Joerg Schmitz 0:08
Welcome to the inclusive leader podcast. The practice of inclusive leadership enables us to tackle the complex challenges of our times. This is the space for conversations about inclusive leadership. I am your host, York Schmitz, and I welcome you to this episode. You may know Laura Lee's word from her book, The loud is dark, which is one of those key publications in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion. In her latest book, The elephant and the mouse that was just recently published, she writes, we do need to acknowledge some hard truths. As we scan the horizon of change and progress for diversity, we are definitely not there yet. And the rate of progress is not comforting. And she goes on to give some very specific statistics that demonstrate that while there has been some progress made in certain areas, it's really in the corporate sector, that change has been sluggish, if not slow. Looking back at about 20 years of work, this is not insignificant. We continue to do diversity, equity and inclusion work sometimes without actually recognizing what is working and what is not. And we keep doing the same things that are not necessarily associated with progress. So this opens up a whole host of questions as to what will make diversity, equity and inclusion actually successful, what might we need to change in the way we do diversity, equity and inclusion work? And how do we move beyond the illusion of inclusion, and make the promises of a diverse and equitable workplace a reality? These are questions that Laura, this wood, is directly and closely associated with. And it is my great pleasure to not only welcome her to the institute, but also share this conversation with her with you, Laura, first of all, it's a pleasure to to just talk to you, as always. And I'm just curious, what do we need to know about ducks and elephants and mice? Actually,
Laura Liswood 2:19
it does seem that in your thank you for having me, in this conversation, you know, I very much admire all the work you're doing. So really, it's a pleasure to be here to have this conversation with you. It seems like a lot of my metaphors are animal based when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. And possibly, because, you know, I was on the board of the Friends of the National Zoo in the United States. So I got to see animal behavior and arrow there. So when we talk about the start with the sort of the ducks coming off of my book, The loudest duck, what that was, was a metaphor for how potentially diversity can unlevel the playing field that that heterogeneity without sufficient awareness and tools can cause more problems than less. And so this was the the notion that, you know, some people are taught, I call it by grandma, you know, which is society, that, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And, you know, often Americans know what that phrase means, you know, speak up, and you get what you want, kind of thing is a very, you know, kind of American, if you will, notion, but people recognize it. But then I say, but you know, when I go to Japan, nobody knows what that phrase means. Because they've been taught by grandma, the nail that sticks out gets hit on the head, right? Which is just the opposite of speak up and you get what you want. Women in societies all over the world have been taught. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. And the Chinese have a phrase that the loudest duck gets shot, which is the opposite of the squeaky wheel. So when I posed to people, I say, Okay, you're, you're the manager now. And you told me early on in our conversation, you you prized diversity, you wanted it? And I say well, okay, you're you've got it. You've got a wheel and dock and nail in a nice and, and then I say to you, okay, so given what they all mean, you know, who's doing most of the talking? And then you say, Well, clearly it's got to be the wheel because that's what they've been taught. They say absolutely. But here's what's happening in your diverse workplace. You're overhearing though, the wheel you're under hearing the nailed up nice. All those diversity of ideas you told me you wanted, get didn't get. So then I tape. Okay, what are you going to do about that? You know? How are you going to level that playing field? How are you going to stop overhearing the wheel? And under hearing the nail talk nice. So that's how that duck, you know, metaphor came about?
Unknown Speaker 5:16
It's great. It's great, because it's also playing with with with, I mean, first of all duck metaphors are always safe, right? But also, it's unintended it's a nail on the head. Because isn't that the dilemma of, of so many people in this diversity conversation. And I love the metaphor as well, because of where it comes from. I've done obviously, like you a lot of global work. And Western managers so often are so I mean, especially now we see this in this remote, post COVID type of remote workplace. It's almost like the people who speak, you know, they get the attention. They're the saviors of the meeting, because we're so afraid of awkward silence. And we don't know how to, or many people don't know how to interact with silence, and how to read silence and engage with that. So the loudest voice or the voice that takes the air will get preferential treatment, because even sometimes, because the manager themselves is deeply uncomfortable with when the vote when there are no voices. That's exactly
Unknown Speaker 6:32
right. But then, of course, what happens is, you're starting to move into more homogeneous thinking, right? Because you're only hearing certain kinds of cultural types, who who are comfortable speaking up. So that's where you know, and I don't want to get too prescriptive about it. But that's where a manager has to say, you know, hold on, we'll, let's hear from ya duck nail Nice.
