s perspective, but let’s start with the employees. You kind of divide the book into employees and employers, let’s talk to the employees like what’s the main thrust of your idea around what employees should be thinking about?

Steve Cadigan 9:27
Um, I think the psychology of the workforce is really shifted and employees whether you cognitively process and absorb it yourself. We’re moving to a domain where I think we are reconsidering what job security and career security is, from being stationary to movement. That and that’s it’s not comfortable for everyone. But most people are starting to realize, hey, the more I move, the more I get exposed to new ideas, new ways of solving problems, new techniques, new cultures, new leadership styles, the more my network grows, the more new opportunities can find me, the more people I have to phone a friend when I hit a stumbling block or a cliff that I’m not sure I can climb. And it’s happened pretty fast, I would say maybe the last decade where we used to think staying in one place, was valuable. But businesses and jobs, I mean, ask any recruiter: How long is the job description really hold up. And I’ll tell you maybe two months. So what I’m trying to tell employees is, hey, every job changing, your value to yourself, and your vitality, for the future work, is going to really reside in how fast you can learn and apply new things. And that doesn’t mean you need to change jobs necessarily. You know, there are lots of reasons why people are changing jobs beyond what I’ve already said. But I think that the more you can learn and apply new things fast, the more valuable you’re going to become. And you’re not going to have to be in this infinite rat chase of, well, I need to learn that skill, I need to learn that skill, but I may have a shorter shelf life, so but if you can just be confident that, hey, learning new things is going to make me more valuable. So I’m going to seek opportunities in organizations and firms where I’m going to be exposed to new things, new ways of solving problems, and that’s how I’m seeing the shift, to try and make people more comfortable. Because there’s still a stigma with job movement, right?

Sue Bethanis 11:17
Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Because, executives especially, what do you tell the executive who has moved and, you know, is thinking that that’s a negative. That employers will think of as a negative, I don’t think it’s a negative thing. You’ve had a lot of good experiences, and you’ve been able to move and change and drop in quickly. Right? And get going. Yeah, so talk a little bit about that.

Steve Cadigan 11:39
Yeah. And I think the pace of movement, and the acceptance of movement is rising, right, that more and more people have changed and will change. And I think, you know, we can’t say there’s a right number, or amount of time per organization per industry, just it varies like, hey, if we’re hiring hospital staff, I do not want people changing out because lives are on the line. So I want to hold on to people. For putting someone on the moon, and they could die if we get it wrong, like, and that’s where problems can happen when there’s a lot of turnover. So it’s not true for every industry, but for a lot. What I’ll tell executives is, I mean, let’s take a look at the automobile industry. For example. Right now, the most valuable automobile company is Tesla. Now they’re not selling more cars, they’re not making more profit, but they’re worth more than Honda, Toyota and Ford combined, and their median tenure is 2.3 years. And so they built a new business. They’re under 25 years old as a company, I believe. Well, the new business with people with different perspectives and new ideas, and that workforce has come together with different perspectives. And the investor community has voted, that they’re far more valuable because I believe the perception is they can innovate faster, right? And so, you know, I’m thinking back to my days at LinkedIn, when we’re sitting in the boardroom, and something would hit us that we weren’t ready for a problem. And it felt like every day, there were multiple problems, but that’s another story. So we’d sit there and Jeff waiting to see what the time would say, “Hey, Deep. How did you guys see this at Google?”, “Hey, David, how do we solve this at Yahoo?”, “Hey, Steve, how’d you solve it at Cisco and EA?” and that collective experience and muscle that we build in other organizations was what our value was. And so I think what the current state of a higher fluid world of work is exposing to us right now is I think we may have overvalued again, a big generalization, I think we may have overvalued tenure, in this new world of work, where things are changing so fast. Things weren’t changing fast? Yes, longer-term, understanding our market, understanding our people, building social equity, was valuable. That’s not as valuable today as new ideas, new ways of solving problems, new perspectives, new networks. I’m seeing recruiters now look at candidates based on how rich their network is, and how dense it is, not just to recruit from but also to source for ideas and inspiration. So, you know, again, I don’t think we would do the audience justice if we’re trying to make everyone comfortable that hey, you know, executives, it’s okay. I mean, it is uncomfortable. This is not what we were told, right?

Sue Bethanis 14:13
Yeah, we were told that if they’re there, as somebody pointed out in the chat, is if they’re at a company one or two years, they didn’t last long, like didn’t work out. Um, that’s what it could look like. It could be something different. Okay. So let’s talk about the from an employer’s perspective. It’s kind of crazy. I was talking to someone this morning in Berlin, and they’re a startup, they’re trying to recruit for new product head and when we talked about like, the kind of questions that they asked and how they’re trying to find people that are more startupy. And he says I want more people that are sharp that can take a hit us and essentially be resilient. And because I want to start recruiting the United States for its too expensive, like okay, and in a time with people here, it’s like they can now recruit beyond the Silicon Valley. Find somebody who just got out of Carnegie Mellon and they can, wherever they are does not have to be in the Silicon Valley. So how are these strategies changing, given COVID because as I said, we both agree here that things aren’t going to go back to where they were, there’s going to be remote or hybrid, it’s at least going to be hybrid. So most companies, I think, in Silicon Valley are doing or doing remote only at this point, how do these talent strategies change?

Steve Cadigan 15:18
Alright, so let’s step back and talk about the big trends. People are leaving faster, nobody believes it’s going to change. It’s not temporary. Everyone I talk to, every business leader in every geography, every industry, that’s the biggest problem, as you’ve already pointed out, and nobody thinks is going to change. So I think what we have to do is say, Okay, if that is true, what is our mission here? Our mission is to create value, we’ve believed that full-time employees are the pathway to sustainable competitive advantage. And I would argue that what we’re seeing in the valley, and maybe it is a trend setter that will hit other parts of the world, a lot of great people are leaving full-time employment, and going to a more Fiverr, Upwork independent model, because of the premium they place on autonomy and independence. And this would suggest to me, and I do think the stigma of being an IC, and a temp has come way down, and almost on par with being an employee. The problem in the US, obviously, is the awful healthcare system that we have. That’s another story for another episode. But so when I’m talking to organizations, they’re saying, “Well, what do we do? Like I can’t find people, they’re not staying as long?,” I’m saying, “Well, why are people leaving?” I think people are leaving because they’re concerned that they’re not growing and building their vitality for tomorrow, if you can feed that, with not just bringing professors in, but how you design work, that’s giving new challenges, new experiences, and making them more likely to be able to leave, I think you stand a greater chance of keeping people. I think that’s the most important element of the new compensation stack, if you will, is autonomy, freedom, independence, but also what we call learning velocity, the extent to which the job itself delivers new experiences and new things. And you ask anyone, you know, I asked the business leaders in Durango this last week, “When have you, business leader, been most energized? When you’ve been doing the same thing five years, or when you took on something new, and it was scary? And maybe you weren’t prepared?” And they said definitely something new. I said, Okay, well, you’re tapping into energy right now. This is what’s going on in Silicon Valley. Like, when I look at LinkedIn, we built a $26 billion company that was sold in 15 years to Microsoft, right? For 26 something billion dollars, the median tenure the whole time I was there, nine months. So what’s going on? Well, all the senior leaders, when you’re doubling the size of your population, every year, they’re recruiting and their lieutenants are stepping into their jobs, doing something on paper they’re not qualified to do, being inspired. Unlocking energy now is something like, whoa, I’m stepping into this bigger job, and I’m going to be more valuable tomorrow because I’m doing new stuff. And the company’s not doing a belly flop, thank goodness, but my boss is not gone. They’re busy, but they’re available to do mentoring. Right. And that was just, that’s just interesting to me. And I think, you know, back to this, I think a lot of people are migrating into independent contractor roles. Who says you can only get your value created with a full-time employee? Who says that? And what’s driving that is all the business, the CFO models were headcount, right? No. So we got a lot of inertia.

Sue Bethanis 18:31
Right well, and then your slogan in your book is “come to my company, so I can help you leave it.” I mean, that’s, that’s a risky thing. And you sort of alluded to it. How do you help people think, how do you help people get there?

Steve Cadigan 18:52
Okay. So, you know, one of the things my publisher, my PR team was saying, hey, you gotta have some provocative points in the book, I’m like, Okay, well, I’m gonna push it a little bit here and say, “Come to my company, so I can help you leave it.” And where I’m getting with that is, you know, something that was one of the reasons why I wrote this book, which was, I’ve been just increasingly disappointed with these fake conversations that we have between employer and employees, Hey, stay here a long time. And I promise to keep you employed a long time. We both know we’re not going to follow through on that commitment. But let’s have that be the foundation of how we work together.

Sue Bethanis 19:25
It’s for your vesting like, that alone is the issue.

Steve Cadigan 19:29
That’s right. And nobody believes it, but we still go ahead and do that. So well, you know, what I say is maybe a more honest conversation is caring about someone more than just when they work for you, the entirety of their career, not just when they’re employed by you and say, let me do what Chipotle does. We know this is not your destination. We know we’re a transition employer. We know you have other aspirations, but let’s optimize you to get you where you want to go while you’re here. And we hope in doing that, you’re going to bring more of your really talented friends here, we hope you’re going to say positive things on the internet and chirp goodness about us, you’re going to eat here, we’re a BTC. So we want this relationship to be good. But we know it’s not going to be forever. And that’s okay. And we’re going to just double down on all kinds of tuition reimbursement education for you, and you only have to be here for like a week full time, and then boom, we’ll do it, or at some very, very minimal number of hours. And I’m starting to see, Sue, many other larger enterprises start to come to terms with, yeah, we’re not the perfect destination for everyone. Forever. And that’s okay. We’re part of someone’s journey.

Sue Bethanis 20:37
Yeah. I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re gonna get some pushback. But I have one more question. And that is, it costs a lot of money to hire an executive, and let’s call executives even managers, managers, directors, okay, it costs a lot of money to recruit them. Whether they’re hiring a search firm or just the time that their own recruiters are spending. And so a lot of people don’t want to be letting people just go because it costs a lot of money to get new people in. So talk a little bit about how we can shift the way we look at getting people in. And so it doesn’t cost so much, because it costs a lot of money.

Steve Cadigan 21:07
Right. I mean, there are infinite ways of being creative there. If we’re stuck with ‘I need someone’ versus ‘I need this work done.’ And maybe there are creative fractional ways of our workup, again, some of the business models we have or how we forecast that we plan business blocks the creativity there, I know, you know, several people who started companies trying to get, you know, women who’ve had kids who don’t want to go back full time to be able to work and it just doesn’t work, because a lot of businesses just aren’t built to sustain that model. But you know, just take a look at how many organizations if we take a look at right now Facebook, Slack, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, the median tenure in those companies is right around two years. And they’re doing pretty good, right? And so some of that could be skewed if you’re hiring really fast that your median tenure is going to come down. Or if you’ve done a bunch of acquisitions, and you restarted the clock on how you measure in the length of employment. But I think yes, there is cost, but I think the cost is worse if you’re building expecting people to stay a long time, and then you have all these single points to fit someone, Oh, my gosh, you know, I think we’re going to have to build organizations, in a way and I don’t have all the answers here. But we know no one disagrees that people are going to leave faster. So is it you know, maybe we can organize work differently? Or maybe we can set up business differently so that we build to expect people will leave?

Sue Bethanis 22:38
Yes, I think that we get surprised. You should have a pulse on how they’re feeling. So then you will know that they’re ready to go because they are ready to go. Let’s talk about this. I want to know about culture and communication here in a second. But I want to open the lineup for anyone who wants to ask Steve a question. Hey, Michael.

Michael 22:57
Hey, Steve. So a lot of my clients are dealing with, you know, this quarter, they don’t really necessarily use the old term VUCA you know, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, but they’re stressed out they’re having a lot of uncertainty. And all this churn. You know, as you’ve been speaking most of today, about kind of, Hey, you know, churn isn’t a bad word necessarily. But let’s call them the remainders, the survivors. And so they asked me, Michael, I’m losing great people, you know, every story and maybe, you know, Mazel Tov, congratulations, it’s okay. But I’m still here. And I’m trying to keep my people still here, right? There’s absenteeism. There’s also a thing called presenteeism when you’re present, but you’re not really present. And so people are really stressed out. So, you know, if somebody is kind of, for whatever reason, in a model that you might suggest as an older model, you know, what have you seen? Or what do you think about that challenge?

Steve Cadigan 23:55
Yeah, here’s how I think about this. Because everyone’s feeling that and it’s almost, I was talking to a CEO yesterday, it’s like, you know, it’s almost like it’s not cool to stay longer now. It’s, it’s starting to move, like some of the people that are talking to you like, there’s something wrong with me that I’m still here?

Michael 24:11
I call it left at the dock. Left at the dock, that ship has sailed with all your friends, and you’re still standing there.

Steve Cadigan 24:18
Right? So here, here’s a couple of interesting conversations I’ve had in the last few weeks: someone calls and they go through the whole cycle of everything that we just talked about, can’t hire people, people leaving faster, and then I go, “Hey, how’s your business done during COVID?”, “Oh, really? Well, sales are up increased market share.” I go “Hmm, isn’t that interesting.” So your ability to adapt is as measured by increased market share, increase revenue, maybe the measures of a healthy organization need to shift maybe we shouldn’t be feeling so dour because our turnovers up maybe we should be celebrating people leaving going on to bigger, better things. I don’t know. But that’s four companies I talked to, and the last month, everyone that’s how the conversation went. That’s where it started. And then the second was, oh, How’s business? So really good. Okay, so why do you seem all bummed out?

Michael 25:11
You know, yeah just to give you what somebody might say, well I’m bummed out because those four people had a very important job. Yeah, now the people that aren’t leaving are going to have to do all that work or, or get a priority, you know, whatever. We’re gonna have to sort all that work now.

