Creating a Culture of Belonging
Guest Speaker DDS Dobson-SmithIn this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts DDS Dobson-Smith, CEO and Founder of the executive coaching consultancy, Soul Trained, and a registered neuro-linguistic psychotherapist. DDS has spent over 25 years creating cultures in which people can show up, be themselves, and experience the fundamental joys and benefits of belonging. They are certified as an executive coach by the Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring. Before founding Soul Trained, DDS held a range of senior, executive, and C-Suite roles across a host of sectors and companies. They are the author of the new book, You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging.
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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS
DDS provides us with some simple and profound insights into diversity, inclusivity, and belonging. The relationship between the three is much more meaningful than the way they are often tossed around in the business world. DDS states that “diversity plus inclusion equals belonging” and that “you can’t have a diverse organization without having inclusion” (4:26). When put so simply, it is evident that diversity is not the end goal, a diverse workplace that fosters a sense of belonging is the true motive. As this is easier said than done, DDS provides more insight into specific ways to foster inclusivity and how to create belonging in the workplace, whether remote or in person.
Some key takeaways from this talk:
- It’s important to reframe our mindset to accept the discomfort of being wrong. To work through uncomfortable feelings to admit we’ve made mistakes, to be vulnerable enough to apologize, and to have difficult conversations. We don’t want to be wrong or to face discomfort in new situations, but this is a huge step towards progress. (7:53)
- It’s in our nature to seek connection and want meaningful relationships, it’s necessary for our health and wellbeing. On the flip side, when we are in situations that feel exclusionary or lack connection, it can have detrimental effects. With remote work settings, as we have stated many times before, it is imperative to be intentional in how we connect with others and to find new ways to reach out to people. (13:34)
- DDS shares that leaders should refrain from claiming ‘safe spaces’ when trying to foster vulnerability. A space will only feel safe if you have created psychological safety in the workplace. You can ask people to be brave and share their experiences, but they likely will only do so when there is a foundation of psychological safety. (29:53)
Connection, inclusivity, and belonging have drastically shifted since the pandemic began. It has become ever more imperative to focus on meaningful conversations and foster a sense of belonging in the workplace. When we remove ourselves from judgment and shift into a mindset where we are open to being wrong, great things happen. Connection, engagement, and innovation are all on the other side of our fears and insecurities. As leaders, we need to embody vulnerability and inclusivity and learn to welcome differences and new perspectives.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“In a conversation, if you cause harm through the words that you use, you take accountability for that by saying, ‘Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I take accountability, and I apologize for the impact that it had on you. I won’t do it again.’ And then move on. Learn from that.” (11:30)
“In order to have psychological health, we have to have connection, we have to have attunement, we have to have nurture. And it’s actually not just for psychological health, it’s for biological health, too.” (13:34)
“I share a lot with my patients that our wounding in life, happens in relationships, so, therefore, so must our healing. And that’s why relationships and how we manage relationships, and how we nurture them in the workplace, as well as outside of it is so, so important.” (18:26)
“It’s crucial for employers, and leaders to recognize and be cognizant of the fact that we are all walking around with some form of wounding, and therefore to take action to create spaces in which people can experience psychological safety.” (18:26)
“We all know in business as leaders, we say we want innovation, we want people to be brave, we want people to change things and to make things better. But none of that is going to happen without psychological safety.” (29:53)
RESOURCES
DDS Dobson-Smith:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome DDS Dobson Smith. And again, thank you so much for being with us. DDS is the founder of the executive coaching consultancy Soul Trained. And a registered neurolinguistic psychotherapist, DDS has spent over 25 years creating cultures in which people can show up, be themselves and experience the fundamental joys and benefits of belonging, they are certified as an executive coach by the Oxford School of coaching mentoring. And before founding Soul Trained, DDS held a range of senior executive and C suite roles across a host of sectors and companies. DDS is the author of the new book, You Can be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging. So, I read your bio, but I want to hear your personal story. So, tell us a little bit about that. How you ended up in Connecticut, tell us about your tattoos. I’ll tell you about mine. And then about the book.
