In this episode of the Future of Team podcast, hosts James Giroux and Dee Teal navigate the complexities of inclusive leadership. They candidly discuss their personal challenges and unease surrounding the topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially from James’ perspective as a white male. The conversation spans six key traits of inclusive leaders as identified by Harvard Business Review: visible commitment, humility, awareness of bias, curiosity about others, cultural intelligence, and effective collaboration. They also outline practical steps leaders can take, such as creating a diverse personal advisory board, sharing learnings, engaging in bias training, and joining employee resource groups. Throughout the episode, the hosts emphasize the importance of introspection, authentic commitment, and proactive efforts in fostering an inclusive culture.
Transcript
James: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the future of team podcast.
Ooh, today is a topic that for me, I always get not scared is probably the wrong word to describe it, but as a white male talking about inclusivity, diversity, equity, belonging, it is a loaded topic. And it is one that for me, I find myself. Consciously avoiding a lot of the times when it’s out in like, you know on X or in these social communities and networks Because I often find that My voice is not the voice that needs to be heard, right?
I mean, I’m there to support and be an ally and champion where I can but I feel like every time I open my mouth to share an opinion, it’s going to be the wrong opinion, or it’s not going to be something I can and should say, so I always get scared. But I think that today, hopefully, as we get into this if you feel like me, Hopefully today will be a day to alleviate some of that and to create an opportunity to invite you to participate in the conversation.
And maybe this is that safe space for you to actually engage in that conversation. But as always, I am joined by Dee, my lovely co host. We’ve been talking about this already a little bit and sharing a little bit. We’ve got, we’ve both got lots to say. How are you Dee?
Dee: I am very well, thank you. I am loving the change of season that we’re having and even though it means getting up a little earlier to catch up with you, but I’m excited about the prospect of talking about this.
I know that we’re not going to solve it. in one conversation, but I do love the opportunity to open the can of worms, really, I guess, and to have a little look at it and have a poke around and see where we land. I think there’s lots of great things to say about it. I think I think it’s going to be fun.
Let’s do it.
James: Well, let’s start off by just saying that we are both open to being wrong. And I’ll speak for myself here and say that by no means is this a conversation where I am expecting you to accept everything I say as the only truth that there is, and it’s the only way to look at things, or the best way and I hope that if I do say something that you disagree with, or that you have a different perspective on, that you would feel safe and comfortable enough to share in comments and let us know what you think and be open and willing to correct.
because that’s how we grow as individuals and as leaders is when people are willing to share their thoughts and perspective.
Dee: I think the other thing that we are also mindful of is that we both you know, I mean, I can represent an underrepresented group in the sense that I’m a woman, but I am a white woman and acutely aware of the privilege that’s wrapped around that.
So we don’t purport to speak for all groups. But we are very interested in how we can make the areas that we work more inclusive for those groups and how we can be open to learning and hearing from voices that represent those groups for sure.
James: Absolutely. And at Future of Team, we have what we call our core principles or our eight principles.
And one of those is the concept of inclusive culture. But you cannot really have an inclusive culture without first addressing inclusivity at the leadership level. It always starts from the top. So today, while yes, inclusive culture is one of the principles that we really espouse and want to champion and want to see organizations really integrate into their culture.
We recognize it starts with leadership. In fact As we were doing research for this, I found this article from the Harvard Business Review and it said this really interesting thing that I think just hits the nail on the head for this. It says that what leaders say and do makes up to a 70 percent difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included.
So when I hear that, what that says to me is that there is an outsized impact. Of the role a leader plays in helping people in their team feel included when they are saying the right things and doing the right things. And so hopefully today we can unpack that a little bit and come up with some ideas of what does this actually mean and look like for leaders when it comes to being an inclusive leader.
Yeah, and hopefully giving all of us a sense of what it looks like at any level of an organization. So, you know, D, you and I have talked a little bit about this. I’m, you’re working on a project right now that is all about, Kind of like women in leadership in WordPress. I’d love maybe just give us a little bit of background on that and tell them, tell us a little bit about what you’re working on in that regard.
Cause I think that’s helpful context as well as we jump into this.
Dee: Sure. Well, I’m working with a group spearheaded by Francesca Marano and Siobhan McEwen called WP includes, which is a mentorship program geared towards women prepare for being leaders. So we have women in leadership in the WordPress community offering themselves, Then their time to help support other women who also want to kind of move into leadership.
So probably four or five month program we match people up women or women identify female identifying, see, I’m losing it already, so getting the right language already around us who who wants to push into that leadership arena. We match them up and set them running in this mentorship program.