Steve Cadigan 25:27
Right, right. And then we get to, there’s a friend of mine, Shahar Rez has got a company called Stoke talent and Stoke talent has built a platform to help you manage your contingent workforce. Because I’ve worked in big companies, and there are lots of people that no one knew who’s paying them or how they got here. But you’ve got this big, dark, invisible workforce, I think we need to look for other solutions than just a full-time employee. There’s a ton of talent that can be applied in different ways. And I know the intellectual property lawyers are like, “No, we, you know, we can’t have all these people around” and, you know, company secrets and all that. But what’s the cost of having that rec open for a long time? What’s the cost of the culture? What’s the cost, as you say, to the morale, it’s a hit, you know when we’ve got all these people who could come in and offer, maybe a different way of doing it. And I think we’re very close to a breaking point where a lot of people are really stressed out because we’re still stuck on I need someone and they need to do this job. Maybe we need to reorganize how work gets done in different ways and sort of deconstructing jobs so that it’s not – one person is going to do all this. And we’re not, it’s going to take us six months to find someone else. And then after six months of training, when we hire them, they’re going to you know, look for another so we’re going to have to be more creative here. I think.

Michael 26:53
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, stress reduction is cooperate with the inevitable.

Steve Cadigan 26:59
Right, right. Cool. Well said. Well said, Michael.

Sue Bethanis 27:02
Thanks, Michael. Anyone else have a question or comment?

Unknown Speaker 27:06
Do you have any kind of specific ideas for what companies need to do what they need to change in their talent management strategies to adapt to this new world?

Steve Cadigan 27:16
Well, at a high level, I think, you know, when I speak to executives, you know, people are leaving faster, do you think it’s going to change? No. Okay, so why is every one of your benefits driven by length of tenure? What if we changed all these costs, the investment that we’re making, that is driven by long tenure? What if we shift those to development? What if we shift to a closer relationship with universities or schools where we can access pools of talent that can be sort of an incubator for people understanding our business challenges and helping solve it? How we solved our recruiting challenges at LinkedIn when we went through the fastest growth years, and this was sort of ironic like our biggest company problem was our also our biggest product it was recruiting. We couldn’t hire fast enough and we realize we are not going to win in the open market for talent cause we’re getting outbid, out perked up, benefited by all these sexy brands in the Mountain View area. So what can we do? We said, we’re gonna have to grow talent instead of buy talent. And we were at scale at that time, like 1000 1500 people, but we went from no interns to 50 to 100 to 250. So almost all the incremental technical hiring that we did was out of schools. A much easier place, by the way, to recruit from if your business can afford to do the internships and grow the talent, right. So that’s one strategy that I’ve seen. I’ve also seen people start to do things like, one organization I was working with recently. Well, let’s just take Canva, you heard what Canva did. Canva said, Okay, we’re growing like gangbusters. And what we’re hearing from our talent is that they want freedom, independence, and autonomy, almost as much as in the new compensation stack is very high for them. So we’re gonna let our teams decide how and where and when they work. That’s something we’re gonna essentially do, we’re going to decentralize the decision-making for that, which is super powerful. Here’s another interesting bit of data. So I don’t subscribe to a lot of new services, but I’m starting to subscribe to more, and one of the ones they sort of have a love-hate relationship: Business Insider. This insider published an article yesterday or the day before: the cannabis industry now has in the United States closing in on half a million workers and in the last nine months, they’ve seen an explosion of recruiting. Now think about this. This is a, you know, I guess call it a rebellious business model in some respects because it’s still illegal and cannabis sales still illegal and most of the states in the United States. Banks are still not allowing for you know, transactions to go through, has to be all cash and people are flocking there. What’s going on? I think people are seeing this rebellious business leader you know, community, is more open to being creative with employment circumstances. And so they listed several people’s, it’s an interesting article, listed several people from retail, say, “I’m making a little bit less, but I’m winning in the end, because I like the freedom of my time and autonomy. And I feel a lot more relaxed.” So it’s just interesting.

Sue Bethanis 30:23
You know and freedom at work itself, too. Yeah, they get to do more. I think that there’s a lot about creativity around what kind of work do they get to do? That’s a part of the timing of it as well.

Steve Cadigan 30:36
That’s right. And, here’s the thing, getting back to the point we talked about earlier, which is, I think what people really want is to be more valuable tomorrow. And before the pandemic, one of the companies that I was so curious about was one of the scooter industries company in Santa Monica, Bird, it was just a fascination for me that they were exploding. They had no recruiting problem, and they should have a recruiting problem because it’s a new industry. There’s no business plan for profitability in the next five years. There’s no leader on that team that could say we know everything about the scooter industry because it’s only about four years old. And they were turning down more applicants than they could handle. Like what’s going on? And the answer is the same as why the cannabis industry I think is an appeal. If I can build a new business and show that I can grow something new that sets me up for a future with more options. In a world where disruption and change is happening fast. If I can go to cannabis and can make this work out of nothing or a scooter industry, which is the future of the transportation industry. You know, here’s the business where their plans, I’m sure most scooter businesses in 10 years, we’re not gonna be selling scooters, there’s no way and no one who goes there thinking so yeah, everyone’s gonna be riding scooters forever. No, they know, it’s a company of reinvention. And they want to be on that reinvention place, right. And so to the extent that you’re a business and you have those places where you have pockets of newness that are growing, that I think is going to be the light that moths are going to want to fly towards that. I would be talking about trying to draw people in and say hey, we’re doing stuff no one else is doing you know, and that’s gonna make you more valuable for tomorrow. And this gets to the last point that I want to make sure I land, Sue, in the conversation which is as a recruiter who’s been recruiting for 35 years, we used to recruit on our journey, ‘come here because we are this we are going there we are. It’s our journey.’ That’s the message. And I think it’s pivoting to: ‘I need to know your journey. Where are you going? What do you want to do? How can I get you there?’ And I talked about in the book, right, at LinkedIn we would say in that first interview “When you leave where do you want to be?” and they’re like “what, you’re firing you haven’t even started yet?” like and it was changing the conversation from us ourselves to you. And if we’re not having that conversation now you’re really really missing out. And that’s what I think the pandemic has served the opportunity of a lifetime of we have to know each other more during the pandemic, because stuff is impeding us at home, it’s going to block us being effective at work and so that’s a good thing that’s happened I think. And if we don’t lose that. This is where you know. to get to some of these sort of ideas that I have around deeper personal connection with people, understanding what their journey is, doing your best to deliver on, if you can’t and say okay, we’re not the best place for you someone else might be able to deliver that. Because if you hire them and you know their journey is different, you’re really renting them for a short period of time and then they’re going going to leave.

Sue Bethanis 33:30
Lori do you have a follow up? thank you yeah, thanks alright. So I want to shift, we started talking about a little bit of shift to more cultures learning capacity, so we’ve been foreshadowing it this whole time. Something Michael said that was really interesting around the remainders, the people that are still there. What are the people that are there doing in terms of staying close to their employees? To understanding where their journey is, understanding what’s going on for them, understanding what they’re upset about, what they’re good about? All, everything. I think that the pandemic has required it. It has put us in a place where we have to know more about that anyway, because people could be sick. I mean, there’s this more health involvement, just that alone. So how, what are your thoughts on how people can stay close, especially like let’s just assume in these remote and hybrid?

Steve Cadigan 34:22
Yeah, this is a big one. So I mean, I feel like wellness has gone to the top of the talent agenda and it wasn’t there before and you know, people working in different circumstances. I don’t know about the folks who are listening in, but when I would start a new job the first thing I wanted to know quickly was: Am I good with my new boss or not? Like I want to know do I feel they trust me? Can I trust them? And I don’t know that the pathway to achieve that is as easy so far, because we don’t know how to do it. And we don’t have those informal moments or those collisions in the hallway, right, a break room at lunch that we had. So my advice is while we try to navigate this is, is to be more purposeful and intentional around those informal moments. Now, the challenge is, I’m so done with zoom at the end of it, like I don’t want another informal zoom, like I’m so over it, right? Let’s just each go on a hike in our own places where we’re living, and let’s just put something in our ear and just have a conversation, let’s say, it’s being in a different physical space. I’m seeing people experiment with that, I’m seeing people experiment with sort of spin wheel lottery connecting to people that they’ve never met in a company, they have to have a virtual lunch or coffee or something like that. I’m seeing people do a multiplayer online games, department to department and having chat in there. I’ve seen chess tournaments, where people in product and engineering meet for the first time, they’ve been in the company three years together, and like, oh, what do you guys working on down there? While they’re, you know, having a playing a game. So I think organizations are going to have to create that space for that to happen to you know, I don’t know what the right amount of is. But I feel like we are in a very dangerous point right now where we’re not creating downtime, off time, informal time, that it’s going to continue to show that the rise in anxiety and depression is not going to change. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 36:25
And also, if people don’t get close, they’re not going to be as committed and there’s even more reason they’re going to leave, not for the right reasons. Because like the new people that I’ve been told by , I’ve read and also people that I have been working with, it’s like, they’re hiring a lot of people now that have never seen each other because they’ve hired people in COVID. It’s like, well, how do I get connected and stay close, when I’ve never even met them before. And, and so if people don’t get feel committed, then they it’s easier for them to go. So one of the things that one of our other coaches got from one of her clients was instead of doing one-on-ones, he does half-and-halfs. And what that means is, I love this. He says, half the meeting he has with his directs are about how they’re doing, half the meetings, it’s a 30 minute meeting. 15 minutes, is just how you’re doing? what are you up to? how’s your family? and the other 15 minutes is operations. Isn’t that awesome? I’m like, okay, we gotta write about that. We got to. It’s just because and he’s thought to do it because it’s what’s needed, right? And it’s that kind of thing that stickiness will keep people.

Steve Cadigan 37:41
Yeah, we have an opportunity. That’s right Sue, we have an opportunity, that I hope we take advantage of, shame on us if we don’t given everything that’s changed, to rebuild better and I think that’s one of the ones where we can leverage the increased greater awareness that someone’s personal circumstances are meaningful. And I also think in the background, pre pandemic, you know, this whole tech obsessed you know, I don’t need to see anyone I don’t need to ask my neighbors for butter, sugar, because I can just have it delivered. And because I’m not asking them, I’m not knocking on their door, opening it up seeing they’re not feeling well saying, oh, and or they’re missing a lightbulb like Hey, can you change my light? Like, I have an elderly neighbor, and every time I go over there, there’s something she’d like me to do. Can you put this up on the shelf? Can you change that lightbulb, whatever. And I almost sometimes go over even if I don’t have something to do, because I need something. And but this is where I think organizations can deliver community because I think a lot of us are missing that and maybe that may be one of those things that can hold on to someone a little bit longer. in there. There’s been tons of studies around why does some great employers high performing employees never leave when they have opportunities to get more money? Well it’s because of the relationship equity. They know all the players, all the players know them. And I’ve seen over the course of my career many people leave and then they come back a year, wasn’t as great as I thought. And now they’re back with purpose and that’s why I love the boomerang people because they’re here and they’ve got a reason to be here and they know they tasted it and so I think you know again it gets back to what we’re talking about earlier, Sue, which is we’re going to have to experiment and see and hopefully leverage you know these opportunities like the half and a half, I mean you got to blow that up, that’s got to be like a blog right there. It’s such a great one.

Sue Bethanis 39:28
I have to give credit to Donna, because her client, they came up with it. But yeah, I but it’s just an example of we have to have ways to stay close. I mean, I just think that it’s not about necessarily even, it’s not just about being connected, it’s about being close, those are different. And I think that we need to understand where people are coming from, we need to understand their circumstance, because it’s changing every day. Really it could be and I really do think that creates loyalty. And so we can juxtaposes, we can say: yes, we want to, we want to bring people in so they can leave eventually, and be okay with that. But for the time that they’re there, that we want loyalty, both ways, as much as we can. So, thanks for talking about that. A couple more things. What do we got here? We got time. Um, so you talked about learning capacity, and how important that is for employees to feel like they’re learning something, they’re doing interesting work. What can employers do to ensure that there that are highlighting agility that they’re teaching that, especially in hybrid or remote? It’s not just about having a training class? So what what can we can we do to help people learn in a different way?

Steve Cadigan 40:52
Well, I think we, we’ve danced around this. And some other conversations we’ve had today, which is appreciate the energy that gets unlocked when people are taking on new things and look to design work to unlock some of that energy. And it’s easy to say, hey, I want to help you realize your career ambitions, it but it’s harder when you ask them, “What is your ambition?” like I’m not really sure, you know, I have more choice, I have more ways that I could make a living today than ever before, because I can see more. And that’s not netting comfort, it’s netting more anxiety because I have more reasons to think I might have made the wrong choice. You know, and so I think having more conversations, having more, you know, those half-and-half, I mean more discussions with people, and sharing the learnings. And I think some of that connective tissue that we talked about earlier, can happen with, you know, you helping people build relationships inside and outside the organization. Many organizations are so insular in their thinking, like, we’re gonna have a mentoring program only with pairing people inside them. You know, why don’t your employees have people outside the company. That’s just like succession planning, like the best succession plans aren’t the ones where only people in the company are on the list. It’s when people outside the company are on the list, because, as we said earlier, new people new ideas, new ways of solving problems.

Sue Bethanis 42:13
Well at least if you’re going to do succession planning, like somebody from this part of the organization can succeed, somebody from another part of the organization doesn’t have to be in that same, you know, silo?

