BOND: The Keys to Belonging and Inclusion

In a world overloaded with distractions, from social media to streaming content and nonstop notifications, genuine connection is becoming rare. So what does it really take to connect meaningfully, to ensure everyone feels seen and heard, and to lead with confidence rather than hesitation? If you're a corporate professional ready to level up your leadership and create a culture where differences drive success and connection is paramount, then welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the show where bold leaders are built and high-performing teams are made. I'm your host, Bernadette Boas, and today we're diving into one of the most powerful and often overlooked drivers of team success: inclusion through connection. Joining us is Greg Morley of BSL International. He is a global leader, author, and inclusion champion. Who brings rich insights from living and leading across North America, Asia, and Europe. We're unpacking ideas from his groundbreaking book, Bond: Belonging and the Keys to Inclusion and Connection, and challenging you to learn more about those around you, as well using a step-by-step mindset to leverage differences and take action by meeting people where they are to create lasting progress and team connection.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. With more than 25 years in corporate trenches, Bernadette's own journey from being dismissed as a tyrant boss to becoming a sought-after leadership coach and speaker illustrates the very essence of transformation that she now inspires in others with her tips, strategies, and stories. So if You're ready to shed the bitches of fear and insecurity, ditch the imposter syndrome, and step into the role of the powerhouse leader you were born to be. This podcast is for you. Let's do this.

Greg, how are you? Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Bernadette, it's so great to see you and finally meet in person.

It is, it's great and great to meet you. So before we get started, because this subject of belonging and connection and inclusion. It, it actually kind of made my heart start to reverberate because in this world today, I think belonging and connection is just missing and people are looking for it and are starved for it. But before we do get into that, I'd love for our listeners and viewers to get to know Greg, the man. So could you share with us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Happy to. And maybe I'll start with the end of the story because the end of the story is actually a book I wrote called Bond: Belonging and the Keys to Inclusion and Connection. And that goes back to the beginning of the story because the beginning of the story and what's been very much a theme through my entire life has been adventure, travel, and learning. And so, I was very fortunate to be brought up in a family of travelers. My mother, at a very young age, went and taught middle school in Saudi Arabia in the late '50s, and she had always told us these stories of living and working abroad. And my sister and I really picked up on that, and we both were fortunate that our parents took us traveling. My father was in the military abroad, and he also had great stories of these adventures. So I think we always wanted to, to pick up and live on these, live these adventures. And through that, I really started to become very passionate and educated about things like cross-cultural competency, and it became something that was very important to me. I was fortunate to, to marry a man who also was an adventurer or was willing to go along for the ride. So maybe that's lesson one, which is marry properly for for your, your lifestyle. And, and so that's really then what, what led me to a career of working, starting my work in the US, but then I've spent more than 25 years now working and living outside the US, both in Europe and in Asia. And so I feel like now I've kind of come back full circle to, you know, where I started with my parents, but then the life that I'm living now. Was one very much that I had imagined when I was younger. I couldn't have imagined how that would have happened, like what was the road to that happening, and it certainly wasn't a straight road, but I was very fortunate now to have a life where, you know, you're in Florida today, I'm talking to you from London, I live normally in Paris, and my life is very enriched by that kind of cultural exchange, which is a daily part of my life and who I am.

That's fabulous. Fabulous. Both those two cities too are just wonderful. Wonderful. But I also have to ask you, and I want our listeners to hear it too. I asked you what the BSL part of your business name stands for. Could you share that with us?

Sure. So BSL International SAS is the French company that, that is how I do my consulting and my coaching and my, my book. Selling, and BSL is actually the first initials of the 3 dogs we have had in our life, Buddy, Simba, and Louis. And we came up with that because in fact we're dog people. And in fact, dogs are also part of this journey of cultural experience. When you move to a country like France with a dog, you're a superstar because people love dogs in France. I had a situation one time, the guy was riding a moped down the street. He stopped the moped, he pulled it up on the sidewalk. He got off. I was ready for, for fight. And he got off the moped and he said, what kind of dog is that? And so, so through dogs, we also created great connections to people. And again, it's a bit the theme that I would continue to talk about today, which is this way to create connection and belonging and community. And I think animals have a very strong influence on that for people that have them and why BSL, those 3 dogs, is, is really who we are and how we got to where we are in life.

