The DEI Questions Leaders Ask Behind Closed Doors With Lily Zheng

Speaker A: It's not about the Oppression Olympics. It's not about who is most oppressed or whose problems are most, you know, urgent. It's recognizing that even though all of our identities and backgrounds are different, our experiences overlap to reveal what's broken about our workplaces. And if we are strategic about it, we can work together and say, you and I, we have different problems with our workplace.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker A: But we all hate the promotions process because it's not fair. So let's work together and make this process better for everybody.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome to the Inclusion at Work podcast. Today we are very lucky to be joined by Lily Zhang, Fairness, Access, Inclusion and representation strategist, and authority. And we thought in today's discussion we would explore some of your tough DEI questions. These are the things we hear from leaders, from practitioners, people working within organizations, when they get us alone, when they open up, about some of the big challenges they're facing when trying to make progress. We're also going to explore some of the edge cases and the things that can sort of test the limits of our thinking, test our approaches. And these are some of the things that come up more often than you might think. Lily will bring their perspective from the work they do, as well as looking at these situations through the lens of their fair framework, which I'm sure we'll hear more about as the episode progresses. But before we dive in, Lily, we'd love to hear a bit more about you, about your background and how you come to be doing the work that you're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Um, we had so much fun during the prep conference conversation for this conversation, because we were just talking about how to make this conversation fun and unique and insightful. So, um, a bit about me. I come by this work of making better workplaces for everybody kind, um, of through a weird trajectory. I actually finished my master's degree and went straight into basically workshop creation and teaching in the DEI space. So I was kind of teaching inclusive behaviors, inclusive leadership. Um, I was teaching like gender 101, race 101 classes as a 21 year old. And from that is the next decade or so of my work. I've been really evolving how I think about this practice over the last ten plus years. Um, and thinking specifically not just about how we say the right things or do the right things, but how we actually create better workplaces. And so over time, I think my approach has evolved from a very basic. I'm going to teach you the 10 words that are good and the 10 words that are bad kind of approach into much more complex, rigorous structural organizational change work and change management leadership, uh, coaching, uh, strategy design and that kind of work. I feel like I bring that experience into this approach and the frameworks that I develop, you know, for better or worse, I feel like that that evolution of my own career really mirrors a lot of how this field, uh, that I'm in has evolved over the last couple of decades as well. So I'm eager to talk about that. I'm always a fan of a fun conversation, um, a good debate, if you will. So we were talking about that in the pre conversation. I was just like, would it be appropriate if I asked you to, to try to break my framework? And you two were like, yeah, that sounds like fun. So, you know, here we are, right? Like let's, let's have a fun conversation. Let's, let's get some hard questions. And I'm hoping that this hits on what our listeners have thought to themselves but haven't wanted to say out loud. So yeah, um, hit me with it. Let's have a good time.

Speaker C: That's a great way of putting it.

Speaker A: Perfect.

Speaker C: Um, and super unique background as well. We don't meet many people who their first port of call was diving straight into the work of inclusion.

Speaker A: That's kind of wild, right? Imagine being 21, right? This kid right out of college trying to teach. Oh, it was tough.

Speaker B: Yeah. And we were super excited to have this conversation with you because we've followed you for a while and we have quite a lot of similar thinking. But also you're very, um, what's the word? Strong in terms of how you articulate and very clear with exactly what it is that you change, you want to see and how you think organizations really need to shift. So we love that. And when you said to us on that pre meeting challenge me, that was great. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to share the tough of questions that we get asked from, as Phil said, leaders normally when they are behind closed doors. So the first one, if you're happy for me to jump straight into some examples and scenarios, is this ongoing conversation around meritocracy. So just in case anyone doesn't know that term, it's that belief that individuals should succeed purely on the basis of merit. And what we often hear from leaders is just focusing on diversity. Prevent meritocracy. So. Or it's not fair to focus on diversity because that goes against Meritocracy. So there's a lot to unpack here, but I might hand straight over to you what comes to mind when we talk about that.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, the first thing that comes to mind is immediately dispelling the first of the big misconceptions that DEI work, diversity, equity, inclusion work, is opposed to meritocracy. I think the ultimate irony is the whole point of DEI work is actually to create a meritocracy in the first place. The starting point of DEI is recognizing that the status quo around us is not a meritocracy, and it never has been. We don't work in a world, we don't work in workplaces that treat people on the basis of merit. Now, I'm going to share a bunch of stats based on the US Things are different where y' all are based, right? But I'm willing to wager not that different. Now, in the U.S. 91% of American workers have experienced workplace discrimination. It is a absolutely staggering amount. In the United States, workers share all sorts of things, from being passed over in hiring for their age to being passed over in promotion because they then go to the same school or the same elite university as their manager, as being spoken over in meetings, being discriminated against or bullied or harassed in the workplace for who they are. These stories are not unique to the United States. They're global, right? Pretty much in every single one of our workplaces. We don't have a meritocracy. We have these imperfect environments where decisions are made on the basis of unfairness, exclusion, nepotism, favoritism, all the bad stuff. So our status quo, right, I think we need to recognize starts from this pretty messed up place. Now, if we can get on that same page saying our status quo is not perfect, we then get to this conversation of, well, how do we fix it? And the answer is basically, DEI work, right? Like, we fix it by changing our environments to be more fair. We fix it by teaching people how to communicate more respectfully. So, you know, like I mentioned in the beginning, the ultimate irony is that the whole point of DEI is to achieve a meritocracy. So when people say, like, isn't DEI anti meritocratic? I'm, um, here just kind of at a loss for words and thinking like, well, who told you that? And then it turns out if you look at who's actually spreading this narrative, it's actually the people who are benefiting the most from the lack of meritocracy in the workplace, right? It feels like people who benefit from all of us being angry and scared and, you know, feeling scarcity and terrified that we're not going to put food on the table. It feels like it's a very small subset of people benefiting from that who want to keep us angry and to want to get us to throw away the exact solutions that will make our workplaces better for everyone. So that's my answer, right? Dei, uh, is the answer to our lack of meritocracy. If we do this work right, we might actually get a little closer to meritocracy than we are today.

