272: 3 Future of Work Trends Critical To Understand Now with Elizabeth J. Sandler

We really need to start looking at more individual humanity, right? And being able to really say, oh, if someone says something wrong or mispronounces it or shows up in a suit with the wrong color shoes or whatever, why does that matter to me? As opposed to adjusting them, right? And being able to say, well, that's okay, we're going to make space for them anyway.

Hello everyone, this is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created this show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts, and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of Finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful and meaningful life, business and career. Hey folks, Kathy here. Are you ready for a big positive shift in how you're working and what you're capable of achieving in your career? Let's make that happen for you. While you might know me best as a podcast host and writer, a key focus in my work is helping women achieve greater success in their work. In my career and leadership Breakthrough one on one coaching program, I help women get what they want most, which includes more confidence, diagnostic impact, advancement, financial reward and fulfillment. And I also help them achieve their most exciting visions for the future. In the past 16 years, I've worked with over 20,000 women across six continents. And before that I served as a therapist and before that I was a corporate VP managing multimillion dollar budgets and global initiatives. I leverage all of that experience to help women build a new chapter where they can reach their highest and happiest potential doing work they love. Check out Kathy Caprino.com career breakthrough and I hope you'll register now. I'd love to support you. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Great. How are you? This is coming to you, I believe, right in the middle of December, middle of many people's holiday seasons, right before what is traditionally considered the, you know, the start of the new year. I hope it's going well. I hope you can breathe and, you know, not be too crazy and exhausted and drained from what can be a lot of shopping and nervous making of our lists and our, you know, our menus for when people are coming over. I hope you can have a wonderful time as well as a restful, peaceful time. So maybe listening to this podcast will give you a little bit of a respite. And I am thrilled to have on our show the amazing Elizabeth Sandler. And we were just talking about how we connected. And I do want to tell everybody a little bit about that because of course it was on my favorite place in the world, LinkedIn. But it is, I think, Elizabeth, I'd love to know your thoughts. A true walking example of how when you reach out to somebody and you're a complete stranger, but you share a few sentences of your heartfelt thinking, it can form a relationship, a friendship for life, hopefully. What do you think, Elizabeth?

Completely. I mean, you're right. It is. One of the most powerful things about LinkedIn is how in such small snippets, if people are willing to be open and honest and authentic and vulnerable, how you can see inside someone's soul so quickly. And we were able to do that.

We did that. And also it's a way to show people support when sometimes, like in the case we'll talk about in a sec, there wasn't a lot of support for what I was saying. And not that we always have to be agreed with, but it's also a way of sharing your heart and supporting someone when you feel it. Oh, there we go. All right, we'll. We'll link to the post that we're talking about, but I want to let you know all about Elizabeth. I'd love to share her bio. And we are talking about 3 future, 3 future of work trends that are critical to understand and I think I would even add critical to understand them differently than from how we understand them now. I cannot wait. But let me tell you about Elizabeth. Elizabeth Sandler spent 25 years as the CEO and strategist in investment banking and private equity in the US and uk and you even lived in the uk. I'm so very jealous. Right. Five years ago, she left her corporate career on a mission to make work place is more successful and fulfilling for everyone. As the founder and CEO of Echo Juliet, which we're going to understand what that means a little more in a minute. She now works with C suite teams on strategy and leadership development, exclusively in a team format, which is so fascinating. Elizabeth is on the board of two public companies, two private equity funds and two nonprofits and is frequent speaker at conferences, companies and universities. There you go, Elizabeth. Holy cow. Thank you, dear. All right, let me just say that what we were talking about here was a minute ago was, and it was three months ago already when I went to see the Barbie movie and I really was excited beforehand. I loved the director. I was thrilled to see it taking off and in the end it left me a little disappointed for one particular reason. And you'll, you'll see that when I post it. But. Well, basically it was about how I felt that in the conscious caricaturing, I mean, there was caricaturing, it's about dolls for goodness sake. I felt that the segment in the real world lacked any examples of any kind of men that we would look up to. Not 1 fleeting 2 second image and somebody. So I posted on that and I don't think that does either gender, any gender service to vilify the entire gender. So somebody, many people did not agree and said, oh, you missed the whole point. And one person said, you know, something like, I would not want to lecture about that. And you know, I'm an entertainment fan. I mean, in the movie I wouldn't want to lecture about there are some good men. And I certainly understand entertainment and feel like a lecture isn't what I was not looking for. What I was looking for is truly a 30 second snippet of a hopeful view of men because we all know amazing men and we all know men who are trying to rise above patriarchal societies. And so that was that. And Elizabeth, you chimed in with something. Tell me what, you tell us.