I love that. Cause we were talking about the fact that I am such a dog fanatic and yes, my, you know, 2 dogs that I've had, one now and one in the past, saved my life. Definitely creates that belonging and that connection. And even that inclusion with individuals. So it's a great segue into our conversation today. So you have lived around the world.

Yes.

And you have lived in very diverse, very different cultures and surroundings. So what have those experiences really taught you and how has it shaped who you are, but more importantly, your view on belonging and connection?

I think, Bernadette, I was fortunate that I came at difference from a very positive perspective. I grew up with parents that had lived abroad and they talked to us about this kind of adventure and foreignness or difference being something exciting, a place to learn, a place to grow. And then I went to a high school that was relatively diverse. I was in a class that was the first— it was traditionally a boys' school, and I was in the first class with women graduating from the school. So we talked a lot about the integration of genders in education at that time, even I was only in high school, but it was very present for us. And then when I got into the corporate world, I continued to sort of look for this difference as a way of learning, as a way of creating a distinctness. Now, for me as a white male, to be sort of chasing diversity or chasing difference was not the norm. You know, I was, I was, I was trying to discover things because I was really interested in them. And again, it came from, from where I was, from how I was raised. And my idea over time, as it related to inclusion and belonging, was, especially as I became an HR professional— I spent the majority of my career in HR working at Disney, working at Hasbro, and then ultimately working at LVMH— was it, when people feel like they belong in an organization, when they feel like they're included, they have a connection to the people they work for, and with, they do incredible things. And ultimately, for me, it also helped me to discover that, you know, my, my mission in life was to help people to achieve more than they could, more than they believed they could on their own. And I know you're a coach and that's what you do every day, right? When you're coaching people, you're really trying to bring the best out of them. Absolutely. But, but from them. Not to impose it on them. And inclusion and belonging is very much that way, where you can see in an organization, an organization thrives when you have a culture where people who are different, distinct, unique, bring talents from different parts of their life, but they bring it into an organization and they feel like, OK, I can really be on fire in this organization. And I've seen that in those 3 organizations I talked about. Because I worked in different places in those 3 organizations, I can compare when it worked well and when it didn't work well. And you can look at through things like employee surveys, turnover data, 360s, you can really see through data this connection between inclusion, belonging, and business results. And I've just always been fascinated by that and ultimately was why I wrote the book.

Why do you think leaders struggle so much with being successful in creating that type of culture and having that focus on making sure everyone feels like they belong and that they're included? What is the struggle?

It's such a great question, and I think the answer is not that complicated. That we all grow up in, in business and in life with a training of an avoidance of risk. So don't cross the street without holding your parent's hand. Wear a helmet when you ride a bike, put your seatbelt on when you drive, because the consequence of not doing those things is pretty— could be tragic. And so we guard our lives against risk. The reality is in the, in the working world, risk is what makes things happen. You take risk, you invest money. If you do it the right way, you make money. If a company decides to take a risk on a hire that maybe is a unique person, a unique profile, that person might bring something into the organization that's going to set a fire in the organization and the organization grow. But there's risk to that. And so I think for managers, for leaders, this area of inclusion and diverse talents often feels risky. And so what I do is I revert kind of into my own bias, my own way of working, my own understanding of the world. And they, and managers are fearful of that. And, and so it's a very understandable human response to avoid risk. But as you know, I was listening to one of your, your prior podcasts and, and the woman was talking very eloquently about how risk accelerated her career. And I think that that's very similar to what I've experienced, which is when you take bets, measured bets in business, and you take risks and you go where places where other people may not want, you oftentimes will be recognized for that. You may fail, but you've created a profile of yourself that is somebody who can take risks and can potentially be successful. And if you bring this back to inclusion, managers don't want to do the wrong thing. They don't want to be called out for doing the wrong thing. So most managers settle in the comfort zone that they know, and they don't go out and try to, to invest that money or invest that resource in something that could grow much faster.

