The Business Brunch - Dynamic Diversity

Good morning. No, good afternoon. I guess it depends where you are in the world.

Good evening.

Good night. That's it, short show. Uh, welcome back everybody. Um, I haven't quite got into this thing yet, have I? Um, lovely to see you all. Welcome to the Business Brunch. It's our first show of 2023. 3, and we are delighted to be joined by a very special guest, Cynthia Fortlage, today, who will introduce herself in just a moment. Uh, and also my co-hosts as well, Vanessa and Belinda. Welcome back, Belinda, from your holiday. But this is the show. If you've not seen it before, if you've just stumbled across it and gone, oh, what am I doing here? This is a show for all professionals who want to connect, learn, and evolve. It's continual professional development, CPD, in bite-sized chunks over lunch or breakfast or dinner, depending on where you are in the world. Um, my name is Sarah Farmer. I'm an executive coach, and I specialize in mindset and leadership skills development for senior leaders and leadership teams. Um, and I'll just get Vanessa and Melinda to introduce themselves in just a second, but very quickly, just for those of you want to know what you're going to get today, we're talking with Cynthia Fortlage today about creating a diverse culture, which is so important for for the growth of the business, but also for the humans within that business that reside there. And Cynthia brings with us— brings today a really unique, um, perspective to the show because you are one leader with two genders of experience, which we've never had that on our show before. And we can't wait to learn from you and understand more about that. But we'll come to, to you in just a second. Quickly, I'll go over to Vanessa and Melinda. Quick intro from you ladies.

Okay, I'll say hello first. I'm Vanessa Ashworth. I step in to make you stand out. So I'm a marketer. That's it.

Okay, your, your, um, your audio has gone very strange, but, uh, we'll go to Melinda just to— it's gone very fast for some reason.

Yeah, check your mic connections there, Vanessa, and then we can come back to you. Uh, my name is Melinda Ward. I am the Director of Consulting Solutions and Managed Services for Helm360. Um, as within the context of the business branch, I am here bringing experience many years in the consulting industry, in business transformation, technical transformation, and team management. And so let's loop back to Vanessa and see if the audio has recovered.

Has that made any difference at all?

No.

Right.

No. It's pathetic.

It sounds like you've had helium and you're going really fast. But anyway, while we're sorting that out, if you are listening to the show, if you've just tuned in, say hello, let us know where you are in the world. And whilst you're doing that, And don't worry if you can't see other people commenting as well, because we are now— we're broadcasting over several different channels. So don't worry if you can't see everybody's messages, we can, and we'll be popping in to say hello to you in just a second. But let me just hand over to Cynthia. Um, Cynthia, welcome to the show. Uh, do you want to just give us a quick intro into who you are, what you do, and all of that?

Absolutely. So hello everyone, whatever time zone you're in. Welcome. Um, yes, you can tell by the accent that this is not a typical UK accent, it's a Canadian accent. I was born in Belfast, so I am a British citizen by birth, but due to the Troubles, grew up in Canada. That I call my first transition in life. Um, through that, um, in 2020 during lockdown, I decided to come back. You know, I thought it was for a short term, but believe it or not, I actually fell in love with living in large city like London. So this is where I decided to transition once again and make this my new home, reboot my career, and start over with my consultancy in the wonderful world of diversity and inclusion. And that's where I work with organizations at the intersection of human rights, sexuality, gender, and privilege.

Wow, quite a job, quite a job. So today we're talking about creating a diverse culture, and who, who is better to help us understand what that really means than you. You know, you've seen things from both sides. And just like Cynthia said to us before we started, don't worry about the language you use, don't worry about the questions you ask, because we're going to get it wrong. You know, we're all learning here and we'll do our best to get it right. But, you know, if you're listening into this and want to ask a question, you are very much open to ask me anything. Just ask me anything. Let's get this out because talking about things and understanding, although it's not necessary for acceptance, which is something you're going to talk about. We've got to talk about this stuff. So we're going to look at the impact of language, building an awareness without awkwardness, which is really key, but also this thing about you don't need to understand to accept. You can just accept. Have we got anybody popped into the chat yet?

Not yet. It's a bit quiet.

I changed my microphone. Does that make any difference? Oh God.

No, it's very odd. It's like it's going at 10 times speed.

I'm gonna go out and come back in and see what happens. All right.

Okay. We'll be here.

While she's doing that then, should we— sorry, Melinda, go on.