We meet, I have a men, I have a mentee. I am a mentor. We meet once a month. We talk about areas and issues that they’ve been finding and where they need support and coach basically a little bit about what what they’re involved in with a view to helping to build up that confidence and that sense of being able to take up space.
You know, in an area, in areas and their companies where there is significant inequity around, you know, particularly the gender breakdown in leadership and WordPress. And so it’s new and young and we are learning and we’ve just done our first, we’re closing in on the end of our first year.
I don’t know what you call it. The first program, the first iteration, I guess, and cohort for cohort. Yeah. And so I’m really interested to kind of get a sense from everybody how it’s gone and how we can continue to improve, but yeah, it’s great to be part of something that’s wanting to make that kind of difference.
James: I think, you know, from my perspective, what’s really cool about that is number one, it’s identifying that there, there is a definite need. For leadership mentorship for women, especially in WordPress, right? Like where it has been so heavily dominated by men, especially a lot of our larger companies. You look in the WordPress ecosystem and they’re all CEOed by men for the most part, we are starting to see some.
diversity showing up, which is really cool. And some young I say young, but kind of my age. So maybe not so young women leaders step into influence and into roles, which is really cool. But we need more and we’ve got a long way to go, but a long way to go. I, you know, like I have you know, I said a little Earlier that I did a bit of research on this.
And one of the really cool things that I found was this article by Harvard business review where they talked about, and they called out like six traits that. In their studies. And if you don’t know what Harvard Business Review is, it’s like this academic collective. So it’s like the researchers who do research projects around leadership and business for Harvard School of Business.
And anyway, they write articles about what they’re learning and what the studies are showing. And in, in a bunch of the studies they’ve done they discovered or they’ve been finding six traits in particular. That inclusive leaders have, and I thought for the purposes of our conversation, you know, as we’re talking about inclusive leadership, it would be kind of neat to maybe just go through those six areas and maybe do like a bit of a react to that and give our own thoughts on what we think, whether we agree or disagree.
Yeah. So if you’re cool with that, Dee, I’m just gonna jump right in. Yeah. I’m in I’m in,
Dee: I’m looking up to the side. I keep looking at, because I’m sitting here looking at them going yeah. Well,
James: the first one that is on list, these aren’t in any particular order, but after we go through them. I will tell you which one they’ve identified as the most important one. But I’m gonna be curious to see as WeChat, if. If you can figure it out but the first one on their list is the idea of visible commitment. And they say that inclusive leaders articulate authentic commitment to diversity, challenge the status quo, hold others accountable, and make diversity and inclusion a personal priority.
So that’s a visible commitment. What do you think?
Dee: I think the thing that stands out for me there and that line actually is that it’s a personal priority. Because. I’ve heard this phrase, what runs in the leader runs in the team. I’ve had it used against me in the past. I’m a little iffy about it from time to time, but I don’t think it’s wrong. Actually, if you make this commitment personally that you want.
The place that you work, the team that you’re in to have access to those different voices to be diverse because you understand what that’s going to bring to your organization that runs in you personally, then it will spill over. But if you’re afraid of change and you’re not you are scared of this and you’re not prepared and willing really.
You want to fear you want to make the right noises, but if you don’t actually feel it personally then, yeah, I think it’s you’re not going to go very far in this being able to make your workplace diverse because people understand and recognize that in authenticity. So yes, the visible commitment.
James: Yeah, I mean, it has to be visible, right? Like if you think of the reality is if you just pay lip service to it right or if you like it’s even more like. Like, if you s I would say it’s worse if you are doing a do as I say, not as I do, right? Well,
Dee: I have an example. I know that I, and I’m probably cautious because I know that you’re setting yourself up for all those people that they’re going political connectless, political correctness gone wrong, but just calling people guys.
Hey guys, like I remember in jobs I’ve had gone past where we’ve made that decision, we’re not going to do that anymore. And people were comfortable enough to be called out on it when it did happen. And yet there are still organizations that go yeah. We want more inclusion.
And, but every day I’m hearing, Hey guys, how’s it going? And I’m like, I, but, and I’m not comfortable to say, you know, I really wish we would try harder not to do that. Because. I’m hearing the words and not seeing the action.
James: I remember I had meeting I was in with some folks and you’ll hear me.
I say the word folks a lot, right? That is my alternative word. And often even when I’m writing it, I’ll write it with an X to be a bit more even gender spectrum oriented as opposed to, yeah. You know, the traditional model those are very visible cues that you are giving to people that show you are taking steps to do that.
But I can remember as well, sitting in a meeting where there was a conversation happening and I didn’t really like, like it was just a total automatic thing where somebody said guys and I said, and gals, right. Or I said, and everybody else, you know, or something like that. And another leader that was in that room who was of a different gender than I am or identifies as a different gender, acknowledged the fact that I had done that.