If we took differences, and I love that, how you've kind of, you know, peppered that in, that it's really about differences. But if you took differences, which can be scary for people and uncomfortable and feel like a risk, but if you take that out of that formula, so to speak, and it's even about managers ensuring that everyone that's even on their team even if they're all like vanilla, to really ensure that they are, you know, they feel like they belong, that they feel like they're included, they feel like they're being heard and seen. Why do so many struggle even in that space that has minimal risk as far as what you mentioned, but yet at the same time is critical to ensure that, to your point, that everyone's lifted up? And what, what it is that they're capable of doing.

It's interesting you use the analogy of vanilla, because if I had 10 different scoops of vanilla, even they have some difference.

True.

And so in a team that looks like people who came from the same place, they, they maybe had the same educational background, maybe they're all of the same gender, and they, they speak the same language. All of those people have uniqueness. And so for a manager to not try to learn that and understand that, you know, it's why people do simple things like, let's have the team over for a barbecue. Because what happens at the barbecue? You stop talking about work and you start talking about life. And that's the kind of thing that can help demystify the difference in the workplace. That even if the team is very, of very homogeneous makeup, the team has a lot of uniqueness to it. Individuals are individuals. They were created one by one. And managers who don't even really have to do it well but make people feel like you can be yourself, and that barbecue person now is known at work, and that person is also fully accepted here and feel, and can feel like they can do their best work here. That's how great teams are formed and how culture is formed. So to me, culture starts at the very micro level. It's the actions of managers with their team members. It's the actions between team members, and then it grows into an aggregate. But managers that do that well are the ones that then attract the best people. Because I look over there and I'm thinking, oh, that manager's pretty good. I want to go work for her.

Right.

Because everybody seems to like working for her. So they end up attracting the best people. Those people stay, and likely those people are the ones that get developed.

Now, you mentioned your book.

Yes.

Bond, meaning Belonging and the Keys to Inclusion and Connection. You talked briefly on what inspired you to write it, but what is the problem you're working to solve and the value that you have witnessed, because I'm assuming you did, witnessed for those that really embrace it?