Yeah, I was just going to say, and for people who are thinking, oh, well, I'm not a corporate person, I'm not a leader who would hire in a D&I expert, 'Is this for me?' The answer is absolutely yes, because all of these topics are important not only for people in big corporations, but also for independent contractors and consultants, and even just as humans in general, because your interactions every day with your friends, your family, your colleagues are all colored by this sort of, um, these facts and these sort of historical habits and terminology and beliefs that we may have had with us for a very long time. So it's best that everybody have this information and share. So, uh, please feel free to share this, um, this link or this recording with, with your contacts, either now or for replay. And let's spread the word and get more people to have the awareness that we should all have. Cool.

And we have got people coming in, and Vanessa's coming in, but I'm just very conscious of time because we want to get as much out of Cynthia as we possibly can.

So, um, and hi to James who's just joined us.

So Cynthia, um, how do you want, you know, talk to us, tell us about, let's start with the impact of language then, maybe we start there.

It's a great topic to start with. So, you know, language matters. I think we've all heard that a gazillion times, right? And the reality is, is that It does. And we're used to language in one particular way, but language changes, right? And it's never, it's never a constant. And so, yes, we, we are experiencing this upsurge or really an awareness because the reality is the language that, quote, everybody is feeling is new. It's really new in, quote, the last 600 to 800 years. The fact is, is that there's actually records where we talk about diversity, definitely gender diversity. There's records dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years ago with Indigenous cultures where the simplest language in North America from an Indigenous culture had 5 words to represent gender, as an example. So there was female, male, female but male, male but female, and neither male nor female. Now of course these are quote colonizer labels that have been associated with the terms the Indigenous people use, that they are reclaiming. But in terms of us grasping the understanding of that, you go back and you go, well, I thought it was pretty amazing that 5,000 to 7,000 years ago this idea of neither male nor female existed. But somehow 600 to 800 years ago we were taught and we have, quote, made it normal in coming— in terms of, you know, coming forward to society. And, you know, normal is one of those words Right? Like, because if something's not normal, therefore it's abnormal. But why can't it just be usual? This is what we usually say. Or we talk about, instead of heteronormativity, we talk about hetero-usual. So the whole idea is, you know, again, words do matter. In the talks and work that I do, I use the example of high guys. I'm not going to go into the full depth of it, but, you know, does somebody need to understand the trauma that that term can carry, not necessarily for me, but for perhaps other women like me who have had a journey in life that was not necessarily the one they probably planned. And at the end of the day, that when they hear the term, their safety is being questioned when they hear that term. And that's not only their psychological safety, but their emotional safety and their physical safety. There's a whole story to it, but it's like, do you actually need to understand all of that history? If I just said, hey, you know, when we come into the office, can we not say hi guys? Could we just say hi team or hi everyone? Because I find that, you know, less, less triggering for me. And again, you know, it comes back to, do we really need to understand? Are you going to go, well, that's what I've always said, so live with it. But if that is constantly like, you know, a pin pricking, like eventually a balloon bursts. So like, why do we have to go there when again, can we be much more sensitive to each other and start to learn and adjust? Because language is moving. And if you don't believe me, just ask your teenager because they will tell you the language is changing.

Well, just look at text speak and how that's evolved in the last, you know, month or two months. It's like every, you know, every few months there's a complete change in acronyms and things like that.

So yeah, moving target. Can I ask you a question? And this is something that I said to you before we came on the show. I was having a conversation about today's show with my dad, who is nearly 80, and my kids who are in their teenagers, and then you've got me and my husband who are middle-aged. Uh, but we are. And the difference in thought around this is just incredible. You know, for my dad, it's like, wow, this is such an extreme thought of my children, it's completely normal. But even that word normal, isn't it? It's why the word being normal suggests that if you're not, you're abnormal, which can make people feel terrible. Um, but what I was going to ask you was, why do everybody is treated a certain way at work, and everybody, irrespective of their gender, their race, whatever else, it sometimes feels uncomfortable Can we realistically change everything we do to be so neutral that it doesn't affect anybody? Because you're kind of getting into a difficult area, aren't we, where every word— you could trigger me by saying something, and do I then have a right to say, "Don't use that word," or are we just getting it— is it getting too complicated?

Well, I mean, I think the world, certainly from my experience, the world is very complicated as it is.

Yeah.