Unknown Speaker 6:59
Well, and it's such a simple thing to do, actually. Right. It's paying attention to a different element, and just reaching out right, enabling something. It's not, it's not complicated, actually.
Unknown Speaker 7:12
That's the irony of many of these diversity, you know, things that would level the playing field, would make sure that, you know, we know that, for example, that some groups get more feedback then other groups. Yeah, so we know all of this stuff, the research is quite plentiful. And then it's the Okay, now that we know this, how are we going to, you know, how are we going to nudge people into doing actions? And, you know, I'm a big I'm a big proponent of kind of a nudge, notion, right? I think you are, too. And that sort of behavior mode?
Unknown Speaker 7:47
Yes, absolutely. I tried to nudge others and be a nudge. Of course, I need to ask you about elephants and mice, but because you didn't just stay with ducks. But in and obviously, this is about your latest book, The elephant and the mouse. And in this later on, you quote Adam Grant, actually, and you say, and I'll read it for a moment that he said, and which is very true, leading in a diverse world is a competence, not a nice to have skill, we need to understand how to skill people to lead in inclusive ways. And to understand that leading in a diverse world creates new demands. And I think this is such a perfect quote, to encapsulate what I think you're doing with the elephant and the mouse of really shining the light on? Yes, on one hand, these are relatively simple things to do. But they're actually more complex than meets the eye. And that we need to embrace what I call the ethos of inclusive leadership more, more specifically, what I mean, is that am I interpreting you correctly? There?
Unknown Speaker 9:03
Yeah, absolutely. And this has been, you know, this has been your theme for a very long time, you're, which is, you know, you have to have this intentional leadership, you have to have this inclusive leadership, you know, the skill sets that we thought were, you know, those that would make for great leaders, you know, probably never did, you know, it originally ever make for great leaders, but the diversity demands, are you saying shining a light putting a magnifier on to what is it that actually makes us? You know, when you sometimes see this discussion, when you get, you know, the issues of you know, how men lead and women lead, you know, you'll often see that in that kind of discussion. Now, I'm not an essentialist round, you know, all men are bad leaders, all women are good leaders, because that's definitely not the case. But you know, it does mean that what are the things traditionally that have been accepted as tools for men leaders versus women or dominant group leaders versus non dominant group leaders. And you know, so then you hear things like, compassion and inclusiveness and listening and curiosity. You know, all of those kinds of things start to, to now be equally as important. As action orientation, as agency as it were, assertiveness, all of those kinds of things, which we attribute to dominant group members, that's fine. But all we're doing is saying, basically, what I'm saying I think you too, are that to be the to be the kind of leader that can operate and get the best out of people in a diverse workplace in a diverse society. Just means you have to, you have to add more tools to your toolbox. The Hammer isn't the only tool that's going to
Unknown Speaker 10:54
be worthwhile. No, that's fine. You need a repertoire,
Unknown Speaker 10:57
yeah, new repertoire, expand. And then also know when to use the different tools. Yeah. And so the elephant and mouse and you ask that, that comes from my strong belief that first and foremost dama dominant group members, elephants, if you will, don't know much about non dominant group members, mice, if you will, but the mouse needs to know everything about the elephant, right? Yes. And so you know, that original, that original concept came from the colonizer and the colonized, you know, colonizer don't really know much other than how to control the colonizer. And the colonized, colonized, knows everything about the colonizer. It's a matter of survival. So that's the basic theme around that mouse. And part of that theme is that to be a good leader, now you need to be both an elephant leader and a mouse leader. Because the mouse, it has more of that emotional intelligence, because it's has to, you know, it has that sort of almost intuition. It's not an intuition. It's just a hypervigilance, but in a diverse workplace, you can no longer assume if you're a dominant group member, that the world of the workplace works for others, the way it works for you.