I did because I had agreed with you and I had actually spent the entire month of July on LinkedIn. I made it Men's Month where I was really spending the entire month honoring all the men you're talking about that were represented. That was my, that I created Men's Month out of nowhere because I was feeling even before the Barbie movie. Exactly. What you're talking about is that we don't spend enough time really embracing, honoring, thanking and calling out the men who actually are trying to do the right thing and who are, you know, the modern man in terms of their awareness. And I just felt I agreed with you in the post and, and built on it to further say that I felt it was dangerous by doing that because by not showing that there wasn't just one type of man in terms of that board of directors at the, at the, at the doll company, that it was making it too easy for people to say, oh well, men aren't like that. So, you know, we don't have to worry about that because that's not what I see in the real world. Whereas if they had given us the cont, then we could have said, oh yes, those are the men we do recognize in the world. But let's be honest, we have those Other men as well. So by taking the realism. Right. That was your point and I was agreeing. By taking the realism out of the real world, it just made it too farcical as opposed to being able to say, how do women really live?

How eloquent. And you, you nailed it, in my opinion. And I want to say this is episode 272, I believe, several episodes before. I've interviewed Ludo Gabriel on masculinity at a crossroads, and what he works with is men who are suffering and mental illness and depression and anxiety and suicidality and substance abuse. It's so on the rise for men and so tune into that if you it. It's heartbreaking and I think we have to remember the humanity of who we are and, and what we're dealing with, even when we are in some cases being discriminated against and marginalized because of patriarchal words world. So thank you. That was so eloquent, Elizabeth. All right, now let's hop into these three future of work trends and you've stated them for me a little in our prep sheet, but you. One is on social media and a specific aspect of that. Another is on DEI and the third is. Is AI. And I have a crazy story on AI. My image on something was altered by AI and you know, I won't go into it too much, but it's. It's crazy to see. So it's. It. The image was in promotion of something. It's. It's absolutely crazy to take a look at the photo that you shot, you sent in and then to see it come out. And it was truly altered in three key ways. And I guess they thought that beautified me in some.

Oh goodness.

But you know, you've heard about Tom Hanks and others being so afraid that in nefarious ways images are being used and doctored and, and misrepresented. So I'd love, if you don't mind, if we start with AI and I'm sure you're going in a different direction. Direction than what I just shared, but can you start with that? The future trend that you are working with, with companies and leaders and the AI piece I'm dying to hear.

I think the. For me, everyone has become more in like the hype cycle, right. For AI, where everyone is talking about AI. When I first started working in the AI space and really researching it, I had seen a demo of what is now called ChatGPT and there were only four models like that in the world. There's over. I think we're up to 3,000. Right. There's so many different ways you can do it for video and for pictures and, and for text. And there's so much in incapable in terms of generative AI. And it's on your phone, it's on your desktop. Right. It's in the hands of whoever has any kind of Internet connectivity. And so when you think about how quickly that has happened and where companies are right now, and all the survey data is showing that companies are saying, I really think AI is going to be majorly transformational in the next three to years. But what they're not realizing is, well, it could be majorly transformational in the next three months if we really connect with it in the way that I think people are not yet thinking about and what I'm talking about. And all of these three trends have one thing in common, which is that we've been talking about for years about work life integration. Right. We all gave up on talking about work life balance. And we wanted to say we want to talk about work life integration. Well, with respect to diversity, with respect to social media and with respect to AI, no, in those three trends, our work life and our personal life are just integrating and blending so seamlessly. So for artificial intelligence, I think we need to start thinking about how is it impacting us as individual humans in our daily lives and how is that going to trickle into our work life? And how, in terms of how our human resource departments and our leaders and managers have been managing employees for decades now, how is artificial intelligence going to play a role in those communications and those connections with how we, how we manage and how we lead? And people aren't really talking about. Some people are, but it's not really. Everyone right now is talking about how can it make us more productive? How can it make us faster, smarter? How can we manage all the data? How can we use it to solve problems? Not really. How can we use it to behave differently as humans?

I want to talk to you for five hours.

Let's make it a class.

I have so many questions. So you know one crazy thing and I am very selfish. On this podcast, I really ask the questions. I want to understand. I've used chat GPT for the very obvious ways. Let me see if I can write this email in a different way. I don't use it for my articles. I'm scared because I'll be influenced by. I just want to have it, you know, when I'm writing, I want it truly to be my ideas. But it'll be for marketing, it'll be from for some strategic planning. It'll be for, you know, all sorts of things. Can we just start for folks listening who aren't running major companies and let's say they have a small business. Do you have to. Would you off the top of your head know, here are the five things any small business should be using AI for in a way that's going to be helpful in every way you can imagine. Does that come rolling off your tongue?

