Embrace the Differences: Thriving in Diverse Work Environments with Kelly McDonald

Hey everybody wendy sellers here the hr lady i am back with my co-host jc hey jc wendy it's so good to see you today i i gotta tell you when the day started it was so incredibly cold but i don't know what happened i had this warm rush and energy come over me over the past five minutes i feel fantastic now how are you you know i've had a week but it's good you know i woke up today thinking I was going to get things done. And I did, but I got a lot of requests to speak at conferences across the country.

So I'm super excited about that. So even though that is overwhelming, I'm super, super excited. Things are happening. I'm even more excited, though, about our guest today, who is Kelly McDonald.

Hey, Kelly, how you doing? Hey, Wendy. Hey, JC. I'm great.

Well, hey, thanks for joining us. We want to talk with you today about how to work with and lead people who are not like you. But before we jump into that, everybody, welcome to the show, Kelly McDonald. She works with businesses from Fortune 500 companies to entrepreneurs and everybody in between.

She is an on-demand speaker and her message is simple yet profound. Managing with an eye towards embracing employee differences, truly making a centerpiece of a company's operation. I love that, I love that. So thanks for coming today and thanks for your time.

Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, maybe where you're from and how you got to where you are. Okay. I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but I haven't lived there in a long, long, long time. I live in Denver, Colorado.

So coming to you from Denver where it's nice and cold here. And how I got to where I am is I started my career in the advertising agency world and spent the first 25 years of my career doing that, working for global ad agencies. And along the way, you know, it's great training for what I do now, because what advertising about is finding the market opportunities that are not right in front of you. I mean, the ones that are right in front of you are obvious, but that's where with one of the ad agencies I was working with, we started looking at people who were not the core customer group.

You know, how could we expand that? You're already successful getting the customers that you're getting. How great could it be if you could get more customers? And those are typically people who are not like you.

So I just started diving into demographic differences. And then, of course, that leads to consumer differences, consumer buying preferences and all that kind of stuff. And then I realized that there was a lot of tension around that, especially when it comes to just working with people who are not like you. Sometimes those very differences that we have actually create friction.

And then I discovered that people don't know how to talk about that. And they don't know how to resolve it. So that's why we're on the show today. I love it.

And I also love the fact that you are author of four, not one, not two, not three, four best-selling business and leadership books. That is amazing. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I appreciate that. So let's just jump right in. Is it harder today, 2025, to work with people not like us, say two years ago?

Absolutely unequivocally the reason is that people and I find this you know at work is that people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing at work or having what they say taken the wrong way you know either one. That they absolutely are like frozen and they choose to say nothing. When they don't know what to say because they're so afraid, they say nothing. And I think that's a terrible thing for business.

I think we should always be able to talk to each other and especially when we come from different perspectives or we don't have the same point of view. But that's what's making it harder right now is the reality is, and you know this HR lady, is that the repercussions for saying the wrong thing at work or having it taken the wrong way are real. And everybody knows that. I mean, you can get in trouble.

You can get written up. You could potentially be put on probation or lose your position, you know. And so people are absolutely terrified of saying the wrong thing. And they don't say anything.

And I just think that's a that's. Adding to and compounding the problem that we have when we're working with somebody who's not like us, who might have those different perspectives and different experiences. And rather than shying away from them, we need to actually learn more about those and lean into those because that's where the magic happens. I can't help but jump on this real quick.

I instantly think of working within the agile environment. I instantly think of a culture of transparency and honesty and openness and a culture of trust. And then I think about those rooms where there's so many people that stay silent, they don't speak up, or when they do, they come to find out that they're not effectively in the right rooms. So their words are transcending to a group of people that are at face value buying into the culture of the organization, but when they jump into other rooms, they're not carrying those words forward from the person who's being open and honest and transparent and looking to do the right thing, and it comes down to a little bit of lack of leadership or, as some have said in the past, backbone and people skills.

I don't know. What do you think? I think you're dead right. I think you're completely dead on.

I think that's why I talk about working with and leading people not like you, because leaders have to exemplify the kind of behavior that they want to see in their teams. And so they have to lead by example. And consequently, if the leadership is not being that transparent, if the leadership is tiptoeing around sensitive issues or perceive sensitivity around issues, which I say perceive because so many people in a room that I've been in are like, I'm eager to talk about this.