Speaker B: And I think what's interesting is what we often see with leaders is that they can see that a systemic perspective, so that they can see that there are challenges and people are not making fair judgments outside of their own world. But when they think about themselves, of course they don't see it in the same way because they believe themselves to be fair. So that's the real challenge, is how we help leaders see that maybe they aren't making decisions just based on merit. And that's hard, right, because you have to accept that you do have some bias and there are things at play that aren't necessarily under your control. So I think that's the challenge that we have is how do we best help leaders see that in a way that allows them to make change?

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, this really connects to my background in social psychology and starts from this realization that humans are very simple creatures, right? We want for a very small number of. Of psychological things at all times, and one of them is we want to feel good about ourselves. People have the innate need to feel good about ourselves, which mostly only comes up when you look at what people do when they're made to feel bad about themselves. When you make someone feel bad about themselves, the human response is to eliminate the threat, to get rid of the thing that makes us feel bad. And so, in other words, this manifests as extreme defensiveness when we help leaders introspect on the possibility that they might have bias or have made biased decisions. Now, there's a lot of different schools of thought on how we address that, but for me, I. Rather than saying, look, you are not a meritocratic person, you are not a fair person. I mean, even just saying these things, right, if I looked both of y' all in the eye and said, you are not a fair person, you'd probably get a little anxious, right? It's not a good feeling. But if we instead say, look, all of us, all of us, you know, are going to default to what feels comfortable over what might be most rigorous at any given point in time. Are the processes we use each and every day set up for maximum fairness, yes or no? And I'm sure both of you could easily say, no, they're not. And then I could say, how can we set up better practices that ensure that we can make more fair decisions every day? And you would both say, I don't know, let's figure that out together. Um, and this is such a radical shift in how we do this kind of awareness building. Instead of trying to fix the individual and try to make people into better people, we instead say, look, we're all imperfect, but our actions and our decisions can be either more or less fair. Let's strive towards more fair by creating the infrastructure and support we need to be better leaders. And that I find leaders are pretty amenable to.

Speaker C: I'm having to stop myself on a moment to moment basis jumping in with fierce agreement with what you're saying there, Lily. And it's odd that it is a radical idea and it is actually in a lot of the work we see people doing in the inclusion space that we, we should approach change in this manner of making it a generative positive experience. We've all been in terrible DEI workshops. We've all been in those workshops at one point in our career that felt shaming, that felt blaming. And as you quite rightly pointed out, the barriers go up because I always enjoy the phrase the complacency of good intent. And I think that is to blame for a lot in terms of inactivity. Leaders see themselves as, well, most humans see themselves as good people. We're all the hero of our own story. We're not, you know, we're not racist or sexist or homophobic or any of the above. And therefore we don't have any work to do. And that of course misses a huge, huge opportunity. And I think when we're looking at addressing this work inside of organizations, taking that generative approach and uh, just thinking of an example of how people generally pushed back on the question of meritocracy, it's often a straw man argument born of scenarios which don't often occur inside of organizations. So, uh, an example is in inclusive hiring practices. So what you're saying is that you're going to make me hire somebody who's dramatically underqualified for this role just because they fulfill some kind of hiring quota or criteria. And that's not safe and that's not fair. And very often that's not what's being implemented. That's not what's being proposed in an organization. It's. No, let's see a wider pool of candidates. Let's be more mindful of bias in the process as individuals and as know, uh, as a system moving people through this. It's. It's often not.

Speaker A: No, we.

Speaker C: We just have to hire this person because they are X to fulfill a quota and they are, you know, dramatically underqualified for the role.

Speaker A: Yes, you're. You're absolutely right. Right. The operational work of creating more fairness in the hiring process, for example.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, is almost so much different from the strawman that it seems, like, mundane. It's. It's. It's extremely mundane. Right. Like the last time I helped decision makers fix their hiring process, we did two things. Two extremely boring things. One, we designed a scoring rubric to make sure that when they hired candidates, they could be maximally fair in evaluating the skill of the candidates. Right. You can't hire based on vibes. That's extremely unfair. So if you just feel like the candidate feels like a good fit because they went to the same school or you like their qualifications, that's not a fair process. That's not meritocracy. Right. So we help them develop. Uh, I worked with this client. We helped them develop a scoring rubric that directly mapped onto the skills that they were looking for from the position. And I trained them to say, look, even though candidates might have different backgrounds, this is what a 5 out of 5 on your rubric looks like. This is what a 3 out of 5 on your rubric looks like. So let's make sure that we're fair in giving people these scores. That's super mundane. The second thing we did is we kept their job openings open for two weeks longer, um, because their initial pool of candidates was too narrow. It was like, specifically, most of the people who applied were men. And we were like, well, I bet we're missing some of the talent in this pool. Let's keep our position open a little longer and do some target recruiting just to make sure that we have a rich pool of candidates and then we pick the best among them. Now, uh, who could possibly get mad over design a rubric and leave your job posting open for two weeks? I'm too bored to be mad. It's not even interesting. And that's. That's DEI work. Right. It's, like, too boring to get mad at, and yet we're all yelling at each other over something that doesn't exist.

Speaker B: And I think the other really important point there is we've talked about fairness. Right. But it extends beyond just fairness, it's effectiveness. So if we're being fair in the candidates in this scenario that we're recruiting, actually we're going to get better candidates, which is also better for the better candidates. Yeah. And I think that's a big part that we really lean into in the way that we approach dei because we know there's some people that actually just don't genuinely the fairness isn't the biggest motivator for them, but the effectiveness is really motivating. And then we still get the outcome which we want, which is fairness. So making sure to pull all of those levers and communicate about all the huge numbers of benefits that as you say, some really simple practices can end up having for individuals and organizations.

