On June 19th, 1865 enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas were told they were free. A century and a half later, people in cities and towns across the US continue to celebrate the occasion. But what does it really mean for us today in Corporate America? In this episode, our panelists of esteemed guests offered three Juneteenth takeaways for African-Americans and Corporate America today.
SEASON 7 EPISODE 16
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:02] SW: Welcome back to season 7, episode 16 of Your Brain at Work podcast. On June 19th, 1865 enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas were told they were free. A century and a half later, people in cities and towns across the US continue to celebrate the occasion. But what does it really mean for us today in Corporate America? In this episode, our panelists of esteemed guests offered three Juneteenth takeaways for African-Americans and Corporate America today.
I’m Shelby Wilburn, and you're listening to Your Brain at Work from the NeuroLeadership Institute. We continue to draw episodes from our weekly webinar series. This week, our show is a conversation between Janet M. Stovall, Global Head of DE&I at the NeuroLeadership Institute; Dr. Michaela Simpson, Global Director of Research at the NeuroLeadership Institute; and Khalil Smith, Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement at Akamai Technologies. Enjoy.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:05] SW: Hello to all of our viewers across the world. And welcome back to another week of Your Brain at Work Live. I’m your host, Shelby Wilburn. In this week's episode, we are celebrating Juneteenth with a panel of stellar guests and having a discussion around DEI takeaways for Corporate America today.
For our regulars, it's great to have you back. For those of you that are new to Your Brain at Work Live, welcome to the party. For some context, it is the title of one of the best-selling books by our CEO and Co-Founder, Dr. David Rock. And it's also the name of our blog and podcast.
Let's introduce our speakers for today. Our first guest is on the executive leadership team at Akamai, an 8,000-person global tech company focused on keeping digital experiences closer to users and attacks farther away. Before joining Akamai, he worked with the NeuroLeadership Institute, during which time he oversaw consulting practices and research.
Prior to that, he spent over 14 years in senior leader roles with Apple Inc., including leading retail training for global teams of over 40 learning professionals focused on expanding and strengthening the Apple culture across hundreds of retail stores in dozens of countries and languages. He holds an MBA with dual concentrations in leadership and strategy from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Please join me in welcoming Vice President of Inclusion, Diversity and Engagement at Akamai, Khalil Smith. Khalil, it's great to have you here today.
[00:02:28] KS: Wonderful to be with you, Shelby.
[00:02:30] SW: Our next panelist is one of NLI’s best and brightest. She studied emotional functioning in people with neurodegenerative disease in her Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley. Her experience as a researcher leads our biggest projects at NLI translating social and neuroscience findings and distilling that information into learning solutions, research summaries and journal articles to help organizations grow.
Speaking of growing, she's an expert on growth mindset, speaking up, power dynamics, and right now is helping to lead the charge on the science behind allyship and our solutions on the topic. Please join me in welcoming Senior Scientist and Researcher here at NLI, Dr. Michaela Simpson. Michaela, it's great to have you here.
[00:03:10] MS: It's great to be here. Thanks, Khalil.
[00:03:14] SW: For our next guest, a long history of driving change and building culture in large complex organizations has given her deep expertise around DEI practices and principles, especially in the area of communications. In fact, she broke barriers as one of the first, and for a long time only, black C-level speech writers in the Fortune 100. Her three TED presentations, challenging businesses to get serious about inclusion, have collectively over 2.5 million views.
Her superpowers, applying neuroscience to solve DEI challenges, building actionable DEI frameworks and strategies, and brokering honest DEI conversations among top leaders. Please join me in welcoming NLI's Global Head of DE&I, Janet Stovall. Great to have you here, Janet.
[00:03:58] JS: As always, great to be here. And what a great bunch I get to be a part of today. So, I’m so excited.
[00:04:03] SW: And our moderator for today is a passionate explorer of the intersecting lines of narrative communication and culture. He steers strategic communications and public and private research partnerships for some of the most impactful companies in the world, and was the basis of his academic research. Today he puts his brain to work at the NeuroLeadership institute where he leads our marketing and communication efforts to grow and strengthen the NLI community around the world. You might even recognize him from the LinkedIn comments section on our weekly show. Please join me in welcoming NLI's Vice President of Marketing, Evynn McFalls. Great to have you here, Evynn. I'm passing it over to you.
[00:04:38] EM: Thanks so much for the warm welcome, Shelby. I’m super excited to take this conversation off. Let's get the show on the road, why don't we? As you may or may not know, this episode is a very special one. Today, we are gathering and holding space. And so, an early celebration of the upcoming Juneteenth holiday.
To give some context for those who are not necessarily familiar with Juneteenth, one thing that I want to point to is the history. It was recently declared, I think, in 2020 perhaps. I can't remember exactly. But declared a federal holiday in the United States. And so, we're now celebrating this more openly.
But really, Juneteenth began – It started in June 19th, 1865 in Galveston, Texas when federal troops took control of the state to free all of the enslaved people who had not learned yet by that point for over two and a half years that the emancipation proclamation had been issued. It is the oldest African-American holiday. Yeah, and here we are. And the holiday was declared a federal holiday in the United States on June 17th, 2021.
This is significant for a number of reasons. In particular, as we look to the past, today we're coming together to think through the various lessons that we can learn from Juneteenth and this practice of freedom and kind of building a culture where we move forward celebrating greater diversity, advancing equity and practicing inclusion.