I'm eager to share my point of view and I'm eager to hear yours. But it's leadership who's like, well, we want to make sure everybody's voice is heard. And they're actually kind of casting this power over the whole thing, which is to be tentative and to be tiptoeing. And I don't think we need to tiptoe.

Obviously, we need to be respectful and professional at times, but we don't need to tiptoe. Yeah, I love it. There's actually a survey that revealed that 86% of employees and executives, both sides, cite the lack of effective collaboration and communication as the main causes of workplace failures. And Kelly, that's no surprise, right?

I'm not surprised by that stat at all. No surprise at all. And a lot of organizations, you know, really tout, you know, how inclusive and collaborative they are. But collaboration is a skill.

And like any skill, it can be taught and it can be developed and honed. People don't necessarily just automatically know how to collaborate effectively, especially when they come at a situation or a problem or an issue with different views and different agendas sometimes and, you know, different experiences, etc. et cetera. So collaboration is key, but I don't think any leader should assume that people know how to do it.

Right, right. Well, you know, kind of on the same path there, how do we overcome being afraid to speak up? Obviously, you're not afraid. I'm not afraid.

JC's not afraid, but many people are. How do they overcome being afraid to speak up? I think it's about choosing your words, and I don't mean choosing them carefully. It's about actually saying what you mean, but framing it in a way that makes the other person understand that You're probing.

You're not confronting or challenging, right? So if you and I are talking, Wendy, and you share something with me and I don't agree with you or I have a different perspective, I might say, Wendy, I see it differently. May I tell you how I see it? And so I'm getting my point across.

I'm doing it very respectfully and professionally, but I'm standing my ground and I'm saying, I see it differently. Can I share that with you? And that's how an effective conversation starts. Or if, let's say, I sense that you're holding back, I can say, you know, JC, tell me how you see this.

Let's talk about how you see this first, and then I'll share what I think as well, and let's see if there's some overlap there. And if not, let's see where our differences lie. But it's not about proclaiming your idea to be or your point of view to be good or bad or smart or stupid or anything. It's just about tell me how you see it.

But if you put that welcome mat out there, tell me, I want to know, then that's where effective collaboration comes in. And that allows people to start asking the questions that they want to ask or having the conversations, but they don't know how to start. Somebody has to start. Yeah, absolutely.

And the fact that you also have to listen, right? You have to actually listen to the answer. A lot of times we just say, oh, I want to hear from you. The manager is just sitting there or HR too.

They're just sitting there waiting for a break in the conversation to jump in. They're not really listening. They really had no intent of doing anything at all. So folks, if that's you and you're kind of chuckling right now, listening, going, oh, that's right.

I don't really listen. Please stop and listen. For me, if there's a lot of information, especially if somebody is upset and they're coming to me and I call it, you know, word throw up, word vomit. I just say, hey, is it okay if I start taking notes?

Because there seems to be a lot here. And then that way I could summarize it at the end and say, all right, I can't fix all your problems right now. You gave me five. Here's three answers.

Here's how you and I together, we're going to go find the other two hours or two. Did I capture that correctly? Did I capture that? Because just because you took notes doesn't mean that what you are repeating back to that person is actually what they intended.

I mean, have you ever been in those situations where you take some notes and you're like, okay, so let me recap. Here's what I heard you say. Did I get that right? And somebody will say, no, no, no, that second thing, that's not what I meant at all.

And so I think that's a really good tactic as well, is just to make sure that what you heard is what they meant. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's just talk about, oh, go ahead, Jaycee.

Yeah, I got something for you. Embracing employees' differences, it can significantly enhance organizational performance. A study by McKinsey & Company found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above average profitability compared to companies in the fourth quartile. Additionally, companies with more culturally and ethnically diverse executive teams were 36 percent more likely to outperform on profitability.

Back to you. I love that. I mean, you know, go ahead, Kelly. What do you think about that.

I love it. And I would say that there is a difference between just, what was the first sentence that you said, JC? Do you still have it in front of you? Embracing employees' differences can significantly enhance organizational performance.

Embracing employees' differences. So I agree with that. And all the stats and all the studies bear that out. What I would say, though, is there's a right way and a wrong way to embrace employees' difference.

So the wrong way is my friend Cliff is a very out gay man. And he works with, you know, a nice group of people or whatever. But in meetings, he has shared that they will say things like, so Cliff, as the gay man in the room. No, I'm not kidding.

And I've got a friend of mine who's a black woman and it's the exact same thing. You know, Melissa, as the black woman, as a black woman in the room. So that's the wrong way. I just want to make sure that your audience is clear on this.