Speaker C: This goes to the language we use to talk about and think about. You know, we know DEI is a polarized term. Again, the example I sort of shared before about, you know, the strawman example of hiring somebody who's grossly underqualified. I see that in the news from time to time. It's like a wokeness is causing dangerous hiring in this, um, you know, in this particular profession. But we're big fans of exactly what you said, Lilly, which is when you strip things back down to actually what are we talking about and actually what do we want to achieve? We want an environment where everyone has a cultural staple in Australia, is there no notion of a fair go? Which is wonderful. Um, so where everyone has a fair go, where everyone has the tools they need to get the job done. And when you talk about it in those terms, everyone nods along in a way that when you say this is an inclusive hiring workshop, maybe they don't. So I think the strategic re. Badging or talking about things in a palatable way, um, can be really powerful.

Speaker A: Well, I have a bit of a spicy take for you. Amazing. Um, which is that when it, when it comes to these kinds of sticky narratives around we're hiring less qualified people and so people like myself are not getting a shot. Now again, I'm going to go back to psychology and if we ask ourselves why are people so drawn to this narrative? Um, there are very clear answers to that. Which is right now for job seekers. Right. The employment landscape is so hostile to everybody. Mhm. I don't know exactly the details of how things are in Australia, but here in the States, Right. Like it's a bad time to be looking for a job. And so people everywhere, job seekers, candidates, whether you're on the job or off the job, you feel intense scarcity. We're also dealing with a time where corporations and leaders feel maybe more emboldened than they did 10 years ago to be acting callously towards their candidates. Right. You can apply to a thousand jobs and not get a callback. You can apply to 500 roles and not get a recruiter speaking to you. And so people emotionally are feeling like opportunities are slipping away from them. Right. Like that's the broader context. And so when some demagogue comes online and says it's because of the minorities. Right. I mean, people are feeling so scared and feeling that sense of loss. So I, I almost don't blame them for gravitating towards these narratives. It's not enough to just say, well, the facts and logic say you're wrong. What we need to do instead is to say, yes, like, the facts don't line up with what you're saying. But I understand how you're feeling. Right? You're feeling loss, you're feeling fear. You're worried that the opportunities that you had yesterday are not available today. And you know what? You're right. You're right. They're not. But it's not because of people of color or people with disabilities or LGBTQ people. Uh, it's because, you know, our random multi, you know, hundreds of millionaire billionaire, you know, CEOs have decided to instruct their teams to lay off 10% of their workforce every two years. Right. It's because we don't have the kinds of social safety nets that we used to have several decades ago. And so these are the shared problems that we need to be solving as societies. Rather than letting a very small number of extremists direct this, this very well placed fear and anger against each other, rather than fixing these workplaces that most people look to for their livelihoods and their survival.

Speaker C: I'm sure AI is not going to have any role in exacerbating that particular issue.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker C: And in, uh, that respect, we'll, uh, likely continue to do so in varied and unexpected ways.

Speaker A: I'm going to correct myself. AI isn't m doing anything. No, it's the leaders. It's the leaders that are using AI as an excuse to put people last. And I want to make sure that we highlight that it's people making these decisions, because people can make different decisions. And as a society, if we can come together and focus on why it is that we're letting our workplace leaders treat, you know, their employees, their workers, their consumers, the general public so callously. Right. I think we can come Together and make things better if we just take a breath, step back from the culture wars and the endless, you know, infighting and distractions of pointing fingers to say instead, wow, you know, it seems like our, our societies are burning down around us and it's a very small number of people that are driving the car off the cliff. Right, yeah. We have to change directions.

Speaker C: It's such an important reframe, Lily. And, uh, I think the more we can work that into our language. AI is not causing job losses. It's a factor in the equation, but it's people making decisions because they have access to a technology. Um, I might move us on to question two, though.

Speaker A: Question two? Yeah, I was going to say maybe it's time for a second question.

Speaker C: We could loop back around that in some directions. Um, I think we're already on the fun train, so, um. Yeah, good stuff. Um, the second thing we hear very often, and I'm sure you do the same, is we want to take an intersectional approach, um, to inclusion. We want to consider intersectionality and then kind of an awkward pause in a blank stare because making that practical and putting it into practice seems really daunting and really challenging. We want to take this approach, but we have no idea how to do it. How would you counsel somebody who's approaching their strategy from that direction?