The reality is that You know, according to the UN, whatever said that we're now at 8 billion people worldwide. You're not having to deal with all 8 billion. So let's just recognize that we're not dealing with 8 billion different variations of language that we need to learn. You've got a much smaller subset. And, you know, maybe I don't remember all your keywords, but like one of the things I found for myself is that if we were talking the conversation uses pronouns, I put it on my name on screen, then, you know, all I would ask is, can you just remember Cynthia as she/her? Like, that's it. You don't need to remember another thing about me because you can always say, Cynthia, can you remind me, where do you work again? Or, sorry, Cynthia, what is it you do? And, you know, we can end up having that conversation and to work through. So I'm not asking you to remember, quote, my entire life history. And so forth. But when it comes to recognizing someone's identity, again, maybe it's somebody you've worked with. I've got people that have known me for 30 years, and I just simply tell them, look, it's really easy. Don't refer to me for who I was, refer to me for who I am. Because when I look back and, you know, they're referring to memory and they go, oh, you remember when I went out with my old name and so forth? And I go, what? But I was there. I have that memory. I didn't look like this, I wasn't called Cynthia, but I was there. So you can say, you know, 30 years ago when Cynthia and I went out to the bar, and then you can tell the story, you know. So it doesn't— you don't lose that history. It's just, again, recognizing who I am, not who I was.

And, you know, it's about— it's being sensitive. It's not about changing our world completely, is it? Sensitive to everybody that's within it. Yeah. No, it's a It's a good, really good answer. Yeah, it makes sense. Vanessa, how's your audio?

Shall we try it? Is that better?

No, it's still not working.

Not sure why, honestly, because it's not typical of this. Another thing I've noticed is— do you have a sense, Cynthia Fortlage? For some reason, I remember when LinkedIn put the option for people to include their pronouns on their, their name, uh, or the, the trend started. I don't, I don't remember how exactly it manifested, but some people were quite like defensive about it, which I found very weird because I'm always of the, you know, they works great. You know what I mean? It's like if you're not sure if you want to cover all the bases, they's your word, you know. So, but why do you think some people are very much, well, I'll— I'm not going to use they because it needs to be X or Y. And it's like, no, it doesn't. But why do you think that defensiveness is there? Is it really for other, like, insecurity reasons, or, or what?

Well, maybe, maybe it's just how they were raised and what they know. And, you know, the challenge with that is that you know, where you were born, the color of your skin, the family that you were born into. You had no control over any of those things.

Yeah.

But they may have given you privilege. And the challenge to you is that that privilege is a set of blinders of the way you see the world. And we call that bias. So all of a sudden, you are seeing the world through a set of blinders that no fault of your own is how you've been raised, what you've been taught, and you see it. And now all of a sudden your privilege is being challenged in terms of, well, can't you use your privilege? Again, the idea of being an ally to any marginalized community, not just LGBTQ+. Women are the largest group of marginalized people, just to remind everybody. So the whole idea is, can you use your power and privilege to help someone who doesn't carry that power and privilege. So for someone like myself, it is a recognition of my identity is all I'm simply asking for. And, you know, we didn't get into the acceptance piece, but if you accept that I'm a human being and I'm here as who I am, not who I was, then simply just recognizing that is where it's at. And you know what, if you don't need to use pronouns as an example, there's many different examples, but pronouns, well, you know, bless you, what an amazing privilege you have. And you know, most people don't think of that and go, what an amazing way to be an active ally, to actually use your pronouns when you don't need to, to help uplift others to be equal to you. Now you've used your power and privilege for good socially.

So does that mean that, is it seen as disrespectful then by us not having she/her on there, or it's not supportive? Because I didn't— Vanessa's actually typing her questions in on the phone, or her thoughts now. I haven't, I don't know if I've got it on my LinkedIn profile. I think I did change it, but I can't remember. But is it something we could all very easily do? Yes, there is bias wherever there's change, there's fear, we know that. But actually, we are— I didn't realize it was supporting people like you, and actually that makes it more important to do it.

Well, again, if I'm the only person and I work for your organization and I'm the only person that uses it and I'm already a marginalized identity, that's why I need to use the pronouns, well, you haven't done anything to help me if I'm the only one doing it. I still stand out like a sore thumb.

Yeah.

But if everybody does it, now we come to the idea of an intentional culture. So remember, the idea of creating a culture is the values, the behaviors, and the language that we normalize within an organization or within society at large. And since we know that to a large part, governments are responsible for dictating some of those aspects, quote, as a society, and/or they don't listen to society— works both ways— then what happens is the onus gets put on organizations. The businesses become microcosms of society, right? It kind of works kind of from the inside out. If it's not being experienced in society, then businesses kind of take on the onus. And certainly in the UK, I've seen the UK government has basically done that. They've dumped the responsibility onto businesses because they're worried about getting it right or wrong depending upon where you stand, you know, on the conversation. So we're really talking about culture, and culture as a society, culture as businesses. And when you do it as a business, it's about being intentional. So when you want to be in, you know, um, a business that says, no, we are fully, um, you know, inclusive, then this might be one of the behaviors that you adopt that says, this is one of the ways we show our inclusivity is by using pronouns.