And. I didn’t think anything. I just, it was just, it just slipped out. Right. Like one of these, like, like just to just do that, but I noticed it and called it out. Right for me was like such a wake up call and as leaders, you know, we talk about visible commitment, but I also think visible commitment goes to supporting the behaviors we want to see in our communities.
Yeah. People around us as well. So it’s not just about our own personal visible commitment but we commit to, you know, recognizing and validating the behaviors we want to see in the folks. Cause that, you know, that to me, it wasn’t even about me. It was about that other leader who recognized that I had done something that was leaning toward where she, like, she could see that I was wanting to move In that direction and just gave that positive reinforcement and it was all I need.
I’ve I still think about that Moment, you know five seven years later And it con and it’s a conscious thing now for me every time i’m in a room to be careful I don’t always get it right. I still make mistakes, but Yeah Isn’t that crazy? Like just that one little term can have such a, I
Dee: know. And it’s so wild to me because I mean, I spent years even just using that term and it wasn’t until we kind of made those commitments in that workplace.
That was like, that it became, you know, that became a standard for me. And it was, and so now, yeah. And I, yeah. All the time, you know, when I’m writing, I say, I don’t default to folks. I find it hard to say weirdly. I default to friends and I don’t know if that’s right either. Right. Hello friends. Hi pals.
Hi. You know, but that, but yeah, it’s a fun it’s important. It’s important. And it’s such, such a small thing. I think one of the other things that is. That, again, that visibility is putting pronouns on your email, you know, or on your Slack. Just that recognition that I’m open around this, that you can share your pronouns with me, that I won’t assume your pronouns, they’re such small things and such touch paper for some people, which is fascinating.
But It’s these tiny little visibilities that I feel like will make, you know, bit by bit help reinforce that
James: so much of what our responsibility is to our teams is to create psychological safety, to create a space where people can have. The kinds of conversations they want and need to have right, right?
And when we take these steps of visible commitment to create that space of inclusivity Right that safety it just extends out like I mean as leaders We want high performing teams. We want productivity. We want all that stuff you get that To the next level when you are willing to visibly commit to inclusivity.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is a real, it’s an easy win. Yeah. But anyway, okay. But it has,
Dee: But it has to be authentic and it has to be, and it has to live in you. It’s not just ticking a box.
James: That’s right. That’s right. So visible commitment, authentic commitment to diversity, challenging the status quo, holding others account.
We’ve agreed. With all of that. Okay. So the next one on this list of traits is humility. You may have heard a little bit of that off the top when I acknowledge the fact that I suck at this, but it’s inclusive leaders being modest about their capabilities, admitting mistakes and creating the space for others to contribute.
What do you think?
Dee: I think in any situation where there is this kind of volatility around it, the, and because, you know, when we talk, even as somebody who is white, I have to be able to know that I don’t know anything about the experience of somebody who’s indigenous, or I, and so, I don’t understand how you can not have humility around this, except that I see all the time people who don’t.
So, so yeah, I completely agree. I think, I mean, in any leadership, really, you have to be open to be able to make mistakes, you have to be open to hear that your opinion or what you’re doing may or may not be inclusive or may not be right in the context or in the situation that you’re in. I think, I mean, I’m a, an agilist and a huge believer in servant leadership but yeah, this one’s a no brainer for me, but as somebody, you know, yourself as a white male with a huge amount of privilege, how does it sit with you?
James: I mean, for me, just because I mean, I wrestle with imposter syndrome, so I’ve got my own hangups there, which I think makes humility a bit more of a thing for me.
But I mean, impossible. The flip to that is, is as a white male growing up in the age and the era that I’ve grown up in, it’s fake it till you make it right. It’s, you know, you don’t show your weakness. You don’t show, you know, you need to be confident. You need to You know, I can remember very early on, you know, it came down to like, even the business cards that I use back when we had business cards, the quality of my suit, the quality of my car, right?
Like there was very much this outward bravado of, you know, looking the part of a manager, looking the part of a leader and a leader doesn’t fail, right? Or a leader needs to be, you know, The one that’s holding the flag and is always has the answer, right? And is cool, calm and collected in the face of crisis.
Like these are the messages that we’ve received, right? From the generation before us, our mentors, our, you know, leadership icons. So admitting a mistake, right? It also, I mean, comes with a lot more consequences as well, right? Because we were given leadership and responsibility early on, right? Or we’ve been we’ve been in a position of privilege to gain responsibility and opportunity early on.
It also means that fall can be that much harder. For us if we make a mistake and so so there’s that You know, maybe a How humble do I have to be in order to get through this and get the result i’m after? Which is a very interesting way to look at things maybe but I would imagine Is probably a conversation that goes on in a lot of white males heads.