In that vein, I want to just take a moment to thank our speakers today. One of the most important concepts that I want to speak to in relation to Juneteenth is this idea of participatory culture. Janet, could you tell us a little bit more about the history of Juneteenth and its relation to inclusion?
[00:06:31] JS: Okay. Well, as you mentioned, it was basically slaved people in Galveston, Texas didn't get the memo for like a couple of years. And there are a lot of stories around why that happened. Most of them are false. And the reality, we said the messenger got shot. They say Texas is far away, so they didn't they didn't get the memo, whatever. But the reality is they did. And the same time the emancipation proclamation was issued, Lincoln's people were using the telegraph then. It was around. They got it. But what happened was they actually had Texas law that said that they didn't do manumission.
The local law said they didn't have to do it. The local people said they weren't going to do it. And it just took until the federal troops could actually get there to free the enslaved people who were there. That's kind of where it was. And we've been celebrating it ever since. It's always been celebrated in Texas. But the rest of the country has figured this out now and became a legal holiday in 2021, like you mentioned. That's the background.
[00:07:33] EM: Thank you, Janet. And so having backgrounded that, we're really hoping today to enter a conversation where we think about what lessons can we learn from Juneteenth and our pursuit of greater freedom for all people? Greater equity for all people?
And in that vain, one concept that we have been discussing together as a group and that we'll discuss a little bit more today is this concept of a participatory culture. Participatory cultures are essentially about equitable collaboration. And what I mean by that is shared power over a shared purpose toward a shared bank. A participatory culture is one that minimizes barriers to expression and civic engagement that retains strong support for creating, acting and communicating with others. It retains a certain informal mentorship, whereby, what is known by the most experienced has passed along to novices.
And within that participatory culture, there is a widely and deeply held belief that the contributions of every community member matters. More broadly, this also means that we share a sense of connection with one another. So, people care about one another's thoughts, their feelings, and their trust. And they trust that that is going to be mutually practiced by all.
That is perhaps the ideal. And what this means, participatory culture essentially lays the groundwork for us to practice inclusion and advanced equity. Now, I think we're going to get into this in a little bit more depth. But what I will say is that participatory culture is a destination. It is an ideal more so than a destination. It's what we strive to achieve in building inclusion. But that does not mean that you're going to turn on a switch and build participatory culture automatically.
And so, toward that end, I’m going to take a moment to pass things over to Khalil to give us a little bit more information about that.
[00:09:33] KS: Oh, thank you, Evynn. And it's newer language for me as well. And I’ve been around this narrative of inclusion, and diversity, and belonging, and things like that. And I think, to your point, and the folks that know me won't be – Maybe surprised. I’m a little bit of the naysayer here. But I think, to your point, we are looking for ideal. We are surrounded by folks that are saying, "How do we do it better? How do we do more?" And that is incredibly powerful.
And yet, within that, to your point around the ideal of a participatory culture, sometimes I think we talk about things like inclusion or participation as if they're almost an on-off switch, right? Do you have an inclusive culture? Yes or no? Do you have a group of people that are creating belonging? Yes or no? And yet, in a lot of instances, I think what I’ve come across, and absolutely would love to hear from Janet and Michaela on this, it's a bit more of a dial, right? It is a bit more of a, "Today, we're a bit more inclusive. Yesterday, we were a bit less inclusive." When we think about what we're trying to become, we're moving towards that ideal. And we had asked the question before, "Are there any companies out there that we would say are absolutely nailing this idea of a participatory culture?"
And so, you can see in the slide, right? Things like low barriers to expression and civic engagement. Everyone is able to participate, right? Strong support for creating, acting and communicating with others. And that idea and that degree of equity and consistency.
And what I’ll say is that I struggle with coming up with examples of organizations that do this really well consistently and across the entire organization. Because I think there are pockets of companies that do it well. There are teams that do it well on a Monday, and a Wednesday, and a Friday, but maybe not on a Tuesday. There are places where some folks feel incredibly engaged and others don't as much.
And so, I think we're pushing for that ideal, which is incredible and useful. But it's also helpful to remember that sometimes when we use language like yes or no, that we're either on or we're off, we are dulling all of the kind of nuance and the flexibility that happens in those organizations.
And so, when Shelby was talking about the company I’m fortunate enough to work with, Akamai, we're actually starting to knock on 10,000 people. The bio she read was not that long ago. But when we think about trying to be inclusive across 10,000 people, I think what we're going to talk about today are a lot of the kind of tools, and tips, and best practices that Juneteenth can teach us about that.
And I absolutely anchor on some of what Janet was saying, which is it wasn't that the communication didn't get to the various pockets of the United States. It was that there wasn't a mechanism for enforcing. It was that there were different perspectives. It was that some folks said, "Yeah, I get that you all are doing that. But I don't want to do that."
And while, hopefully, we are not talking about the degree of malice and historical kind of subjugation that happened as a part of Juneteenth, what we are talking about is you can roll out whatever program you want or whatever policy you want. But if you don't have a mechanism to ensure that that is happening throughout your organization, you will find those pockets of places that say, "No. We know better." Or, "No. We're not interested in doing that." And that absolutely erodes this idea and ideal of a participatory culture.
Janet, Michaela, I’m going to be quiet. Because I’m here to hear from you all as well. But I’m curious to get your perspective on that.
