142 - The Importance of Diversity in Organizations with Powered By Authenticity's Emily Carlson

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Emily Carlson, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the executive and technology officer for PBA Consulting, which can be found at make sure I got that right— consultwithpba.com. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Doug. Thanks for having me.

So I, I know that you've been in technology, especially healthcare technology, for most of your career. Why don't you give us a little bit about your backstory?

Yeah, I have been in tech for just over, uh, 30 years. Um, I actually found the industry and my love for it because right out of high school I had my son. Um, and after I got pregnant, I I did not want to go right to college, but I did need to have some sort of income generated. And I found a small computer shop in my little hometown of Batavia, New York, and they allowed me to bring his pack and play. And I sat at a computer bench and put computers together and just kind of learned the love of technology at that time. Um, from there, I've kind of sprouted up the the executive chain, if you will, with most of my career having been spent in healthcare IT. Started as what I thought I wanted to be, a developer, and that went sideways because I'm very social. So took more of a training and project management route until the last few years where I really helped organizations more from a, a strategy and implementation type of support system for them. We did a lot with COVID So standing up telehealth conversion centers, vaccine and testing clinics, it really had really forced you really to continue to expand and grow just out of necessity. So, you know, long time routed in both the technology healthcare realm and then just really recently started to use my voice about women in technology and the fact that we have such an, uh, imbalanced, uh, representation in tech and other career fields. But, you know, tech is my, my natural space. Um, so just helping to use my story to coach, to mentor, and to really try to align to drive the, the presence of women in tech.

And I know you have your own podcast. Tell us about your podcast.

Yeah, my podcast is Powered by Authenticity. It's really important to me that as women look at joining the— either joining the workforce, changing within the workforce, whatever it may be— that they lead with an impassioned authenticity about them and should feel empowered to do so. So the show really brings forward women and men as allies who can help share their story, help to share type of adversity if they've overcome that, um, tips, tricks, coaching, mentoring type of opportunities that may be available through other organizations, and really try to connect one another to, to really help other women and men, uh, be aware of some of the issues that we do face, um, and really again drive those conversations. And that's really what that platform is for is that if we're not talking about it, we can't do something about it. So it's really to make sure that we're using our voices.

I love the concept powered by authenticity. We'll get into listening in a little bit, but I find that there seems to be a prejudice or a bias against vulnerability and authenticity in the corporate world. And I just shake my head at that because What leaders aren't recognizing is that when they're asking their employees to leave all their emotional stuff at the door, they're losing 98% of who those people are.

Yeah.

And, and it's especially true for women when women are stereotyped into gender roles that do not reflect who they really are. And I, I just don't— I'm, I've been trying to get my head around why Here we are in the 21st century, and, and leaders can't, can't, can't and won't grasp these very fundamental and basic concepts about humanity and who we are as human beings.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Maybe it's fear, maybe it's ignorance, maybe it's a little bit of both. Maybe it's a cultural macho mentality. I don't know, maybe it's all of them. What you're thinking about it?

I think it's a little bit of everything, you know, and I think what people sometimes forget is that you need diversity in your organization to grow and to expand and to innovate into different areas. So without the representation of females, you know, you're lacking a whole other perspective when you go to market or have a strategy. So there's I think I just, again, I go back to talking about it and we, we need to get rid of those, you know, old-fashioned mindsets of where, you know, women and others belong and say, no, this is a, this is a good thing and we need more representation from diverse communities to make sure that we are continuing to grow and expand organizations.

Yeah, well, you'll be pleased to know that my second book came out in 2008, so I was ahead of the curve. Sex Politics and Religion at the Office: The New Competitive Advantage.

I love it.

And my, my co-author John Bogart and I, um, looked at diversity, uh, as a competitive advantage and a leadership challenge, and took the— and in the book described how leaders have to change and how they can change. We gave the how. How do you, how do you have a diverse, inclusive workplace? And, and what do you do with the challenges that in, in the conflicts that inevitably arise? Because the more diverse your workforce, the more conflicts you're going to have, because people are bringing different values and beliefs into, into the work. And that calls for the leader to have a much higher set of skills to deal with the difficult conversations and to deal with the fights and arguments and disagreements that are going to arise and the misunderstandings that are going to arise because not—

we're not—

no, we don't— we're not all Oreo cookies here, right? We're extremely diverse. And so the book was ahead of its time.