So are there any other— that's a very simple way, isn't it, to do that? Is there— what are the, uh, some other quick, easy tips that we could all embrace in an organization that would help people feel less excluded?

Well, that's the million-dollar question. I certainly don't have a magic wand or a bag full of magic answers. It's hard work. Unfortunately, life is hard work and being able to go through all of these nuances are dealing with it and we get into— it's a piece that I'm working on now, the idea of psychological safety. Beyond the idea of privilege, which I deal with both white privilege and gender-based privilege, Now all of a sudden, you know, it's taken me into the space of talking about psychological safety. And, you know, that's really what you're talking about. And so all of a sudden, how in an organization do you create psychological safety for those who are marginalized at the same time not taking away psychological safety for everyone else?

Yeah, it's tough.

It is. It's hard work and there has to be some intentionality to that process. And that comes out, I believe, within the culture of the organization that does that work because they're establishing the norms of the values, behaviors, and language in that organization.

Yeah. And I think that ties in with what Vanessa was saying, where it's like pop culture can facilitate gradual change and gradual acceptance and a more inclusive terminology, vocabulary. On one of the UK programs last night that I was watching that too, it's got, it's a reality show where people make pottery. And it was, you know, there's, yes, one of the participants goes by they, so, and it's completely, it's no one makes any big deal about it. It just is. And that's the way things should be. It's just.

James has asked a good question as well. Yeah.

Oh wait, oh sorry, the wrong— there we go. I think that was the first one.

Yeah.

Um, that James has said to me, there's an issue with the gender, um, which is a social construct, and sex, biological, including intersex. I'd be interested in your opinion, uh, but I think these two things not being separated is confusing the debate.

Absolutely.

I mean, obviously that's a really big answer.

Well, it is. But you know what? I use this model to talk about this, and I'm glad that James recognized intersex persons because, you know, in so many conversations, you know, intersex persons get forgotten. You know, certainly, you know, we find non-binary folks are getting forgotten in the conversation, and even bisexual people get forgotten in the conversations. A lot. So we need to kind of bring them in. So what I do when I speak about the area that I focus on, which is within that kind of gender-based space, I use this model. You can find it, just type in gender unicorn. It's a model out on the net, and I love it because as humans we're so complex. And again, that's back to the whole understanding. You can never completely understand. Hey, we're all struggling to understand ourselves, let alone anyone else. So the reality is when we talk in this gender space, we break it down. So using myself as an example, my gender identity, I was born with it. Lady Gaga was right, we were born this way. It exists in my brain. Then I end up having my genitalia. That's again the difference between the hormones that were fired at one point through the gestational period, and 6 weeks later the gender identity that was formed in my brain. That's fired through another set of hormones. There was a mismatch in it. We know that medical science has proven they can't, quote, reprogram the brain. So medical science has the ability through surgery to actually change the body, if in fact that's where it was. For me, it was. So I went through the change, the big surgery, and went the whole way through, which is why I talk about being transgender in a past tense, because to me, I transitioned in the past tense, to deal with it. So we have those elements. We have our sexuality, who we love both romantically and physically. And we also have the way we dress, the way we represent ourselves to the world. And all of these are represented in it. So you have these 5 different elements that make up part of your overall identity. And it's really critical to get with it. And again, we are recognizing the biology question in that, which by the way, when we talk about biology, did you know that when we talk about the sex chromosome, which is A, the only chromosome to be named, not numbered, B, 4% of it has anything to do with sex or gender, and there are 26 normal occurring sets of chromosomes. They're not all Xs and Ys.

So again, that's something that kind of is not usually mentioned in biology in school, is it?

No, and this has been known for a long time. But again, it's about making it not normal. We're going to talk about making things usual, right? Adding these in, making these usual conversations to understand all of this. They are all different, right? Right. You know, there was, you know, Vanessa had the post about her hair and it's like, I can accept that Vanessa has short hair. Great. Doesn't matter. Long hair, short hair, whatever. I don't need to understand why. Right. So we end up having these conversations that kind of come together and we want to group all of these things, which again, if you are cisgender, and heterosexual, quote, all the usual things. And remember, cis is not a slur. In fact, it's a pronoun, not a— sorry, not a pronoun. It's an adjective because it's describing the noun that you agree with the identity you were given at birth.

That's it.