[00:13:12] JS: Well, I think we've talked about doing this episode. The idea was what can we learn from Juneteenth that is relevant today? And that's where the idea of participatory culture came in. Because the thing is this, if you want any good indication of what a participatory culture is not, it's probably an organization that is completely ignoring Juneteenth. Well, why this holiday?
When you think about all the holidays that we celebrate, we have holidays that we celebrate that are about bringing families together. There are holidays that we celebrate that are about recognizing something very historical, historical thing of significance.
Juneteenth is one of the few holidays where, while it is based on a historical action that happened years ago, over 150 years ago, the issues are valid today. I mean, when you think about equity, when you think about the concept of freedom, those things are very real today. If you as an organization choose not to celebrate – And I’m not even going to say give people the day off, which we do at NLI. But that notwithstanding. Not even to acknowledge it . Then where it's different is that what you are sort of doing if you think about it, especially if you're trying to build a participatory culture, is you're saying we aren't going to acknowledge what's happening right now.
Because one thing that Juneteenth does is it gives you the opportunity to open a dialogue to, be a participatory culture to talk about what happened, to talk about systemic racism, to talk about freedom, to talk about racism. That it opens that door. So, if you don't acknowledge it in some way, you are sort of shutting that door.
And what you're saying to your employees are you don't stand with them during this very tumultuous time. You're not acknowledging that there's an entire community that is struggling at this point. And you're not acknowledging that the black experience is something that we need to pay attention to. Not doing it is really a hallmark of a non-participatory culture.
And we think back to that slide that we had that listed all the different things that were in a participatory culture, you can almost check it off and say, "Okay. So, what? You're not – You're having a high barrier," for example, to civic engagement. You're not giving people an opportunity to have that conversation. You don't have a strong support for sharing things. You don't have the opportunity to pass knowledge around in a mentorship arrangement. You're telling people that their contributions don't matter. And you are losing the chance for people to have a social connection with each other. I think it is a very good opportunity to do these things. And not doing it makes a statement as well.
And so, Michaela, I’m going to bounce a little bit to you. Because as always, you can probably tell us scientifically what might be in play here. Some of the things that some of the forces that are going on for people who choose either not to do this or not to engage, and to lose this opportunity.
[00:16:04] MS: Very good. Yeah, good point. I wish to talk about science and, basically, human behavior. There're so many theories, if you will, that social psychologists have come up with. And I’ll focus on a few. And one is status quo, right? There's maintaining the status quo. There are certain ways that people like we do things a certain way. So, something new can come in. And if they don't like it, and when we talk about things that speak of our past that leads into our future, like racism, that's a very uncomfortable thing anyway in the United States to talk about. And then in the workplace, that's a whole other thing. There could just be this simple level of I just like things the way they are. Let's not mess up the apple cart. Let's just keep on going.
And so, people want to uphold the status quo. And those are often people who benefit from a system. And there's interesting studies that show that people who want to maintain the status quo actually can be more resolute than those who want to change the system, because they're holding on so strong. That doesn't mean we can't change systems that has happened over time. But you need to put in a lot of energy, because those who, in a way, have the power are very resolute in holding on to that and maintaining the status quo and whatever the status quo might look like. With that said, there are people who kind of have an aversion to the status quo and will work to change systems. We have that.
I’d also like to kind of go more on the level of power in the sense of social dominance, social dominance theory. There are many different – There's social hierarchy. There are many levels I could talk about. But also, if we talk about a system in an organization that works a certain way and you have people who have a say on how things are done and how things are run, they get to tell the narrative. And if it supports them, they will continue doing that. Again, it's also kind of justifying that status quo. But if the system works for you, why do you necessarily need to change it? Those are just some of the things happening.
Also, it could be that people look through the world in their own lens. And especially if it doesn't affect them, this is not their story. This is not their problem. Why do I need to take this on. And again, these are things that we do as human beings with any number of topics. But these can be some of the many, many processes at play why we don't change the needle and why the needle isn't being changed in organizations.
[00:18:32] KS: Yeah. And I'm probably throwing off everything we're going to talk about. But I would just love to kind of get your perspective on this. Because I saw in the chat someone say the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 precipitated a lot of organizations saying we now want to have this conversation about Juneteenth or feel compelled to have it.
And Janet, I’m curious to get your perspective, and Michaela, based on what you were talking about as well, is that – I mean, clearly, there were a lot of things about that that we wish never happened. Is it okay that the conversation is extending from there? Michaela, to your point around the status quo, that felt like a moment where a lot of things changed for a lot of organizations or a lot of people. Janet, are you seeing that continue to change? Is that the right way to kind of carry this forward? It just felt like it was a moment. And I don't know how many organizations are actually like – Leveraging is not the right word. But carrying that forward.
[00:19:29] JS: We have the whole discussion about everything that's going on. Is it a movement or a moment? For something to be a movement, you have to have a way for that momentum to continue. You have to continue to have a conversation. You have to have a dialogue. And so many people have fatigue about these topics. They just are tired of talking about them. And I’ve said to a couple of people, I said, "If you think you're tired of talking about them, think how tired the people are who have to live it."
So, yes, we know it's tiring. It is hard living this stuff every day. But if we don't talk about these things, if we don't take these moments that happen that shock us all into understanding some things that maybe we didn't believe was true – I mean, let's face it. When George Floyd was murdered, it triggered a worldwide reckoning on race.
And I remember thinking, "I’m glad this is happening." But when you say reckoning, my question was what does that mean? Is reckoning just that we now have an open conversation and we're going to push this through and continue this dialogue? Or is reckoning that we're going to change things?