So I had 3 goals in my book writing. The first was, this may be tips for starting authors. So it's like my first book I had ever written. I didn't want to lose money. And the second was I wanted to see the book somewhere like on a shelf. And the third was I wanted to influence positively the discussion around inclusion and belonging. So I think that I've achieved the three in different measure. The reason I started the book was, as I progressed through my career in HR, having worked in the US both on the East and the West Coast, having then moved to France, and then working in both Hong Kong and Shanghai, I saw again this power that inclusion could bring to organizations, especially organizations that work across borders, across languages. And big brands like Disney do that, Hasbro, LVMH, which is the big French group. They have to figure out this matrix of cultural nuance that works around the world, and it happens through employees and customers. What I saw over time was my beloved inclusion was becoming a very exclusive club. And what I started to feel and see was exactly what has manifested itself in the past year or so, which is inclusion became a dirty word. Then you have to think, okay, why did that happen? And I started to see that happening several years ago when I, when I started to write the book, because there was a lot of language being used that people didn't really understand. And if you're already part of a group of people that doesn't feel marginalized, or you feel like you're being heard and you're being listened to, then engaging in something that can be, again, risky for you, you might say, "I don't understand what they're talking about. It's not really my game." The reality is, if you look at the data, diverse teams are more creative and they avoid risk much greater than homogenous teams. I was just talking to a friend of mine this weekend who runs an investment firm for one of the big banks. And he said, it's absolutely true. He sees it. He said when he has teams of diverse members, they're much better at making those investment decisions than when he sees homogenous teams. Inclusive teams are also more creative and they've been proven to be better at delivering on business results. When you have diversity, inclusion, and then an inclusive leader, who I'm sure must be a lot of the things that you're talking to with your coaching, in your coaching practice, those teams excel versus their peer groups. So that's the data. And I wanted to get back to that in the book. I wanted to remind leaders that the imperative of inclusion is a business imperative. And that all of the noise on the edges of, whether it's right and left, woke, anti-woke, I don't really care what the language was. But the idea is that it's a driver of business and it's also a driver of talent. As we talked before, there's a war for talent. It's global. Talent is getting more and more difficult to find the right person in the right role. Well, if you cut yourself off from whole swaths of talent because you don't want to deal with this inclusion issue or you don't want to work a little bit harder to give people a sense of belonging in an environment where there is a lot of difference, then you're less likely to be successful. And so that's the story I tell in the book, the stories I tell in the book. And I'm very honest in the book. I made a lot of mistakes in my career. And I try to also demystify the discussion by saying, you know, I made this mistake and this is what I learned from it. I did this thing well. I think it's a practice you may want to consider. But to be very honest about, again, why I believe it's an imperative to have inclusive teams where there's a sense of belonging and how I think leaders can access those learnings very easily.

And would you say, considering the fact that you've been all around the world and you've worked in various countries and now you're— right now you're outside the United States, but of course you probably know of all the chaos that is going on around DEI and organizations. What's the outside world, outside of the US's viewpoint on the breakdown?

There's certainly a reaction. So, you know, the US has an outsized influence on the rest of the world. What I would say in some places though, the reaction is the inverse. So where companies are seeing what's happening in the US to a lot of, European companies, and I, and I was recently at a, at a meeting of HR, senior HR leaders and diversity leaders. They're starting to look at this inflection point as a competitive advantage where again, people, you know, the best talent want to work in teams that are vibrant, that are energetic, that are, they have people from everywhere who are coming to solve problems. It's how the you know, great American engine was built. And so European companies and Asian companies are starting to see that there's, there's probably an opening for them there as it relates to global business. There are also, whether it's in the US, Asia, Europe, a lot of organizations are trying to watch the way they talk about things as a way to avoid creating problems for themselves, but also to continue on the journey that, when I, again, if I go back to the data, they know is true. So they're trying to, they're trying to recruit diverse consumers, and they can't do that if they, if they don't have an organization that is competent around culture. And so, you know, the language is changing, that's for sure. But that's probably okay. I go back again to my premise, which is inclusion needs to be an inclusive practice. It needs to be everybody's practice. And I need to feel like no matter what group I think I represent, that that's an important lever for my business to be successful. And again, I, in the book, I share some story, a story I had where I didn't do that. Like, I was very blind to my own whether it's not a bias, but I went too far too fast. I scared everybody. And you know, the learning was, it's also a journey. You have to bring people along with you. You know, criticizing people for using the wrong language, saying the wrong thing is never a good way to, to improve. It doesn't work in performance reviews. Why would it work in culture? And so that kind of thing is what I tried to tackle in the book. And again, make it very— make the discussion very approachable. Yeah.

Is a lot of the changing of the language though, more to suit, like to be politically correct, to minimize that risk you talked about earlier? You know, what would you tell a leader who, you know, absolutely wants to be in that space and wants to foster that space, but is getting this tug of war of yes or no or do or don't, what would you tell them?

So I'll— yeah, what I do tell them. So I— one, one project I'm working on right now is with my high school. And, and, you know, in that group, you have the constituents of students, faculty, staff, parents, administrators, the community, donors. So there's a lot of opinion in that.

There's diversity right there.