I like it.

It never really got a lot of traction, but I'm proud of the fact that we were thinking about this back in you know, almost 15, 20 years ago.

I'm gonna go find it, um, and, and read it.

Yeah, if you can't, well, we'll talk about it later. I can send you, I can send you a copy. Uh, I'm not sure, I'm not sure whether we're still in print. I think it's print on demand, but I'm not sure. Um, there's not a lot of demand for the book, so I kind of— your conversation just sort of— oh yeah, that reminds me.

Yeah, well, you know what, it should have a, a rebirth, so to speak, because if you look at what happened during COVID a lot, a lot of women had to leave their careers because magically your, your kids are home from school and you do not have daycare and you had to make important decisions, or you had elderly parents who someone had to become the caretaker of, or somebody was that sick. So, you know, it is a, a, a necessity of conversation that needs to happen because now we're, we're swinging the pendulum the other way, but we're not getting traction back. You know, we lost that traction. And one thing you said, one word that stood out there was the word conflict. And there is have to be conflict when you have, you know, differing of opinions. But conflict, if handled the right way, can actually breed something wonderful for an organization because it makes you talk. And the more you're talking about things, the more innovative and progressive your ideas become because you have to meld them together into a cohesive strategy or product.

Right. And as you probably know, I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker. Yeah, I am. I deal with conflict all the time, and the metaphor I like to talk about is grass. When grass grows, it's pushing violently through the soil.

Yep.

To emerge into the air and grow. And if you don't have that, if the grass doesn't have that resistance, or any plant doesn't have that resistance, that conflict, it can't grow.

Yep.

And it's the same thing with us as humans. We run from conflict and avoid conflict because It makes us anxious, and that's simply because we haven't learned the skill sets of how to listen and how to calm people down. And once you learn those skills, then conflict is easy to deal with. It's simple.

Yeah. And there's so many people who do want to run away from that conflict. It's, I'm not going to talk about this because somebody's going to get upset.

Or I was going to say, or I'm really anxious about this.

Yes.

Or if they say, I'm not going to talk about this because somebody's really going to get upset, what they're really saying is, I'm really anxious around this conflict and I'm going to get upset. I'm afraid somebody else is going to get upset. I'm afraid this is going to explode into something uncontrollable and chaotic that's going to be really ugly and messy.

Yeah, absolutely. And instead of teaching leaders, instead of empowering them to be able to handle conflict when they're facing it, We're, you know, we're, we're not, we're really not equipping for success under the area of conflict when it comes to leadership.

There's not, there's not an MBA program in the world that I'm aware of that teaches, uh, people that are going to be leaders someday how to manage conflict and how to listen, which are the two most foundational skills of leadership.

Yep.

And they're just, they just, it's not part of the curriculum. It's not even in the mindset of the accrediting agencies of thinking about, okay, what should be in the MBA curriculum.

Yeah, it is crazy to me. It's, it's such an important skill set, and it's one unfortunately that you don't learn until you're on the job. And it could be, you know, if you've started a career when you're 21, you know, what age are you really going to be? What have you been exposed to as you're coming up to the ranks to have that on-the-job training of how you'll handle conflict? And it's Yeah.

Yeah. Well, think, think about this in your career. How many, how many really good listeners have you ever really encountered? I mean, people who are really fantastic listeners.

Very few.

How many bad listeners have you, have you encountered?

Oh, so many. Even just past, in the past 8 years.

That's exactly right. You know, I mean, we really can't. And so there are no role models out there. So that's why on-the-job training, learning to listen on the job is ad hoc at best. And especially if you don't have anybody that really knows how to listen and know what to listen for and how to respond, then you're just, you're grasping at straws and, or you're looking for a needle in a haystack. You know, use whatever metaphor you want. It's extraordinarily difficult. That's why I teach listening skills now. I developed this really powerful way of listening that allows you to calm any angry person in 90 seconds or less. And, uh, it's It's fantastic how it works. And I've devoted myself to teaching this skill because, to the point that we're making here, is that there's just so— there's just nobody out there that's either teaching it or is modeling it. And it's really, really, really, really essential. So in your work, what kinds of things do you get— I mean, in addition to the advocacy work you do, what, what kind of— what kinds of projects do you get called into?