And in some places, I want to believe things did change. But we are still having a lot of the conversations. And so, when I see things like Juneteenth, when I see anything that comes up, the whole issue we have right now around CRT and sort of that flash point around that, I see that people are continuing this dialogue. These things are being pulled along. But I don't know that we are getting out of the dialogue phase as much as I would like. And it's because it's emotional. Because it's hard. Because the things you have to do, like Michaela said, you're asking people to give something up.
And I always tell folks, if it were flipped and if black people are in that position, we wouldn't want to give anything up either. This is not what we want to do. I mean, I understand it. But I agree. I understand, but I don't necessarily agree. And so, it is a matter of saying what are we going to actually do with all this energy that we have? Are we going to push things through? That's a challenge.
[00:21:22] KS: Michaela, again, this goes to you. Like, is this a moment to break through that status quo? Is there anything that we can leverage to say, to Janet's point, like, there's all this energy. There are these moments. There are these things that have shifted. And now, we're going to use this to help get people unstuck.
[00:21:39] MS: Right. Yes. And it was a catalyst, right? What happened with George Floyd. And we're having these conversations between what's performative and what's authentic? People making statements. But to your point, are they carrying that through? Are we sustaining that?
And I think you have some – If you talk about organizations, some organizations who are like, "Okay, we really want to work through this. Because guess what? They have work forces." People in their organizations who are being impacted and coming to them and saying as much. And some are actually seeing how their people of color, their black people are being impacted depending on what the business is where they might be in more danger. I don't want to give too much context. But where they might be more vulnerable in literal physical danger because of the color of their skin. And some of these leaders actually seeing that and like, "I want to be able to protect my people." This is something that's real. We need some tools to work through this.
And so, I’m finding – And Janet can maybe speak to this as well. There's some organizations like we don't know what to do. We don't know how to talk about this. This is kind of scary for us. But we do need some help. And there are other ones who are like, "Yeah, okay. We are hearing that this is an issue. Yeah, we kind of need to know more. Is this something that's really legitimate." But we are having this conversation I think that we weren't having four years ago. There is hope here. And how can we, all of us, who are not only here on this panel attending session, how can we be pivotal players wherever we are?
[00:23:09] KS: I was just going to say really quickly, based on what you were describing, like the only thing that I’ve never heard a company say is we've got this nailed. Like, "Nope. We're good. We figured it out. We don't need any support. We're all dialed in." But I think, to your point, I’ve heard everything else along that spectrum of like, "Hey, here's some things we're trying. We want to share. Here are some things we're doing that didn't work. What are you doing? How can we learn?" All the way to, to your point, we don't even know how to have the conversation. And I think there are still some folks that are saying we don't want to have the conversation. That is part of the problem, right? The organizations or the leaders that are saying, "I just don't want to talk about it. I don't think this is relevant. I don't think this is helpful. I don't think this is –" Enter excuse here. I think that is, in a lot of ways, the essence of the problem that we've got to kind of work through.
[00:24:00] JS: No. They're not going to have – Companies that don't want to talk about this are going to have a problem. Because the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2022 pointed to the fact that there is such a distrust of – This vicious cycle of distrust of the media and of government that people have slowly but surely been turning to organizations as the place that they put their trust. And the communications that they get, they trust them. They want to trust them. However, it'll also tell you that they think that companies aren't doing and saying enough about some of these big issues.
The days of companies staying out of the social justice and the social impact space are over. If you don't talk about these things, if you don't engage, it's clear to people. You're the outlier at this point. The question is how do you engage in this? How do you talk about it? How do you do it in a way that makes sense?
And I would argue that you have to communicate authentically both within to the people that are in your organization and without if you're going to step out of it. And what do I mean by authentic? It just so happens that I’m writing a book, and I created a model and I called. My co-author and I, we created a model. And we talk about how communications need to have depth. And what makes them have depth has to do with how you actually look at, what you're going to step into and how?
And one of the biggest issues that you have to ask yourself is, is this something that is aligned with this company's core capabilities? Is it something that is aligned with our mission and vision? Internally, it should be. I mean, issues of justice and equity, they're aligned with most people's, most organizations core values and their mission. So, that's automatic. That's aligned there. It may not be aligned with what you do outside. It may not be aligned externally with what you do.
The question is how do you talk about this stuff? I’m a firm believer that you have to tie it back to who you are as an organization. Every organization is different. And if you don't do that, if you don't tie it to what you do, if you don't tie it to what you say you believe, if you don't talk about things that you intend to continue talking about. And the big one is if you don't commit, if you don't commit to doing something, and then make yourself accountable for it, nobody's going to believe what you say.
And if you've been down that road and had that push back, I can understand why those companies are hesitant to have conversations and to communicate. Because they've had problems. But they probably thinking the problem that they had is because of what they were talking about, because of what they stepped in, because of what they decided to communicate. And that's not it. It was how they did it. Because like I said, at this point, you don't have a choice. It is not an option not to engage. It's just not.
[00:26:44] MS: I came across – I mean, it's a term that's been around. Two terms. One, accidental ignorance. Somebody didn't know something, right? Maybe they didn't know about Juneteenth. "Oh, okay. That's really interesting. Thank you. Now, I’ve taken it in." And then there's active ignorance, which is basically you kind of know what's going on, but you're like claiming, "Oh! Oh! There's something else that can be attributed to this or to that." And it's like we know something's happening. But for some people, legitimately. Let's just go back to George Floyd. Like, the experience of black people in America, that was really new for them. And so, they kind of, in a way, you could say have had accidental ignorance. Just didn't really know the depth of it. But now, we kind of all know this is out there.