Steve Cadigan 42:22
That’s right. I think all of us, if we take a look at our career arcs, we’ll find fondness for people that took a risk on us that we probably, on paper, weren’t ready to do something or qualified, and we did great. And that that belief that someone had in us, are we doing that? Are we paying that forward? You know, are we looking at that, because most people won’t, and here’s why. It’s not a cut on anyone. The more that, you know, if you don’t have experience, you’re risk to me, if you’re risk to me, that means you’re putting my weekends, you’re putting my evenings at risk, because maybe stuff won’t get done, you maybe putting my job at risk, because I’m taking a risk on you. And at scale, that becomes pretty scary, right? Just like when I was at Cisco, and all the GE HR people invaded and said, we’re gonna measure your success as leader by how well you move people around. We’re not done. They started moving. They started rigging the performance management systems, so people that weren’t good could look like they were good, and then passing the sort of mediocre talent around the organization and making it look like hey, I’m moving good talent around. And so I mean, I get it, it’s human nature. If you ask a salesperson, give me your best person. They’re like, why? That’s like, my, that’s my bonus. Why wouldn’t give you my bonus, you know, and in the company? Well, we got to think bigger than that, like, Yeah, really? No, because you’re gonna fire me if I don’t make my number and that person, she’s crushing it. You know, why would I do that? So, you know the truth. The truth is, both perspectives are fair. And we have to try to find, you know, what, if you say, I got to get my best salesperson up, I’m not going to want to do that. Unless I know, I’m getting someone as good or better in return, right? Until that flywheel starts moving, and trust is there. You’re not going to realize it. That’s why it’s hard. It’s hard.

Sue Bethanis 44:08
Mm hmm. Let’s talk about networking and connecting. So this is a different kind of connecting. Because I think that given that we don’t like have the watercooler like we’re finding like, you know, we used to walk around companies and go from one person to another and find new people without even trying, right. What do we need to do now in terms of networking, and we’re not in and about in coffee houses or in the companies?

Steve Cadigan 44:32
Yeah. Let me share how I got the job at LinkedIn, which is a story I think I tell in the book. I was going to a kid’s birthday party. My kids are in daycare. One of his friends at the school of the daycare was having a birthday party. And it was that what’s called Gilroy gardens. It’s a kid’s Disneyland. And as a dad, you’re thinking Oh great. Kids with sugar, screaming on the top of their lungs all afternoon, cannot wait for that moment. So I sort of reluctantly took my son to this thing. And over the course of the walking around the park, I met another dad who was there and he was applying for a job at LinkedIn. I offered to help him close his, you know, his offer with them and tried to negotiate more for him. He was grateful and came back to me a few months later and says, “Hey, we got this job. Are you interested in applying?” I’m like, “No, I’m good. I’m fine.” Electronic or he’s like, “No, man, you’re really the kind of person we want to have here” and like, okay, I reluctantly did it. a kid’s birthday party was a networking opportunity of a lifetime that opened the door. I mean, what are the odds that was happening? And so I think we have to rethink what networking really is. And some people think, Oh, I’ve got to go to those, you know, industry association meetings or you know, a night with strangers, which is so uncomfortable. But even as an extrovert, I don’t like those kinds of things. Yeah, but so I would think we all know people so what I would say is you’ve got a stale, huge stale network that you’ve not been nurturing. Reach out to those people just talk to them. How’s it going? That you haven’t you’ve got we all know tons of people we haven’t talked to in a while that something could be crossing your radar. And because you’re calling them then we Oh, hey, I was just thinking of you because you reached out to me so good. I’ll tell you a funny story. I started doing tik tok about a year ago. And I’ve got I think of like, 120,000 followers now and closing in on a million likes on my content. And half-and-half might turn into a tick tock one of these days, but I’m on Tick Tock. And within two weeks of me being on Tick tock, a colleague that I used to work with at LinkedIn reaches out to me, a LinkedIn colleague reaches out to me and says, “Hey, I saw you on tik tok. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this. Can you come in and do a seminar for my team?” I was like, really? Tick Tock is returning, you know, and they It was a paid you know, engagement. I was like, wow, from a tick tock. So, you know, there are places where, you know, again, back to this sort of passive, you have many passive people that we all know and I like to frame networking as helping people that you know, and asking for help from people that you know, start there. It’s not about adding people, strangers No, no, you’re those people will come like the other place, Sue, where I have like, a ridiculous network if I really wrote people’s names down, and I haven’t leveraged it that much is coaching in Menlo Park. Are you kidding me? I’ve coached the CFO, Twitter’s son. I’ve coached the guy that does all the digital photography for Apple and baseball. I mean, all these people they just like, or go watch your kids play sports and ask the person next to them. “Hey, who are you? What do you do?” Like what? It’s ridiculous.

Sue Bethanis 47:36
It’s like the grocery store.

Steve Cadigan 47:40
Yeah, it is. So there, there are places where it’s not forced. And I know it doesn’t feel easy, but we all know a ton of people. Now’s the time if things are a little bit slow, or you’re wanting to you know, think about your network is just activate the one that’s been dormant.

Sue Bethanis 47:56
Right, right. Yeah. And I think we need to get out I mean, like, safe to go out as long as you’re outside, you know, we don’t have to do these indoor big, you know, event things, it’s just go in the park or go to coffee outside. I mean, there’s a lot of things we can do. And we can also travel I mean, I’d said to one of my clients and you know, a couple months ago, it’s like remote does not mean we’re not traveling, you can still get on a plane, it’s still it’s pretty safe to get on a plane. You know, once you get there you got to be careful, especially where you go. But I think that we can’t just you know, stay in in too insular, we can come out a little bit. So that’s good. Any final words, my friend, thank you so much. This has been another good conversation.

Steve Cadigan 48:39
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Sue. I guess I’ll just restate something I said earlier, we have the greatest opportunity of a lifetime to rebuild the future working in a better way. Shame on us, we go back to our old ways. We have to. We’re compelled to, we have to do it. And it doesn’t mean you have to change everything. But experiment a little bit. And I think here’s the great thing about what we’re going through. And you know, this is a change zen master Sue, which is, the longer we haven’t been doing what we used to do, the less likely we’re going to go back to that. And we’re still in that new place. Right? And so the memory of how we used to do that is already changing. I have, there’s a friend of mine, she’s in a small medical practice here. Maybe they have 20 people. She went back to the office a few months ago, she had Steve, we hired a couple new people, but the culture is totally different now, it’s totally different. I go “What do you mean?” I was totally drawn in now. I’m like, now she’s got me like, “What do you mean?” And she goes,” Well, we’re all kind of the same, but everything’s different.” I go You mean the people that left, they’re not the same people who came back?” She goes, “Well, yeah, okay.” And I mean, this is these are medical professionals, obviously highly trained, very, very thoughtful people. And she’s like, “yeah, it’s not really what I want. I like that what it was,” and I go, “Well, what is it about the new one?” she’s like, “I’m not sure. It’s just it’s not what it was.” like okay, well that to me just means you need to build new patterns. But Isn’t that fascinating that even in a small 20 person we’re most 80% of the people are the same, culture is really really different.

Sue Bethanis 50:12
Right. Right. And well I think that because we’re really different too. That kind of kicked our ass what just happened.

Steve Cadigan 50:20
Yeah, and this is back to what we said in the beginning. We’re just hitting now at 18-20 months in of recognition “Okay, we’re not going to go back to that, but the grounds not firm. Business leaders, and it’s fair, we’re all “well let’s wait for things to calm down.” They’re not calming down.

Sue Bethanis 50:37
Let’s wait for the delta to go away. No, not gonna. I mean, we gotta like we have to stop waiting. We have to do it. Got to do it. So everybody, go to SteveCadigan.com. His Instagram is @stevecadigan. Book is WorkQuake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working you know, obviously find that on Amazon. All right, Steve. Again, just you know your my bud, thank you so much for being with me today and for and for being with us.

Steve Cadigan 51:11
Yeah. Thanks, Sue. Thanks for having me everybody.

MORE

In this episode of WiseTalk, Sue Bethanis hosts Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson, Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and is particularly interested in the effects of unconscious biases in the evaluation of women and minorities to find ways to mitigate those biases. She is the author of Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams, an award-winning and groundbreaking guide, outlining the transformative leadership skill of tomorrow—one that can make it possible to build truly diverse and inclusive teams which value employees’ needs to belong while being themselves.

Dr. Johnson brings bias to light with an engaging and humorous approach to advanced scientific research, which has earned her numerous accolades and invitations to present her work at meetings around the world, including the White House for a 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America on National Equal Pay Day, and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters in outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, and The Academy of Management Journal. She has extensive consulting experience and has created and delivered leadership-development training with an emphasis on evidence-based practice. In recognition of her unique research, Dr. Johnson has been awarded nearly three million dollars in external funding to study leadership and create leadership development programs aimed at increasing safety. Media outlets featuring her work include The Economist, Newsweek, Time, and CNN.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Hybrid and remote work is here to stay. Moving forward many teams are going to remain virtual, and we need to find new creative ways to promote connection and inclusivity. Stefanie offers a new term – Inclusify, which emphasizes the need to create a sense of belonging while allowing people to show up as their authentic selves. It’s time to go beyond diversity and find ways to elevate different voices and broaden our sense of work culture. As leaders, we need to create a culture of valued differences and learn to integrate those differences and perspectives. Whether on zoom or in person, emphasizing and placing value on other people’s viewpoints, voices, and differences will have a huge impact on inclusivity and connection.

Stefanie believes that being virtual may feel less connected but can provide a better ground for equality and inclusivity if used effectively. Zoom meetings have created a more equal space in which inclusive behaviors can easily be applied. A few key take-aways and effective methods for increasing inclusivity that Stefanie offers:

• Send out questions prior to a meeting so you can curate the discussion around responses. The goal is to check in with each person during the meeting, make sure everyone has a chance to contribute, and encourage people to voice disagreements. (15:47)
• Advocate for others and make sure everyone with a seat at the table has had a chance to speak and their voices are heard. This can be done by politely redirecting the conversation back to someone who was cut off or talked over, or by checking in with anyone who has yet to contribute. Whether a leader or not, these gestures model to others how to create a more inclusive environment. (20:47)
• Record virtual meetings and play them back later to monitor for inclusiveness. Review how well current inclusive strategies are working or notice who did not get to contribute and follow up with them. (17:59)

Regarding connection, Stefanie believes Covid has brought us to a point where we need to get creative and find new ways to connect. Whether it’s fostering digital activities or finding new ways to check-in, we are at a point where we can redefine the work world and move into a new era more focused on inclusivity. There is no single solution that will work for every team but opening discussions to ask questions and find ways everyone would prefer to connect is a great place to start. You can find many resources on Stefanie’s site where she has assessments, card decks, activities, and more for ways to increase inclusivity.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Diversity without inclusion is just going to lead to turnover.” (1:16)

“Inclusifying is a conscious and ongoing action to help people experience a sense of belonging, while still encouraging them to be their unique and authentic self, so they can fully show up and participate and be valued for who they are.” (5:30)

“You hire people who fit your culture, and then you reinforce that fit all the time because you want to build a tight-knit group, right?… And that’s great, except you’re missing out on a large segment of the population that you could be recruiting. And you’ve created massive blind spots on your team because everyone’s similar… Yes, you can have a strong culture, but part of that culture has to be valued differently. If you’re a leader who doesn’t value difference, that’s the thing to start focusing on.” (9:12)

RESOURCES

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Hello everyone to WiseTalk. This Mariposa’s monthly podcast. We provide perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Dr. Stefanie Johnson, thank you for being here, who is in Venezuela right now. That’s very cool. She’s an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Colorado Boulder, and it’s the Leeds School of Business that she’s at. She’s authored many articles and book chapters in both academic and applied outlets. Her first book Inclusify, the Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams, reveals the unexpected ways that well intentioned leaders undermine their teams, explains how to also recognize the myths and misperceptions that drive these behaviors, and provides practical strategies to become an inclusifier. She has presented her work at over 170 meetings around the world, including at the White House for the 2016 summit on diversity in corporate America, on the National Equal Pay Day and the 2016 Harvard Negotiation and Leadership Conference. She’s also a frequent contributor to HBR, Forbes and Bloomberg. So thanks again, so much for being here. Really appreciate it. We’ve done this for 15-16 years now. So every month so I always ask the first question, which is, why did you decide to write the book, I read your bio, that’s nice. But I want to know, like what inspired you?

Stefanie Johnson 1:16
So I study leadership, and specifically what leaders can do to create diverse workplaces. And so everything from selection practices, to mentoring, all the way up to like corporate visions, setting goals, strategy. And I have the opportunity to work with some of the best companies in the world, and probably around 2016, around that Equal Pay Day event at the White House, I was really starting to pick up energy in corporate America to invest in diversity. And so companies are like “what do we do?” And so I have lots of solutions. You can remove names from resumes, recruit this way, have diverse slate for your board searches. And many of them were doing this and then we kind of saw all this, I guess it was unexpected results of some of those companies are doing all the right things and it was taking off and they were showing great return on investment and their stock prices were going up. And other companies it was the opposite. They had increased turnover, more conflict, just wasn’t working out. And so after they get there, you have to actually continue investing in half of this equation has been around the idea of inclusion. And at the time, that wasn’t the thing. And so I started doing research on like, well, what’s differentiating and found part of the answers is diversity without inclusion is just going to lead to turnover. Or forced inclusion results in all these types of outcomes. And so to communicate this to a broad audience, I wanted to put it in paper so people could read it, pick it up, get an idea. And then I’ll tell you the real reason is I am obsessed with pop management books. I read every single one. I love them. Even, I read them as like a high school student and I don’t really read fiction, so I read a lot of nonfiction and I just love pop business books in my life dream was to write pop business books.

Sue Bethanis 3:09
Well, you must have like a billion in your office.

Stefanie Johnson 3:12
I did. I got rid of all of them when I did this move. And so other than giving books to people, which I think is a nice time to, I donated a lot, everything.

Sue Bethanis 3:21
Very cool. I mean, there’s a lot of things you could write about leadership, what prompted you in terms of the passion for diversity and inclusion? Because obviously there’s a shift now because we’re looking more at belonging and engagement. What was your, what really grabbed you about it?