Dee: Maybe I think one of the things that, I think, the I wonder, again, not white. I am white, but not male and not having a different kind of privilege. I wonder if that sense of admitting mistakes is emblematic of doing this requires change, or this whole conversation actually, you know, at the core of this.
Becoming an organization that is more diverse and is more inclusive is going to demand a significant amount of change to the status of the people that hold privilege in those organizations. And so even before that humility, or, you know, we’ve picked out a few things around what humility looks like, but I feel like it’s that sense of understanding and embracing the fact I’ve had this privilege and my choice to be more inclusive is going to put a dent, it’s not going to put a dent in the privilege, but it’s going to put a dent in the experience that I have in my workplace.
And I think the humility actually needs to also be wrapped up in an acceptance of what this change is going to mean for me. I appreciate and acknowledge that I’ve had this privilege over this period, and that it’s not right, because my privilege means that somebody else is underprivileged, and that in order, diversity and inclusion means And I think a huge part of why people go into this, you know, kicking and screaming internally is like she’s going to use a bad word then, but I’m going to have to put an explicit tag on the podcast, but is, oh my goodness, this represents to me.
a loss of my privilege and there’s a lot of internal work I think that needs to happen for people to be able to embrace that.
James: Culturally and contextually as well, I think there’s some things that are going on here as well because you know, we come from an era of work that was very hierarchical.
You weren’t looking beside you and you weren’t looking below you. You were always looking ahead of you. And so your view, your focus was on how do I rank up, right? The only pathway to growth, the only pathway to more responsibility, more money, more opportunity was to increase your leadership, right? Level to rank up for lack of a better term.
And so we have you know, climbing the ladder, this world where folks are so focused on ranking up that they don’t have time or capacity to worry about what’s going on beside or below them. which further alienates folks that have different backgrounds and different experiences. And again, creates that, well, you know, why I fought tooth and nail to get these, you know, responsibilities to get these rewards, if you will, right.
Of status and opportunity. Why are you Taking that away from me now, right? We see this happening. A great example right now is happening at this moment in time, date wise, in South Korea where the government has decided that they want to increase enrollment for doctors because they don’t have enough doctors to serve the country.
And the doctors that have fought tooth and nail to get the positions they have and fought, you know, sacrificed all of their time and effort to get into the schools are striking and protesting this increase in the number of slots for med school because they see it as, you know, People but diluting their privilege.
Yeah, they’re losing their privilege. They’re losing. Yeah, all the things they fought for So so there is some of that and we as white folks as leaders as people with privilege We have to come to terms with that and be okay with giving up some of that privilege So, you know what we probably shouldn’t have had that in the first place
Dee: And
James: that’s maybe a good segue into the next trait, which is this awareness of bias. So it’s that inclusive leaders show awareness of personal blind spots as well as flaws in the system and work hard to ensure a meritocracy. So even the fact that you and I are having this conversation shows an awareness of bias.
And. I think that in some industries it’s maybe easier than others. Tech tends to be flatter. We’ve done away with a lot of hierarchy in our organizations, remote as well, but it still exists. And it’s, you know, there are only so many leadership spots for people that want to be leaders. There’s only so many pathways to grow in a lot of companies.
And yeah, I think.
Dee: So we’ve been talking. We’ve been talking already, a lot of what we’ve focused on has been specific about increasing Diversity in leadership. And I think we’re talking, you know, this list is helpful in that sense, but it’s also that sense of increasing diversity in our organizations so that it’s not just how we have a whole team.
You know, you might have an agency, 50 or a hundred people or 25 people. And if you’re looking at that and going, how do we also increase that? the diversity around that. I think that the conversation around the awareness of bias is really interesting because I’ve actually done, you know, one of the groups that I have worked with I’m always cautious because I anyway the, we, they actually brought consultants in to actually do by, I can’t even remember how you describe training In understanding and recognizing bias.
James: We just call it bias training. That’s yeah. Okay.
Dee: Yeah. I feel like there was a word that we used and I can’t remember what it was. None of that matters, but it was that sense of here are some, I mean, you can get online and you can actually do fill in questionnaires that will actually show you the areas in which.
You are biased. And for me, growing up in rural New Zealand, in a country that has done a lot of work and is imperfect by a long way, but can be contrasted quite significantly with the country that I live in now, around the world racial issues around putting aside the indigenous element, but even my personal biases and the things that I highlighted in doing some of those questionnaires were very much around race.
I, my dad is a boomer. I love him dearly. I know he’s not going to hear this podcast, so I can probably say this. Has very strong opinions about people that are not like him. And I grew up with those, you know, he works in a primary industry. The people that he would hire were often people that were not like him.