To even kind of claim to become an active, to be actively ignorant, "Yeah, well –"
[00:27:35] JS: No. No. You're making a choice. My mother used to always tell me, doing nothing is a choice. Not talking about something, not engaging with something is a choice. And so, the question is what choice are you going to make? And that's why I think Juneteenth is a very interesting holiday to look at in sort of this space. Because the choice you make not to deal with this particular holiday is a statement of what you're choosing to deal with.
If you choose not to deal with it at all, you're saying I’m not dealing with any of this. And I would argue, you can't keep doing that.
[00:28:11] MS: And I would just like to throw in a little nuance there. Because some people are like, "Well, it's not my intention. I mean, I don't have bad intentions. Just because I don't say anything about it doesn't mean I have anything against it." And I just want to note a quote from somebody who works at Capital One. It's on their website at Capital One. His name is Graham Crawford. And he made this the statement. He said it's very easy to sit on the sidelines thinking that your lack of negative intent is enough to make a difference. It doesn't.
I also want to highlight the thing of like individuals or organizations, we mean no ill harm. Or to anybody, we're all inclusive, but they might not act on it. But just the fact that you don't have negative intent doesn't mean that you're making a difference into what Janet said, not acting is actually a choice.
[00:29:00] JS: Okay. Evynn, we went off the rails.
[00:29:01] EM: No. I love it. If that was off the rails then you went in the right direction all the same. But I did want to take a moment to – I think that you really discuss many of the challenges that we face. And advancing inclusion and how people are thinking through these issues. And I want to turn the conversation a little bit more towards how do we begin to solve for some of these challenges that you're discussing?
For example, that accidental ignorance that people are experiencing or are practicing, I suppose. And that unwillingness. I saw a comment in the chat regarding new data from the Edelman Trust Barometers that indicates – And I see it. Then there's lots of data beyond the Edelman Trust barometer to corroborate this, that people increasingly expect that their employers, that their leadership, are stepping up on social matters and are making their positions known. People want to work for companies that have some kind of mission and that are not – How some employees might perceive to be indifferent or contributing further to oppression. Perhaps, we can start with what do we do to begin communicating, understanding and acting in this direction?
[00:30:22] JS: Let me just go to something that was in the chat. And I think it was Patrick. One of my communication MA students was a psychologist who, when asked to define communication, said all communication is behavior and all behavior is communication. She really earned her A that day. Exactly. I mean, the thing is that is the point. You can talk about it – Think about how many times after George Floyd died. I’m sorry. Was murdered. After that happened, people said, "We need to open up the conversation." We have been having this conversation since Juneteenth.
And so, the conversation at some point has to move forward into actual action. And when it does move forward, it cannot be performative. To your question of how do you sustain this conversation going forward? You have it authentically and you don't have it performatively. And if you want an example of performative communications, all you got to do, look, is the Juneteenth ice cream that came out this year. Okay. That was a bad move. And you can serve your Juneteenth ice cream on a Juneteenth plate that said it's the freedom for me.
Okay. What I’m saying is part of having a participatory culture and not having a performative culture is inclusion. It is making sure that the people about whom you're talking, about whom you're engaging, about for whom you're engaging are involved in those conversations. In terms of sustaining these conversations, you have to make sure the right people are in there. You have to listen to them when they're there. And you have to act on what they say. That to me is how you sustain all these – Sustain and advance these conversations into action. You move beyond aspiration to action. That's my take on it.
[00:32:00] KS: Yeah, Janet, I would agree. I mean, one of the terms that I heard early in my career kind of doing similar types of work is not about us without us, right? Like, don't have the conversation about a particular group without having people from that group as a part of the conversation and appropriately deferential, right? Like, yes, you may be a VP in this role. But you're asking me about this experience. And so, your title right now is not relevant to what we're trying to get done.
And so, Michaela spoke about power and how all of these things weave together. But a large part of what we're saying is bring folks from your organization. And if you don't have them, that's obviously a concern, right? It's one of the reasons that we talk about diverse organizations being smarter, and more innovative, and better able to kind of weather these things.
But one of the big challenges that organizations are struggling with right now is this notion of we want to say or feel the need to say something externally because of the Edelman Trust Barometer, because our customers are asking for it. And yet we haven't done the work internally. And the gap between your employees' experience internally and what you say on your Twitter account, or Facebook, or LinkedIn is the measure of hypocrisy.
[00:33:16] JS: And they will call you out on Twitter.
[00:33:18] KS: Absolutely. And they should, right? And so, that is one of the things that we are probably struggling with to a degree, is if you haven't done the work internally, but now as a society we're saying, "We expect you to speak up," and you start to speak up. Well, you don't have a leg to stand on, as we would say in some instances, right? But you do need to speak up.
And so, both of these things need to move together. But ultimately – And it is absolutely approach that I’ve tried to take to my role at Akamai and the approach that I consulted on when I was with NeuroLeadership Institute is get your house in order, right? Take care of the things that are in front of you, and your people will support you with these other things.