Sure, I get called into, um, A lot of technology strategy, so working with C-suites to understand what maybe some of their strategies could be, could be underneath attack. Or recently, a lot of work under ERPs and, you know, the employer type of programs. The other thing that we're seeing a lot now too is operational processes and improvement and application rationalization, and that's because right now there's such a squeeze on money when it comes especially in healthcare for the IT stack. They bring someone like myself in to say, where do we have redundancy in applications? So a really easy example of that is, you know, again, out of that post-COVID, people stood up Microsoft Teams and Zoom and all of these other collaboration tools which all have the same functionality, but they bought all of them. And so that's a great example because somebody somewhere really liked one product over another and we were moving so swiftly. So that happens across the board with many different applications. So somebody like myself comes in and says, you have 14 applications that do the same thing, you're paying, you know, $1 million in licensing that you do not need to. And I really, I help them find the way to do that, that type of operational find. You know, I am more and more on the tech and then work very closely with some of the third-party large-scale implementers to say, let's, you know, let's Jenga this piece of software and get the right pieces in place for this organization.

A lot of that involves change. So you become a change agent or a change consultant in many ways. Tell us about the challenges inherent in that.

Yeah, so It, well, it's funny, I just had this, this, you know, call today where inherently when you're going, an organization's going through, you know, many different varying sizes of change, it, nobody wants to accept it. It's difficult. It changes the way someone does their job and that, that's challenging. And with that becomes that I, I'm not gonna do it. This is never gonna be perfect enough. And so I'll, I have to come in and be that sounding board of we're gonna rip the bandaid off to 50%. Let's see how it goes. You know, let— what do we need to do to get it to 100%? And to let them understand the risk involved. You know, people just want to be heard. And that's the biggest thing for me in the change space is that I'm there to listen. You talk about listening, and really that is one thing that I think for not only my role from a technical perspective, but also the work that I'm trying to do in, in the equity and inclusion space is that people need to be heard. And when it comes to change, if you talk to them, you listen, sometimes I can do something about it. Sometimes it's an easy fix. Other times it's just getting to understand their viewpoint and making sure that it's included ultimately in the direction that we're going.

Exactly. I talk about Type 1 and Type 2 listening. Type 1 listening is what we all engage in. It's on our— as a listener, it's our agenda. We're out there trying to gather information, make a point, argue a case, whatever it might be. Without any interest in making, making sure the speaker feels heard. But the other kind of listening is what you're talking about, what I call Type 2 listening. And in Type 2 listening, my agenda is to make sure that you, the speaker, are heard from your frame of reference. And that's all I care about. I just want to make sure that you feel heard and validated. It's a very different kind of listening, uh, with a— it's a completely different skill set that's very counterintuitive to what we think.

Yeah.

And what I found in my work is that when you've got conflict, for example, or you're having a difficult conversation and, and the people feel heard and validated, almost always the conflict either goes away without anything else, or they're calmed down enough that they can solve the problem themselves without any further intervention. 95% of the time. And say that that's the case. And so you're right, making people feel heard is the secret sauce to relationships and to solving problems. So when I teach my graduate students, de-escalate then problem solve.

Yep. Yeah, I, and I, I found that, and you know, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, something in my personal life or something in my, my career, it's taking the time to listen. And I think that's part of it too, is that everyone's moving at such a pace that to take that, that time to stop feels unnatural. Nope, gotta keep moving, gotta keep moving, gotta keep moving. You know, you should have, should have said something faster. That's wrong. That's, that's not what I want somebody to feel. I want somebody to feel like, wow, we stopped, we had the conversation. Again, that person may feel better because we can do something about it, Or they're gonna feel better because we took 10 minutes to talk about it. And that 10 minutes is something that they're gonna remember. And that's, that makes me feel good, right? Like I'm making sure that they, they feel heard.

Absolutely. And, and for those people that think that listening takes too much time, it's exactly the opposite. You can take 5 or 10 minutes and really listen to somebody and you can cut your problem short by hours, if not days and months.

Yep.

Just by taking that time. And once you learn how to do it, it's— it becomes effortless. And as I tell my students, my clients, every time you listen to somebody throwing another pebble into the pond of peace, and those ripples are spreading in ways that you can't even imagine. And when we have enough people doing this, we're going to have a tsunami in that pond. How cool is that?