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, first of all, let's talk about what intersectionality is. It's everyone's favorite term to misunderstand. Intersectionality, uh, emerged from Kimberle Crenshaw's work with black women, specifically saying we had these two different frameworks to understand inequality, the framework of race and the framework of gender. Saying basically, look, you know, sexism is bad, women are treated worse than men. Uh, and then separately, racism is bad, Black people are treated worse than white people. Now, the concept of intersectionality came about because each of these two kinds of dimensions, race and gender, were only being applied one at a time. And so Kimberly Crenshaw was basically like, it's not enough. Right? It's not just that you're either a man or a woman, or you're either white or black. Both of these things exist at the same time, right? Experiences of gender are cross cutting and multiplicative and complex. And so unless we understand the experiences of people living at the intersection of these marginalizations, race and gender and disability and sexuality and age and all these things, then we can't truly understand the scope of people's problems. And more importantly, we can't understand how to fix their problems. Intersectionality was never just an academic framework for knowing it was a practical framework for fixing. So fast forward to our present day, right? People say intersectionality, that's important. Now, what most people mean is we can't leave behind people at the margins of identity. Now, that's all well and good. Is that very pragmatic the way people think about it? Not at all. And so when I work with leaders, we start from understanding what intersectionality is. We say, look, not everyone in your workplace is being treated the same, right? There are people within every workplace. The people at the margins, usually the most junior, uh, workers, the most entry level workers, the youngest and the oldest workers, women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people with disabilities, Muslims, Jewish people, trans people, people at these intersections, they have oftentimes the worst experience of the workplace, period. M. Okay, then what? Then what? Why do they have the worst experience? Well, because their experiences reveal everything that's wrong about how we've designed our workplace incentives, our policies, our processes, our culture. If we focus on these experiences of marginalization, we basically treat them like the canaries in the coal mine. You basically look at marginalized workers and you say, look, their experiences reveal something telling about how this environment is broken for so many people. When we design for the most marginalized, it turns out we actually uplift everybody's experiences. Um, there's a particular example that I share from my book Fixing Fairness, um, of what accessibility advocates call the curb cut effect, where when you design a sidewalk, a physical sidewalk to have a cut for the curb, it slopes down into the street. That is designed as an accessibility fix. Right? It's something designed so that people with different mobility needs can access public life. Right? People in a wheelchair can go up into the curb. You know who else that benefits? People using strollers, people, uh, wearing roller skates, people who ride bikes, delivery drivers, people with suitcases and roller luggage. Right? So when we design for the most marginalized, we actually help everybody. And this is intersectionality in action. Right? It's not just enough to say, oh, look, we recognize that there are people who are most marginalized. We then have to follow through and say, by fixing the environment, by designing for their needs, we actually help all of us. Right? Another example, who is most disadvantaged from meetings, when we have virtual meetings, usually, um, introverted people who don't speak up as much as women, people with disabilities, parents. Right? And so what tends to be a really good fix for these people to meet their needs? Sending out meeting notes and agendas before the fact. Now, I think we all benefit when we send out meeting notes and Agendas before the fact. So this is another example of how when we design for marginalized people in mind, when we put these needs first, we actually design better for everybody.

Speaker B: And Lily, can I take it a stage further in terms of practicality? Because one of the challenges that people often come back to us with when we start to talk about that is. But where do we start? So because of the nature of intersectionality, and you're thinking about so many different groups, identities, how they build on top of each other, how do you think about where to even begin in terms of designing for those marginalized cases?

Speaker A: Oh, this is my favorite question. So I get some version of this question all the time. I've gotten this question for almost ten years now. Um, and in most manifests as this, Lily, we want to start to make our workplace better. Do we focus on race first or gender first or disability first or sexuality first? And there are bitter, bitter fights over who gets priority in these conversations. Now, to those debates, I say everyone is wrong. You start everywhere, all at once. What do I mean by this? Right. Oftentimes workplaces tackle dei, uh, from a sequential point of view. They say, like, well, we're going to only focus on one identity of the month, and then we're going to go through the line, right? And I think this is completely backwards. We instead need to say, where do we find people, problems in the organization? Right. And let's say, let's just use a very basic example, uh, promotions. Let's say there's a problem in promotions. The lack of a, uh, rigorous promotions process allows for bias to seep into that progress or that process. Who is negatively impacted by a broken promotions process? It turns out everybody. By race, by gender, by sexuality, by disability, by age. And now all of these groups, rather than fighting to be considered first, are now all equal stakeholders and constituents in helping to understand how to fix the problem. Right? So intersectionality, if we apply it, if we understand it most pragmatically, it's not about the oppression olympics. It's not about who is most depressed or whose problems are most urgent. It's recognizing that even though all of our identities and backgrounds are different, our experiences overlap to reveal what's broken about our workplaces. And if we are strategic about it, we can work together and say, you and I, we have different problems with our workplace, but we all hate the promotions process because it's not fair. So let's work together and make this process better for everybody. Whether we are upset about it because we're marginalized by race or Gender or disability or age or sexuality or all of the above, it almost doesn't matter. Right. We have a shared focus and we're going to fix it together.

Speaker C: I'd love to scratch on that in a couple of different directions. Completely agree. We take the approach of um, we usually refer to it as foundational inclusion. Um, so when we're thinking about an organization again, we look at a process like the promotions process, um, exactly as you describe and there are so many benefits and you pointed to most of them. And I think another one that's really worth highlighting there is the level of buy in and agreement and support for policy, practice, process learning and development changes when framed in that way, skyrockets as opposed to, we are doing something for this group. It's like, actually no, we're going to fix this. This, we're going to fix meetings. We love talking, talking about meetings. Meetings universally suck. People universally dislike them and think they're a waste of time. Anything we can do to make them more fair, more effective is something that's generally welcomed with open arms by organizations. And we see, we see a massive uptick there. So completely agree that in terms of going back to the question of though, where do we start and where do we prioritize some version of. Yes, yes, yes, foundational inclusion, absolutely. But we also want to celebrate days of significance, um, throughout the year. We also want to raise awareness about the challenges that a group might suffer. Uh, and so we still come back around to the question of essentially who are we including and who are we not including in our narrative, uh, around DEI and the organization? So it's still, the list is infinite about things we could talk to. But for instance, here in Australia, a vanishingly small amount of organisations that we've worked with had a focus on something like generational inclusion. Gender is always on the list, um, here in Australia. Um, but things like generational inclusion, often disability is something that's not explicitly spoken about. So yeah, how do you counsel somebody who wants to talk about some of those diversity dimensions but is scared of the triage?