And he had opinions about keeping them where they were working. Like I can’t imagine dad would have ever had a manager in his business who wasn’t white. So, because in his head and mine as I grew up, it’s like, Oh, hang on just a second. I was working with a whole trench of people from a particular region that I had bias about and had to have that kind of surgically excised and go, Whoa, just a minute.
And so there are places where we can get That awareness of bias as organizations, we can provide those spaces for the teams that we’re working in. And it becomes another thing that harks back to that visibility of the commitment is that, Hey, we recognize that these are really important issues for our whole team, not just for the leadership, because we want to, you know, we’re working in, you mentioned remote, and we’re working with increasingly diverse racially or regionally diverse.
groups and how we structure the way that we do things within our organization is critically important. Learning the culture map and how different people operate critically important things to actually make work smoother, not just for the people in leadership, but also for the people on the ground.
James: There’s this interesting collection of graphs that maybe you’ve seen in your travels around the internets of the different ways that countries approach negotiating to get to a deal. And you know, even between America and Canada, but Canada and the UK, like just how you go, like how you go through.
through the stages of negotiation and what that looks like. It’s phenomenal reading to look at that as you know culture analyst or a leadership person, because you very quickly see, okay, when I’m entering into a conversation with somebody on my team, right, this might be the approach that they take in that conversation to get to the decision that they need to get to.
And how are we. In our remote, globally diverse workplaces, actually addressing some of these, like, it’s very interesting, you know, like there’s this The challenge we have in our workplaces is we often see You know a transforming to whatever the status quo is or whatever the original way of working is As you know the way that we’re supposed to move forward, but that’s actually completely non diverse right non inclusive it’s Yeah, you know like You For me, this whole idea of awareness of bias, I mean, we talk about it on a bunch of different levels, but I think the biggest thing is from my perspective is being aware of our own personal blind spots.
If as leaders, we ignored everything else and we were just aware of our own personal blind spots, right? That self awareness is an important trait as a leader and, you know, being aware of our blind spots. I just think that’s. That’s such a powerful thing to start from.
Dee: It feels like a good first step, right?
It’s that sense of, I, I want to make a visible commitment. I want to be humble around all of this. I can’t really do any of that until I recognize that I have blind spots and go looking at those. Yeah, work starts with me, right? I feel like we jumped into cultural intelligence. Should we pick up there and circle back to the next one?
Because we’re, I feel like we’re already we’re already halfway there. And you mentioned that graph around negotiation. And I want to highlight a book called The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. Which is, I don’t know enough about her background to kind of talk about where she comes from on that, but I have used that book and the reference.
You can sign up to have reference to be able to. They have mapped the cultures in a number of different areas, negotiation being one of them around how people do work. And we had a recent experience in my organization, The culture is primarily Australian the leadership in the company is predominantly Australian.
So we have that kind of white Anglo bias, I guess. And we’re working with people that are outside and we were struggling to connect with or to have people. Approach the work. I was going to say in the same way. It’s not in the same way, but us as project managers were struggling to find the work happening.
We were struggling to get clarity around what was going on or what needed or how we needed to communicate. And we pulled up. I kind of having gone through this before pulled up the culture map for our country in the country. Of the person that we were struggling to connect with. And we were at opposite ends of the spectrum.
There was no crossover where on one end, everybody needs to be direct. You need to be really explicit. And so we were doing all of that and being really explicit. And at the other end, it’s all about relationship. And nuance and reading between the lines. And so we totally had to modify the way that we communicated what we needed and be so much more oblique around it so that they could do the reading between the lines rather than just feeling like they had this hammer coming at them of all of this expectation.
It was everybody, we’re all Australian and we’re all, Oh, you could just be really direct about it. And everybody, and for some people, that’s just. Horrifying. And I’m like, Oh, okay. So that was a interesting learning. Anyway, the culture map highly recommend. We’ll throw that in the show notes that as a place to actually, when we’re talking about things like understanding that different cultures were going to approach very, you know, important things within trying to get work done.
It’s really. Critical to kind of get a sense of how to. So the trait
James: that Dee has been referencing is this cultural intelligence, which is how inclusive leaders are attentive to others cultures and adapt as required. And there is a case study right there of what that looks like. So the next one is curiosity about others.
So inclusive leaders demonstrate an open mindset and deep curiosity about others, listen without judgment, And seek with empathy to understand those around them. I think, just generally, this is harder for men to do. Men, I, and I’m going to make a judgment, like a blanket statement here that say men suck at empathy.