DDS Dobson Smith 0:59
Yeah, I mean, my personal story is I’m a transplant. I grew up and lived in the UK, and lived in London for most of my adult life. And then my husband and I moved to California for what was meant to be a two-year work assignment that ended up being a permanent assignment. And I think, you know, my linking my story to the book professionally, I have carved out a career, before I stood up Soul Trained, carved out a career in the corporate world in learning and development, OD, HR, org psych, roles, all the things ordered C suite level. And actually, when I took kind of step back from it all and looked at it, I was like, oh, really the whole career has been around either directly affecting or being a catalyst for or supporting people to create workplaces in which people could be themselves. And there’s a whole reason why that’s important, which I’m sure we’ll get into. But when I looked at that and realized that’s what I done, I couldn’t help but realize that it’s been affected by my own experience of the body I walk around this world in. And it was a non-binary queer person. Over the years in my career, that there’s been more times than I care to count where I’ve had people senior to me, junior to me, colleagues to me, say to me, you know, could you just tone it? Could you just tone it down a bit in this next meeting? Or could you just, you know, dial that back a bit. And I never really questioned what they meant by that I knew what they really meant, but hadn’t really questioned it until I was in a C suite position myself, and a colleague said it to me and I only at that point where I felt I was this was after, you know, 20 years or something? Had I felt like I was in a senior enough, powerful enough position, to be able to say to that person, ‘what do you mean by tone it down?’ And I went you know, ‘could you just be a little bit less – like less what?’ And they said to me ‘less gay.’ And at that point inside I –
Sue Bethanis 3:18
You became like, no, no way.
DDS Dobson Smith 3:18
And I said to them, ‘well, could you be a little bit less straight?’ And they said, ‘What, I don’t know what you mean, I don’t think I can do that’. And I said, ‘Yeah, exactly’. Like my personal lived experience, my corporate experience, and then also being a licensed therapist, working in community mental health, and really working in the space of centering social justice as a mental health issue, really seeing that there were deep, deep problems in this system that we operate in. And along comes this book, the book started life as an academic paper, which is incredibly dull, boring reading. And, and so I turned it into a book that would make interesting, exciting, and it really does feel like it’s come from here.
Sue Bethanis 4:09
Nice. Thank you for that. So, you do talk in the book about three different terms that we kind of in business throw it as the round a lot diversity, inclusion and belonging DEI, sometimes we say, which doesn’t include belonging. But can you explain each term because they really are distinct? Let’s talk about each of those.
DDS Dobson Smith 4:26
Yeah, you’re right, too. They’re often said, not only in the same sentence but mostly in the same breath. And I think the problem with that is it conflates three different, very different things. And I see equity as an important. Yeah, read through all of them. Yeah. Diversity is a fact. Right? And diversity is about representation. You’re you either do or do not have a diverse workforce, Team organization. When you look around you are there people that look like you, are like you and are there people that don’t look like you and are not like you. And if you can answer yes to both of those questions, you probably have a degree of diversity and representation of different identities in your organization, check first step, create diversity in your organization, which is not easy, by the way. And in the book, there’s a whole load, as you know, there’s a whole load of tips and tools of how to go about creating diversity. And once you are creating or have created diversity, I think it’s are creating because I don’t think it’s a box that ever is just like, oh, yeah, we are diverse, then you go to inclusion. And I say that inclusion is a behavior, the way that the behavior, the way the organization behaves, through the processes, policies, and platforms it uses in going out business, and also the way in which people show up and behave in their interactions and their relationships. So once you’ve got diversity, then you have to behave in an inclusive way, and if you do that you are likely to be able to have the experience of belonging, and I talk about belonging being an experience. It’s a feeling, logical, emotional, and sometimes spiritual experience, we have those moments in our lives when we’ve gone to a place or had an experience where we’re like, oh, I am with my people, I’m here. And that feels really good. And we’ve also had those experiences were like, I do not belong here. And I gotta get out of here. So, diversity plus inclusion equals belonging, you can’t have belonging without inclusion, you can’t have inclusion without diversity. But you can have a diverse organization without having inclusion. And the problem with that is if you create diversity in your organization, and you don’t have the belonging calling those so-called diverse hires, which to me is just good hiring, will exit the organization, right? Because if there’s not a sense of belonging, there’s no sense of I have a seat at the table, I am involved. And I am where decisions are being made. My perspective matters, I matter, all of those things.