Speaker A: Yeah. So, okay, I'm so glad you said triage at the end because I was about to go in a very different direction. Um, I think triage is in fact the answer because what you've just talked about is I think a dead end approach to inclusion work. It's basically, um, this fight for attention, this idea that there are an infinite number of diversity dimensions and if our dimension isn't the focus of the month, then we have to fight to get a little Bit of attention. And what this does is it puts advocates for gender inclusion, for trans rights, for disability justice, for generational inclusion, for class inclusion basically at odds with each other, right? We're all fighting each other for the barest little scraps of attention. I think it is a complete dead end way to advocate for this work. Um, I think it forces us to fight each other rather than to say, what we really need to do is to create a workplace where all of us can get our needs met. And the problem is that the challenges are always going to be different on a case by case basis, right? It's not that every single workplace has every single possible kind of inequality in every single nook and cranny. Maybe a workplace has actually designed a very fair hiring process when it comes to gender, but not when it comes to generation. Maybe a workplace has a very fair, let's say, um, pay equity process when it comes to both race and gender, but not when it comes to educational level or educational attainment, right? And so triage is the way that we allocate resources to solve problems. And I don't think it's as simple as saying, like, which identity group matters? We know that every identity group matters. It's not an attention economy thing. There's no scarcity here that we're fighting for. It's instead saying which identity group gives us the right lens to solve this problem that we're looking at, that it's a case by case problem solving question. And it's very tricky to maintain that focus when so many of us have been coached or incentivized through the society we live in. To fight for clicks, to fight for eyeballs, to fight for attention, to say, my group is the most marginalized, my group is the most deserving of your attention. That's the definition of the Oppression Olympics, right? Saying we have to fight to be most recognized. And I think it is, it dooms us all, right? Like, it keeps us fighting against each other rather than saying, I don't care who has it worse, we all have it pretty bad, right? But, uh, what we need to fix, let's get focused. Are we fixing a hiring process? Are we fixing your horrible meetings? Are we fixing your team culture? What are we fixing? Okay, how is it broken? Who is it hurting? Who is most marginalized? In this case, in this situation, that's triage. Once you have the answer, you work with the groups that are having a good time to understand how and why they're having a good time so that you can scale that, then you Work with the groups that are having a bad time to understand how to solve their problems, regardless of what those groups are, regardless of what identities are implicated in those groups. Right. It's a way we can recognize our differences without imposing some weird hierarchy of, uh, the more oppressed you are, the more I care about giving you attention. Right. I think that's just a dead end for how to organize this work, and

Speaker B: I think that's really interesting. And one of the key areas we see that as a challenge here is in employee resource groups where many organizations will have a gender group and a race group. And of course, all of those groups are fighting for organizational resources. So there is attention and resource limit. And for HR teams, that's incredibly challenging because they've got five groups looking at their policies and five groups asking for different things from them. So when we do that work, one of the key things we do is work out how they best collaborate and work together and, uh, agree as a team. Is it the recruitment process? Is it the promotion process? Like what is the key thing we as a broader organization want to solve and then how do we bring the different lenses to it? But it takes a lot of work to get that working in the right way because people of course come from such a passionate place when it is an identity area that they experience and believe really strongly.

Speaker C: I think another, another challenge there to raise or another kind of consideration is policy and requirements of organizations. So for example, here in Australia we have, uh, gender pay gap reporting. So, so organizations over a certain size have to provide data to wagea, which makes that, um, information publicly available. So there is a very clear motivator and incentive for organizations to focus on gender specifically. And I think one of the challenges is in still, uh, counseling organizations to still take that foundational approach in the knowledge that that will do what it needs to in terms of your gender pay gap numbers, in terms of your representation numbers. Because we're still looking at recruitment, we're still looking at fair compensation, we're still looking at, uh, um, remuneration processes. And if those are by looking at them logically and going, hang on, there is something here that is not fair. This group is clearly underrepresented or underpaid compared to this group. That is what will bubble to the surface and get hopefully addressed by the process. But that is a more roundabout story than we need to focus on gender, uh, as an example.

Speaker A: Right, right. I mean, the identity focus is one of the most tactical tools we can use to solve organizational problems. But the identity focus itself is Not a quote unquote problem to be solved.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: It's a big shift in thinking because if we can get to a place where we recognize the importance of identity but we don't end up so subsumed in this kind of events calendar, Infinite Identity celebration every day. Look, I love a good party, I love a good cultural celebration. And I have worked in so many workplaces that have gotten, uh, consumed by their own events calendar, right? They're doing so much work every single day to shift focus, to raise awareness that they've sucked all of the oxygen out of the room. They have no time, they have no budget, they have no patience, they have nothing left to actually work on solving the real problems. Um, it's a phenomenon, I think I talk about it in the uh, book Fixing Fairness called Admiring the Problem, right? Where you get so swept up in the contours of the problem you're trying to fix, you forget that you need to fix it, it. Right. And like that's, that's, I think the, the trap that so many of us risk falling into, especially those of us that are most passionate about the work.

Speaker B: I love that. And I think we see that and the articulation of it I haven't heard before, but we see that a lot within, within organizations. So I really love that framing. I might take us on to the next question because we've got a few that we'd love to talk to you about. And I know this one we talked about briefly in our pre chat and obviously your frame is slightly different coming from the US But I think there's a lot of similarities. So this is, I guess, cultural tensions. And the key area that we've been seeing this in our work is in with our, uh, indigenous population. So in Australia we've got a big focus on the indigenous population and many organizations would have what we call a reconciliation action plan and targets for first nations employment. And some organizations do that really well, some have a long way to go. But one thing the big challenges we've seen that organizations are really focused on getting first nations people into the organization. And they're like, awesome tick. But actually once first nations people are in the organization, there's a really big clash in terms of ways of working with the sort of more traditional Western style. So as an example, one of the organizations we work with a not for profit, they're super progressive. They've done a really good job at getting at, uh, having some identified first nations roles and bringing Aboriginal people into their leadership team. Amazing. But this tension in times of ways of working, because we've got this Western style, which is about fast decisions versus a first nation style, which is about a slower consultative process. We've got Western style of this, like, short, to the point communications and meetings versus this indigenous style that's longer. It's the storytelling and it results in huge frustrations on both sides. And, and it means things get stuck and people feel frustrated and it ends up resulting in a whole load of challenge. So it's not necessarily like conflict conflict, but it is that definite tension. Any thoughts on how you start to manage that in organizations?