I think every business is different. So I think that the basics is to really look at. For each business owner to really look at their business and say, what? Where do I get bogged up? Right. Where do I get. Where do I slow down? Where am I doing something that is below my pay grade, if you will. Right. And figuring out, can artificial, artificial intelligence. Can generative AI specifically be helpful to me there? Right. And so, and that can be in terms of taking a email or a script and saying, well, I don't want to have to edit a million, a million times and I don't want to have to pay someone x amount hour, you know, per hour to do it for me. So let me plug it into generative AI and see what it can do, how it can clean it up. So I think that and the same thing for imagery. I've been using now generative AI to do my LinkedIn posts where I used to just use photo, stock, right. And now stock photo, and now I am able to generate art that is 100 keeping with my brand and is quite specifically the message I'm trying to convey. Right. I did a post which had someone in a yellow hazmat suit but holding a bouquet of flowers. I was never going to find stock photo of that, but it was, it went with the post that I was trying to convey. And so, and I've had a lot of comments on my LinkedIn where people say, oh my gosh, God, who's doing your art? It's exactly like your branding. And I say, well, of course, because we're now using generative AI in order to be able to say these are the color, like I put in the colors that we want and we use big botanicals in one of my brands. And so that's where I think people can really use it to be very consistent with speeding them up, but also in terms of helping them with precision, right. If they're really trying to convey a certain brand image, generative AI is like nothing else. You will search forever to find stock footage that produces.

I have to tell you how this speaks to me before I Do are you comfortable sharing the actual application that you use the name of it for the visual? Would you mind I use.

I use the one I use the most frequently is Midjourney which you have to access through Discord. Although I'm told they're going to be releasing an app if they haven't already. They will be releasing soon an independent app. But Mid Journey is the one that I Journey. I'm sorry Mid M I D Journey but I have also used Adobe makes one that is also very good and then Chat GPT has has their own that just the name just went out of my head and so they have their own. They have their own image generator there but Mid Journey is the one that I use the most.

Can I tell you what speaks to me so much about that? So I write on Forbes on my own blog on LinkedIn Newsletter newsletter and I am always searching for not hours. I'll take you know a half hour for the one image. Let's say it's a woman who's in I it's about executive presence and I want a particular woman in that case. Sometimes it's a man, sometimes it's whatever doing a certain thing with certain people. You know what I've noticed For the past 10 years there's so much bias completely what is in the stock photography base, right? I'm seeing men doing all exactly what I'm wanting. Where's the woman?

Right?

And maybe there's an older mature woman. That's great, that's me. But I'm really wanting to target, you know, 25 to 30. And all I typically say is there's so much bias in what's available in the standard stock images. Would you agree with that?

Oh, completely. I did a post one time where I had put just put into stock footage app. I had said man leading and it gave me a man standing up in a suit in front of a room. And then I said woman leading and it gave me an image of a woman in a bathing suit with her hand reaching out like follow me. And I thought okay, well there you go. That's that bias everybody talks about.

It's a pretty stunning experience. Everything. Try it. Go to, you know, a free stock photography. You'll be shocked.

One of the and that is one of the side benefits with respect to generative AI is it is and this is what I'm talking about when I talk about the the humanity of it and the implications on individual humans is that it is forcing us to really think about how we communicate so clear because women Leading. Right. What was I expecting to get now when I would put in for the prompt? Right. And there's an entire. There are people now, this is their job prompt engineering.

Right.

And so like just for me to understand the neuro linguistic programming side of it, to say how am I commuting, how am I communicating with generative AI or with digital assistance. How many times have we had to say to our, you know, smart watch or to our I can't even say her name device because she'll. She'll turn on and start asking me what I want in the room. Lexi is what we call her when we don't want her to answer that. That you have to say things multiple times. Right. In terms trying to get.

You're right about that. We've been doing that with the name. You cannot say I've been doing it with Siri. No, I didn't mean that. I'm looking for this. And you know, for anyone who doesn't know this, you, you are continually saying generative AI to make sure we understand and differentiate. Just for people that go, what does she mean generative? Can you explain that?