Unknown Speaker 12:23
That is such a great insight. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:27
And that you, you as a leader, must be much more aware of understanding of changing infrastructure changing processes, when you discover that the lived experiences of others is not the same as your lived experiences. So that let's just say we'll use that, you know, great word meritocracy, right. Now that you and I both know, we have never met anyone who said, I got to the top of this organization, because I was subtly advantaged, even r&d, or anybody vote. No, but I got to the top, because this was a meritocracy.
Unknown Speaker 13:11
Exactly. And in fact that I'm at the top is a great evidence that it is a meritocracy. I am I am the walking proof. We are a meritocracy.
Unknown Speaker 13:21
Because you know, one of those statistics that I love about men is that 76% of men believe they're above average. Okay, that doesn't even mathematically work.
Unknown Speaker 13:33
I'm disappointed that that secret is out.
Unknown Speaker 13:37
There. But you know, how does that translate sometimes, incidentally, going down this path a little bit is the the confidence doesn't necessarily equal the competence. And that's where we get in trouble a lot when it comes to what we think of as great leadership, you know, and that one of the things that I think about when I think about what are the risks and rewards around diversity, one of the risks of not having heterogeneous groups is that risk of overconfidence of the homogeneous group.
Unknown Speaker 14:11
I mean, I think it's a fantastic first of all, it's a fantastic metaphor, because I was thinking of two things as you were speaking, one is the idea of who is agile in this in this relationship, right? And we talk a lot about agility. And yet we are where we are not thinking sometimes what are the cultural prerequisites, the experiential prerequisites for agility, actually, and if we've been been the elephant are part of the elephant or a culture society that is the elephant in the world or so. Then we may talk about agility because we kind of know that we need it but we, we have such a hard time being agile, the mouse is agile by default, right? Which is why why I think a lot of true innovation is found in in places that actually have Been resource constrained. And they'd have had long histories of oppression oftentimes and so forth. Because people had to actually be extremely innovative. And it was a way of survival and of living. And, you know, we in the more developed world have kind of lost that, that sense, we talk about it, but we don't live it necessarily.
Unknown Speaker 15:22
I think that's a really good addition to this, the notion that this agility of the mouse, if you will, of the non dominant groups, kind of stemming off of initially survival, but then, you know, making do with scarce resources, making do with having to overcome so many hurdles within organizations, you know, having to also being able to be more acutely aware, perhaps, of the, the downside of dominant leadership, because you experience it. So, you know, it's not necessarily guarantee that you will become more empathetic, but it certainly opens the door for it. To understand that,
Unknown Speaker 16:09
I think what you're asking people to do, and I found this to be a challenge in my world, in my work is ultimately the perspective that we are offering or that you are offering in this book is a social perspective, a sociological perspective, almost right. And we're doing this in a world of management and leadership wisdom that is so heavily impacted by psychology. That means focusing on the individual, we think of leadership as its traits too often that we measure at the individual level. And obviously, neuroscience is yet another step in this individualistic, even though the, you know, neuroscience obviously has some broader application, but it's still a very psychological inward orientation. Rather than looking at the social context, the dynamics as an important element in how we leave what happens between people what happens in interactions, I found that perspective, the psychological versus the sociological to be almost two very different paradigms. And it's very difficult to get people to who are raised in the psychological paradigm, to actually embrace a more sociological paradigm,
Unknown Speaker 17:28
using my own particular way of thinking about that, because I absolutely agree with you. Often, like in the individual focus, you get a lot of the fixed a woman kind of things, you know, in organizations, we going to just fix the minorities and fix them, we just did that, you know, kind of thing is that that's that individual focus in the way I put it is, I call it the seed in the soil, seed being individual. And we all need to develop ourselves as individuals to grow. Because I often joke, who cares most about your career besides your mother, only some people respond me, most say, Oh, my manager cares most, and I'm going, Oh, that's delusional.
Unknown Speaker 18:14
That's a problem, we need to.