It's not cool.

A tsunami of peace spreading out.

Oh, that's good.

That's what I meant by the metaphor.

Gotcha. That's awesome.

So we've been talking about listening. How did you learn how to listen? Obviously it's integral to what you do. It is.

I hate to say it, but I feel like it's always just been a part of who I am. And that maybe that's my upbringing. Maybe that's being a young mom. Maybe there's many different ways to it, but You know, I approach the opportunity to listen to, you know, anybody, especially if they're undergoing some sort of issue where they're concerned. That's value, you know, that's a value add of my time and their time. So, you know, there is no course to your point. You know, there was— when I did go to college, I didn't sign up for Listening 101. It wasn't on the option. But I do think it's something that inherently was ingrained in me. And part of that I think was maybe a respect factor from my parents that we do, you know, always want to take time to stop and listen to, to, to people and hear their opinions. That was something that in my house was very valued when I was younger, is that we, we, we take every, you know, we, we take that into consideration and value each other. So for me, it's if it's a new situation, To your point, stopping and just trying to diffuse that situation simply by listening, you know, that's an easy win. And I hate to say easy win, but when you truly take that time to stop and listen, that's much easier than spending 3 weeks spinning our wheels because somebody, you know, is upset. And to your point, that tsunami becomes the other way. It's no longer peace, but it's the escalated problem.

That's right. Yeah, it's so interesting that we're talking about this. Um, just before we got on this call, I had my biweekly— bimonthly, uh, no, biweekly, every other week— lesson with my violin teacher. I play jazz violin. And this afternoon she turned me on to a book called The Listening Book, which is available on iTunes, and for $10. And it's not about listening in the— it is about— it's, it's about how to listen to— how to listen to everything. In the context of music. So how do you listen to music? How do you, as a musician, how do you listen to what's going on around you? And I haven't even started it yet, but my teacher said it was just absolutely mind-blowing to her. And, um, so I'm going to be very interested in listening to the book from the context of myself as a jazz musician, but from a broader context as a person who teaches listening skills at a very high level. And see what I can learn from it.

Um, interesting.

I think there are ways. I think there, there is, there are resources out there that, but you have to look for them. There's a lot of, there's a lot of junk out there. So you've been doing, you've been, you've been, you've been in that, had, uh, your consulting business for how long?

So my own consulting business, not very long. It's, uh, fairly new. Um, I Yeah, it is exciting. It was kind of bred out of a couple of different things. One is that I was unfortunately ultimately a part of a reduction in force from a full-time position that I had in August of 2021. And I just, I was like, okay, I'm going to go try to find contracts and find opportunities. And those have just come to me through networking. I didn't make it official until I think I think it was about May or June of this year. I'm trying to remember the exact date that I did the paper filing, if you will. And then it's kind of led to additional opportunities with my Powered by Authenticity and being able to get some really fun, industry-leading, strong women to talk about what they've experienced. So it's, it's twofold, you know, and it's just, it's been wonderful to, to meet so many different people. It's been fun to have these new engagements and to really know that I'm investing in myself with every contract that I, that I do get. It's, it's not me, you know, on behalf of somebody. It's me really representing myself and what I want to make sure people know about me from a career perspective and, you know, really show the drive and value for, for myself. And it's truly meaningful for me.

For you. So if I were walking down the street, how would I be able to pick out your perfect client?

My perfect client?

How would I say, oh, perfect client for Emily, I need to turn them on? How would I— what would I be looking for?

You would be looking for a healthcare organization, and that could be a provider or a payer that is really trying to invest in themselves by making sure from an operational perspective they are functioning, functioning at capacity that supports their team members. So what I mean by that is they've got the tools, they've got the training, they've got the people from a resource perspective that everybody feels they can sufficiently do their job. It's people who are willing to open up to really maybe different ideas and different ways of thinking to approach problems. And ultimately, for me, It's remembering that at the end of the day, we're serving a patient. So one cool thing about serving the healthcare community, whether it's in the, the payers and insurance or it's the providers, at the end of the day, if we can allow clinicians to do their job that in a more efficient manner, then they get to go help patients. And the more patients they can help, the better our world is. And you know, that could be somebody's mom who has been diagnosed with cancer, and that doctor now has 15 extra minutes because there's that fewer clicks in the system that they can sit there and have a conversation about what their, their diagnosis means and what, what they need to do to get treatment and work with other clinicians to develop a treatment plan. So ultimately, at the end of the day, I really do want to work with organizations that want to help clinicians deliver healthcare and get them at the bedside so that when something happens to a patient or somebody, they can focus on that patient and not have to worry about what's going on behind the scenes from a tech perspective.