You don't call out somebody's differences. Okay, so in order to, because that creates otherness, right? You're essentially saying you're not like the rest of us. And we don't want that.

So the better way to say it is, is there anybody who has any personal or business life experience that would be beneficial to this conversation that would like to share? And by doing it that way and saying, is there anybody who would like to share some personal or business life experience? Because that way somebody might say, well, you know what, as a gay man, I feel this way or whatever. But don't shine a spotlight on somebody and call out that difference because it's very disrespectful and otherness.

That's the don't. Absolutely. And it could be that the person who was trying to do that was trying to be inclusive, but they just did it the wrong way. Or I want to talk about people that just rub us the wrong way.

So let's jump in there. What about people who just rub us the wrong way? And we don't know why. I don't know why that person bothers me.

How can we make that better? We can't put that on them. I'm not sure we can ever answer the question or why they bother us unless it's like really in your face, right? Right.

There are people who we just don't click with and that's part of life. And work is no different. So I think the first thing I would say is expect to not like some people that you're going to work with. I mean, it's just going to happen.

You're just not going to like them. They bug you, you bug them, whatever. It's just the way it is. No one has ever said that you have to like everybody that you work with.

There's not a culture, no matter how family oriented or whatever, There's not a culture ever that says you must like everyone that you work with. You do have to be professional and you do have to be respectful. But the example that I use when I'm doing like a live keynote would be to say, you know, Wendy, you and I don't like each other. OK, we just rub each other the wrong way.

Always have oil and water. Do you think that you and I could sit down and do a budget forecast? And inevitably, that person will say yes. And I'll say, right, because it's a task.

We don't have to have feelings around a task. I cannot like you and still sit down and do the job So certainly it makes the job better and easier and more fun if you like the people that you work with But if you can kind of like let yourself off the hook, there's nothing wrong with you You're not broken if you don't like people that you work with just focus on the task and go, okay I gotta sit down with wendy and jc And we've got an hour and we need to create you know an outline for the meeting for next week.

It's a task. You don't have to have emotions around that. And so that makes the job easier. And that's what you do with people you don't like.

Just plow through it. And it's not even about not liking them. It's just about, you know, maybe, and there's something, there's something. I wouldn't go to dinner with them if I had a choice.

But that doesn't make you a bad person. That doesn't make you wrong. It doesn't make you a. Absolutely.

All right. So I have a question for you, a little personal question, not really, but where can our listeners connect with you? And more importantly, how can they get a copy of how to work with and lead people not like you? Okay.

They can connect with me on all my socials. I'm probably most prolific on LinkedIn as a business site. And I am Kelly C. McDonald.

My middle name is Christine. If you just put in Kelly McDonald, there are like 30,000 of us. because it's a good Irish name. So put in Kelly C.

McDonald, or if you can't remember that, put in Kelly McDonald Denver and I'll come up. And that's where I'm going to share this podcast as well with my followers too. So that's a good way. And then they can get a copy of my book anywhere books are sold.

Certainly all the online services like Amazon, barnesandnoble.com, but also independent booksellers because we love our independent booksellers in the world. And that's where you can find it. any bookstore, any place that books are sold, online or in real life.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. JC, any final words, any final statistics you want to share? Yeah, sure.

Actually, you know, a 2024 survey found that over 70% of companies anticipate a rising demand for both analytical and creative thinking skills, and highlighting the value of integrating logical problem solving with innovative idea generation is next level. Research from Drexel University suggests that these thinking styles, they're rooted in different brain activity patterns. So it's critical to think about bridging those gaps. If you want to learn more about that, look up Kelly McDonald's books.

It might teach you a little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll make sure that I include your LinkedIn profile as well in the podcast notes. So with that said, Kelly, any final words before we wrap up here?

My only final words are, Don't be afraid of working with people who are not like you. You're going to find, number one, that people are people. We all kind of want the same things and care about the same things. Our different perspectives and our different backgrounds and the experiences that we have that shape us, that's where the magic is.

So lean into it. Don't lean away from it. That's where it all happens. That's what's making businesses successful.

I love it. You heard it here first, folks. Lean in, lean in, lean in. I love it.

So hey, everybody, thanks so much for listening. Just a reminder that the HR Lady podcast is now on the radio, too, in the Carolinas, Detroit, Southwest Florida, and Tampa Bay. You just check us out on podcast radio U.S.

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