Speaker A: Yes. Well, there's two things that come up. Um, one is to understand that the purpose of these kinds of cross cultural engagement through these conversations, they're not just kind of uncomfortable things that we have to grit our teeth and get through. There's a value to this kind of culture clash in the first place. And the value specifically is in building trust between these different communities and creating these relationships through these different ways of working. And so if you have colleagues that work very differently from you, like, yes, all of the research on difference, whether it's difference in communication style, difference in cultural background, I mean, hell, there's differences in like independent versus interdependent cultures more broadly around the world. Whether we're talking about Western versus indigenous, or even like, you know, more Asian or eastern cultures or more Western, you know, like more white dominated cultures perhaps. There's lots of differences in how people engage, uh, through life that kind of connects. This research is how we manage difference. If we see differences as something that needs to be squashed out or destroyed, we're going to have a really, really hard time regardless of what those differences are. Right. We're going to see this conflict and we're going to demand assimilation. We're going to say either my way of working wins or your way of working wins, but it cannot be both.

Speaker B: Both.

Speaker A: And I'll just go out and say that that's not very useful. It's not a very productive way of tackling these challenges. If instead we say, look, you're very different from me. We have very different strengths, we have different weaknesses, we have different ways of looking at problems. If we at the very least start from the recognition that there is value in all of our approaches, My approach is valuable, your approach is valuable, but maybe not in the same ways. There are things that are uniquely valuable about being able to go really, really fast and talk really, really quickly. Right. There's also a lot of value in taking your time, understanding the process, allowing decisions uh, to be made as a group, understanding what's best for all the people involved. There's value in that as well. And so when we have these kinds of blended organizations, the goal is not to force everybody into one uncomfortable way of working. It's to say, like, how can we blend all of our strengths to do our work in better ways? How can we supercharge our mission using all of our differences as fuel? Right? That's one thing. The second thing, um, people are so bad at conflict. Like, pretty much everyone I work with is terrible around dealing with conflict. And so normally, if people were good at conflict, this clash that we're talking about, we would do, wow. The very hard thing of talking through it, we'd have conversations, right? We would hash out our differences and say, hey, this is tough. I'm having some hard emotions. This is rough. We're not hitting these deadlines. We're really struggling with these things. What can we do? What actually happens is we don't say anything. We stew in our feelings. We hold on to this tension. Uh, researchers call it conflict debt. Right? Of all the conflict that we're not having, that's bottling up and bottling up until it explodes like a. Like a, you know, can of soda that you shake. And it's terrible for our workplaces. What we need to get better at is acknowledging these differences and talking about them in plain language. Basically saying, like, hey, I know that things have been really tough, right? It's not a matter of who's right or who's wrong or who wins or who loses, but we have to figure out something to do around this, and there has to be a way to move forward that feels constructive, that acknowledges where everyone's coming from, but that also is clear that we need a solution beyond our status quo. So Those are my $0.02, right? That's how we get through it.

Speaker C: The bottling up of conflict and the lack of direct conversations is especially prevalent when it comes to matters of identity and inclusion.

Speaker A: Yes. No one wants to say the wrong thing, so they opt to say nothing. And that's worse.

Speaker C: Exactly. Um, I was just running a workshop last night with, uh, an organization on direct conversations. And, you know, foundationally, we're talking about how to have difficult conversations in the workplace. And we use, um, examples of identity and inclusion to, I guess, throw people in the deep end, so to speak, with the hypotheticals. Because those are possibly some of the most challenging conversations, uh, that people are likely to have in the workplace. Because hearing that something you said could be construed as culturally insensitive or sexist or racist is. Is terrifying for some people, quite frankly. And I think what it comes down to is also things centered around clarity and decision making and the practicalities of the operating environment. Again, it comes back to that pragmatic conversation about when and where we can best utilize these strengths. So in a fast paced environment, there are and having this conversation that, hey, just because of the environment we operate in, there are certain situations where we need to act fast, decisions need to be made within this time frame. And so can we all agree that absolutely respecting where everyone comes from culturally, but can we all agree these are the situations where we do need to have less consultation and less conversation and more calls being made, Whereas there are these other situations where we absolutely benefit from hearing more perspectives in a more considered way. And I think that speaks to what you were talking about there, Lilly, which is this is absolutely a superpower if harnessed in the right way, but if not thought about in a considered way that's contextually relevant to what's going on is the source of the frustration, is the source of the, you know, the tension.

Speaker B: And I guess the theory there is right in terms of what you've just said. But of course the challenge is the people that are normally making those calls about which decisions need to be made quickly tend to be people on one side of the fence. So in this sense it was the people with the more western way of working and the expediency bias. So I think within the organization, it's to your very first point on that question, Lily, which is how do we first get to the stage where people can see that neither of these two different ways of working are wrong? Because I think that whole thing about I'm going to get the term wrong, but if you're fishing a pond, you can't see the water. Like, we don't recognize that the culture that we operate in is one way of working. We don't realize that making speedy decisions all the time is one choice. Like we're making a decision to do that versus that being the only way of doing things. So it's the same when we do work in cultural competency. Stage one is to help people see what is the culture I have. And that is one way, not not the only way and doesn't mean I'm right. So I think it's such an interesting process for those reasons as that first stage that we have to do before we can start to have the conversations properly.