Sue Bethanis 7:14
So, I love that. I love that explanation. And there’s things that kind of find the face of each other. Like, for example, if you’re trying to find your tribe, I use that with quotation marks, and a sense of belonging, find your people, your people might not be – you may think of your people as like you. And so, therefore, the diversity situation kind of flies in the face of each other. So what I think happens, because and where people get caught, if you will. Say more about that, because if you go back to brain science, I mean, diversity is different. It’s different and different causes fear. So this is a huge question. There are like five questions in there. Right. Right.
DDS Dobson Smith 7:53
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really interesting that you’ve touched on difference equals fear. And so the psychologist in me goes to the place of well, why does difference equal fear? Yeah, and, there’s a lot of the work that I do clinically, but also with my coaching clients, is this idea of when we’re in this space, we have to be prepared to be wrong. We have to be prepared also to experience and feel feelings of shame, or guilt or embarrassment, or even anger. Because what we’re getting into is conversations about injustice, we’re getting into conversations about where people are harmed at the hands of other people. And we all like to think of ourselves as good moral people, no matter what we believe, no matter where we come from, no matter who we vote for. We all believe that we are good and we are moral, we like to believe that we’re good and moral. Yeah, and fair. And so when we have these types of conversations, and when we think about difference, this fear comes because it challenges those notions that we have of I’m a good moral fair person. And I think that’s one of the biggest things and that shame and that anger and that fear, it acts in such a way to stop us from having the conversations and guess what, when we don’t have the conversations, the fear feeds itself. And the problem feeds itself and we stay where we are. We don’t want to be wrong.
Sue Bethanis 9:29
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s what I was getting into some of our even more fundamental, which I love what you just said, but more fundamental in terms of just, you know, biology that when we are in fear, if we’re in fear because of a change or difference or you know, a bear is chasing us, they’re all the same. The way I’ve reframed it for myself since I was a little girl really is that I welcomed it, but to me difference was interesting. So I kind of just keep thinking, Oh, well, that’s different. That’s interesting. Instead of that’s different. That’s scary. There are obviously points of that, but there are some things that are truly scary, like Stranger Things, that show, things like that, that my Son makes me watch. I think that’s what I’ve been reckoning with since I was a little girl. And then, you know, going to Dachau concentration camp when I was 17 and the most important experience in my life in terms of understanding difference and understanding, lack of inclusion, I guess. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about that then it was like, understanding power. So we have to be able to reframe different so I’m wondering what you think about that?
DDS Dobson Smith 9:29
Well I guess our amygdala and our emotional centers in our brain fire up. Yeah, we are emotionally hijacked, not because we are in danger. But because we think we’re in danger. And there is a sense called neuroception. That is an unconscious sense that is operating all of the time, that is sensing danger, survival danger in our environment. So even before we know it, we’re starting to go into that amygdala response, which some people call flight or fight response. Right? Freeze form. So reframing that’s an I think, for me, you reframed difference as interesting. I think I’m reframing the idea of being wrong as being a good thing. Because it means we’re learning. And, I’m not saying that we should go out there willy-nilly. Just trying to say anything we want to say in order to like, upset people.
Sue Bethanis 11:27
And then apologize.