When we've looked at what do we say about black history month? What do we say about Juneteenth? How do we respect it? How do we regard it? What do we say about women's rights? Like, all of these things, I am a person of color sitting in the role that I sit in, and our response to Juneteenth is not Khalil's perspective. I reach out to our employee resource group and say, "What are people asking about? What are people thinking? What's going on in your community? Help me balance. Help me understand."
And so, if you're not building that into your organization, you are doomed to fail. And there is no company out there that is not building a finance department, an operations department, and a strategy team, and all of that. Because you wouldn't just leave it to one person to figure out what your organizational strategy should be. If you're leaving it to one person or a handful of people to figure out what your responses should be to societal movements, you are doing it wrong. And take this as a sign to figure it out.
[00:34:54] JS: And you made a very good point that we talked about Edelman Trust and people want to say something. But there is a time for an organization to just sit on the sidelines and be quiet. And that's when – Because the way you see the huge missteps, that's the people who didn't get their houses in order. And either, all their folks on Twitter are going, "No. No. No. No. No. I know what you said. But that's not what we do. Practice what you preach." They're either doing that. Or you step out the wrong way.
You think about all the various missteps. A lot of times the CEOs. Because CEOs, when they say stuff, it goes a lot further. You think about all the things that CEOs have said that are wrong and that ended up blowing up that were all over LinkedIn. And when a CEO talks, it affects the stock price. Or when there's a disconnect and employers are talking about it. It's because exactly that. What you say externally needs to align with what you're doing internally. And if it doesn't, you need to sit that one out.
And yes, it will be obvious that you sit it out. But you think about all the folks who, after George Floyd was murdered, everybody put little black boxes up. First of all, that was a mistake. Because that was not what it was supposed to be. Somebody hijacked that completely and turned it into a thing. But then those black boxes came down. Nothing changed. And now, people are calling companies on that. They're saying, "Okay. So, what are you going to do about it?"
I do believe there's a time to just be quiet. But what's not okay is if you have an opportunity where you realize, if you've done – Somebody, like a communication person, goes, "No. No. No. We need to sit this one out." You don't just get to go, "Yeah. Well, it was good we sat that out." That's where you find the cracks in your internal space. That's where you say, "We're sitting this out. Why? Why? We're sending it out because we haven't done this. Because we've never talked about this before. Because we've avoided these issues before. Because we don't really have anything we can say." You deal with your internal people. You got to talk to them no matter what. You can't be quiet about that.
But before you step out, you need to have your house in order. And if it's not, then you need to clean it up. And these types of opportunities – We see these as opportunities to figure out where the dirty spots are in our house. Then we can actually move this whole argument forward, this whole discussion forward.
[00:37:07] MS: And you can start having those conversations internally. And it's not like you have to be perfect internally before you can start making your external statements. But in terms of, organizationally, how can we change behavior? And Janet, you're speaking of CEOs. And I really want to highlight the importance of CEOs, of senior leadership, of role modeling.
Human behavior, we look to those in authority, right? And we model what they do. We get the sense of, "Oh, this is appropriate. This is not appropriate. This is what's accepted. This is what's not accepted." So, how do you go about in your own organization leaders, senior leaders, changing the norms? You could be saying this. But are you acting that out? Are people seeing you do that like for real?
When you start doing that, people say, "Oh, our CEO, our General Manager of North America started doing that." Sometimes it's not that conscious. We just start to model that behavior. You set the norms. And we can set the norms as colleagues. But let's be real. There's a lot of power in those who have authority. People will look to you. That is one way to start the change on an organizational level. Then people will start adopting that behavior. Let's call it inclusive behaviors. Behaving and having equitable practices. That will make its way through the organization. And individuals will be taking that on. And that's how you can start changing a culture. How you can start changing the system.
[00:38:29] JS: Absolutely.
[00:38:30] EM: Thank you for sharing that, Michaela. And I think that an interesting conversation came up while each of us were speaking. And I want to jump back to it a little bit, because this conversation about behavior change. Somebody was asking, "What does success really look like?" I think they're kind of curious about you know how do we measure better inclusion? And how do we measure companies getting their houses in order? Because to the point of another commenter, there are those who believe that their house is in order. And they act from that place. And they have no tangible data or observable behavior to really inform that perspective. And yet, that's the perspective from which they act. Can the group tell me a little bit more about that?
[00:39:14] JS: I’ll jump in there. Then I’m going to turn over to Khalil, because he probably can talk about this in practice. I believe firmly that the first question you have to ask yourself is what are we solving for? What are we solving for with diversity? What are we solving for with inclusion? You hear all the time, "Well, we want inclusion because it drives innovation." All right. So, then my question is, so how do you – Where do things get innovative in your company? How do you do innovation? Who's there? What went forward? What happened? You can't say – You can't measure something if you don't know what you're looking for. You can't decide whether you're successful if you haven't decided what success looks like. I think we go through life.
Well, organizations – And we were saying this for years. We do it because it's the right thing to do. You can't measure the right thing to do. Back in 1865, they thought slavery was the right thing to do. So, we don't really want to play that game. As an organization, and it varies from organization to organization, what's the right thing to do for one company is – I mean, I’m sorry. What the thing to solve for in one company with your diversity and your inclusion is a different thing to solve for. And it's an objective reason. It is not a subjective thing.
If we get it out of the subjective space, then we can start talking about whether or not – We can prove whether or not we got there. And we can measure it. And Khalil, I’m sure you probably have an even better view on that.