Speaker A: I feel like there's specifically something I Want to double click on here? Which is that the status quo, right. Whether it's the status quo of an organization or the status quo of the culture we were raised in has a cost. And so all of us, we are raised to think about the strengths, the benefits of what we take for granted. So when I think about the culture I was raised in, I think about the good things. When I think about the organizations that I lead or that I work with, I think about the good things. And so whenever we're encountered with difference, we can usually see with maybe too much clarity, all the strengths and benefits of change and also the weaknesses of change. We see change as a threat. We see like, oh, but what if this could happen? What if this could happen? What if this could happen? And so we make the mistake of evaluating a neutral status quo against a potentially risky future state. But that's a bias. We don't see the actual cost of the status quo in the first place. The status quo is never neutral. The status quo has its own strengths and weaknesses. And so what we're actually, what we ought to do is to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of our status quo against the strengths and weaknesses of change. And that is a dramatically different current conversation. Right. But, um, it requires that we have the humility to say, what are the weaknesses of everything I've taken for granted. If I work fast, if I go fast, if I talk fast, if I make decisions quickly, what are the weaknesses of that? And many leaders, I'm, um, willing to bet will say, I don't even understand the question. There are no weaknesses. The things that I like, they are perfect. They are impervious. There's nothing wrong with them. The things that are new to me now, I can see some of the weaknesses. Right. And getting people to feel safe enough to question their status quo, by the way, without making them feel like a bad person, because we talked at the very beginning. People shut down when they feel like they're a bad person. Um, is really what takes a lot of finesse in this work.

Speaker C: Absolutely. If it's all right with you, we've got a few getting to know you questions that we like to ask our guests at, uh, the end of each episode. But maybe we'll have to circle back, uh, and potentially do a round two, um, of this conversation at some point.

Speaker A: I was going to say, hit me with some spicier ones. These are softballs.

Speaker C: Well, maybe we can reach out to you. Dear audience, listening to this, what are your Spicy questions? Email helloadersforgood.org um, you can send us a note. What are your spicy questions? And if we get some really good ones, uh, we'll do a round two with Lillian.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll bring me back.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's it.

Speaker B: And just to give you a sneak peek, our next one on the list was going to be what do we do about those people that think that DEI is woke bullshit. So if you're interested in that, then

Speaker A: can I answer that one?

Speaker B: Go on, do it. Do a one minute answer.

Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay, okay. What do I do with people who think that DEI is woke bullshit. Right? Um. Now, I think I read about this in my book. You create so much value for these people that they cannot imagine a world without dei. That's it. That is a short answer, right? You basically talk to the people who say, I'm going to make it my life's work to tear down you and everything that you work for. You look them in the eye and you say, I want to solve your problems too, buddy. Tell me about your problems, right? Genuinely tell me about your problems. Where are you having trouble? Where are you facing discrimination? Where are you losing access to opportunity? Where are your communities being overlooked? And take those problems seriously. And to say, even if you hate my guts for it, it's my job to fight for you too, right? And eventually we will come to a place where you recognize that. But I don't need you to recognize that to fight for you, right? And that's what you do, right? Like, it's surprisingly hard to change people's minds, and it's extra hard to change people's minds with quote, unquote, facts and logic. There's no point to me saying, like, well, guess what? You're not discriminated against. Only I'm discriminated against, right? Like, no one's going to listen to that. But what you have to do is you have to speak to people's emotions and you have to remember, you know, the people who think DEI is woke bullshit. These are not like, you know, random stoic people that feel nothing. These are people who are scared. These are people who are angry. These are people experiencing scarcity. You know what, what our people, quote, unquote, are feeling? Scared. Angry. Scarcity, right? Like, we are living in some decidedly dark times right now. Um, and if you ask me, I don't think we have the luxury to be playing culture wars against each other. We need to be fixing our shit, right? Like, we need to be making our world just slightly more livable if we want our kids to be able to survive if we want our grandkids to be able to survive in this world or around us. So, yeah, you know, I'm gonna look this person in the face and say, you know, someday you might understand, but even if you don't, I want to fight for you, and I want to understand what you are going through so that I can fight for you better.

Speaker C: You pointed something so important there, Lily, and it kind of reminds me of the old adage that, uh, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. And I think that speaks to what you, You. You talked about. Actually, somebody who feels strongly about this topic, has an interest in it. They actually care enough to feel strongly about it. And something there is broken for them. Something there is not working. Something that has been framed in a way. Whether they've, you know, consumed certain media and got their opinion, it kind of doesn't matter. But they have a strong opinion, so they are invested in the conversation as opposed to somebody who just does not care. I think that's a. Possibly a harder. A harder hill to climb. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's a different hill to climb maybe.

Speaker C: Yeah, different hills.

Speaker A: Uh, there's my one minute answer.

Speaker C: Amazing. Amazing.

Speaker B: And hopefully we'll get a chance to dig into that at a later date. But we might quickly do a couple of getting to know you questions, if that's okay. So first one, outside of work, what obsessions do you explore?

Speaker A: Oh, man. Um, I have two of them. One, I've gotten really into coffee. I was talking about this in the pre show. I was a bit late to the game. I thought coffee was a thing that tasted terrible that you had to put milk and sugar in to make palatable. Um, I've now learned how to make coffee taste good. And coffee's incredible. So now I make a lot of coffee. Um, so I've gotten really obsessed with that. That. Another in the last couple of years, I got. I've gotten really into indoor bouldering, like climbing. Uh, it's been really good. It's been good exercise. I've been getting buff, you know, like, it's. It's important to move and to get out there and, and, um, to stay active. And it's been really good for me and my health. So, yeah, those are. Those are two obsessions. I'm pretty obsessed. They're my entire identity outside of work.

Speaker C: We're gonna have to nerd out. Not. Not so much the bouldering. My weight to upper body strength ratio, uh, doesn't let me climb very well,

Speaker A: but I Can't do that. Not with that attitude.

Speaker C: Not with that. True.

Speaker A: Bouldering's for everybody. But we can talk about that another day.

Speaker C: Absolutely. But I will nerd out with you about coffee at, uh, some other time. Lily, Organizations you admire for the good they're doing in the world, do you have any that come to the top of your mind in whatever capacity that kind of sparks for you?

Speaker A: Okay, this is a really tough one. This is canonically one of my least favorite questions to ever answer because I have the bad luck every single time. Every single time I give an answer, like, two weeks later, that exact organization ends up in the news for, like, I don't know, murdering some person.

Speaker C: Curling of the Monkey Paw, whatever you.