Unknown Speaker 18:17
But then this the soil, as you're discussing the institution, or the society, you know, also needs to that's I call it a 5050 deal here. And with organizations that I have found that possibly part of the reason that some of these efforts are so slow, or so faltering is that they're less likely to focus on institutional and process changes, versus the individual kind of things that they get programmatic. And then you get, you get the subtitle of my book, elf mouse, the illusion of inclusion. Oh, that's that original original to me. It's Cheryl Kaisers work, but it's so captures what happens, yeah, this program for this group and this employee resource group, and this and that focus on the individual. And so all the senior leader says, Well, look at all these programs we're doing, right, we must be a fair organization, in spite of the fact that the numbers don't show it.
Unknown Speaker 19:19
No. And that's, I mean, I love that in your book as well. I mean, were you what do you call it the hard truths? You know, I mean, I think it's a really a very good and balanced view of what's actually going on and that there, yes, there is some progress and yet there is none. And this, this, this contradictory experience of success, I found that to be really enlightening, and I love that you have such an empirically based and, and fact based and clear, clear sight of this, you know, you're not and because the illusion of inclusion is running rampant in so many places, and there's a hole in that History in holding up the illusion and that is counter active and undermines actually really good efforts and and obviously not just undermines it counteracts the best interests of the people. It's purporting to serve in many.
Unknown Speaker 20:18
I completely agree. And the second year consequences of that illusion of inclusion, we're doing all these programs, why are things getting better? Is what we we both see diversity fatigue, we see dominant group members thinking that, that everything is now unfair to them. You know, they're, they're thinking that they don't have the opportunities. You know, unfortunately, you I remember, I remember this great study, it really captures my mind, sort of this thought about takeaways versus the, you know, a fairness is a study as well, if you remember. But there was a study in the United States, where there was a realization that teachers in schools were calling on the boys more than they were calling on the girls. So that one of the one of the experiments was to tell get the teachers to call on the boys and the girls, the boys equally as best as possible 5050 Boys, girls, they did it for a couple of months. Then they asked the boys what it was like, now we're talking 5050 Boys response, the girls were getting all the attention, all the all the intention. So they had normalized equality at 7030 8020. So when you start putting processes in place, that diminish that subtle advantage, then it's not surprising that some people say, Oh, this is a takeaway,
Unknown Speaker 21:51
in fact, I mean, we see this in society all the time. I mean, we talked about this earlier, how when change starts to happen, all of a sudden, the majority group, or the privileged group feels discriminated against, right. And even though factually, none of that is true, but it's a deep seated sense. And I also, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, the, the role of status plays in our psychology and our makeup, our social makeup, and, and when we fear the loss of status, or how vicious the reactions can be, and I oftentimes think about what does that mean for how how this change? I mean, how this change towards inclusiveness and equity actually needs to be led. So that, you know, we don't create these, these unnecessary pushback and, and regrets as a result, because I mean, we see this on so many levels.
Unknown Speaker 22:51
Oh, there's no question that social backlash going on and not just in this particular topic. But, you know, anywhere we you're saying, seeing this migration, of status, yeah. And a loss of it. And I remember a book by a woman named Virginia valerian, which was called Why so slow, this was about women's progress. And she said, it wasn't that men didn't want fairness, that was an objective that men could very much buy into fairness. But what really was troublesome for them and hard to accept was loss of centrality. And that, that, as you say, is a deep seated emotion. That's not factual. That's not anything, and it's almost not even, you know, is almost something that you can't even take away, you know, removed from people because it is so as you said, so visceral. So deep seated, you know, my hope is, is that if, for example, you say, you know, if your organization doesn't evaluation on meritocracy, and it breaks up the data by groups. And it turns out, you have large gaps between the perceptions of meritocracy from dominant group members in historically underrepresented groups, and you have gaps in people's perception of meritocracy. That does mean that there are probably some people in the dominant group who are also not experiencing meritocracy. So that if you put into place these processes that remove subtle advantage, you are helping an organization improve it. So
Unknown Speaker 24:29
everybody wins. Actually, everybody and people can be when you I mean, in my I see this in my work, people can see your analogy of the elephant and the mouse. The mouse knows everything about the elephant. But But elephants that don't feel like elephants or are not treated like elephants. No, no that to have that knowledge and they can be very instrumental in bringing about that change.