Stefanie Johnson 3:37
Bad data. First I consider myself diverse. A human can’t really be diverse, but I’m an underrepresented person. I’m like a first student, my parents didn’t go to college, I’m a female, Mexican American, not your typical business professor, I’d say. So some of these topics really resonate with me, like it makes a lot of sense to me how there’s not an equal playing field and how there’s privilege and advantages and how belonging is a thing and how when you’re faking it all the time to fit in, you’re not contributing 100% of your mental energy. So I think that definitely contributed but really, it was just I’m trying to study leadership and what leaders can do to be effective and how we view leaders and there’s these gaps, always, doesn’t matter what study you do. what industry, there’s always a difference usually by gender because there’s just typically historically more women than there are any one minority or personal color group. So I’m trying to predict something, I’m trying to predict what makes effective leadership so I can better train leaders of tomorrow. And then you know, be assertive, you want to assert your vision and unless you’re a woman and then being assertive. So I’m like, Okay, what is going on here, I just need to figure this gender thing out. And again, this is I mean, this is like 2000. And so I can get back to my say leadership. And I just like haven’t really cracked that nut yet. But that’s a really fun, it’s just like, if you want to be accurate about your data representation, you have to show if there’s differences, and you can’t make a compelling case, when it’s like, everything I just told you, it’s the opposite. If you’re, if you happen to be a woman or LGBTQIA, or a person with disability, this is the theory that leadership are written for

Sue Bethanis 5:19
Right, right. Right, exactly. So I want to get into the the actual title of your book because you’ve coined it and it’s, you know, it’s not diversifying. It’s not including, so how are you defining inclusify?

Stefanie Johnson 5:30
Yeah so, it’s supposed to signal or make you feel like it’s an action, like, including people makes you feel like, well, you included me in this zoom conversation, because you sent me a link, but am I speaking? Am I able to contribute? Am I able to give my thoughts and perspectives people don’t really think about that second part as including. Including just seems like well, I let you come in, which is really more like allowing people to have a seat at the table. But yeah, that’s not really that great, honestly. So this will signify that inclusifying is a conscious and ongoing action to help people experience a sense of belonging, while still encouraging them to be their unique and authentic self, so they can fully show up and participate and be valued for who they are. The other reason is, I feel like when I talked about increasing diversity for so many years, that increased diversity, people were not that keen on that term or that idea, there’s a lot of backlash around that. When you say diversifying, I think people think about their portfolio, and then you understand why diversify makes you more robust. And in fact, the same thing, I think, with your company, if you have greater diversity, you’re going to be more resilient change, are able to attract new customers and new talent. And it’s the same it’s like if you inclusify, but it actually has a benefit, just like it would to your life.

Sue Bethanis 6:50
So I’m kind of curious about when you wrote this book, when did you start writing and when did you finish it in terms of how it kind of collided with COVID?

Stefanie Johnson 6:58
It was fully done before the first COVID case

Sue Bethanis 7:02
I’m actually curious, because I think it’s even more potent, or more important. Now, I want to talk a little bit about your original intent, like what were you thinking in terms of the main tenets of inclusify, and then I want to then apply it to what’s going on right now.

Stefanie Johnson 7:15
I think it’s more relevant today, you know, following George Floyd’s murder, and just like the increase in corporate attention to diversity issues, none of which is in the book, there’s Black Lives Matter the sort of the older or like more longitudinal movements, but it doesn’t include this most recent string of events which has really mobilize people. And it doesn’t talk about COVID at all. So I think the principles are the same. And it’s just this idea that, but what I find is that most leaders are really well intentioned, when it comes to creating a more inclusive workforce. They’re just not quite getting right. And so it’s like a very coaching mindset of like, so here’s what you’re doing well, you’re really great at building belonging on your team. And you’re maybe not recognizing that not everyone’s the same. So you need to foster this dissenting viewpoints and bring out people’s unique identities and because realistically, there’s people on your team who don’t belong, who feel like they don’t belong, you just see what it’s look like they do. And I think that’s true today, too. It just looks a little bit different. There’s leaders who are really good at highlighting people’s unique identities, but don’t always create that cohesive team feeling where you have like a root or core of belonging. This is the implementation of how that leader pivots, I think looks a little bit different in a virtual remote world?

Sue Bethanis 8:28
I think that intentionality is not a problem. I mean, I think that most people, especially now want people to feel belonging, I use the word connection a lot, the paper that I just penned was about making sure that we stay close and connected to our peace. So I don’t think anyone’s going to argue with, you know, even the commodity, I don’t think anyone’s gonna say we shouldn’t want people to be feel belonging, and we shouldn’t want people to feel connected. So given that, but how do we help people do that? Oh, to some of your advice, in terms of making sure that leaders are focusing on that in terms of their practice? Because I think that again, their mindset is yes, yes, yes. But then there’s not a time or I’m not sure how to do that, or I’m feel awkward about it, or we got to get to business and not check in or you know.

Stefanie Johnson 9:12
There’s a million right, like a laundry list of things. But some of the ones that rise to the top are things like hiring and cultural fit. So you hire people who fit your culture, and then you reinforce that fit all the time because you want to build a tight-knit group, right? If you put everyone in T-shirts, they’re wearing the same outfits, and you do the same type of cultural events that everyone likes. And that’s great, except you’re missing out on a large segment of the population that you could be recruiting. And you’ve created massive blind spots on your team because everyone’s similar and even more to the point. There’s probably someone on that team who isn’t similar but made it through somehow, and every day feels like they don’t actually belong. So I think it’s like yes, you can have a strong culture, but part of that culture has to be valued differently. If you’re a leader who’s who doesn’t value difference, that’s the thing to start focusing on, and then getting some empathy skills because you’re gonna have to learn how to integrate differences and have perspective-taking of like, well, this is what your experience is like, it’s different than mine. You don’t have to do that for one thing is you, right? You’re just like, I know what your experience is, I hired you, you have the same college education background.

Sue Bethanis 10:26
Right, I’m thinking right now about a client, great guy, well-intended, very fast-paced company had an engineering opening. And so he was going through the motions of getting the engineering people, you know, his recruiter is going out there and, and I said to him, how many women candidates you have, I wasn’t being snarky, I was like, “how’s it going?” You know, he’s like, he just sort of stopped cold like, oh, my God, he just didn’t think of it. And you know, the fact is, there’s not that many. It’s hard to find that. But it takes an extra couple steps or three or four or five steps to find women engineers, but he hired one and it all worked out. But it’s because this is one of many people that he’s hiring. But what I’m curious from you is, you know, how do we take, we can take the recruiting sample, or we can also just take check-ins like how do we get people to feel the differences like despite merely asking and check and like something like, hey, say something about you, that makes you feel very creative? Like your what’s creative about you? Or what’s different about you? Or that nobody else knows something like that? I mean, there are so many different questions we can ask. And then you’ll find out things about people that you just actually have no idea. So what are some other ideas?

Stefanie Johnson 11:28
Yeah, I have a deck of cards on my website at drstefjohnson.com under resources, there are just these various decks, you can download them they’re free. And they just have these questions, just like you just asked us. I think my favorite right now is returning to work after COVID. And there is this my favorite is because it gives you a reason why you’re doing this, but this is new territory. And the fact that I don’t know how you experienced a global pandemic, I don’t, because it’s never happened before. So you just have to ask. And so it opens the door to having a conversation about how has your work experience been amidst this pandemic? What are things from this experience that you would want to bring back to the right place in terms of changes to the work format, you know, affecting your career aspirations? Whatever it is, there are a bunch of parts.

Sue Bethanis 12:16
Yeah, lots of questions asked around that for sure. So let’s get actually get into that because I do want to do a little application. See, my view on this is that a lot of us are, not necessarily you and me, but just generally we as a people are waiting around a lot, and were waiting to go back to the office, we’re waiting for COVID to subside. You know, there’s a lot of waiting. And in the meantime, this whole time, because you know, we’re gonna go back to the office in three weeks then it wasn’t me three months, and we just keep putting off and it really, we were really, really sure about July, the people, the tech folks I know we’re like okay, July is it, July 1, you know, kids are out of school. And you know, summers here, we’re coming back. Obviously, definitely happy. I mean, now companies are pushing out to, you know, January 22. Course, it’d be flu season, and then you know, we’ll have like season two, but, you know, anyway, they just keep pushing off. But meanwhile, there’s not been a lot of skill-building necessarily with how we are doing now. Because we keep waiting for this time, we can all about the office, at least go back like two or three days a week. So I don’t know anyone that’s going back five, right? So how do we there’s two questions I have that are related. How do we help people be more skillful about being online, whether it’s on the phone or online or on zoom in terms of their inclusivity? And then also, as these are really separate questions, but really, as we’re going back when we do go back, and there’s some people that are back, what are some things that are particular about that, that we want to make sure that we’re doing to again, be good inclusifiers? I’m gonna use that a lot.

Stefanie Johnson 13:46
Yeah I love it. So I would say read Erica Dhawan’s book on digital body language that came out this year. A lot of skill building tips for just communicating online, your virtual presence, I think that’s helpful for anyone. I think people are investing at this point in becoming better communicators online, because we waited for a long time. And now like the cats out of the bag, we’re not going back so full time, you know, so we might as well get good at this. And there’s new technologies emerging, you know, definitely communication technologies. I feel like my Zoom and WebEx and Teams is like constantly updating with new accessibility options, so it transcribes what I’m saying. So people who can’t hear as well can easily read it. So I think there is an investment in that. I feel like the one thing that should stick around is when it comes to workplace decision making. We have you know, we’re having a meeting on a task. This isn’t bonding, we’re not getting coffee, but we’re trying to make decisions. I think there’s with virtual, there’s essentially always been and now always will be some people who aren’t in the room, right? Like I just was on session earlier today.

Sue Bethanis 14:58
It’s hard to have, even with a new thing, so hard to everybody in the room ever, all the time.

Stefanie Johnson 15:03
Yeah. And there’s people who are like, you know, FYI, I’ve been in Singapore for the last decade. And no one’s ever cared that I was staying here. We said, and you know, he’s on the phone going, “Excuse me. Can you hear me?” So now we know this is going to be happening. So I will follow you know, what I’ve heard for, like Sun Microsystems, and Oracle now has has always had these remote teams and globally dispersed teams. And so they have taken meetings, like, even if you and I are sitting in our office together in California, but one of our team members has to work remotely say for whatever reason, we just take the meeting separately, i’ll be in my office, you’re in your office, right?

Sue Bethanis 15:44
And everybody’s equal. Everyone has equitable situation. Yeah.

Stefanie Johnson 15:47
You got it, and you don’t have to wear masks, right? Because you’re not two people in a room. And, and there’s basically so many ways, but to me, this is more equitable than all of the things that we’ve experienced in meeting rooms, the person with the loudest voice is heard, the person who takes up the most space is the person who sits behind a table, like let’s face it, we’re six, nine little boxes on screen, right? So it’s a lot of ways it creates greater equity. And if I want to chime in, but I don’t feel like I have a voice, I can just add it in the chat. But there’s multiple lines of communication going, I think it was always better, we just didn’t know it. Right? So if you believe that so far, then it’s like, Okay, so then how can you really use this format to be effective, and I use this kind of multi step process. The experience is different. And so we want to start with sending out questions to people in advance so that they can respond and actually want them to send me their responses, I’m going to curate a discussion around their responses. And when we get into the room, I’m going to make sure I check in with each person, you know, everyone contribute we can I do popcorn, but you know, I might say, this is how I’m doing Sue, I’m gonna call on you. So you can call on Judy, Judy, you can choose let each person call on someone, and then you dive into your curated session on the topics and really focus on you know, we start with the stuff there’s a lot of agreement on like, okay, we all agreed that we should expand operations into Venezuela. So now rather than listening to 20 minutes of we have an agreement on that topic. “Oh, I agree, because this reasons” and people will continue to share. And they don’t know that everyone already agrees with them. You started out with the “Everyone agreed on this. Here’s some reasons. Now tell me why you disagree.”

Sue Bethanis 17:24
Right or is anybody on this particular topic that may have an issue with it? Just you make the assumption that people are in agreement. So then but you give people room to disagree with. Because I think that that’s if we say is everybody in agreement is it’s harder to say no. Whereas you say is ‘Does anybody have a disagreement with this?” you’re opening it up so that people can disagree if they if they want to.

Stefanie Johnson 17:48
Yeah, let’s demand it. Now. I want to hear the reason why. And it’s whether you’re making it up to be devil’s advocate, or whether you really believe that, but just didn’t get a chance.

Sue Bethanis 17:57
Yeah.

Stefanie Johnson 17:59
And then one of the things where you disagree, right, and you just save tons of time, because, right, exactly, I spent all the time vehemently agreeing. When you set the norms about we want disagreement, this is good. And then you can make decisions. And I’ll say like another thing that I love about the zoom format, and I encourage leaders to do this all the time, maybe tell your coaching clients this too. I have them tape meetings. Everyone knows you’re taping it, right? Because you tell everyone, and then go back and watch it and look at what are you doing that’s allowing people to contribute? Who’s getting spoken over, who’s, you know, raising their hand all the time? And whatever it might be, like use the features that because it’s recorded, you can go back and watch it. That’s a great feature. And then you can use the chat, the chats like another great feature to say, you know, I actually know this is a topic that soon would be great to speak to I’m not sure why you’re not speaking and I don’t want to embarrass you, but I can direct message you. Isn’t that amazing? Right? Right on or even if I’m like, I’m going to say something, I want you to back me up or back me up, if you agree. With there’s all this opportunity for covert communication to run and you can use it for evil but I’m saying using it for good.