Oh, that is diversity. And, and, you know, because it's multi-generational, nobody really leaves. You know, people, they go from one category to another category. And what we've talked about with them is go back to your values. So the school has very strong values. And for those organizations, if I look at the organizations that have stuck with inclusion as a practice, investments in inclusion, you can map almost directly that those organizations have very strong defined value sets. And those organizations that walked away from it very quickly probably invested in it around 2001, 2021, 2022, because that's the way the wind was blowing.

Right.

And so walking away from something that's not embedded into your value system is much easier than walking away from it when it's who you are. And so, you know, in the discussion with, with, with school, but I would say this, and with other organizations I've spoken to, go back to your values. What is it that your organization is all about? And in a lot of organizations, you know, being close to the consumer is what they're about. Having an environment where people can, can, can do their best and be celebrated for it is, is oftentimes some kind of value. And that's, again, what inclusion and belonging is about. So you don't have to use the language that might become more, you know, difficult or reactionary, but go back to the values and invest in the values and invest in that. And that allows people to continue, organizations to continue the great work of creating environments where people want to join, They want to learn, they want to grow, and they want to be successful.

And they want to be part of the conversation. So, which is something that you talk about is making everyone part of the conversation. So what does it look like when a leader is ensuring that they're including everyone in the conversation?

So that's something that is critical and making sure that even in the words leaders are using or the techniques that they use, that everybody has a voice. I'll use the example of what we all came to know, love, and hate during COVID which was Zoom or Teams or whatever format you were using. And, you know, there's, there's a practice of in a Zoom meeting, making sure that a leader is giving options for people to participate, whether that's through chat, whether it's through an app like Slido where people can send anonymous questions or comments, Or whether it's if there were 3 of us and I'm running the meeting and I would say, Bernadette, do you have anything to say? So giving you the floor or the opportunity to speak. And those kinds of things are how leaders can create an environment of openness, of safety, and also recognizing then, you know, you say, well, I'm thinking about this. Well, that's a great suggestion. We hadn't thought about that. So, so just being more, giving people more opportunity to be recognized for what they're saying, and also giving them different options for participation, I think is a great way that I've seen, especially in cultures where people may not even speak English as a first language. So, you know, I'm an American, you're an American. We oftentimes on a global scale don't mind saying the first thing that pops into our head. And so that's a little bit intimidating to people who don't come from that kind of culture or don't even speak English as a first language. So they're waiting for their moment, and then we as Americans have moved to the next thing. And so I encourage and develop leaders to think about what are those methods you're using to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to speak. And oftentimes it's the quietest person in the room that has the best ideas.

That's so absolutely true. I love your comment about options for participation because that requires leaders, that requires intention.

Yes.

And it requires attention that they are— they're not just getting on a meeting or sitting in a room full of people in a meeting. They're actually paying attention and they're very intentional about making sure they're aware of who is participating, who is not, and the how to give them options for participating. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. And, and, and other things that seem very simple, but how many times have you shown up to a meeting and have no idea what the meeting's about? So how does one prepare for that? You know, how do you prepare yourself to be an active participant when you don't know what an agenda is or what the expectation of the participants are? When I was in my, my former organization in, in Moët Hennessy at LVMH, we had developed this practice and it was in the scope of a big culture, global culture change initiative. And it was called No Taboo. And No Taboo was basically a facilitated question time that was embedded in basically any town hall, whether it was local, regional, or global.. And it allowed people again, through some of these different techniques, to ask questions of the management that at first it was done anonymously. So people would submit questions and they weren't named. And so it took a while for people to get comfortable with it, but because it became a standard in every meeting, then people started to know it was coming. They would prepare. Right. And then ultimately I experienced this in Asia, where the culture is very much a kind of respectful of hierarchy culture. People are much less willing to just jot their hand up and challenge a senior manager. Ultimately, we got to a place where we actually got rid of the anonymous part of it. And people did know, OK, I know that if I ask a question, someone's going to answer it. And I also know that if I ask a question, even if it's a confrontational one, I won't be penalized for it. And that's the way you start to change culture. That's the way you also start to get great ideas from people that you may not have ever heard of because they're sitting on them because they're afraid of raising their hand or saying something that's going to challenge the boss. And I saw that that became an extremely effective tool. And because everybody knew no taboo, that it also had a brand. So it was for people to associate, okay, this is no taboo time.

