Leading Inclusively in Hybrid
Guest Speaker Stephanie Pinder-Amaker & Lauren WadsworthIn 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:
Dr. Lauren Wadsworth:
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.