Just as a rule, and it’s maybe a learned trait or something we have to work harder at. And maybe that’s not true. Maybe that’s just me. But empathy has been.
Dee: Is it sucking at empathy? I, well, I, maybe it is. I’m not asking about you. Here’s a, this ability to connect with other people outside of what you’re immediately doing.
And I think.
I’ve got to say the P word, patriarchy, that has hurt men as much as it has hurt women. I feel like I do that on my door, but here’s a, here’s curiosity about others. Here, as someone, as a project manager and account manager who is charged with Connecting with people. I, you know, some of the first things that I’m doing are trying to kind of get an understanding of where I can make that connection with somebody.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know. I’ve had people that I’m working with that are so quiet and so, they just don’t let anything in. But I have also seen this behavior in men, and I don’t know if this is not giving very much away about themselves. So there’s this wall up that I don’t, is it empathy? I also don’t want to let anyone in.
I don’t know what that is protective about, but even the sense of having conversations with people and Referring to my wife, without giving her a name. And so I don’t, I’m trying to work out how I thread that into, but there is the sense in which I feel there are often within that connection and it, and that is a, you know, it feels like I have felt as a woman, men not wanting to let me in to their world, even in something as simple as.
My wife, Roseanne and then using her names to our future conversations. So so I guess with my question around, is it empathy or, and you can only speak to your experience on this, but what is that? What is the hat that makes it so difficult for us to connect?
James: It could be a generational thing around compartmentalization.
Yeah. Yeah. So they’re, you know, we spoke a little bit earlier about, you know, that fear of failure or like the leader needing to be perfect and that, you know, like how my generation of leaders looked to the leaders, you know, that were our role models, right? Like we had a very. You know, for lack of a better term, bro kind of like personality to go after.
And and it, there very much was a line, you know, of work life and home life or outside of work life. I think the traits that were celebrated and rewarded the you know, the ways of working, the ways of thinking that were rewarded were ones that were very task oriented and focused on the work as opposed to empathy and people oriented.
And I know for myself that has been a learning journey because I lean task, right? Like that is my Natural bent is to go into a conversation With my direct reports and not ask them about how they’re going what they did at the weekend Yeah, you know, you know what tv shows are You know, catching them up, you know, like anything like that, because I’m, I just naturally lean into task.
So I have had to work as an individual and as a leader on my curiosity about others. So maybe it is, I suspect, cultivated a leadership, a kind of leader in the world, right. Or at least in the Western world, that is more task oriented than right oriented.
Dee: Yeah, that makes sense.
James: This is getting really fun and really, I love this.
Dee: I know. Oh, there’s so, there’s just so much to unpack around all of that. But that carry, I mean, because even then when we, when you’re talking about that blurring, that line between home and work is like, that’s because there’s some fraught territory in there too. Right. And so. So yeah, super mindful around, but that sense of, Hey, I’m working with these people.
They are not just cogs in my machine. They have rich internal lives. They’ve chosen to spend time with me in this scenario of our business and what we’re building and working towards for the season. And so it’s been. That being able to value not just what they contribute to your bottom line, but also what can they contribute to your culture, what they contribute.
And even from the, that cultural perspective of, you know, we have an organization that may be kind of rooted in Australia. But we have people that celebrate different holidays to us. What do they look like? How does that affect your work life? You know, it’s Ramadan at the moment. How does that affect, what is you doing in your workplace at the moment to make sure that you’re accommodating people who are fasting, you know, all of these things and what does that mean?
And I know, you know, I’ve talked to people in them, in the, that community around, well, what does this actually mean to your day to day work? How can we put things in place? that actually helps support you. It’s critical
James: accommodation look like in that context, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, the last one on our list, and this is starting to get long.
So we’ve got a few minutes left, but a few more things to talk about. But effective collaboration is the last trait. So inclusive leaders, empower others, pay attention to diversity of thinking and psychological safety and focus on team cohesion. So that is the last trait of the six, effective collaboration.
Dee: Which kind of loops in all of those things above it, right? You can’t effectively collaborate if you’re not humble. It’s not effective collaboration if you’re telling everybody what to do. So you have to be open to around all of that. You have to be curious around others to be able to effectively effectively collaborate.
So that just feels like the. Almost a wrapper around it really. Yeah. To me at any rate. Yeah.
James: It’s interesting to me to think too, like just on how a lot of these things are not necessarily just things that inclusive leaders need, but all leaders, right? Like an awareness of bias will help you not just in terms of diversity and inclusion and equity, but it’ll also help you just in making better decisions.
Right. Right. Like curiosity about others is just a good thing to be as a leader. If you want. As a human being. Exactly. But yeah, it’s funny, right? How we have to. We have to articulate these things in and say them so explicitly in this way in order for people to understand them We’ll get them folks.