Yes. Because there's so many different. Right. Artificial intelligence is just this big bucket and there's machine learning, which is when you take large data sets and you use all of that information in order to draw conclusions or to solve problems. Generative AI is based on a data library, right. Of information that is out in the world. And different applications of generative AI will use choose different libraries. And there's a lot of regulatory and legal issues on their way in terms of what's populating that library and is it copywritten and are we paying people for it? So that's a completely different topic. But those applications are generating what the user is asking based on that data set of information out there. So the one most people talk about is of course chat GPT because it was really first. OpenAI launched that first, but all of the big companies now have big tech companies, all have their own versions and everybody is using different versions. But it can generate text, it can generate art, it can generate. I just did my first video. I'm cleaning it up right now, but I will be posting it. So a video where I said here's the script. I used generative AI to clean up the script. Then I plugged it into Pictory is the tool that I used, plugged it into Pictory and it selected video based on what my text was. So I said something about team building and it had a video of someone falling backwards and the team catching them. Right. That classic team building exercise.

And you're paying your pictory license or fee covers all the licensing and copywriting.

Exactly, exactly. And not expensive. I did the first video for free just to test it and it has a watermark on it it. But then if you decide you'd like the tool enough, you pay and the watermark is removed and next thing you know you have this video. So I will be posting it at some point I have to clean.

Holy. You're giving us a whole. I love it. A whole lesson. Aren't you fortunate to be digging into this every day? But let us go back to your key point here. That AI can be used for helping. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Yes, tell me where we're going with it and give us an example.

Of course it can be, it can really be used to help humans in the workplace. Like if we think about all the manager training that we have put, that we put people through hours and hours after having a 25 year career, I have sat through so much leadership training and it's always telling you, here's how you should communicate to your employees. Here's how you write an effective performance review. Here's how you make sure that the introverts in the room are speaking up so that you're not railroading over them. Right? And on and on and on. Of all human behaviors we want good leaders to have and it's not always innate because we're. Humans are not designed to sit in conference rooms, right? That's really, that's a new evolution into. In terms of our DNA, right. We really are meant to be out in the wild. So here we are. We're asking humans to be in these highly professional environments and behaving a certain way and, and taking away the normal connection that we would have when we were hunters and gatherers and where AI can come in and already has there. For example, let's take the performance review, right? There's already performance review companies that have integrated AI into the performance review process. So that if I say I know you're usually shy because you're so young, it will catch it and it will be able to say to me that maybe you should try different terminology, right? Instead maybe you should say, you know, you don't, you don't often speak up as much because of your experience level, but in this scenario you did amazingly well, right? So the, the AI can be, can help us catch the things, microaggressions or whatever you want to call Them just things that when we're moving too fast, it can help us with the power of the pause. So there's just so many different, different ways it can, it can do that. Right? We talk about one of the big topics right now is remote workforce versus coming back into the office and hybrid. And there's a lot of companies. There's this amazing company in Korea that has done a Metaverse office. So you stay home, you're on your computer with the camera, and you navigate. You press the button for the elevator. It takes you to the floor. You come out, you pass one of your colleagues and you say hello to them and they hear you. But once you're, you're past them, you don't hear them anymore. So anyone that's ever been to a Metaverse party knows exactly how this works. But to do it with an office space where you then go navigate and sit at your desk, and then you can see, you can talk to the people that are around, around you, or if you need quiet, you can go find a particular sofa. If you start integrating artificial intelligence into these types of workplaces, one, it can save you, it can save you money. Now you're saving real estate costs and, and it can, can update, it can auto update the Metaverse. So you can come in tomorrow and the sofas are gone because no one had been sitting in them. So now the artificial intelligence says, why do we need a sitting area here? Nobody ever sats there. I mean, John sat there once. Poor John. He's gonna have to go find another place to sit. So that's where. When we talk about not just artificial intelligence in terms of the applications and how we interface, but when you take leading technologies that are out there and starting to introduce themselves into the workplace and you and you make them intellig by integrated artificial intelligence into them, it will transform the human experience at work and it will transform workplaces.

This is too much. My head's exploding. I want to punctuate two things and get your thought you said, you know, we, we humans aren't designed to sit in conference rooms. And I, I have come out and said this without hesitation. None of us is born a leader, not one person person, because leading is more than one thing. Leadership is. And as we know, it needs to be different from what it was. So I think that generative AI can be so helpful in help me be a better leader. And I did want to ask you this. I've interviewed a few people about AI and they're talking, just as you said, about the prompts Needing to be really as accurate and specific as possible. But for instance, I've learned you can say, act like a top copywriter and you know, you know, or act like a top recruiter when, when you're talking about, you know, help me deliver this news to an employee and find, you know, replace any microaggression type language. Are you putting in a prompt? Act like a DEI expert. Act like, are you, are you framing it to put its headset on its, you know, mindset on act. It's someone who really understands diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And update this, this content for me.