Sue Bethanis 19:10
Exactly. Right, inclusion. Exactly. So this is great. I want to stop for a second, give people a chance to speak, speaking of. And so you’re welcome to basically go on video, which will mean that you’re raising your hand and you can speak and ask somebody a question, and we can have another, certainly have a discussion about it after this, we’re going to go into assuming that we are doing what you’re saying, which I happen to agree with as well, where we’re getting most of our viewers will be on zoom. How do we connect off of zoom when we’re either virtual or at the office? Yeah. So we’ll talk about that in a second. But um, who has a question or a comment so far? Okay. So can you please talk about how to effectively manage up to support more inclusive practices among supervisors leaders of above you on the org chart? That’s a great question.

Unknown Speaker 19:56
Yeah. I to expand on that question a little bit. We are doing at my organization, we’re doing some kind of reorganization and rethinking about how decisions get made and trying to move towards a structure where there’s not just one like executive or leadership team making all of the decisions, but having there be kind of multiple area focuses of teams that make decisions in those areas. But it is challenging for the staff who are coming into the decision making structure, I think, to encourage more inclusive practices among those who have been above them on the org chart, even though those people at the top do want to be more inclusive. It’s like nobody knows how. So It would be great if you could speak to that a little bit.

Stefanie Johnson 20:47
Absolutely. Thank you for your clarification on that. And a broader context, we’ll send them all Inclusify books, of course. We’ll immediately solve your problems. I guess I think two things one, some of it’s just role modeling. And there’s the thing that happens is, you know, become more senior in your role, more people are coming to you for answers. So you become less good at asking questions. So sometimes it’s just like needing to practice that muscle again, because people before they became that senior role, they were one of the people asking questions, right? So it’s not that they can’t do it, they just need to practice, warm it up again. So by doing that, as yourself, if you’re not one of the senior people, you’re talking about that if you’re in the room, you can role model the behaviors. And it’s like, if you see someone speaking another person or not letting them finish, you can say, you know, I really wanted to hear that person finish their thought, can you pause on your thought, and we can finish hearing them speak, because what they’re saying is really important. Or if you have you haven’t heard from some of the room, you can raise that and say, you know, we really haven’t heard from Kaylee today. And what she has to say is really important, because she’s been leading up for years. And so I think her perspectives really valuable. And then when you start doing that, what I found is it totally touches on the other people start doing it, too. If you want to go Obama White House style, you can actually form like an agreement to do this, like they call it amplification. And the Obama staffers made this pact to do that for each other to try to bring out people’s opinions and support each other. So you could do that. But even if you didn’t, it just starts to catch on. And then it’s hard for the supervisor not to do it when everyone else is kind of doing it. Okay, if that’s like too small of a, you know, behavioral nudge for you, then I think the next best thing is to form a collaboration with maybe a couple other people on your team and go to the supervisor with these very specific suggestions. Like, Hey, I have this great knowledge and training and skills around creating inclusive work environment, can I lead a team meeting? Can we three organize a different way of approaching this next meeting to get more voices on the table? And actually do it, like assert your leadership and demonstrate teaching upward teaching at the same time?

Sue Bethanis 23:07
Okay. So in your book, you talk about these great concepts we always want to stand out and to fit in? I mean, I think that those are, they can be diametrically opposed. But hopefully they’re not I think you’ve done a good job of kind of molding, those or blending those together. So can you speak to that, and how we can blend those and also a minute, and I want to then apply it to what we’re going through right now.

Stefanie Johnson 23:30
Yeah absolutely. It’s just this idea, it’s, there’s a theory of optimal distinctiveness, it is the idea that we want to be distinct. Like, this isn’t true for all animals. But it is true for humans, right? We don’t want to be the same as everyone else. We want to have our own stripes or be our unique selves. And our identities are important to us.

Sue Bethanis 23:51
Yeah, brains are saying we want to stand out. Yeah.

Stefanie Johnson 23:54
Exactly. So you want to be distinct, but only to an optimal level. Because you don’t want to stand out so much that you’re not accepted into the pack, because as much as you want to stand out, like we really want to be accepted. That need to belonging is like a basic human need. We are a social animal, we want to be part of the group. So it’s a tough, it seems like a tough balance, and you want to do both. But on the flip side, it’s actually really natural, if you can just start from the place of valuing these distinct people, and the fact that people are bringing different skills and rather than falling into the trap of saying, you know, we want clones, everyone to be the same. Recognizing that everyone’s the same, we’re probably missing out on a lot of information. Instead, take the perspective of like, we’re trying to build the best team, like if you’re trying to build a sports team, I’m going to use a sports analogy, a fairly good football team. You don’t bring on all quarterbacks, right? There’s different roles that need to be filled in different attributes that people need to have. And so when you’re putting together the best team, it’s really not about figuring out who’s the best person for the job and then replicating them 5 times is about figuring out what person is going to add the most to our current makeup of our team.

Sue Bethanis 25:06
Right? Well, and if you also extend that even further is not even us positions, but you awaked a pre Madonna, like there’s sports teams, supposedly basketball, there’s typically a pre Madonna, that stands out, okay? And it’s okay to have a few of them. You have more than a couple, then it’s a problem. And if you have also a team that has pretty much people that are like, if you take the Giants, for example, people who have a team, it’s it’s very, very even. Like, there’s not like the obvious job, the one that’s getting paid a ton, you know, then you have even more of a situation where fitting in is is more important, and is part of the main reason why they’ve been so successful. But there is a balance, because you can’t be you can’t have too much, you have to have some ego, right? Some, some distinction, right? How do you suggest that people strike this balance? How do you do that on zoom? And then how you do that off of zoom? So like, there’s ways to connect, and to do these things to stand out and to fit in? So the connecting is more of the fitting in, but the being distinct is more of the standing out? How do you do these things? On zoom? And then how do you do these things off?

Stefanie Johnson 26:19
Yeah, so in in zoom world, you know, I think it is about really valuing the different perspectives that people bring. And so that is like trying to create dissension trying to ask, demand, I want a different perspective right now, and creating a psychologically safe environment where people can say an idea, maybe off the wall or not your typical idea, but it’s valued. And people who humiliate people or punish them for their idea, then you’re never going to get a creative idea again. So making sure that it’s when I say you value it, you really value it , what you’re trying to get the ideas out there, and then you’re thankful for people sharing, even if you don’t go with that idea. Like maybe it changes the way you thought about something. Or maybe it comes back in later. And so valuing that, and maybe this isn’t what you mean. But the other off zoom, maybe the thing that comes to mind for me is that there’s still a need for like the human connection, as you mentioned earlier, and so we need to still be finding ways to bond, maybe it’s, it really can’t be face to face, I’ve seen people doing book clubs, like anti racist book clubs. So it has the value of difference woven into the fact that you’re about to take a shared experience. And you can do, it doesn’t have to be an anti racist book club. It could be, you know, you watch movies, or reading romance novels or whatever, whatever. Maybe not romance novels, but whatever you want to build connection with your team members, a lot of organizations before COVID, were investing in cultural events, you know, there’s ways to do that. Outside of COVID, to like, you can have groups each week share something about themselves, or individuals, things that you don’t know about them. So you can learn about people. It’s like super fascinating. We love to learn about humans. And then you’re starting to make people feel connected for their difference. Isn’t that like, that’s the magic?

Sue Bethanis 28:13
Yes, they’re embracing difference as something interesting and curious. Yeah. So let’s talk about what you just said. I think I think it’s a really important point, I have an example of a client who’s in DC, her team currently has, but she’s always had a remote team. So COVID has not made that much of difference. But she also has people in DC as well. So she was noticing that her, she went to a new team, this is a huge company. So she went to a new team, she was noticing that nobody is in DC. So she was gonna actually hire her next couple hires, we’re gonna be in DC, because she was like, you know what, we can meet outside and we can have park walk or a Starbucks gathering or whatever. So I think I’d rather just to be able to do that. But yeah, so I was really much encouraging her to do that. If Zoom is all you have then they’re are ways to linger and they’re are ways to connect that aren’t work that I think that beyond the let’s have a party on zoom or let’s have a game night or something like that. I’m just talking about having a walk and actually calling somebody on the phone and not on zoom. So you’re connecting with them in slack or on phone or whatever. Or you’re doing that after that right after the meeting or whatever. So I think that there’s those things but I also think that there’s things we can do that are creative that allow us to be together. I mean, we don’t we could still be outside and be safe. So what is your what’s your thinking? Thinking about that?

Stefanie Johnson 29:37
Yeah I mean, I love your idea that I’ve been sitting outside, I had a class meet we all got picnic blankets, and so we were still distanced because your picnic blankets big and had lunch together. We used our phones to communicate and post lil videos on, I think it’s Instagram, just like I didn’t even have an Instagram at this point. Just to connect, like even though you’re not this close to someone like you can still feel really connected because you’re having a shared experience. I think it’s just like what you said you gotta get it, we’re gonna need to be creative because I think this is gonna last for a while and in some ways, it’s, you know, maybe it’s for the better when it comes to equity because there’s always been people off at social events together where others aren’t involved. You know, it’s like the bad end is like strip clubs. And like, I’m not making this up. Like this is a thing that happens in corporate America, the golf course, it’s like playing a game of pickup basketball, those were not inclusive events. Right?

Sue Bethanis 30:46
They can be, but not the strip club. But I mean, the can be in golf and they can be, you can go to the public parks.

Stefanie Johnson 30:54
Yes, maybe it’s not, if that’s all you do, but it’s not inclusive. So I think in some ways, this has given us a good opportunity to be creative about new ways to build connection. And so I like the book club, you can stream Netflix together, like have it the exact same time. Even though you’re a part in being creative about finding ways to do things, virtually, I think if you’ve always keep that lens of equity and inclusion, and keep it afloat, who’s showing up and who’s not, these people never show up for our seven o’clock pm meeting, maybe there’s a reason for that, you know, like, maybe that’s really late, or maybe they have their parents and they have young children they’re putting to bed at seven o’clock. So just like being mindful of those things. Because it’s like, I felt like when the when the workplace is built, you know, in the industrial revolution, it was built for a very specific demographic, it wasn’t built to be inclusive, right. And the vast majority of the workforce were men, and they had stay at home partners. And it wasn’t designed to be a place where anyone could be equally successful. So seriously we get to rebuild it. Because it’s gone.

Sue Bethanis 32:02
No I agree. I mean, I think that we’re in this for a while and we can refresh it. I mean, we don’t have to do what we were doing. Like we can make this completely different.

Stefanie Johnson 32:09
It can be better and it can be a workplace that really works for everyone. And I think that includes things like the social events like maybe it’s fewer happy hours and more outdoor coffee hours and walks. I live in Boulder Colorado, so outdoor walks are like, you know, a daily main stay that people are always doing this. Thats not true everywhere.

Sue Bethanis 32:28
Well its true here its true there. I mean, obviously the dead of winter Chicago and Minnesota can’t do that. You know, yeah. It’s a little maybe more creative about, I think that I was talking to somebody and there’s a guy, but the be meeting in the garage, you know, was getting still too cold. So the garage door open, you’re outside, but it was still too cold. So yeah, I think you have to get really creative and if there’s some things you can share from your, you said that you’ve got some cards online, got some things online that you might be able to share, you’ve got an Inclusify leadership matrix, maybe you can share that too.

Stefanie Johnson 33:09
Yeah, for sure. So all of that is the matrix is on Inclusifier.com And that the assessments of where your kind of leadership strengths are and how do you become more inclusive, like capitalize on your strengths, but pivot on things that are areas opportunity for you. And then there’s just lots of resources, inclusive hiring guide, how to make workplaces work for parents, conferences that are more inclusive, I mean, there’s just a lot, a lot of different resources that people can use. And, but the best thing I would say to do is actually to create a group, a task force, or whatever it is to start solving these ideas for yourself, because just doing that is building connection. And like, I don’t know, the best way to come up with social events for your group, because I don’t really know you, but you know you, and you’re going to have the most creative ideas because you have all these different perspectives sitting there, and they’re going to be ideas that work for you.

Sue Bethanis 34:05
Well, I think that not trying to be, as a leader not trying to be, you know, the, the end all you can ask your team. No, that’s to say, okay, so that they want to get together, you know, next time, next Friday and for an hour and what are some ideas about what we could do, right?

Stefanie Johnson 34:24
Or even maybe so we have eight people on our team. We’re going to do something each biweekly or something every two weeks, each week. Someone different gets to play. Yeah. That’s a great idea. It just was created and that is when ideas that people would come up with.

Sue Bethanis 34:43
Yeah I’ve got a group that I started two groups, I started during COVID and one of them is a coaching group. So we always have an article, so we always have some content that we read each time. And then another group that I have I started was with my best friends, and we started every Monday and so it started out me having a question. You know, it could be anything like, ‘what’s the silver lining of COVID?’ And ‘what are you doing to exercise?’ and you know, those kinds of questions. And now we’re I mean, every other week, and now everybody comes with a question like, in other words, you have your night, and you come with a question. And so everyone’s got to facilitate over and over, you know, and it’s been great because people come up with the darndest questions. And you know, really interesting questions around like this, where do you want to go? The place you wanted to always go to? You never been able to. And earlier I did, would you rather and that was fun, because it was a series of questions. But the last question I’m gonna leave you guys with which is would you rather end hatred or hunger? Yeah. tough one, huh? But, but there’s no right answer. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that I think supported, like getting creative about just curiosity, like, because we found out a lot about each other when we ask that kind of question. Hugely.

Stefanie Johnson 35:58
Yeah these aren’t like yes or no question, though. They’re getting people to open up and talk and that’s building that empathy and connection. Like, there’s certain things that you get from a face to face. It’s like people’s, I don’t know what it is, their aura, just like the way they show their energy. So you don’t get that on zoom. But you so you have to be intentional about going deep.

Sue Bethanis 36:22
Yeah. Because you’re not necessarily it’s not going to be offered. You know, you have to you have to go the extra. It’s all this takes extra energy. And I think that’s the key.

Stefanie Johnson 36:34
I think you felt so energized after that conversation. So it took energy, but I bet afterwards, you’re like dang.