DDS Dobson Smith 11:29
In a conversation, if you cause harm through the words that you use, you take accountability for that by saying, ‘Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I take accountability, and I apologize for the impact that it had on you. I won’t do it again.’ And then move on. Learn from that. And I think that’s the reframe for me is be okay with being wrong, right. Okay, with being less like that be okay with, you know, just knowing that these things are going to be uncomfortable. And by the way, remember, that hurt doesn’t always equal harm. So you might one thing I say with all of my patients and clients, there’s no such thing as positive or negative emotions. They’re just emotions. The meaning that you place on them is what makes them into positive-negative, right? So if you feel sad, or shame, or guilt, or fear, or anger, all of those things that some people would put on the list of emotions that are negative, I’m saying they are showing you something, they’re telling you something to pay attention rather than away from them. It’s sad, it’s not going to kill you.
Sue Bethanis 12:36
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s okay to be in it for two seconds. Okay, so I’m going to shift here a little bit, because I mean, I love talking about this the whole time. So with regards to belonging, how are you seeing that now, with the pandemic. I have a 16-year-old, so he has experienced the pandemic as a 14 and 15-year-old, all it’s done is isolate him. This is a very extroverted kid. Yeah. And you know, he’s not alone. Obviously, it’s isolated all of us, you know, he’s a big extrovert, I’m a big extrovert, and I’ve hated it can’t stand it. And it really, because it really gets to my sense of belonging. And that’s really what it comes down to. And we’re hearing that from people or our clients a lot. And we’re, I just did a thing actually, for a client couple weeks ago about how did you do hybrid? And how do you bring people together to , even though you’re remote? First, how do you connect? And we’ve been doing this for two years, but we haven’t really done it with much intention. So what are your thoughts about belonging and isolation? And what can we do about it? To me that you agree with me?
DDS Dobson Smith 13:34
I, you know, I was I’ve been talking to some clients about similar sorts of things. So about how do you create those moments of meaningful connection because connection is really fundamentally important. It’s a biological imperative. And when we talked about the psychology of belonging, in order to have psychological health, we have to have connection, we have to have attunement, we have to have nurture. And it’s actually not just for psychological health, it’s for biological health, too. And I think what is how we have been programmed in the corporate world is to seek that connection, that attunement, those relationships by walking up to people’s desks. You know, at the watercooler by perhaps going out to lunch together, the bar, or hanging out outside the meeting room and chatting with each other.
Sue Bethanis 14:26
Parking lot. Whatever. Yeah. Right, lingering in the meeting. Yeah.
DDS Dobson Smith 14:30
That’s corporate folklore. Right? That’s all law, call it corporate law. That’s how connections happen. That’s how we build relationships and then all of that went away for, at least for knowledge base workers, office-based workers…So that went away for two years. And for some people, that’s still going away. And for some people, it’s slowly coming back. And so that was completely discombobulating for everyone because it’s like everything burned. It has everything I know how to do has gone away. Now, I agree that making connections is easier in-person because that’s how I have been programmed. And my life also changed in those two years and my entire business, my entire clinical practice went online, I have some coaching clients, and I have some patients who I have never met in person. And we have had some of the most evocative moving, clinical moments of change, and also coaching moments of change with people I’ve never met. So it is harder to make those connections. And it’s not impossible, we just have to think about it. I was coaching and this is really, really simple. I was talking to one person once and she said to me, DDS, you know, I’ve exchanged the walking up to someone’s desk and saying, how have you got a moment to send them a Slack or a chat to say, Have you got a moment? And if they say, Yes, we jump on a call. And so it just because the context shifted, so significantly, and everything was up in the air, I think some of us lost touch with our own creativity and the permissions that we didn’t know we needed to go and do and connect and to be in relationships.