[00:40:32] KS: It's definitely not a better view. What I will say is I think there's a place for both of these, right? The subjective and the objective. And I think, to your point, Janet, for so long it has been we do this because it's the right thing to do. And that is a compelling argument for the folks for whom it is a compelling argument. And it has changed nothing for the folks for whom it's not a compelling argument. Because we can debate right, or wrong, or what we should be doing, or the role of businesses for as long as we want. The beauty of this is that diverse and inclusive teams are kind of like a buy one get one free, right? Like, you get all of those benefits that Michaela can talk to us about for hours and hours and days and days of all the research and the Deloittes, and the McKinseys, and the great place to work, and so on and so forth. And you get the people that say, "I want to work at an organization that values these things. I am more likely to go work there. I am more likely to give my discretionary effort, or to stay for longer, or to you know not feel like I need some of those other things that I may be jumping around for."
And so, clearly, I know nothing about shampoo or conditioner. But it's like those shampoo and conditioner. Even if you only need one, you're getting the other one in there. And I think that there's a lot of value when we talk about the objective. There are measurements that you can use, right? Pulse surveys to evaluate your teams, to understand how they're feeling. Are you measuring representation across your organization? There's a lot of data that you can pull together to look at, "Let's look at the teams. Let's look at our people analytics. Let's pull a bunch of that data together."
But similarly, in some instances, sometimes the things that we do are like indoor plumbing. We don't always cost it out. We just know it's the right thing, right? We know that we want to live in a home that has that. And therefore, we are going to make the investment because it is what creates a better environment for us holistically and overall.
And so, again, we do things like pulse surveys. We have a great people analytics team that is constantly helping us to understand who's leaving? Who's joining? Our leaders, how are they being effective and affected? Do we have slates of interview candidates? Do we have panel interviews? Like, all of that data. But that speaks to a particular group. When I’m talking to some other folks, it's almost like I’ve said before, it's almost like saying, "Hey, we've got a bunch of data that says that it is 70 degrees here. And you should be comfortable." But somebody is saying, "But I’m cold," right? They're not asking you for the data. They're asking you to respect their experience and to have a conversation with them about how you can change some of what they're going through.
If you marry those two things together, the data and the actual experience, I think there's a lot of value in saying like, "Hey, we're actually getting everyone." And now there's no reason to not do this. Because I’ve shown you the data. And I’ve proved to you that it's important to people. And so, if you are holding back, you're holding back because you've just decided this isn't a place you want to engage. And that goes right back to Michaela's point of, "If you have leaders that have decided regardless of the data, regardless of the trends, regardless of our employees, this is not a priority to me." You need to get them out of your organization. Period. End of story. And that needs to become one of those practices that you put in place.
Before you are promoting people, you need to understand how are they treating the people around them? How are they prioritizing these things that we've said that are important to the organization? Because if you tell people it's important and yet you always promote the top coder or the top salesperson. Guess which one of those things you are going to multiply in your organization? You can tell me all day long. But the thing that you reward, the thing that you promote, the thing that you pay for is what you are ultimately going to get.
And to Janet's point before around like you got to know where you're going. We're quoting parents today, as we always do. My father would say all the time, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." If you're just saying, "We just want to be more inclusive," but you're not measuring it, you're not evaluating it, you're not helping you to understand what it's doing for your organization, you will spend a lot of time running in circles. As opposed to being really clear about where you are, really clear about where you want to go, and the deliberate steps that can get you closer.
[00:44:43] EM: Thank you. Thank you all for sharing those perspectives. As we kind of move toward you know the final 10 minutes of this discussion, I think that probably our audience is eager to learn more about where they can do deeper reading or find further insights about all of this. Does the group want to share some of their perspectives on where people can learn a little bit more about this?
[00:45:07] MS: Maybe, Janet, speak about that special publication?
[00:45:10] KS: I heard there might be a book coming out sometime soon.
[00:45:13] JS: Yeah, there's a book coming out. And it's actually coming out in September. If anybody see my mug that sits around here, this is kind of like it. The title of the book is The Conscious Communicator: The Fine Art of Not Saying Stupid, I’m going to say, stuff. But that's not what the title says. And the whole point of it is – Oh, yep. There it is. The whole point of it is, that model that I mentioned, and the whole idea is this is how you talk about difficult issues. And I won't say an objective way. But in a way that allows you to justify whether or not you should be talking about it. And if you do talk about it, that you're doing it in a way that's authentic. And that's what the whole book is about.
And so, yeah. And the other books that are out, there some – The Movement Made Us, That's what I’m reading right now. And I’m reading Celeste Headlee's Speaking of Race. Both of those are powerful books.
[00:46:03] MS: There are multiple resources out there. I mean, just literally Google what might be that you're curious about. And you can find videos, webinars, books, you name it. And we talk about that in our allyship program. It's like educate yourself. And fortunately, there are a lot of resources out there.
[00:46:22] KS: Yeah. Michaela, I know you've written about this. Janet, I know you've put things out about this and have the book coming out. I mean, as you say, there's just a tremendous amount of information out there. And I think sessions like this are incredibly valuable as well. Evynn, to your point, I was looking through the chat and see people sharing their perspectives, and what they've talked about, and how they've communicated these things. And I had popped up The New Jim Crow. I just think it's an incredibly valuable resource.