Interesting. And, and if I were to be looking for non-Emily clients, people you don't want to deal with, I'm sure you've had a few of those. What, what are, what attributes of when you, when you're deciding whether or not to take a contract or an engagement, what are the trouble signs that you're looking for?

Yeah, the trouble signs are we've had other consulting firms in here and now we need somebody else. You know, they, they didn't listen to us and we've now gone through 7 different consultants and we're, you know, we're seeking our 8th because they just haven't meshed well. That's a warning sign to me. I think right off the bat when you're also looking at their problem, If they're approaching it more as the, the me, me, me type of, of, you know, thinking, then that's probably not going to be a good fit either. You all, they do have to protect their interests. I don't mean anything against that. Each organization has to protect their own interests, but it's the ability to think outside of the box. There's a lot of consulting firms that cookie cutter projects, and if you're looking for cookie cutter, that's not going to be something that I'm probably a great fit for. Because there's solutions that we can put into place which are going to help you. And we can, you know, really do some wonderful, innovative, cool things together if we're not looking at, you know, a center-focused, me cookie-cutter approach.

Yeah, it sounds a lot like sort of one of the things that I do. I sometimes I get called in by HR to— because they've got conflicts in the upper echelons of the organization. And when that happens, I always ask to interview the CEO and warning number one, no, you can't interview the CEO because the CEO is the problem, right? And then if I do get to interview the CEO, then I, the first thing I ask myself is, is this person coachable? Is this person willing to learn, willing to change, willing to grow? And if the answer is no, I don't take the engagement. Because in, in my work where, where I'm dealing with dysfunction and conflict and fights and arguments, it always starts at the top one way or another. And if the top isn't buying into the program, then I can stop the conflict, but it'll come right back in 2 or 3 months.

Yep.

I imagine that's kind of the same thing that you see.

Have, have seen it many times where an organization's on, you know, their third CIO within 2 years. And there's, there's high turnover, and there's, there's probably reasons for all of that, which, you know, nobody wants to address because it could be that C-level that was the problem, you know, and that could go above them, right? Because that's getting to the directive.

What's the board doing, right?

I mean, exactly.

All we got to do is look at OpenAI and Sam Altman and You know, kind of the stereotypical problem.

Yeah. Yeah. And they, they, you know, I've recommended before, maybe you do not hire just yet. Maybe we go back and we have some surveys and we talk to the individuals who are part of that organization to understand what the pain points are. Then maybe we look at what the job description truly is and whether that bumps up to what the direction the board wants to take. You know, do we have that mismatch? And, you know, those— talk about uncomfortable conversations, but You're doing the right thing ultimately.

Yeah. All right, one more question for you and I'll let you go because I know it's a little later in your day. Um, Emily, what's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

You know, it's, uh, from a personal perspective, it's, it, it's just that I, I just It's hard for me to put into words. I just, I have a love of feeding people and because food equals love. So from a personal perspective, it's just that if you come to my house, you're probably gonna be fed a 14-course meal and you wouldn't even expect it. And that kind of, that kind of bleeds over to my professional career as well because I care and it takes a while for people to realize that. I do care, and I mean that. And when I'm on an engagement or I'm having conversations about equity, it's because truly in my heart I want to do the right thing. So in those cases, from a professional perspective, it's, it's my time. It's the, the way that I, I give. And I'm not sure people realize how much time that I do dedicate to, to both of those, but it is important to me. So I guess it's, it's an abundance of, of caring, either through, you know, pies and cookies, or whether it's through the work that I do. And you know, it might be a little bit different of an answer than you were anticipating, but it's, you know, it's hysterical, the conversations we have in my house about food.

Well, this has been a really great conversation, Emily. Thank you so much for taking time out to speak with me and my audience today.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed our time.

You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.