Sue Bethanis 16:24
Yeah, I hear you. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about the idea of lingering, how do you linger at the beginning of a meeting? And how do you linger especially after because we’re typically in that meeting room or walking to the next meeting with somebody. So sometimes, and I don’t want to take credit for this was one of my clients and I came up with it one day because he was saying, what I’m doing is I’m just calling people up. Like, if we have a group meeting, I’ll call one of them up afterward on the phone, or I’ll slack them right after just linger with them. I said, Yes. I said that’s perfect. I love it. He does it every time. Every big meeting, he’ll do one person. So he had, but he had to be intentional about that. You had to think about doing it and be creative. It doesn’t just come naturally. When you’re in person, we are programmed, that’s it’s programmed to be around that, the coffee or the water cooler or whatever. And so to create the water cooler needs attention. And I think that there was so much waiting, like we thought okay, we’re gonna go back or go back. So there wasn’t a lot of intentionality we just kept kind of just kept going on Zoom for like, five hours, 10 hours. So we were 10 hours a day on Zoom. And that’s crazy, I can only do like, four and I’m like, tired, right? Zooms are just like boom, boom, boom. And again. Can you imagine having this pandemic 20 years ago? No, I mean, they would have been completely different. The fact we have this is, it’s, I also think that it’s allowing us to sort of not be lazy, because that’s not right. But to kind of accept it as like, it is going to allow these companies to be remote first and never go back. I don’t think that would happen. But yeah, that doesn’t matter because it’s the case. So in the book, you talk about three lenses: the psychology of belonging, self-psychology, attachment theory, my favorite, and trauma-induced, sorry, not induced, trauma-informed – might be the same thing, trauma-informed workplaces. Sorry, tell me about those three things.
DDS Dobson Smith 18:26
You know, at least the self-psychology and attachment theory. I mean, they’re vast theories of work. So, whatever I say here is not going to do them justice. Yeah, I understand they are incredibly influential pieces of work when it comes to understanding self-esteem. And, our own needs for attention and attachment itself. Self-psychology tells us many, many things, but one of the things it tells us is that for psychological health, we need to see our greatness, our wholeness, our okayness reflected back at us in other people, right. And so, if we are in a workplace where we don’t see that, if we are the only gay in the village, if we are the only black person sitting around the boardroom table, if we are the only woman sitting around the boardroom table, get to see what we don’t get that psychological mirroring our okayness and it impacts our psychological wholeness. it’s the same with you know, you look at pop culture and whether you are you know, you see the Asian person who’s always unlucky in love, or the black person who’s always either a criminal or a reformed clinical or the trans person who ends up being killed off or the woman who is you know, seen as tired, right, like, we see those things if we don’t see It reflected back at us in certain messages. Now with attachment theory, attachment theory tells us that relationships are fundamental to our survival, biological survival relationships, we need them for biological survival, and the attunement to our needs by attachment figures. So important figures when we’re little, that’s our primary caregivers, these. And, you know, as we grow up, our attachment figures become our partners, our attachment figures become our colleagues, they become our bosses. And that attunement to our needs by these attachment figures is crucial to our development as human beings, I also have a theory that I share a lot with my patients that our wounding in life, happens in relationships, so therefore, so must our healing. And that’s why relationships and how we manage relationships, and how we nurture them in the workplace, as well as outside of it is so, so important. And then from a trauma-informed point of view, we have all experienced trauma, trauma happens, because we think we’re in danger, not because we are in danger, and because of the way in which we perceive that danger and our ability to cope with that danger is out of proportion. This is especially true for those of us that walk around this world with identities that come from historically excluded groups, or from identity if we carry an identity that comes from subordinate social groups. So that is anyone that is not a does not have an identity that is white, straight cisgender. Male, able-bodied. Right. And, and so I think it is important, it’s crucial for employers and leaders to recognize and be cognizant of the fact that we are all walking around with some form of wounding, and therefore to take action to create spaces in which people can experience psychological safety. So that their systems, their bodies don’t have to be hijacked emotionally, that their trauma is going to be triggered each time you go into a meeting or into a space, they are going to experience some form of oppression or marginalization once again.