Sue Bethanis 36:41
Yeah, well, it’s so much. I mean, so yeah, it’s like every time is different, right? So it makes it interesting. But yeah, it’s Well, yes, kind of and that will actually you know what, interestingly enough, I do feel energy. And then when I feel sad, I kind of feel sad sometimes afterwards, because I wanted to keep going. Yeah, this little sense of sadness. Yeah. So that’s, that’s also that’s also they’re

Stefanie Johnson 36:59
That’s what keeps you coming back for more.

Sue Bethanis 37:00
Yeah, yeah. Fortunately, now we’re all you know, now we’re able to see each other more, so it’s easier. But that was the beginning. It’s like it felt like we’re in a dungeon, right? Like, ugh, cant see each other.

Stefanie Johnson 37:11
Yes, my home base, my home office, became the basement. Because it was quiet. It’s like yes, far enough away from the kids if they weren’t on every phone call, just like in the background. And I really did feel like I was sent to the dungeon for a year and three months. Yeah, exactly. We’re coming up.

Sue Bethanis 37:31
Yeah, we’re, it’s certainly better now. And you feel but we still have a little bit more to go here. So thank you so much for connecting. And just, you know, just having a wonderful conversation, I’m just going to talk a little bit about your book again here. So you can go to Stephanie’s websites, www.drstefjohnson.com And you can also go to Inclusifybook.com on Instagram, and Twitter is Dr. Stef Johnson. And then, of course, on LinkedIn as well. So again, the book is Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams. And you can get that, of course, on Amazon and other places. So I just want to really, again, appreciate your candor and your energy, I do appreciate it a lot. And there’s a lot of good ideas. A lot more good ideas on the website, as well. So when I encourage everybody to do that, and next month, on September 28, at 12pm Pacific, we’ve got my my brother, he’s my, my consulting brother, he’s the guy who, we commiserate a lot. Steve Cadigan he’s the author of a new book called WorkQuake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 To Create a Better Model of Working, he was able to pivot and actually write the book during COVID. And it’s about the future of work. And I just want to encourage everybody to come on and listen to what Steve has to say. And if anything else, it’ll be funny because he and I are, as I said, brother and sisters. We have fun together. So again, Stephanie, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

Stefanie Johnson 39:12
Thank you for energizing conversation on this kind of mute day and just for your kind introduction and your great questions. And for those who showed up and those who watch Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 39:23
Thanks everybody for being here. Appreciate it.

MORE

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Carole Robin, Ph.D., leadership expert, former award-winning Stanford Business School professor, and co-author of Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. Carole is the Co-Founder and Head of Programs of Leaders in Tech, a nonprofit which brings two decades of lessons to Silicon Valley startups. She was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where she helped to further develop the Interpersonal Dynamics Course (a.k.a. the Touchy-Feely class) including co-developing the Executive version. She also became the Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program. She was known as the “Queen of Touchy Feely” and received the MBA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Silver Apple award for contributions to alumni programming.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

The pandemic has forced us to renavigate what it means to connect. Carole brings her many years of expertise in building connection and functional relationships to this conversation on what it means to connect in an authentic way. Carole explains that by looking at relationships on a continuum, we can easily see what stage we are at regarding another person and take steps to build a better connection or an exceptional relationship. These steps are known in her book as the six core hallmarks:

1. You can be more fully yourself and so can the other person.
2. You are both willing to be vulnerable.
3. You trust that self-disclosures won’t be used against you.
4. You can be honest with each other.
5. You deal with conflict productively.
6. You’re both committed to each other’s growth and development.

Looking at these stages in workplace relationships, we can begin to see the need for more open, honest, and authentic communication. These are skills that need to be developed and reciprocated in order to create meaningful work. Whether remote, hybrid, or back in the office, we all need to find new ways of connection post-pandemic.

Some highlights and key takeaways from this talk include:

• A great practice Carole offers called “if you really knew me” that can be used at the beginning of meetings to get honest insights into what’s going on in everyone’s life. This practice encourages everyone to share how they are feeling in that moment and to be vulnerable and honest. (12:48)
• To become more interpersonally competent, practice disclosing 15% outside of your comfort zone. Particularly when it comes to disclosing how you feel or feedback, disclosing just a bit more than normal allows you to do so without too much anxiety and will probably be received better. (20:03)
• Creating space for people to give feedback is essential. It’s important to communicate what’s working and what’s not working. Leaders especially need to be able to receive honest feedback well and exemplify that to others. (28:27)
• Always remain curious about others in order to gain a better understanding of those around you. Rather than assuming or writing people off, take a moment to remove judgment and ask yourself why someone might be behaving or communicating a certain way, and find ways to talk openly about it. (36:44)

It’s simple tools like these that can be implemented to establish cultures of openness and connectedness. By taking steps as a leader to demonstrate vulnerability, authenticity, and honesty those around you will feel comfortable doing the same. Start with 15% as Carole mentioned, step 15% outside of your comfort zone toward creating more exceptional relationships and a more connected workplace.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Relationships exist on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is either contact and no connection, or dysfunction. At the other end of the continuum is what we came to call exceptional…but the continuum is important. Because along the way, you reach functional, robust, strong, satisfying, without necessarily having to get all the way to exceptional.” (6:04)

“People do business with people. They don’t do business with ideas or machines or products or strategies or plans. They do business with people. So unless you pay attention to the people part, I wouldn’t bet that that’s going to be the key to success.” (25:21)

“One of the most important things a leader can do is model being a good receiver. Because if you don’t model being a good receiver, people won’t tell you the truth. And then you get to find out about what actually happened way down the road when it’s a lot harder to fix.” (34:23)

“Remain as curious as you possibly can. Because never has it been more important for people to understand that what is going on for them may or may not be what is going on for someone else….Curiosity is impossible unless you suspend judgment. You don’t have to suspend judgment forever, but you’re gonna have to suspend judgment long enough to actually be curious and find out what’s going on for someone.” (36:44)

RESOURCES

Carole Robin, Ph.D.:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk today we’re excited to welcome Carole Robin, co-founder, and head of programs of Leaders in Tech, a nonprofit which brings two decades of lessons to Silicon Valley startups. Carole was the Dorothy J King lecturer and leadership at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where she helped to further develop the interpersonal dynamics course, which is the touchy-feely course in case anybody doesn’t know, including co-developing the executive version. Her newest book, co-authored with David Bradford is called Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues. So thank you for being with us. It’s a pleasure. We had David on before. So this is a treat to have you. Alright, Carole. So I want to talk about your book, I want to talk about touchy-feely, before we do any of that I want to know like, kind of what brought you to this book.

Carole Robin 0:41
So I’ve had a lot of different careers. I started in sales and marketing. I was in consulting; I was in industrial automation. And I’ve had my nonprofit era, what I call my nonprofit era. My Stanford gig was the longest I’ve been at anything that I’ve done, I was there for 17 years. And how did I end up co-authoring this book? We have to start with how did I end up at Stanford because I would have never co-authored this book. If I hadn’t ended up at Stanford, frankly, I ended up at Stanford, kind of on a lark. I had gone back to get a Ph.D., when I decided that I wanted to leave sales and marketing, and get into organization development, consulting, and coaching. And I thought, you know, I kind of want to know what I’m doing on. I’m affecting people’s lives. So maybe I should get a little more education. I was halfway through a master’s in chemistry when I realized I didn’t want to be a chemist. So that’s as far as I’d gotten. However, I had gotten some of the basic business stuff because I was at Northwestern at the time, they were very magnanimous. And let me take some business courses. So I knew accounting and basic accounting, finance, little marketing. Anyway, I decided I didn’t want an MBA, I wanted to go back and get a Ph.D. and I ended up getting a Ph.D. in human and organization systems. And in that process, one of the gentlemen who was on my dissertation committee was actually very close with David Bradford, my co-author. And Charlie, his name was Charlie Seashore. And he said to me, you know, Carole, you should go meet David Bradford over at Stanford because they teach this course. And it was very oversubscribed at the time, they were teaching three sections of 36 students. And I joined them when they had gotten to four. And by the time I left, we were teaching 12 sections of 31. So it was on the rise. And at the time, I was a partner and principal at a consulting firm, and I was traveling all over the world. So it wasn’t really going to be all that practical for me to suddenly go teach all the time. But I thought, well, a quarter a year, I can be off the road. And so you know, and I remember vividly walking down the hall at Stanford at the business school and looking at all the names on the doors and thinking, wow, I wonder what it would be like to have my name on one of those doors.’ Never in a million years imagining someday I would not have a name become known as the queen of touchy-feely, you know, become the director of the leadership Fellows Program. I mean, it was just a lark really. And so then what happened is David was like, yeah, you’d be perfect. So I went to work teaching one quarter a year because that was the only bandwidth I had. And then a number of years later, maybe three years later the school came to me and said, ‘Would you consider a full-time appointment? Because there’s a whole lot we’d like you to do here.’ To get off the road for a bunch of personal reasons I took a leave from my consulting firm and said, ‘Yeah, okay, sure, I’ll, you know, I’ll be full time for a couple of years,’ then I completely fell in love with my students, decided this is what I was put on the planet to do, let my partners buy me out from my consulting firm, settled into my Stanford full time. And then and frankly, to this day, you know, I absolutely adore my students, and I adored what I taught. And by 2017, let me just say that no matter how much I love the students and what I taught, the elite academic institution, the environment was no longer for me. It was too big a cost to pay for me to keep doing it. And when I left, I, you know, I just chose I had earned retirement. I was not ready to retire, but I’d earned it. And so I chose to retire. And when I did, my biggest fear was, wow, I’m not done. And the thing that Stanford did give me that I will always be grateful for is an amazing cohort of students every year, who really wanted to learn this and soak this up and then go change the world with what they learn. And that was the hardest thing for me to leave. So that’s when I started Leaders in Tech, which we can come back to and that’s turned out to be actually a real blast.

Sue Bethanis 5:00
All right, let’s go back to the book. So certainly, touchy-feely had something to do with the book.

Carole Robin 5:06
Oh, yeah. In early 2017, an editor from Penguin Randomhouse, came to us and said, so let’s see, you have this class that 1000s of students for decades have said was worth the whole price of admission and has not only changed their life at the time, but continues to change their life. Why is there no book? And David and I said, because you can’t really learn this stuff in a book, you actually have to engage with other people to become more competent, you can’t read about it. And they said, so you’re okay with the only people being armed with these skills and competencies being those that are privileged enough and lucky enough to get into the Stanford Graduate School of Business? Yeah, that’s when David and I looked at each other and said, I guess we’re just going to have to find a way to write a book. And that’s how the book came to be. It took us four years

Sue Bethanis 5:58
So tell us about the premise of the book. And in that way, you could probably tell us the premise of the course as well.

Carole Robin 6:04
Yeah, the premise of the course, is that interpersonal competence is a determinant of both professional and personal success. Right? From a business standpoint, people do business with people. And that’s why it’s such a popular course at the business school. And of course, why is it a determinant of personal success? Probably ops. So the premise of the book is to take the lessons learned by the students in touchy-feely, they call it affectionately touchy-feely, the course is actually called interpersonal dynamics. Yeah, I always thought it should have been called connecting across differences, by the way, because it’s really easy to connect with people that are just like you, right? And bring those lessons too, as our publisher wanted, the world. Now, one of the things that we realized when we sat down to read the book was, we were thinking about, like, ‘what happens to the students? Like, what do they learn? What is their takeaway, and how do they get there?’ And that’s why it took us so long to actually and then by the way, how do we, how do we have a reader have an experience that’s, in some ways, that does justice to the work really, because it’s not a book, you’re going to pick up the airport in New York, read on your way to San Francisco, and then put in your shelf and say, ‘Oh, that was interesting.’ We weren’t going to write three keys to better relationships. It’s just a whole lot more complicated than that. We landed, as the title implies, on what does it take to build exceptional relationships? And there are six core hallmarks, which we’ll come back to in a moment. But more central is that relationships exist on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is either contact and no connection, or dysfunction. At the other end of the continuum is what we came to call exceptional, which I’ll come back and describe in a moment, but the continuum is important. Because along the way, you reach functional, robust, strong, satisfying, without necessarily having to get all the way to exceptional, we’re not trying to say that you should try to turn every relationship in your life into exceptional because that would be first of all, impossible. Second of all, it’s too hard.

Sue Bethanis 8:21
So let’s go through the six real quick, I don’t want to spend our whole time on it. But like, because what I want to do is I want to talk about the book and those six hallmarks. And then what I want to do is apply it to this situation that we ‘re all in right now. Because we’re thick in a very unique situation, the pandemic, we all kind of similar boat, but now we’re gonna all be in all over the place.

Carole Robin 8:42
Absolutely. So these six hallmarks also exist on this continuum, what happens when you get to exceptional is not only are they all present, but they’re all present to a great depth. So think of these six as the way to move along the continuum, right? The first one is you can be more fully yourself. And so can the other person, neither one of you is into spinning your image, or at least you don’t believe that that’s the way to create more relationships. The second one is related to the first which is that you’re both willing to be vulnerable. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to tell you everything. And that’s why we talk a lot about incremental vulnerability and testing standing outside your comfort zone a little bit at a time, right. The third one is that you trust that self-disclosures won’t be used against you. And as you can see, those first three are iterative, right, a little bit of risk and telling you a little bit about me, then maybe you reciprocate. Tell me a little bit about you, then we both been a little vulnerable, then we both trust each other a little more. That’s how trust gets built. The fourth one is you can be honest with each other. Another way of putting that is you believe that by telling each other the truth, you create stronger relationships. That’s actually a belief and a mental model. Hmm, that one includes your willingness to give and receive feedback, and name what we call pinches, which is something that’s not a huge catastrophe, but a little annoying. The fifth one is you deal with conflict productively, every relationship has conflict, if it’s going to do these other things that I just talked about if you’re actually going to tell each other the truth, and you’re going to, you know, be honest with each other, you’re going to have some conflict, you can either see conflict as something to avoid, sweep under the rug, or something that will weaken a relationship. Or you can see it as something that can actually strengthen a relationship. And the sixth one is that you’re both committed to each other’s growth and development. And when you have all six of those, you’ve already moved off of the end, that’s contact no connection, and dysfunctional, and we’ve moved in towards exceptional and again, we believe every relationship can at least get to functional and robust. If you adhere to this.