The number one foundational element of that is trust. And everything that you just talked about is building trust so your people will show up and will feel safe to engage and raise their hand and ask that question or challenge that idea.

Trust in an organization is, is hard to build and easy to shake. So you can see that I tell leaders of any level, you are constantly on stage. As soon as you leave your home in the morning, because you might be on a, you might be on a bus, you might be on a subway, you might be in traffic. People that work for you might see you. And they start taking cues from how you behave. And they watch you in meetings, and they listen to what you're saying. And so a manager of, say, 5 to 10 people has a big impact. They have a big impact on 5 to 10 people. And those 5 to 10 people talk also. So how they, the actions they take, the way they interact with people, that built trust building on a daily basis is really, as you said, I mean, it's really foundational to organizations. And it can be the basis of significant positive cultural transformation.

What are some steps that someone can take to move a team that they see aren't high-functioning, have some division, has some separation, so they can move more to collaboration, connection, belonging?

Yeah, it's a great question. I have always found that helping individuals, again, if it's even if it's the, the 10 vanilla scoops, to start to help people understand each other a little bit better and to start to appreciate each other a little bit better. And again, you know, culture starts, as I said, at a very micro level. And so if I start to understand you a little bit better, whether that's through the barbecue or you do something like Myers-Briggs or some kind of instrument that people can start to to learn about each other, you have to start there because there has to be an appreciation for each other. Even if I start to appreciate that, you know, now I understand why I always have arguments with my colleague or why we disagree fundamentally on things. Okay, now I start to make that connection, and then I start to appreciate that person a little bit more because I understand, you know, when I start to try to stand in that person's shoes Then I start to understand. And then from that, building teams that have mechanisms like we talked about before to share information more freely. Nothing is more powerful than a team that has open information, where information is not used for the purpose of power. It's used for the opportunity for people to help each other. And then I think what's probably then the next step is making sure that the team has some shared goals, that people are working together to be successful. I did something I found very, very successful over time, and I did it with a couple of teams. And these are teams that are, you know, pretty spread out. So they're working in different places. Some of them oftentimes feel very alone because they're the only, say, HR person. And I would say, OK, what are you working on? What's important? And then what do you need? Then I would say, what are you really good at? And they would say, you know, these are 3 things I'm really good at. I'm good at hiring. I'm good at training. I'm good at employee relations. And I say, what are 3 things you're not good— you think you need help with? Well, I'm not that good a project manager, and the systems things are difficult for me. So then what I would do is have the team members go around and say, "Okay, I can help you with that because you may not be good at project management, but I'm very good at project management." Right. And so we created an environment where they had shared objectives around their, you know, collective strength and weakness areas. And again, that then creates a sense of the teams working together. You know, ultimately it's not about liking each other. It's about you're moving the team in a direction of success. And oftentimes it's the, you know, the teams that have the highest level of talent that are most hungry for the next promotion that are the most challenging to lead. But when you start to create those connections where he says, where somebody says, ah, if I work with Bernadette because she's really good at something and I'm good at something that maybe she needs help with, then we're both going to get ahead faster.

And going back, because I want— I like to remove any excuses that our viewers and listeners can come up with in their head. So when you talked about that one, that one practice of whether it's the barbecue, but I hear people going, I don't have time to take my team out for a barbecue. But that practice of just getting to know each other, they could be doing that in a one of their team meetings where they carve out like 15 minutes and they ask one question of each other. So they can get to know each other, correct?