Unknown Speaker 24:52
Yeah, you can basically believe that everyone at some time has been disadvantaged for some reason you You didn't go to the right school, you didn't play the right sport, you know. So if we can paint the picture such that we're trying to remove any of these kinds of things. And I think that the diversity, equity and inclusion effort could do a better job of explaining that what we're really doing here is just improving the workplace, the lived experiences of everyone in the organization. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 25:26
totally agree. So, Laura, I mean, out of curiosity, because I, you know, I mean, how did that become your focus? How did that become your life? In a sense?
Unknown Speaker 25:39
How did that? How does one look at you know, how and pull the string of one's life to see where, where it all started? You know, certainly, I can lay it some groundwork, when I was going through law school and then practicing law, you know, I did a fair amount of work on discrimination law, you know, this case, it was gender discrimination. So that, you know, got me into that thinking mode, if you will, I had a magazine for women. And so, you know, these kinds of discussions would come up, but it got more structured, if you will, after law school. But then moving on, you know, working the workplace, in corporate jobs, would say the next big sort of point of leverage for me was, I had this really, I call it one of these in the shower questions. And we have enhanced our questions, and they should stay in the shower. But this one was, at the time, what would it be like to have a woman president in the United States? That was just a thinking? And that wasn't completely arbitrary? Because I had read research that said that women in well in US state legislatures legislated differently than men did. I thought, well, that's interesting, first quantitative study I'd ever seen. And so I thought, well, what would it be like if we had a woman president, in the United States? Well, at the time I was thinking of this, there was no one to ask in the United States, and there's no one to ask in the United States. And we can just, you know, make haphazard guesses as to when there will be somebody to ask. But nevertheless, though, at the time, there were 15 women living who had been president or prime minister or world president or prime minister of their country, so I thought, Well, perhaps I could meet one of them, and ask what it was like to lead her country, having truthfully your no idea how I can meet a woman president or prime minister. But as I often tell young women, if you never asked for something, the answer is always no. So I asked for these interviews, I got all the interviews, or 15 of them, I got all 15. Nobody turned me down. Well, Margaret Thatcher said, come back after you've met everyone else. That's her way of getting rid of me. And but at 14 other prime ministers and presidents, I did get my interview with Margaret Thatcher. That's great. Yeah, did a book and a documentary on it, but heard so many similar stories. And this is to your point about society. I heard so many of the same stories of how the public treated women the over scrutiny, that tolerance and less tolerance for mistakes, the press questions, they lose a common theme amongst no matter what country, you know. And so I asked them if they wanted to meet, they said they did. And, you know, one of the things that happens, why I do like employee resource groups, to a certain extent, is that if you have someone else, you can ask, is this happening to you? Yes, if you don't, for women and other groups, they think there's something pathologically wrong with them, rather than understanding to your point that society is causing a sixth, yes, these are societal issues, not individual issues. These are these are societal issues based on archetype. So what we have about people, roles we think people can play, etc.
Unknown Speaker 29:10
Or the structure we are structures, the
Unknown Speaker 29:12
laws, all of the kinds of cultural norms are the kinds of things that, you know, enforce certain behaviors. Anyway, we all met, but not all, Margaret Thatcher didn't go. We met in Stockholm. We had a meeting there. I proposed to council and these women leaders, they created a Council, and the council has been in existence since then. And I'm Secretary General. And now there are 86 Women who are presidents and prime ministers of this council. And I'll tell you what propelled me on to thinking about this in a broader context. And just it's a little bit of a story, but we first put the Council of the Kennedy School at Harvard, and there's a at the Kennedy Park Energy School Park. out, there is a granite slab with a quote from John F. Kennedy on it, engraved quote. And I read it every day because I'd walk past that to my office. And let me tell you what it was it said, when at some future date, the High Court of history sits in judgment of each one of us. Our success or failure in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions where we currently men of courage, where we currently men of dedication, where we currently men of integrity, or we currently men of justice, I read that, I think to myself such good questions asked men. Such great questions asked women to. So that's what started getting me thinking more and more, because then I would start talking to men from historically underrepresented groups or intersectional, women from historically underrepresented have and began to see that, hey, these dynamics of dominance and non dominance play out across the board. And that propelled me into that next phase of thinking about diversity. Because, you know, when I kind of was going through all of this, the most of the focus was on gender, it hadn't yet evolved to race or other issues that that it certainly did evolve into. But once you start looking at all these categories, you know, you began to see the overlap.