This is I Maybe because of my privilege and the training that I’ve had in the experiences I’ve been able to have this does not feel like rocket science to me This feels like just the right things for any leader in any situation to do even more so though is the application to this particular conversation around inclusivity that as you take these things and you apply them in your leadership and do them specifically in an area of inclusivity and equity and belonging, you’ll, it’ll pay dividends.
Right.
Dee: Right. Definitely.
James: Well, so, of the six the one that HBR says is the number one what’s your guess?
Dee: That’s a tricky one. I feel like it’s probably the personal one. I can’t see it. My, I’ve got a pop up that’s popped up in front of my screen and I can’t actually see it, but the one that I think it was, what was this? Remind me what they are.
James: Visible commitment, humility, awareness of bias, curiosity about others, cultural intelligence, and effective collaboration.
Dee: Yeah, I think it’s awareness. That’s the bias. It feels like to me it has to start with that.
James: That is the number one. Thank goodness. You passed the test. Yay. Well, we’ve talked a lot about these traits, right? And traits are things that are very much internal to you. We can start to think maybe about.
how we might apply them, but We did a little bit of extra work here and because this topic is so important We’re gonna take a little bit of time now and talk about about how we apply this or some things that we can do practically as leaders to make sure that we are more inclusive or leaning into these traits more Do you and I?
I think we’re going to be a broken record. Everyone’s going to talk to us. And the only thing they’re going to know about us is we say that leadership is proactive, but, and that, yeah, we start with trust. Those are the two things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I say almost every time, but if leadership is proactive, that means we have to be willing to take steps.
So we’ve come up with a couple of ideas here that we think will help help you. And the first one is this idea of a diverse personal advisory board. Now, Dee are you familiar with the concept of a personal advisory board?
Dee: Not really. So tell me about it. I could. Yeah.
James: This is something I’ve encountered in my own lived experience as an entrepreneur in some of the different like coaching groups that I’ve been in.
It’s this idea where you find. Find a group of peers that can act as your personal board of directors. So if you imagine most corporations, you have a board that acts as like that top level policy thing and for the CEO in particular. They’re the ones that are advising the CEO on policy and changes and things to do with the business.
And so you are not restricted to having a board. Once you hit CEO, you can have one as, you know manager of a team, right. Or a manager of managers. And the whole concept is it’s just some of your peers or people who have, you have given permission to, Bounce ideas off of and call you out.
Dee: Well, it’s speaking to your life, right? It’s that sense of these are the people that I trust that I will allow to contribute and then allow to, you know, to share their opinion of me and with me. So, yeah, and so you might say that there is absolutely value in that
James: and very much in a professional context, right?
So right might have four or five folks that you give permission to talk to about All kinds of things and so you go to them with your thinking. Hey Yeah, I want to do this if you’re Personal advisory board is not diverse. If you do not have people from different backgrounds, if everyone looks the same as you and comes from the same belief structure, belief system, you’re going to get a very one sided approach.
You know, blind spot, heavy view of your decisions of your approach. And so taking steps to increase the diversity of your advisory board is one way, right, that you can actually practically take steps toward inclusive leadership.
Dee: I think I, I love it. I, as somebody who’s friend group in the past hasn’t been, or even now really isn’t particularly diverse.
It feels like a big thing to try and set up if you’re not already moving in. diverse circles. So I don’t want to put people off. You don’t have to find five or six people all at once. I think there is also a sense of even increasing the diversity of the people that you’re listening to, the podcasts that you’re listening to, the Twitter feeds that you read, I think.
And I look at my Instagram feed at the moment and I have made some really conscious decisions, you know, when we were going through some of the, when, You know, when Black Lives Matter was at its height, increasing the black voices that are coming through my Twitter feed. And when any of any of these areas that you kind of want to get more aware of, it’s also increasing what you are consuming, the diversity of what you’re consuming.
I think is also, that’s a really
James: good example. Yeah. Yeah. I can point to my own story there just on X, right? Where like we talk about AI right now and AI and WordPress being a big thing. And so I just did a random call out on X Twitter asking, where are the underrepresented groups that are speaking with authority on this subject in WordPress?
Are there any women, are there any people of color who are leading? AI in WordPress that I can add to my network. I already have six white guys who can tell me everything I need to know about AI. Right. Yeah. Where are those other folks? And even just being willing to do that and expand your network, as you said, I think, Oh, that’s such a, I mean, Yeah that’s exactly right.
