Todd Corley Recap: Rethink Diversity

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there.

Systemic racism and exclusion are all around you. Just take a look. In the last episode, I got to interview a man who appeared on White Hot, the Netflix documentary all about Abercrombie and Fitch, the global clothing brand. They got themselves in some real hot water and Todd was brought in as their very first global Chief Diversity Officer. He spent almost 10 years there and he's now the senior VP of inclusion, sustainability and Community at Carhartt, another globally recognized clothing brand. He really focuses in on DEI diversity, equity and inclusion. Here's one takeaway that I want you to think about. If you don't have a formal DEI strategy in your company or the company you work for, you need to get focused on shaping one. It's so incredibly important in this day and age that we look around us at the people we work with. We ensure that we're giving everyone equal opportunity. We spoke on the show about white privilege and I brought it up and said, look, my partner's from South Africa. We were chatting about white privilege, and I just didn't really get that I had white privilege. I thought, I've worked hard for everything I've got, but actually when I started to dig deeper and ask deeper questions, I have got so much privilege because of my skin color. I'm so fortunate for the opportunities I've been given, but not everybody is given those opportunities. And if you're in a position of influence, it's your responsibility to help others get those opportunities too.

Second big takeaway was do you have a moral compass? We all know the word. We talk about moral compass, but do you actually have one? If you do, what shapes it? How does it shape your decisions? How does it influence the people around you? Here's a question I want you to write down right now. What does my moral compass look like? If you answered that today, just that one question, that'll be the greatest piece of self development you do this week.

Third business exists to build a better tomorrow. That was Todd's words exactly. So many people I chat to like, business exists to drive profit, business exists to grow revenue. No, no. Todd says businesses exist to build a better tomorrow. When you think like that, as a leader, as a team leader, as a parent of a family, as a CEO, when you think about your business, your team, your family, that it exists to build a better tomorrow, you're going to act differently and you're going to respond differently. That's for sure.

Next takeaway. Surround yourself with people who think differently than you do. That is so damn important. There's a point in time. I looked around me and 99.9%. I would be as close to, say, 100% of the people I surrounded myself with were of a similar age, lived in a similar place, drove similar cars, had the same skin color, earned similar amount of money, watched the same nonsense on tv. I looked around myself like, wow, how am I going to grow? Because you cannot grow unless you identify your blind spots. Blind spots are blind spots. We can't see them. And people who think, look, walk, talk, and act the same as us, guess what? They also can't see our blind spots. It's when we get around people who are of diverse age, ethnicity, background, interests, they can see our blind spots. Folks, before I share another takeaway, I want to ask you to do me a massive favor. Take a moment, please to leave a rating and review and subscribe to the podcast that really helps me to impact a more amazing leaders like you and parents like you and athletes like you. I appreciate you so much. I would love if you could take just a moment to leave me a rating and review. It would help hugely. Now, the last takeaway, and certainly not the least, be vulnerable, be inquisitive, and always admit what you don't know. That's a really difficult thing to do. But being vulnerable, that's being honest. That's being open. It's not putting the mask up. Being inquisitive is, rather than reacting to things, is just showing genuine curiosity and admit what you don't know. Wow. If I had done that so much more at a younger stage and age, it would have had such a massive impact on my life. So I'm going to encourage you to think about those things. And for now, I'd love you to get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Sam.