Unknown Speaker 31:25
And the pattern is the same average is the same.
Unknown Speaker 31:29
That was once I got to that epiphany that just opened up the aperture for me to think about diversity efforts.
Unknown Speaker 31:37
What a phenomenal story, actually, I mean, first of all, it's great to have a shower. Without the shower, you wouldn't have thought about this. Right? And but it's also been a great example of, of tenacity, just you saw a gap, you saw a question, and you didn't let it go. And now you you convene 86 heads of state, right? I mean, what a phenomenal accomplishment. I think it's, it's a it's such a fantastic story.
Unknown Speaker 32:11
And in a funny way, the story continues, in a sense of learning experience for me, because the next sort of phase around some of this was that I was working for Goldman Sachs on 911 in the United States. And I decided I wanted to become a first responder. And Goldman was very supportive of me. So I actually spent 10 months in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Academy, to become a police officer, became a sworn police officer in the District of Columbia. But it was amazing to me how much some of these things, these tenets of diversity, I could see playing out, both positively and tragically in the police force. Because I remember in the academy, well, first things they said to us, they said was your most dangerous weapon was not your service weapon. Gun, your most infant was not sure which weapon, your most dangerous weapon, were your unconscious words, if you act, react, think, behave, speak unconsciously, in your workplace, well, it is guaranteed, you will get yourself and others into trouble. And we see this not in that sort of level of tragedy that can happen. But we see this in workplaces, but people will act reacting behave speak unconsciously all the time,
Unknown Speaker 33:35
all the time. And what worries me actually, is that just earlier before we met, I did a session for an organization that was I mean, just like many organizations right now, I would say it's an exceptionally really stressed organization. People are just bombarded with, I mean, obviously crisis in the world right now that you really can't control. But then you're bombarded with, whether it's price cuts, material shortages, you know, more demands, people leaving sick days, illness, whatever it is, so severely stressed environments. And I think when we are under stress under that extra stress, it's so much harder to actually heed that advice and
Unknown Speaker 34:18
layer on top of that, you know, all of the things that we know from the research, the unconscious biases, the unconscious perspectives, unconscious perceptions, unconscious Association, all those things we bring in unconsciously already, on top of what you've just layered, which are all the unconscious unconscious stresses that are going on, that it's not surprising that people that progress we wants is not being made. And in one of the other things that I learned in the police was an eye you saw in in one of my chapters in the office mouse, where I call for human and non human help. And you know, when you're a police officer, you are trained Even even you know, although I will say absolutely it does not always happen, tragically, but you are trained for active intervention, you know, active bystander intervention, right? So you look and you say, Why isn't this other police officer intervening in the behavior of another police officer? You know, we've recently seen, but that does not happen. But, you know, taking it into a less dangerous place. But nevertheless, I think that we need to go far beyond sort of this ally ships, yes. You know, Ally, great, okay, fine, you know, but it's a little too, it's a little too mushy for me use a technical term. I want more behaviors, I want more acute behaviors. I want the active intervention. I want what I call, you know, when man when personally, I want independent evaluators looking in on the dynamics of processes and
Unknown Speaker 36:05
feedback, right, honest feedback that is not meant to punish, but to improve why it's because, you know, and because we all have those blind spots, and, and whatnot. And I think that is so important. That is so important. And I also struggled with the idea of ally ship it made it's a feel good term, but is it moving anything? Right? But are we making it specific and concrete enough? And are we enabling a system?
Unknown Speaker 36:32
And I think we leave people really off the hook. But you know, so first of all, I'm going to outline Well, you know, okay, who wouldn't? I want people to just step in, when they cease, for example, it's small, but it's impactful when they see someone getting interrupted in a meeting, when they see somebody's idea being claimed by somebody else, you know, when they see someone who's quiet, you know, so they actively address this doesn't have to be the manager. This could be you know, you and me in the meeting, you know, where we say, where I say, you know, I know you're the expert on this, so we haven't really heard from him. So let's, let's hear from him, literally, math of a step that make moves the needle?