Sue Bethanis 11:06
I want to apply this to what we’re going through right now. I mean, I just wrote a paper and I think you’ve got that. And I, the paper that I wrote has to do with we have a chance to refresh our conversations refresh our relationships, refresh, because we went out 18 months ago, without any warning, pretty much.

Carole Robin 11:26
and no training. Nobody, nobody had already told us that we might need some training.

Sue Bethanis 11:32
No training. And we went out. But the point I’m making is that in tech, I’m not talking about frontline workers. I’m talking about tech right now. We all went out in the same unless you’re in biotech, and at the lab, I’m talking about we all went out, we all went, we all went home, and we were all on the same boat. But now it’s all over the map. And, as you say, fragmented, it’s right. Yeah. And, and chaotic. And it already is starting to be, but it’s going to even be more so like I think a lot of companies are doing this September thing because kids go back to school. And so using September as the now we’re going to be hybrid, you know, before we’re working from anywhere, now, we’re going to definitely go into hybrid as they want you to come out the office. So I think that it’s going to potentially fracture, you know, we get two choices here, we can potentially fracture relationships even more because it’s even more chaotic. It’s a perfect storm for dropping the ball, essentially. But it can also be a chance for us to freshen or to refresh or to start afresh. Whenever a metaphor works, these relationships, I want to spend a little time on that I want to open it up to the group. Because I think these ideas here I think are you know even more important now, of course, you wrote the book right in the middle of the pandemic right before.

Carole Robin 12:38
We started it pre-pandemic

Sue Bethanis 12:41
So talk a little a bit, use a couple of them, or however you want to do that to sort of applying it to like how you see things now.

Carole Robin 12:48
first, let me say that one of the things that happened during the pandemic is that, especially in business, is the tasks got more and more foregrounded, while relationships became more and more backgrounded. And work still had to get done. People were more and more exhausted by Zoom, they had less and less relationship stuff happening. And we human beings adapt. And so now that’s the new normal. We used to actually ask each other how we were doing and what we did over the weekend and how your son was then how did that your daughter’s softball game turn out? And you know, so? Right. So that’s the first thing that happened that we have to both be aware of, and proactive about doing something? Yeah. The second thing that I’ll say is that- and its related is that the things that we talk about, which are tools and ways to move relationships along this continuum, and reach some of these hallmarks are something you have to double down on. Now, you have to do it even more. And by the way, lots of doing it even before the pandemic, but now they really have to do it. Right. So I’ll give you an example. Yeah, one of our leaders in tech fellows, we have a number of different offerings. One of them is a fellowship year-long fellowship for CEO founders, one of them after he went through our year-long program. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And one of the things that he of course, he’d learned about the power of disclosure, the power of vulnerability, he was a convert and the pandemic began. And one of the things that we do in Leaders in Tech is when we start a session, we have each person go around and essentially say if you really knew me right now, and that has to include three feeling words because you know, they call it touchy-feely because of the emphasis on the feely. Yeah, a different F word. Because if you’re really going to know me, I’m going to be willing to be known. It’s not about my deepest, darkest secrets. It’s about how am I feeling right here right now. So if I was gonna model that, I’d say if you really knew me right now you would know that I’m excited to be on this podcast with you, a little bit tired because I’ve lost track of how many of these I’ve done, somewhat disappointed and disillusioned that the message of the book is taking so long to get out there into the world, very disappointed in our publisher and the job that they did, sorry, and really thrilled that I have a new five-month-old grandson, because if you really knew me, you would know that everyone in my life is served by that because I have two things I really care about to spread my obsessive compulsiveness across. Alright, so that took maybe 30 seconds, right? I was a little vulnerable, you just got to know me a little bit better. And if we were having a conversation in an exchange that would be going farther than I suspect, you might be willing to reciprocate? And say, you know, so what would I know about you? So if I really knew you, you can answer that. But I’ll finish the story, which is that this wonderful fellow started a norm where he brings his team of eight C Suite together every other week. And they start their meetings with if you really knew me right now, and they all have their vocabulary of feelings, which by the way, is in the appendix of the book, in which every student who takes the class has as part of their syllabus, and they actually and they’ve laminated theirs, and they actually have to pull their vocabulary out. Yeah, my three feelings.

Sue Bethanis 16:30
Well, I just again, except this sounds like a simple thing. I mean, that’s the first thing that I said in my article is that to understand one another, and to start afresh, do check-ins, I mean, it was the first thing I said, and it sounds so simple. What you just said was so simple, but it grounds us, it disarms us yeah, the article is about taking our armor off. It’s like we need to disarm ourselves and get vulnerable. Because immediately if we see what’s going on for us, especially right now, not in the moment, then it’s too hard to be an asshole actually. It really is.

Carole Robin 17:03
And I guess I’d say the other thing is, if I am being an asshole, then you might have a little bit of context as to why I’m being. And you might want a little more of a break. Yeah, I and I do think that there are check-ins and there are check-ins. And so the way in which you structure and intentionally and deliberately ask for a check-in that actually has people have to take a bit of the armor off matters. Yeah. If you let me know that I we were at a wonderful barbecue over the weekend. And it was really fun. Did you really get to know me, but its a check-in.

Sue Bethanis 17:37
And I mean, I think that that check-in is a wonderful one. Because it’s something you can just you can do every time and it’s gonna be different. Exactly. And I said the same things like saying, how’s everybody doing? Or how you doing? is not going to do the trick. It’s like, fine. Fine, I’m ready. I’m ready to go. Yeah. And I had a series of questions. And I mean, I think it’s interesting to, to pose different kinds of questions, but I think the idea I love the idea of like, if you want to know me, now, you’ll know that I was scrambling to get on this call, because I was trying to ensure that my son was out the door. And he was knocking on the door like as in, like at the hour and, you know, so he’s a little bit frazzling. And so for me to be able to like just, you know, just get here. Despite that, you’ll know that I’m what I’m dealing with. You’ll know me.

Carole Robin 18:29
Yeah. And I’ll know that you were feeling frazzled. And you know, how are you feeling right now?

Sue Bethanis 18:35
I’m great. Because I knew once I got into this because I love this, it’s one of my favorite things to do that I would be fine. And what’s the feeling word? Oh, yes. I’m feeling relieved. And I’m feeling happy. For sure. Yeah. Great. Thanks. So now I know you even better even more. Okay, awesome. Yeah. So Michael?

Michael 18:56
Oh, hi. Yeah. And I put the same question, thank you so much. I’m so enjoying the meeting today. I’m coaching a client who works in a very, I just call it a tough industry, you know, a whole business of very big numbers. And I’ll say real estate business, but very large public real estate company and the executives there, she’s having a lot of trouble. And one of the things that I know happens to her is that there are times in her old company, she’s new in this company, she would have been able to share sort of feelings that one might call vulnerable or feelings that are quote-unquote, positive. And, for lack of a way to put it, Carole, they don’t know how to deal with that. So she’ll do stuff in front of them. And she’s had me observe their meetings. And I can see these, it is mostly fellas, but I can see these guys going like they don’t know how to deal with it. It freaks them out. And they lose confidence in her and it’s very unfair and it creates kind of a bad cycle. And I’m kind of not blaming anybody in the system. But I want to hear your thoughts about that?

Carole Robin 20:03
Well, I have a couple. The first is that in the book, we talk about something called the 15% rule. And the 15% rule essentially says, We all have our comfort zone where we don’t think twice about what we say, they imagine three concentric circles, the middle circle, then there’s a circle on the outside, which is the danger zone in a million years, I’d never say that. And then there’s the circle in the middle, which is the learning zone. Okay, in order to become more interpersonally competent, we actually have to step outside our comfort zone. My students used to say, but Carole, the minute I’m outside my comfort zone, how do I know I’m not in my danger zone? How do I know I’m in the learning in that middle or the other person’s Danger Zone, or the other person’s Exactly. And so we used to say, think 15%, outside your comfort zone, just a little bit. And if you, if you disclose 15%, outside your comfort zone, you’re unlikely to freak yourself out, or the other person quite as much. So the first place I go to is one of curiosity, about what is the impact of her disclosures on them? And her becoming curious about that, and see if she can learn more about what’s happening for them. At the same time, their response is having an impact on her. So to the extent that their response is impacting her in a way, that’s not good for all of them, aren’t they better off knowing than not knowing. So now we’re into the role of feedback and creating a stronger relationship and moving along the continuum if I’m doing something that’s distancing you putting you off? Making you less likely to want to spend time with me? And you don’t tell me? What are you going to do? or What am I going to do? I keep doing it. And the more I do it, the more it’s going to put you off? There’s something about somebody breaking a cycle, perhaps that they’re in.

Michael 22:06
Thank you for that. Yeah, that’s most of what we’re trying, I think part of what’s happened is, what she thought was within the 15% wasn’t, well, it was in hers but not theirs. That’s right. And kind of like Sue was saying their comfort zone. And she’s now been got a bit of a brand, right. And so she’s in a spot where now what might have been fit within this more allowable circle. So anyway, that’s right in. And clearly, the goal is to get to a place where she and them and everybody can either share or talk about sharing and work it out. And so that’s where we’re heading. But I just appreciate your thoughts about that. I think what happened to her is what used to be 15% feels like close to zero for her. And she has to wonder, can she live in that environment? And how tough is that? and How bad is it? And yeah.

Carole Robin 22:58
And by the way, if I was her boss, and I really valued her, I’d at least want to know that that’s what’s happening for her. And the other thing that I’ll add is that there is a great deal of grit and courage and strength in having her say, maybe not to all of them, maybe start with one, maybe start with the one that’s more likely to be the most receptive or her boss. Yeah, just say, Hey, you know, I’m struggling here. And I’m afraid that I’ve been branded because we don’t know if she’s been branded or not branded is an attribution of something they’ve done, which we don’t know whether they’ve done or not,

Michael 23:40
well, actually, in this case, they do, they use their values for feedback. And without getting into too many of the details, one of the values that they gave her some feedback, she was, you know, hurt and felt this was unfair, but like you say, what did you say they’re complicated? So? Yes, yeah.

Carole Robin 23:59
But the bottom line is, I would encourage her to be careful with what she says so that she sticks with her reality, which is when I do this, and you respond this way, that makes me feel why. And, you know, when you interrupt me three times in a meeting, I feel irritated. And the more irritated I get, the less likely I am to offer up my opinion. But you started the meeting by saying you want to hear from everybody. So I think you should know that you’re likely to hear less from me if you continue to interrupt. That’s kind of the way to provide feedback to them about the impact of their behavior on her as opposed to you’re just trying to dominate, which is what we follow.

Sue Bethanis 24:42
Mike, thanks for plunging ahead and being vulnerable with the question. Okay. I want to talk about this 15% comfort, I use the same comfort, learning and dangerous, I love it. I love it a lot. I use it when I sell coaching when you’re trying to pick a coach like you know, pick somebody that’s your hairdresser. You can pick somebody you feel comfortable with, but at the same time won’t push it right, challenge and support, you need it. You won’t grow and develop. That’s right. And so that’s the way that a manager and an employee should look at their managers. Well, the same idea besides this using that mental model, like what are some ways that managers can use that model in this time that we’re in right now?

Carole Robin 25:21
Well, we’re back to – I’m going to keep coming back to this fundamental principle, which is that which remains unspoken, becomes unspeakable. And you can’t just go from zero to 100 in one fell swoop. So what we’re best served by right now, I think what we’re always best served by but especially right now, is what we just talked about, which is naming the things that are working and that isn’t working. ‘Wow, you’re slowing down enough to give us an opportunity to kind of check-in and see how we’re all feeling. I really appreciated that because I had no idea that you know, John was struggling with x.’ So it does not have to be feedback on something that I wish you would do differently. It can also be feedback on stuff that I really appreciate you’re doing that, that I hope you’ll do more of. Right, but creating the space or more of that kind of conversation because of the trap that we really got into during COVID. And it was a problem even before the pandemic, but the trap is to think we’ve got so much we got to get done. We don’t have time for that stuff. But you know what? People do business with people. Yeah, they don’t do business with ideas or machines or products or strategies or plans. They do business with people. So unless you pay attention to the people part, I wouldn’t bet that that’s going to be the key to success.

Sue Bethanis 26:54
Well, what we’ve noticed about zoom is that it is he mentioned this before, I don’t know if you use this word, but it’s more transactional. It’s easy to get into. Yes, you’re in the box. Let’s get into the call, let’s do it. That’s right, exactly. And so you don’t have a chance to linger. Like at least when we’re in a meeting in the same room, there’s a chance before the meeting actually starts to linger a bit and linger before and after. And I think so one of the things I’m suggesting to people is that like, find a way to linger, you can actually get on Slack after or get on the phone after with somebody and whether you’re on zoom still, because a lot of you know, again, I don’t know what the percentages are. But let’s say there’s, it’s 70% of people are going to be working from home. It’s just it’s a lot more than people going back to the office. So you’re always still can start afresh, even though we might be in the same model work model, we still can start afresh and start doing some more not being so transactional.

Carole Robin 27:46
Yeah. And I mean, to your point, I know some folks who have actually begun to schedule, open the Zoom Room five minutes ahead of time, leave the Zoom Room five minutes afterward, and those who want to hang around, hang around in the same way you used to it a meeting.