Yeah, it doesn't have to be an offsite. It can be a practice that you, you do. As you said, it's part of the daily working of the team, which is we're all going to share something. It could just be share what you're working on where you may need some help. Just what I said before. That's a way to start to build. Now, some people might start and say, well, I don't really need any help because in their mind they'll think, gosh, if somebody starts helping me, it's just going to get harder. But as soon as people start to see others being successful because they're collaborating or they're sharing information, you don't get to 100% of the team all on board right away. And if you try, you will be frustrated immediately. And I always think, I always think of teams in thirds. So usually a third of the team will try anything. They're— the, the manager says, we're going to try this, we're going to share, we're going to— okay, I'm in, I'll try it. Then there's usually a third of the team that are just naysayers. We've tried this before, it's not going to work. I'm just going to have to support somebody who's not as strong as I am, whatever their excuse is. And then there's a third that's in the middle. And for a manager, I believe that the important third is that middle, to bring them over to the side of this is a good idea, this is working. I see how the culture is changing. I see how it's making me more successful. And then the other third will either jump or they'll leave. And so that, I think, is the, the role a manager can play in, in culture change. You know, your whole team— thinking that your whole team is going to immediately think you're brilliant and, oh, this guy's great, or this woman's great— that's not the way culture change happens. Again, it's like a A thousand small actions. But if you can start to move the organization towards a positive outcome of the change, then you will end up in the right place.

What would one thing be that our viewers and listeners could be doing right now, listening to this, but then taking action on to really get in touch with where they are from fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion and connection?

I think the most powerful thing in building connection and inclusion in the workplace is trying to understand the experience of the people that you work with. And so just doing simple things like, let's have a coffee together, let's have lunch together, or even from a manager having a one-on-one with an employee, you know, tell me a little bit about yourself. So we don't, we don't often do that because it doesn't seem relevant to the work, or we're afraid of what the person might actually say. But that is how you create connection, and connection is a human behavior. It's a human feeling. And so you, you really need to get closer to people. And if I go back to the, the premise again of the book, this is what companies spend billions of dollars doing. They try to understand the motivation of consumers. They try to, you know, put themselves in the shoes of the consumer so that I can understand what the consumer's behaviors are, what their intentions are, what their interests are. Why don't we do that with the people we work with? That's how winning companies win.

I absolutely love that because, yes, people will walk through fire for someone who cares about them and sees and hears them.

Exactly.

Greg, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much. I want to remind everyone, please first go to gregmorley.com, learn all about him, but you also see where, how you can get his book out there. His book being Belonging and the Keys to Inclusion and Connection, but it's shortened to be just simply BOND. Bond with one another. Also on Instagram, you can follow him at @bond.gregmorley. I have to admit, learning that BSL, that part of his business name, BSL International, is the first initial of his 3 dogs, set my heart on fire and set up for a really fun, engaging, and very, very informative conversation with Greg Morley of BSL International. The whole conversation around belonging and connection really hit because I don't know about you, but it, I find it absolutely critical to feel as if I belonged, feel as if I am connected, feel as if I am seen and heard by those around me, whether that is at work or in my personal life. And so his tips and ideas and strategies in order to create that feeling of belonging and inclusion was just powerful. And his focus on differences, I think, really is paramount for us to understand. I used the analogy of vanilla and, and yet he expanded on that saying even 8 or 9 vanillas Team members have their own uniquenesses, have their own differences, and embracing those uniquenesses and differences is what will foster and build a very high-functioning team. I'm grateful for Greg for sharing all of his expertise and his tips and strategies so that we all can be powerhouse leaders. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow us so you have access to our extensive library fabulous guests and topics, as well as get notified of our future episodes. You can go to ballofirecoaching.com/podcast and follow us on any one of your podcast streaming services and on our YouTube channel, Shedding the Corporate Bitch TV. I'll see you next time for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch.

Bye.

Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Wanna dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.