Unknown Speaker 37:20
Well, I always equate that a little bit to the to the UN, I know that you think a lot about safety and quality as movements that actually that we need to look at when it comes to what, you know, institutionalizing and ingraining and embedding, inclusiveness and equity. But I always think it's like in the in the quality of in manufacturing, but everybody is empowered to stop the line when there is a defect, everyone. And so it's very much like that, because in managerial in companies, our work gets done in meetings and through communication, and whatnot. And when we see something that is clearly substandard, and doesn't meet our expectations of quality interactions, quality environments, everybody should be be empowered to stop the process, and course correct and intervene. So I love that analogy and that call to action to more rigorous action that you're voicing.
Unknown Speaker 38:21
Yes. And the quality, you know, the safety, we're not we're not talking to psychological safety support in this is we're literally talking safety, airplanes not falling out of the sky, you know, babies not getting dropped out of cribs, chemical plants and not exploding, you know, kind of thing. And you hear companies say, you know, safety is our number one priority, right? And then what what does that include? Senior Leadership, total commitment to it, accountability, but everyone rewards and, you know, potentially punishments,
Unknown Speaker 38:55
also daily rituals, you know, there are a lot of rituals and safety organizations, but they're
Unknown Speaker 39:00
trained, and they're constantly trained, yes. And they're constantly reinforced. And as you said, you know, if you are the person on the line, you're not the supervisor, not the CEO, you can stop the line, because you have that power to do that. And it's transparent. And everybody knows what the safety numbers are. And nobody says, Boy, we got safety fatigue, I'm really done. Nobody says, right, because they they realize that the essence of whatever it is that they're doing, it relies upon the safety. So you're right. And, you know, if we could get more people to think of it in terms of that, you know, that safety of the interventions, that quality of leadership, that quality of the dynamics within an organization? Yeah, I think it would, again, cast a different light, rather than people seeing this as an undue burden that doesn't make you know what we He's Laura. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 40:02
So first of all I am, I am so excited to have you're part of this institute and what we're doing here, you know, and I'm deeply honored, because somebody with your expertise, your clarity, your, your voice of reason, as I will call, it is hard to find in the mix of, you know, people out there. And, you know, I mean, I know that within this institute, people have will have more opportunities to hear from you and to meet you and engage with you. But is there maybe one takeaway where you say, out of all your learning, also meeting all these powerful women in the world? And you know, very few people probably can they have that as a as a frame of reference? And excellent experience? Is there is there one or two things that that people can really use tomorrow that were an insight that that is actually actionable?
Unknown Speaker 40:53
First off, let me applaud you, York for creating this institute, seeing the need for understanding there's a gap in sort of how these, you know, these programs and these organizations go about doing things, and the insightfulness, which you're you're putting into this institute. So it's a real honor and privilege for me to be part of this. So thank you for that. And I truly look forward to, you know, having many more of these kinds of interactions. Because we know that there are a lot of like minded people out there who want to make the kinds of changes we both have been talking. So to be able to be part of that is really is really a privilege for me. So thank you for that, when you ask for this kind of one thing, or do I just did, it's never, it's never as easy as I would like it to be. Because, you know, I just, I think that we have to understand that in any organization, everyone everyone wants, generally speaking, everyone wants to do their best. Everyone wants to be part of a successful organization, they want to feel sometimes you hear this phrase, their authentic self, everyone wants to be able to feel like they're making a great contribution in an organization. And so to me, the purpose of things like the EMI is to help ensure that everyone gets that opportunity to do that, that I mean, we have way too many problems in this world, to waste talent, to waste, anyone's, you know, innovation and creativity. And one thing we do know, you know, diversity creates innovation and creativity, if done if John well. And here's where I see your institute coming in the if done well part
Unknown Speaker 42:50
of it. And that's the whole idea. That's the idea.
Unknown Speaker 42:53
So that's what I would say is if we, if we really look at this from some from a philosophical purpose, you know, the planet is not going to survive without some really good, innovative creative thinking. And that's going to come from all of us.
Unknown Speaker 43:16
Thank you for listening. You can sign up for more wherever you get your podcasts, just look for the inclusive leader podcast. To find out more about the inclusive leadership institute, visit us at www the inclusive leadership institute.com