Because a large part of what we're talking about here is that many, many years ago a decision was made. And we're pulling apart what that decision was to try to understand why there was a law passed. And yet, through all of the excuses that Janet spoke about, there are reasons, there are excuses, there are rationales, whatever the case was. For well over two years, people did not benefit from what was meant to have been their new right, right?
And so, when we think about the systems that are being built, the power structures that are in place, a number of the people on this call/webinar are people who do have power in their organizations. They do have a voice in their organizations. And as we see people, as we've all talked about, say, "Well, I trust my government institutions less. And I trust my media sources less. But I trust business more." It's one of the reasons that I have loved being in business for so long. Janet, we were talking about this before, is that you kind of have a captive audience sometimes, right? Like, the things that you choose to educate people about at work, while they are being paid, I’ve seen the benefit of educating people about feedback and then they come back and say, "I’ve got a tremendously better relationship with my significant other or my child because of it." Where you introduce them to these concepts and they say, "You know what? I’m viewing the world differently."
And so, I would argue that after we're kind of done with school for those of us that go, or from our parents, for those of us that are fortunate enough to have ones that raise us a particular way, work becomes the place that you understand what's right and what's not? What gets penalized and what gets rewarded? And so, looking at some of these around the systems that are in place and then being able to use that framework to interrogate our own systems and say, "Are we really just passing laws and then assuming that those things are going to be equitably distributed?" Or are we really going to every single corner of the organization to measure what are people feeling and then root out those places where we have leaders, to Michaela's point, that have said, "Yeah, okay. I can be performative. Or I can kind of put on a smile for the all hands and then go right back to doing what I was doing before." If you're not digging deep, then you're not doing enough.
[00:49:04] JS: Policy is perfect. Policy is wonderful. Policy is what sets down the rules. But measurement, metrics and shining a light on those policies and making them flexible enough to change if you see the need to is what actually makes those policies actionable. I agree.
[00:49:20] MS: And I just want to know. And I know we're at time. And Khalil and Janet both mentioned this, that people out there – And it's not just the younger. It's actually not millennial. Even millennials, gen-Z, gen-Y, they want organizations that are aligned with their values. And they want inclusive cultures. And they're looking at that. That's one of the things they're looking at before they join an organization.
And I’ve been told by some clients, by some organizations, they have people who join a company. And after a month they're like, "Mm-mm. This is not it." And they will actually quit because they have other options. Companies are actually in a race for really good talent. So, they're also being compelled to create more inclusive cultures organizationally.
[00:50:02] EM: Excellent. Thanks all of you for you know sharing the deeper resources. I want to just take a brief moment. I know that we're at time. We'll be wrapping up at 1pm Eastern Standard Time. But as part of my thanks, I’d just like to offer each of you the opportunity to share what you would like to be your last word for today's conversation. Not last word. But last phrase. If there's anything you want to leave the audience to think about.
[00:50:25] KS: I’m going to go first, because there's no way I want to follow up Janet and Michaela. I’m going to take a cop out and just say happy Juneteenth.
[00:50:31] JS: I was going to take that same cop out. But since you did it first –
[00:50:34] KS: See? That's why I went first.
[00:50:38] JS: I will say that we've all heard that adage, if we don't pay attention to history, it repeats itself. We will never repeat, I hope, what we saw back then. But if we don't look at what's going on right now and recognize that there are a lot of things that we thought we'd never see us go back to that we are very much going back to, we should be aware. And if we don't pay attention, if we don't keep an eye on things, if we don't watch where that needle is going, we can go back to what it was. because this is a system, and the system's operating as designed.
Until we blow that system up and change it, which I hope everybody here is about doing that, then we need to recognize that we have to be intentional about what we do. It will not just happen. And every one of us has a role to play in that. Happy Juneteenth.
[00:51:22] MS: Yes. And they're going to carry that theme. Sometimes we encounter things that are really uncomfortable for us to deal with. I have issues when we even talk about slavery in Juneteenth. And I feel all this in my body and this tension. I’m like, "I don't want to think about it." But I invite all of us. When we feel that discomfort, that twinge, that, "Ugh! I don't know." Just kind of breathe into it and be with it, because that's how we can work through something and where we can make change. We kind of have to go through. Allow ourselves to feel that pain, that discomfort, all of us, whatever that might be. It can be part of that human experience. So, let's work and breathe through that. And we can do that together. And I hope this doesn't sound trite, but I really mean it, let's be the change we want to see.
[00:52:07] EM: Thank you so much. That's a beautiful note to end it on. I appreciate all of you for joining us for this really, really wonderful conversation, as does the NLI community. If the chat isn't any indication. Thanks everybody for attending today's community learning event of Your Brain at Work Live. I’m going to go ahead and pass it on back to our community manager and host, Shelby Wilburn. Hi, Shelby.
[00:52:28] SW: Hi. Thank you, Evynn. And thank you all so much. That was a phenomenal conversation. I'm very excited to see how that evolves. A few updates and announcements for you as we close out. Also, we really want to thank you for attending today. As always, staying engaged, sharing your thoughts, and insights, and comments. We can't have these conversations without you. We have a hybrid survey.
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[00:54:12] SW: Your Brain at Work is produced by the NeuroLeadership Institute. You can help us make organizations more human by rating, reviewing and subscribing wherever you listen to your podcast. Our producers are Matt Holidack, Mary Kelly, and me, Shelby Wilburn. Original music is by Grant Zubritsky. And logo design is by Catch Wear. Thanks for joining us. And we’ll see you next week.
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