Sue Bethanis 22:26
Yeah, I call that the sideways, things go sideways, because things are getting triggered, and they have nothing to do with the person that’s in front of you. Right? It happens a lot. Again, how do you help people, your patients, and your clients to recognize that when they’re in the moment? Which is hard to do, realizing ‘why am I getting so upset about this? This is not commensurate with what does the situation ask for?’
DDS Dobson Smith 22:47
The first thing right when you realize you are in that situation when you are able to improve your awareness of what’s happening in your body in the moment. So your heart rate is going quicker and your palms are sweating. You find yourself turning away from a situation rather than leaning into it, when you first the first thing I do is to start to teach my patients to be aware of that, like pay attention to what’s happening in your body. And then in that moment, you know, this is why it’s flight fight or freeze you are you either want to punch that person in the face, or at least yell at them, or you want to get the heck out and the more you’re frozen and you know, you get asked a question and all of a sudden you have selective mutism, because you’re just like, Oh my God. And so in those moments, I teach people how to ground, how to center themselves. And there’s a bunch of techniques that you can use so that you can at least move through that process or move through that experience, at least successfully without needing to, you know, fly get out of there or want to kind of get into some sort of altercation and then you begin to or at least I do, I begin to help people understand what it was about that situation in the here and now that was triggering an experience from the their right and to notice that it’s different to and to help them notice how they are safe now and that they weren’t when they weren’t safe then to unpick and distance themselves. Between the what happened then and what’s happening now.
Sue Bethanis 24:30
I like that. So this is a little different because someone who’s more impulsive, so it’s not necessarily a pinpointed trauma, certainly not a particular incident. But it might be something general but just I’m not as interested right now to talk about the why of I am like, when you look at your coaching clients, someone who’s impulsive, like we work with a lot of people who are obviously very bright and want to get, you know, their word in edgewise. It’s harder on Zoom, you’re trying to interrupt, you know, and there’s a lot of impulsivity around talking fast over people. How do you work with someone like that? And what do you suggest to that?
DDS Dobson Smith 25:10
I mean, one of the places that I go to is, you know, just thinking about Victor Frankel’s work, this idea that in between stimulus and response, there is a gap, and in that gap is the choice. And so what I encourage people to do is just slow the fuck down and linger in the space between cause and effect. And just notice, what are the causes that trigger the behavior that other people receive as unusable or debilitating? Or that the individual themselves wishes they didn’t do. And so when you when you’re able to slow that down, when you’re able to linger in that space and recognize that just because what when something happens, what feels like an impulse reaction isn’t actually an impulse reaction. I remember I was coaching, this is one particular client, she senior woman hated presenting, even when she heard the word presentations would break out into a sweat, and the word presentation, the cause, and the response was sweat. And so I would ask her, and we, in our work together, I would say, what happens just before sweat, and she said, I hear the word presentation, I was like, no, let’s slow that down. What happens just before and we spent 15 minutes unpacking the mental process that what happened in between presentation and sweat. And she realized there was a whole conversation. And there’s a bunch of associations that were happening in her head that led to that. And I think the same applies to absolutely everything when I find myself talking over someone or when I find myself stealing someone’s ideas, or when I find myself asking another woman to take notes or when. Well, I know that the stuff that happens when I when I find myself doing that and I and first of all, I’ve got to own that it is a behavior I don’t want to own that it is a behavior that I don’t want to do. slow down linger in the space between cause and effect.
Sue Bethanis 27:22
I really liked that a lot. I’m hearkening back to someone this impulsiveness. And when I asked him, I didn’t ask him exactly the way you asked him. So I think I like what you say better, actually. And I said, like, what is happening right before you’re doing this? And he says, Well, I don’t know. I said, well think like, Yeah, think about it. And so I think I’m afraid of I’m going to basically came down too afraid of not getting the idea out or not, I’m gonna lose like ground, it came down to loss. Yes, losing ground. So it didn’t take 15 minutes, but it did take some time. Right?