Speaker A: I'm so cursed. Like, I can't even name a good organization. Um, I don't know. In the past, I've said things like, um, uh, Patagonia, I think, has a really good approach to corporate purpose. I appreciate that. Ben and Jerry's. I appreciate them. But like, like, literally both of them too, right? In the last couple of years, you know, Ben and Jerry's, like, now Ben is trying to, like, buy back his company from Unilever because Unilever is being a corporate overlord. Anyways, the moral of the story is there are no perfect, pure, truly good organizations out there. They're only shades of gray. And everyone is trying their best. So if you are not perfect, know that you are among the 100% of organ organizations that are trying their best and to try to be better tomorrow than you are today. There's my non answer.

Speaker B: Love.

Speaker C: It turns out getting a large number of human beings to collaborate on something is, uh, not easy.

Speaker A: Um, no, it's really not.

Speaker B: Next question. What books, movies, or shows have you been inspired by recently?

Speaker A: Ooh, well, uh, it's a tongue in cheek answer. 1. Ah, I've been reading my own book a lot because I have to, uh, because I've been promoting it.

Speaker B: Uh, try and remember what you've said.

Speaker A: I know to try to remember what I've said. I don't know. There's a lot of books behind me that I've been really enjoying lately. Let's see, I'll pull some. That I like. Rosalind Chow's the doors you can open is good. Um, Ruchika. Um, Malhotra's Uncompete. Also really solid. Lots of fun books that exist in the world. Um, I've been reading quite a bit. I'm really excited for David Glasgow and Kenji Yoshino's. I think it's how equality wins. Books coming out soon, in a couple of months, A, uh, couple of weeks maybe. So. Yeah. There's so many books out there. Right. There's so much, I think, wisdom and expertise and brilliance that people continue to put out into the world in these really dark times.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I read a lot of sci fi too. A lot of fiction. Um, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin. Right. Like Isaac Asimov.

Speaker C: Uh, m. I'm just, uh, in Left Hand of, uh, Darkness, uh, by Ursula Le Guin at the moment.

Speaker A: It's incredible. Incredible.

Speaker C: So good.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, that's like a little snapshot.

Speaker C: Amazing. Okay, last question. The worst leadership advice you've ever received?

Speaker A: Oh, uh, man. The worst leadership advice I, I've ever received. You know, it's really funny because I'm usually the one giving leadership advice, so. Because remember my career, right? Like my very first job was teaching. Um, so I have had very few cases where some person has mistakenly tried to provide me mentorship, um, in. In a. In a horrible way. So maybe I've dodged a bullet there. You know, here's an interesting one. Be yourself. M. Because I think authenticity is overrated. I think we've created this scam where we try to push especially marginalized and minoritized people in the workplace to disclose the very aspects of themselves that workplaces punish and then blame them when they get punished for those authentic aspects of themselves. I think we need to recognize that the way in which marginalized people show up in the workplace is how they defend themselves. And asking for authenticity without creating an environment that is safe enough for their authenticity is just asking them to paint a target on their own backs. So I think it's well intentioned, but I don't think be yourself is good advice. I think it's, how can I make my workplace a place where you feel safe? And those are not the same question. The second one is better to answer than the first.

Speaker C: Um, we could go down what even is your authentic self? And you know, what does it mean to be yourself if you wanted to go down a complete existential rabbit hole?

Speaker A: Oh, I also believe in authenticity too. If you want to go down that rabbit hole. I think every single person has like 10 authentic selves. I think the self is developed in relation to the people we spend time around. Authenticity around our spouse is different from authenticity around our friends, which is different from authenticity around our friend group, our colleagues, our boss. Um, and whatever we arrive to in that moment, by definition, is an authentic self. And so what we should, in Fact be doing rather than chasing any one true authenticity is by maximizing our agency to show up the way we want to, when we want to, with who we want to. That's the thing that matters most. Love it. There you go. There's your little. There's your little.

Speaker B: That's a pretty powerful end. Thank you. So, Lily, thank you so much for joining us. We, of course loved it, as we knew we would. You can find a link to Lily's new book in the show Notes for you listener, along with those books that was recommended, um, just then. And if you got value from the episode, please subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. And if you would like to discuss anything related to dei, uh, and culture change, please get in touch with us@helloadersforgood.org

Speaker C: um, and send us your spicy questions.

Speaker B: Yeah, any spicy questions for Lily. We appreciate any final thoughts for us.

Speaker A: I'll just say thank you so much. I mean, this work is really important. I mean, I feel like I've just been peppering random rabbit hole dives throughout this conversation. Um, I think one thing that I didn't touch on that I think is a good way to end, is to say that this work is deeply, deeply collective. Um, like, all the change that I think we aspire to in our workplaces is achieved through coalitions. And so if there's anything that we can do to move this work forward, especially if you are an individual who's listening to this, like, don't let the work begin and end with you as an individual. Find other folks who you can be in community with, whether they're colleagues or local community members. The more we can work in the collective, the more we can find community. I think the more impact we'll see, we will have. And also, um, the more well we will be. Right. Like, this is hard work. Sometimes it's isolating and lonely work. We have to be doing it in community with each other if we want to survive and if we want to win. And I don't know about y', all, but, like, I want all of us to win, right? Like, I want us to wake up eventually to a world that is much better than it is at this point in time. And to say, we created this world together, so if you agree with that, then, like, we have to make that together a, uh, reality.

Speaker C: Beautiful.

Speaker B: What a perfect ending. I don't think there's much more to say. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker A: Take care, y'. All. Thanks for having me.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Inclusion at Work podcast. If you'd like to help others benefit from the conversation you just heard, the most impactful thing you can do is share it with a friend. You can also give us a rating or a review on itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And of course, if you'd like to talk to us about accelerating your organization's DEI efforts, or if you'd like to provide feedback on anything you heard today, you can reach us@, uh, helloadersforgood uh.org.