So again, the idea is to break that apart and understand that what you assume is one thing is actually all of these other things because you may vary, right? The fact that Vanessa has short hair— sorry, Vanessa, picking on your hair— um, has short hair, you know, stands out. And obviously we go, well, is that girl's hair? Is she gay? Like, what's, what's going on? And well, why does any of that matter?

Exactly.

She's still Vanessa.

Well, it's just like boys. I, I remember my brother when, you know, he was a teenager, he wanted to have longer hair, and my parents were very strongly opposed to him having longer hair, let's say. And it was just— it was the, like, the 1980s. It was like mullets were a thing, um, tragically, um, in some cases.

And they're back, tragically.

Yeah.

And like hair bands and things like that. So it was— at that time, it wasn't an unusual thing. For a guy to have long hair. And, you know, thinking of like some of the bands like KISS— and really dating myself— um, wearing makeup. And, and you look at The Cure and you look at all the others where, you know, people with eyeliner and the emos and the goths and everything else. And it, in a way, it's— things have gotten a bit more conservative since then, but in a way they've gotten more progressive at the same time. So it's kind of an interesting twist, isn't it?

Absolutely. And again, this is for me why the youth are— they're my heroes because they get all of this and they're not tied to a single construct and they understand the wide variability that exists. You know, I mean, read a study, part of the work that I do, and it was like 46% of under-18s know someone that identifies as non-binary or gender non-conforming.

Yeah, whereas we never did, you know, we just— we might have done, but we didn't know what it was.

That's the thing. I'm sure the percentages haven't changed. It's the awareness that's changed.

Um, so I'm just very conscious we've got 2 minutes. This thing about not needing understanding for acceptance, it's really hard because Whatever you do, there's bias. People have their own way of thinking. You talked about that at the beginning. Is there anything that you could say to help people that will listen to this now or when on the recording when they catch up is how do you manage your own bias? You've learned to do it really well because you've had to, you need to, and you wanted to.

Yes.

How do you get people to have need and want to do that?

Oh. You know what? One of the things I learned in my C-suite career days was you can't make anyone do anything they don't want to. No. So I can't change somebody because if I did, I would have that magic wand and I would change everybody and make this easy. But the reality is that people have to want to change. And so therefore, we have to create. And hopefully, the idea of creating inclusive cultures because maybe today, With me, we're talking about gender and, you know, we're also talking about Vanessa's short hair. And, you know, maybe tomorrow it's people that wear glasses or, you know, some other aspect of their identity that's different. And maybe one day that aspect will be something you have. So inclusion is not just for me, it's for all of us. And so again, acceptance says you accept me as the human being. You don't need to understand me, but you just accept me. That means you recognize I have human rights. When you do recognize that I'm a human being, because human rights are about equity, not equality, we will all consume equitably because we're all different and unique. And the second element being accept who I am, not who I was. And that's one of the benefits of coming to the UK is nobody knows who I was. So you only know who I am.

So to— what I'm hearing from you is it's education, education, education, and discussion times. So if people want to get hold of you, because you clearly know a lot about this and you've researched it, you've been through so much that most of us will never understand, and we don't need to, but how to help us accept is through you teaching us more. How can people get hold of you?

Well, I've got a website, www.cynthiafortlage.com, but you'll also find me on TikTok, on, um, on LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn, um, it still have a legacy Facebook page over there, but, uh, that and Instagram. So really TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn are really the primary platforms. Facebook and Twitter are becoming very tertiary for me. So, um, That's really the platforms that I'm looking and developing. That's how you can reach out, and of course through my website. And, um, just leave me a message, lots of buttons to click and connect, and would love to hear from people.

Brilliant, thank you. And, and Suzanne, sorry she missed the start. We can go back and watch it on replay, Suzanne, so don't worry. Um, but thank you for joining us. And we are out of time, um, and Vanessa hasn't been able to say very much at all, but she's been busy in the messages, which is great. So I don't know what's happened to Vanessa's, um, microphone, but we'll get that sorted for next week. But just want to say a massive thank you, Cynthia, for coming in, for talking to us, to— for being candid, for sharing your story, and for helping us all understand a little bit more and to know where we can get help if we want to start and understand even more. Um, so we will see you all next week. Um, uh, I can't remember exactly now because my brain hasn't fully switched on yet what we're talking about next week, but it'll be something else awesome.

Watch your LinkedIn and your other social channels. What our topic is later in the week. We'll be sending out, um, notices. And as Vanessa says, we can close on the message of accept all unicorns. Awesome.

Thank you so much, Cynthia. Thank you, ladies, and thank you everyone for tuning in today. See you next week.

Thank you. Bye.

Thanks.