Expanding that, sorry, I probably just cut you off, but I had that thought. No, you
Dee: didn’t. I was just thinking if I was in the audience hearing that going, who would be on my Diverse personal advisory board. And I’m like, I would have to work really hard to find people to put on that, that I haven’t significant enough relationship with, to be able to allow now I am lucky certainly in WordPress and knowing quite a few people with different voices.
So I could probably do that. If I, yeah I think for a lot of us will go, I don’t know how I would do that because it feels to me like if you’re going to let people in, there has to be some relationship there. So how do you build up that relationship? You have to start by hearing some of those voices. So maybe
James: that’s the first step.
Yeah, maybe it is leadership being proactive. It’s okay. I need to lean into some relationships outside of my core circle right now and, you know, invest the next. three, six, 12 months and building enough trust between us that I can rely on them and count them as not just a resource as an advisory board member, but as a friend and a colleague that, you know the next one is share our learnings.
So the question that we have here is, are there appropriate places for you as a leader to share what you’re learning as it relates to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging? Do you have a regular cadence in your standups or meetings where inclusion is front and center? One, one recommendation I saw was, you know, like an inclusivity moment in your agenda where you create space for a conversation to happen.
Hey, this is what I’m learning about inclusivity this week or this month. And you create that space for conversation. And again, we talk about safe spaces and it has to start with the leader. So if you are the leader, you know, Being willing to share your learnings, I think, is a really powerful way to at least engage those conversations and show and visibly show your commitment to inclusivity.
Dee: I think that’s really important. I also want to circle back cause I know that it’s not on the list, but I want to circle back to that awareness of bias. And I think for all of us, like one of the critical next steps can actually be sitting down and Looking internally and going, what are my biases? Where are some of those areas that I, you know, it’s like, where are the logs that I need to take out of my own eye before I try and take a speck out of someone else’s, but that sense of, and so again, we’ll put in the show notes, the links to some of those surveys that you can do that help you just as a, You know, individual poke around internally and do some of that early work, because if the awareness of bias is one of those most critical things to start with, then that’s a really good way of uncovering what that looks like.
James: Yeah. And you know, like, like we keep saying, leadership doesn’t happen to you, right? Like you’ve got to do the work. So being willing to look at yourself, look at your own situation. It starts with me. It starts with me. Absolutely. The last thing that we had on this list was a practical things that you can do is to join employee resource groups.
So D for folks who maybe don’t know what an ERG is, can you give maybe a quick summary of what an ERG is? And
Dee: that’s really funny because that was the term is where I only Came up against that this morning. Thank you very much for for dropping me in that. It’s a group. So I think I probably need to pass it back to you because I’ll make a guess just based on that acronym.
ERGs.
James: Yeah, so an employee resource group are, it’s a bit of an HR term, but the whole concept is that you want to create safe spaces for underrepresented groups in your workplace. To be able to gather, to talk, to connect, bond and do life together. So you might have an employee resource group of people who identify as LGBTQIA.
Right.
Dee: Okay. So this is like Slack channels in your Slack thing. Here’s the, okay, cool. Those I can, those I have seen and participated in.
James: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, you know, you know, the women, that came out really bad, women, like there might be a women in leadership one. I’m just saying the women that just came out wrong.
Yeah. But it’s often ERGs can go beyond that because they can also include like specific supports. They might do events together if you’re, if your team is in a single location, right? Or they might do you know, champion events or do sponsorships or create. Educational opportunities for the rest of the company to learn more about your affinity group, things like that.
So or your underrepresented group. So I think it, it’s an opportunity for leaders to engage directly, right? Allyship is important. And a great way to learn about the lived experience of others is to actually engage with folks in that group. and learn more about what’s what it’s like to do that.
I put the caveat here that ERGs are great as long as we get the balance right between overstuffing a group with allies to the point where the allies are outnumbering the actual employees who represent that group and it becomes an unsafe space or just another slack channel. And what does that look like?
So.
Dee: We can, you could do a whole podcast episode on, on how to actually engage in some of those places safely. Right.
James: Well, well, we have spent a lot of time on this topic. It’s been fun. Hopefully folks are walking away learning stuff. I mean, you probably have lots of thoughts out there in, in the world and we want to hear them.
So please definitely comment. If you like it. If you are interested in more conversations like this, subscribe, cause we’d love to have you on the, you know, The wagon for all these other things that we talk about as it relates to this stuff. But I am curious. What are you doing as a leader?
What’s your company doing, your organization doing to tackle some of these things? It’s not going away. It’s not something that should ever go away. It’s something that is going to become more and more just second nature to us as leaders, as we lean into this. Sure. Hope so. Yeah. But yeah, so that is that’s it from us for this week.
Thank you Dee as always for hanging out
Dee: Thank you. James. Nice to be here.
James: We’ll see you all next time
Dee: Ciao