DDS Dobson Smith 27:53
Yeah it’s really interesting. And this happens clinically, as well. Like, as a therapist, when I’m working with people, there are so many moments. And as a coach, there are so many moments that you’d like that’s a door I want to go in as, as your coach or as your therapist, let’s open that door and walk down it. Of course, what we don’t want to do as coaches or therapists is interrupt a process that our clients are going through and I have to hold a belief that if it is important enough, it will come back with my idea that I want to share at the boardroom table or in a meeting is that good? That is going to change the face of what we’re talking about. There is gonna be an opportunity and even if there isn’t an opportunity, you know, you can say I have an idea that I’d like to share and if it’s a good one guess what people are gonna rally around it if it’s right or not. Then cool move on.
Sue Bethanis 28:48
I like that a lot. I think something else that we look we see is that this idea of asking questions, and I think that really goes with belonging to be able to inquire and when you, especially if you’re feeling itchy and wanting to advocate and wanting to get in, get that out. And I’m not even talking about impulsivity in terms of anxiety and that I’m talking just impetuousness really, to be able to go okay, well to be a pessimist about asking a question that just asks you a question. Instead, you can interrupt and ask a question, but it’s about them, not you. Yeah.
DDS Dobson Smith 29:23
So questions of exploration. As long as they’re not those, you know, those opinions that are masquerading as questions…
Sue Bethanis 29:30
Or leading questions – they’re interrogating what they’re asking for.
DDS Dobson Smith 29:33
Ones that are designed to make you look clever.
Sue Bethanis 29:38
Don’t you think? Okay, yeah. I’m not gonna ask you that kind of question. So I do want to talk about some things in the book. You talk about creating safe rooms and intentionally brave spaces in a hybrid work environment. So say more, I mean, that’s interesting to say more about that.
DDS Dobson Smith 29:53
So I think it’s really important to not talk about or not claim spaces as being safe. And oftentimes when somebody says, and we’ve all been in meetings when you’re trying to encourage some vulnerability and some disclosure and somebody says, it’s a safe space, don’t worry, this is a safe space. And that person that is claiming the space as safe is likely doing so from some sort of position of power. Yeah, either hierarchical power, or positional power as a trainer, or as, or as a facilitator or as a coach or social power. So yeah, that is good. That white, straight cisgender male, able-bodied, and it’s super problematic for somebody from a place of power, claiming a space to be safe. Because I mean, if a straight person tried to say to me, don’t worry, this is a safe space, DDS you can talk about your sexuality here, you can talk about your problems, I’m like, you have no idea of my lived experience. And neither should you. I’m not asking you to have an idea about my lived experience. But you can’t claim a space to be safe on my behalf I can do though, is create intentionally brave spaces. Okay, so you can create spaces where you invite people to be brave, but they will only be brave when they feel or when they can experience psychological safety and psychological safety being that quality that we experience when it’s not expensive to be ourselves. And that requires intentionality that requires very careful, this is the container that we are creating. And these are the behaviors that are important to creating psychological safety. And when I feel some degree of psychological safety, I am more likely to lean into that space of bravery, where I will talk about what’s wrong. And it doesn’t just talk or just talk, right. And it doesn’t have to be about issues of identity and inclusion and belonging. It’s when we experience psychological safety, we’re more likely to say things like I was wrong, I made a mistake. I don’t know what I’m doing, or I have an idea. Or I think there’s a better way of us doing this. If we don’t feel psychological safety, we’re not going to say any of those things. And we all know in business as leaders, we say we want innovation, we want people to be brave, we want people to change things and to make things better. But none of that is going to happen without psychological safety.