Sue Bethanis 28:02
I’ve also seen people open up the Zoom Room all day, I suppose Zoom Room all day as a way to just people literally be at the watercooler. It’s kind of cool to know your team. Let’s talk about feedback. Because I think that that’s, wow, it’s just everybody knows you need to give it and get it. It’s I think it’s still hard. I guess you have it officially under your fourth under being honest with each other. But I mean I suspect that it’s a part of all of these hallmarks in some respects. So let’s talk about it

Carole Robin 28:27
Embedded in any piece of feedback is a disclosure. If I’m going to give you feedback, I’m also going to have to tell you how your behavior is impacting me, by definition, that’s disclosure. That’s right now, one of the things that are really hard for me, Sue is that so many people have had feedback training, I guess some training is better than none. But sometimes some are worse than not because there are so many bad practices up. So feedback is first of all, a skill, as we both know. And there are ways to give it in ways that are easier for the other person to hear and less likely to land. And it’s also people have mental models about feedback, like when I say to people, so what’s the first thing that comes to mind when somebody says, Can I give you some feedback? You go like, ‘okay’, as opposed to like, ‘wow, yeah, sure how cool I’m about you know, I’m going to learn’ I was on a clubhouse right before I came on your podcast with a couple of former students of mine called behind the mask, by the way, and, and one of them said to me, Carole, do you ever get sick of getting feedback? I said that’s like asking me if I ever get sick of chocolate. No, would I want to only do a diet of chocolate? No, but do I ever get sick of it? No. He was like, somehow I thought that’s what you were going to tell me but that’s because I have so internalized the belief that it’s always a gift because I happen to be a big believer in data, and more data is better than less data. So to the extent that feedback contains some data, I am better off. So let’s start with the mental model shift that a lot of people have to make around. Now, mental model, we create those mental models for good reasons. We’ve all either had an experience been witnessed to experience where feedback went terribly awry. And what happens in those cases, nine times out of 10, there are, I think, three things missing, which are addressed by the model that’s in the book, it’s central to the course. And therefore central to the book, the students call it the net. So imagine three realities. In any exchange between two people, there is my intent, and how I see things. There’s what I do. That’s reality. Number one. There’s reality number two, which is what I do, what I say how I say it, that’s reality number two, that’s the only reality known to both of us. And there’s reality number three, which is the impact of what I said and did on you. Okay, now, there’s a metaphorical net, between reality number one and two, I do something you have no idea why I did it. Unless I tell you why I did or said a quick example. My husband comes home. This is many, many years ago. It’s one of the many examples I use in podcasts because it’s very easy to make the point. It’s also in the book, my husband comes home, after a long day’s work plops down on the couch, picks up the newspaper. I come zooming around the corner, I’ve been home with two little kids. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re home. Thank God.’ And he’s like, ‘Huh, mhm’ Okay, so let’s think about this. The only reality we both know is the reality that anybody watching this would know, which is that I’m speaking, I’m a little agitated, and I’m getting no eye contact. And the only response I’m getting is a grunt. That is what is behaviorally specific reality number two. But you know what I used to say, ‘You’re not listening.’ I don’t know I’m not in his head, I don’t know whether he’s listening or not. And by the way, I feel that you’re not listening for those of you who’ve been trained with ‘I messages’ it’s not an ‘i Message.’ It’s still an attribution

Yeah. And by the way, ‘I feel that you’re not listening’ doesn’t have a single feeling word in it. So if you’re going to stay on your side of the net, a, you’ve got to be behaviorally specific and b you have to talk about the impact of the other person’s on your behavior, period. That’s the data you have for them. Honey, when I speak to you, and you make no eye contact, and the only response I get is a grunt. I don’t feel heard. And when I don’t feel hurt, I feel sad. And I feel distanced. And I’m telling you this, this is the other important part of it. My intent. And I’m telling you this because I want to be there for you in a way that I’m not sure I can be. Unless you can be there for me. When I used to say ‘you’re not listening’, he’s to say, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And by the way he was, because then he’d repeat. Yeah, you went to that new nursery school that hasn’t opened yet your old spot, and then I get even more furious. Right? So I had to stay on my side of the net. When you do X, I feel Y. And I’m telling you this because, right. And that allows us to move into a problem-solving conversation, which is the purpose of feedback. The purpose of feedback is not to change somebody. The purpose of feedback is to say, we have a problem here, the way you’re behaving isn’t working for me. So what shall we do about it?

Sue Bethanis 33:43
I love that because the intent is important. But it isn’t actually as important as the second reality, which is this is what’s happening. Behaviorally specific and then the implication or the impact on you. Exactly. I love that. Let’s take this into a business context. In some respects, it might be easier, in some ways easier to say that to your husband, because there’s more security in terms of you know, the vulnerability, but if we’re taking this to a business context, sometimes people don’t feel that secure in their relationship with somebody to be able to do that. So assuming that’s the case, well, assuming that they are there isn’t security. So we’ll be an example of what they could, how they could say something.

Carole Robin 34:23
Let’s say that my boss, this is the fourth time he’s changed his mind about what he wants in that report. That’s, that’s a behaviorally specific thing. You asked me to do this. I did it. I came back. You asked me to do this. Instead, I did it. I came back. This is the fourth time you’ve done it. Now let’s say that the impact on me is that I’m feeling this is where you need the vocabulary of feelings. It’s an appendix of the book. It’s in the syllabus of the course. You actually have to go pull up your vocabulary, I feel ‘What do you feel? I feel frustrated, I feel unimportant. I feel lost. I feel discouraged. I feel let down.’ So first you have to get in touch with what are you feeling? Now let’s say you’re saying this to your boss. So I’ll be this person who is speaking to my boss. And I’ll say, and, you know, ‘the result of my feeling discouraged and frustrated, is that I don’t have quite as much energy as I want to have for the fifth revision. And I’m telling you this because I can’t imagine that’s what you want as the outcome. I imagine you want me to go at this with all the energy that I’ve got, which I had in the first round. So is there something that we could do to avoid the ongoing shift is there something you need from me? Is there something I can do for you?’ And then we’d have to have an interpersonal exchange? Okay, what do you need from me? What do I need from you? Is there some other way? Now one of the most, I’ll hesitate to say the most, but one of the most important things a leader can do is model being a good receiver. Because if you don’t model being a good receiver, people won’t tell you the truth. And then you get to find out about what actually happened way down the road when there’s it’s a lot harder to fix.

Sue Bethanis 36:31
Right? Right. That’s great. I love that example. Carole, anything else you want to impart in terms of these hallmarks in terms of applying them to how we move into this post-pandemic transition? Hybrid, whatever?

Carole Robin 36:44
Yeah. So I mean, the first one that I want to come back to that just kind of flows from what we were just talking about is, there is nothing more efficient than the truth. People will often say, a colleague of mine at Stanford coined that phrase because we would do these executive programs that people say, Oh, my God, giving feedback takes so much time, it’s, you know, it’s so you know, and we used to say, well, there’s nothing more efficient than the truth. So if I, was going to say, keep a couple of concepts front and center, that’s one of them. The second one is to remain as curious as you possibly can. Because never has it been more important for people to understand that what is going on for them may or may not be what is going on for someone else, right. And so if you’re behaving in some way, that is just maddening to me, I can decide to label you an asshole and want to figure out how to work around you, or I can get curious. You know, what’s, what’s happening here? What’s going on? And by the way, curiosity is impossible. Unless you suspend judgment. You don’t like to suspend judgment forever, but you’re gonna have to suspend judgment long enough to actually be curious, find out what’s going on for someone.

Sue Bethanis 38:04
Not wondering about it like the one you said before, like, if they’re being an asshole, there’s probably a reason why something’s going on at home or, you know, whatever.

Carole Robin 38:13
I am big on always naming my intent so that people understand what’s behind my question. You know, I’m asking you this, because I’d actually like to find a way to work better together. I’m telling you this because I don’t want to get to the point where I’m so discouraged that I actually stopped doing my best work. I, you know, I hope the outcome of a conversation we can have is that we can get to a point where we can figure out together, how we can best get through this. So there’s always the more complete you are, the better the interpersonal exchange is likely to be. And I guess the last thing that I’ll say is that we call the book Connect, because connection is really fundamental to human beings. Human beings want to be seen and heard and valued. We want that and others want that. And so, back to in business, people do business with people. If I don’t think you give a crap about me, I am unlikely to go out of my way to do something for you.

Sue Bethanis 39:22
Right, exactly. I love it. I love the book. It’s called Connect, and you can find it on Connectandrelate.com and leadersintech.org is also your website. Obviously, you can find Carole on LinkedIn. And you can find the book on Amazon, of course, thank you for being so helpful, supportive. I love the examples that you give. I love how calm you are. It’s inspirational. So thank you for that.

Carole Robin 39:45
Oh, thank you. And that I would back at you. I would say that was an excellent example of feedback on something that you appreciated. I never used positive and negative feedback. Some people might have called that positive feedback. I never use that because all feedbacks positive because it’s always data. And when you’re giving somebody feedback on something that you’ve appreciated about them, our tendency is to say, Hey, nice job. That a boy or girl, you know, good job. Thanks. Now, let’s compare that to the level of specificity that you just offered. And now I know what I did that worked for you. And if we were going to do more work together, I’d be much more grounded and have concrete understanding of how to show up in a way that would work best for you. Which by the way, might be totally different than someone else.

Sue Bethanis 40:37
Yeah. So thanks for that. Appreciate it. Mahalo, as we say, here in Hawaii. Let me just real quickly talk about next time. So we’ll be together again, August 25 at 2pm Pacific with Stephanie Johnson, She’s the author of Inclusify: the Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams. Okay, so we’re applying all of what we’re talking about, though, to this to our culture or to the whatever we’re calling it the hybrid, the reopening of the post pandemic, whatever word works, the chaos, the mess, trying to apply all of everyone’s work to that right now, because that’s what’s up. And there’s a ton of uncertainty and we need to get it we need to be doing this together because we’re not going to do it by ourselves. Self care, everybody self care support.

Carole Robin 41:18
Thanks for giving me the chance to spread my spread my message.

Sue Bethanis 41:21
Of course, we love it. We love it. Thanks again, Carole, and thanks, everybody for being here.

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Sue hosts Kevin Oakes, author of Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company. Kevin is the CEO and Co-Founder of i4cp, the leading authority on next practices in human capital. He is a frequent author and international keynote speaker on next practices in human capital and works with business and HR executives on people practices that drive high performance. He is considered one of the foremost experts on organizational culture.

In Culture Renovation®, Kevin provides tangible, tactical insights drawn from a robust data set and informed by CEOs and HR leaders at many of the world’s top companies. You’ll find everything you need to rebuild your corporate culture with care and expertise, including:

• Three phases and detailed action steps for architecting the change you want to see
• Practical insights and examples from T-Mobile, Microsoft, 3M, and other top companies
• The traits of a healthy corporate culture
• Proven talent practices to maintain your new culture for long-term success

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Sue Bethanis hosts Larry Robertson, author of the new book Rebel Leadership: How to Thrive in Uncertain Times. Larry is a recognized expert in creativity, entrepreneurship, and leadership, and a highly sought-after advisor, speaker, and facilitator in public, private, and academic forums. He was recently awarded and named a Fulbright Scholar.

Larry is the founder of Lighthouse Consulting, a strategic advisory firm focused on the practical realities of adaptability, change management, and making breakthrough ideas real. He writes recurring columns for Inc. Magazine and The Creativity Post, is a regular contributor to Fast Company, Thrive Global, CEOWorld Magazine, Productive Flourishing, and SmartBrief, and has been featured on or in MSNBC, the Chicago Tribune, AdAge, Business Insider, The Weekly Roundup, and numerous podcasts.

Larry and Sue discuss:

• What Rebel Leadership means, why it’s vital to your company culture, and its direct effect on your bottom line.
• How moving culture from a concept to a priority creates a huge competitive advantage.
• Specific ways to plan for culture as you return to the office (in whatever form that is.)
• Why a long-term view is mostly about what you do with this moment and dealing with uncertainty will dictate how your company does.

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Sue Bethanis hosts David Dye, co-author of Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. As a former executive and elected official, David has over two decades of experience leading teams and building organizations. With his wife and co-author, Karin Hurt, they founded Let’s Grow Leaders, a training firm focused on human-centered leadership development for those determined to get breakthrough results without losing their humanity.

Since 2013, Karin and David have helped grow over 10,000 leaders in 14 countries with their live leadership development programs, keynotes, blogs, videos, and books. They also provide clean water to the people of Cambodia through their Winning Wells philanthropic initiative. David also hosts the popular podcast, Leadership Without Losing Your Soul.

David and Sue discuss:

• Why a Courageous Culture is such a huge competitive advantage in an era of unprecedented change
• How to identify the courage crushers you need to remove
• Tools, best practices, and approaches you can use to help your leaders build a Courageous Culture
• Ways to celebrate and reinforce your momentum for long-term success

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Sue Bethanis hosts Diane Kaufman, author of HR Bullcrap! Revolutionizing Your Workplace Culture. Diane is the President and CEO of HR BullCrap! LLC and is a workplace game-changer, providing HR expertise that can reform and revolutionize workplace cultures, leadership, talent, and strategy.

Diane is a former Senior Vice President of Global Human Resources for Ergotron, headquartered in the United States with 4 subsidiaries, China operations, and representation in 67 countries. She has vast expertise in multiple functions and industries in the global HR and business world, including championing cultures of pure productivity that get results with a no-nonsense approach.

In addition, Diane is a mentor to young female athletes, combining personal growth and development with building strong, healthy relationships. Diane is a former NCAA Division I athlete, which provides her the “know-how” to share her knowledge and experiences.

Diane and Sue discuss how to revolutionize workplace culture, including:

• How to build a trustworthy culture in a two-step process
• How to gain employee accountability
• How to secure and retain top talent in a Covid-era workplace
• How to get rid of the HR non-sense in HR

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