Sue Bethanis 32:37
So I love what you just said. And I, there’s something that I want to say about this a little different because you started listing to people that are in power, or have power. And some people who have power in the situation they’re just skillful because they’ve either had the other none of those, they’re not trainers, they’re not the kind of person with the positional or the I guess you’d say that personal power. What I mean by that is that there are some one of the things that we teach, for example is that is to be brave, and to be brave is to be is having the skill of influence, but it’s also to have psychological, there’s psychological and then there’s the physical literal, like how do you like enumerate your sentences? Fine. What I’m wondering about is, is in the Zoom world is really an extroverted world. It’s harder to get in. And so when an extrovert saying yes, it’s be brave, be brave, and it’s safe, like this. It’s like, because they feel comfortable doing it, they feel more comfortable, I should say. And that’s a stereotype of course, but my point is, is that is that there’s a skill here, whether they’re an extrovert or because they’ve just done it more. And so how do we help encourage, it’s almost like people who there heretofore have not been brave, had to have to do need to encourage people to be brave. And that makes – does that make sense?
DDS Dobson Smith 33:46
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I share a slightly different opinion in the Zoom world being for extroverts, if I’m thinking about pure, like Jungian introversion-extroversion, because I think this world is brilliant for people who want to disconnect and want to go inward. Because you turn off your camera and…
Sue Bethanis 34:07
Right, I meant to be engaged in Zoom.
DDS Dobson Smith 34:13
And the skill that I think that it requires recognizing that everyone has those different needs and being able to go to other people’s bus stops. I always say it’s easier, it’s easier for people to get on your bus if you go to their bus stop instead of asking them to walk to yours right. So like if we can the skill is understanding that other people are not going to be like me and that other people have different needs. And so if you can invite a conversation about what those needs are, and if you can invite a conversation about and I talk about a process in the book of how to do this, but you invite a conversation about what would you need in order to feel experience or experience psychological safety? What qualities are important to you, and then create a space when those qualities are real or true or experience of bool. And you know, oftentimes people will say, Well, I want a space where there’s no judgment. I was like, Well, you’re not gonna get that, you know, when anything, but when anybody says, this is a judgment-free space, I’m like, No, it isn’t. You know, you can’t get out of our judgments. You can’t not judge. Right? It’s a fundamental process that we, the moment that we wake up, we’re using judgment, you use your judgment to decide to wear those beautiful pink glasses that day so you use your judgment of what top to wear, you use your judgment of what item to eat, it’s a thing. It’s just there. It’s like, what do we do with our judgment? And like the station about what are we going to do with our judgment, what quality? What type of judgment is in this space? What do we know is going to happen or isn’t going to happen with our judgment and our behavior and our actions? And how we’re going to sign up to that is you start to create those sorts of those sorts of conversations, and you hear people out and you allow people to be listened to without trying to change their point of view. Kind of reframe them without trying to tell them that they’re wrong, because or even that they’re right, because if you just allow them to have their opinion, and to have their space, marvelous things.
Sue Bethanis 36:26
That’s great. Thank you. Well, I can’t believe we’re up on time, but we are, but I don’t want to just say mahalo. And the thing that I am, there’s a lot of things that we all get out of this. But I want to just harken back to the diversity and the fact inclusion being behavior and belonging is an experience. I think that that’s so easy but powerful. So thank you. So it’s simple, love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Thanks. So a couple of things. Your website is soldtrain.com. And your Twitter and Instagram are at Soul Trained. And then your LinkedIn is DDS Dobson Smith. Correct. Thank you so much, DDS for being with us. I really, really appreciate it. I like your energy a lot. I just like it’s just easy to be with you. So I wish you were here. We would go on to walk on the beach and hang out.
DDS Dobson Smith 37:25
I wish I was there. I recall Maui and I’m very envious of the place that you live in. So have a walk on the beach for me and pretend I’m with you.
Sue Bethanis 37:33
Okay, all right. Okay. Thank you again, everybody. Mahalo Aloha.