For the enterprise systems. Right, so meaning technology that is for the entire company that's already embedded.

Right.

So the organizations that have created this type of software, they have, they've, they've taught it, they've already told it what words to look out for. Right? So they know, don't say shy, don't say young, don't say right. So they're building it. And that's, that's traditional expert systems. Right? Expert systems is where it requires experts to say, what's the decision tree of how it flows? When you then start saying, well, Kelly, how can I now enable this using artificial intelligence? That's when it can start doing, and I put this in air quotes, the thinking on its own, right? Where it can start saying, well, wait a minute, young was okay in this case because we were referring to the project or a sapling tree or whatever it might be, we weren't referring to a person. Right. So, and this is why people talk so much about the biases that are built in, because who's the one that culturally said shy is a, you know, is a bad word and that you shouldn't use it in a workplace because that, that might be true for all cultures or anyone that's English speaking, but there's a lot of language differences and there's a lot of cultural differences. So making sure that we understand the implications of that, you know, there's a whole body of work in terms of people talking about that as well.

How fascinating. And for businesses like me, where, you know, it's a small team and other small businesses that probably don't have this, you know, 10th generation tool, would you agree that, okay, use chat GPT, but make sure that in your prompts you, I mean, without saying, make sure this, this meets the rigor of the top DEI requirements without saying that in Chat GPT, will it?

No, no, you know, I haven't actually tried it. I haven't had any issues with it. I know People have a lot of issues with the hallucinations, right. And also with the fact that some of these tools are reading the live Internet. So I also use Bard, which is Google's tool and that is enabled to. It has a lot more recent information.

Right.

Chat BT was based on a certain data set and so there's, we know there's a lot of websites out there, right? Like I, I haven't asked Chat GPT if it thinks the world is flat or how many people think the world is flat. But there are, there are a lot of people that still think the world is flat or at least talk about thinking the world is flat. So we do have to be careful, right, because there's always going to be information out there that is just not mainstreamed, if you will. But I haven't actually tested it specifically for that. But I also haven't been victimized. I haven't been caught by it doing anything that was inappropriate. So so far all the generative AI applications I've used have really done a good job for me.

Oh, Elizabeth, how amazing. I don't even want to leave this. But let's, we have two more future of work trends. Let's, let's, let's talk about social media. Tell us what you're seeing here. What's the future? What do we have to know?

It is, I mean, we all know, right? Social media has come onto the. You and I, we started our conversation talking about social media. It's how we met, it's how we spend, right. It's how I keep up with. So much of what's happening in the world is social media based. And again, I think for individuals out in the world, but also for employers, really understanding the now integration, right between, between people's lives. When people would come to work, there was always this, this. And it's a very DEI thing too. We should enable employees to be able to bring their whole selves to work, right? Because then they would feel comfortable and they would feel they would be able to be feeling like they belong and that they're included regardless of their or demographics. And I think the now we really don't want people bringing their whole social media life to work. Work, right? Because there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of mess there. I had a friend say to me recently the other day, she said, my second biggest accomplishment behind having an amazing daughter is that I have created an Instagram feed that is all rainbows and puppies because she's had to manually create a feed that doesn't give her any, any nonsense.

Mine is dancing retrievers, huskies and you know, something about, you know, friends right now.

She must have done one of your courses.

It's happy retrievers because I miss my retriever. Anyway. That is hilarious.

Right? And so. But not all of us have that right. I've got. My feed is full of like, just misinformation. It's full of, you know, rage. It's full of. Of hatred. It's full of people getting other people fired because of what they've posted. I mean, it, it's just, it's a lot, it's heavy. It's a lot of heaviness in terms of. As a matter of fact, I've moved away from Instagram and really tried to stay with. And Facebook and stay really with LinkedIn because at least I know, I know the people that I'm interfacing more there. Right. We're just, we work together.

It is different, I think, because. Because we will know exactly who you are and where you work. When you say something hideous and horrible. Yeah. You're not gonna hide like on YouTube. You know, I had some really swearing, you know, Shut up, you dumb C word. I've had that on my feminist video. You don't get that on LinkedIn because everyone's gonna know, oh, you. Who you are.

Exactly. And I think that is. And that's where workplaces and employees, that's a trend that I think they need to be looking more and more at, which is how. How can we preserve, right. This anonymity and the ability to be anonymous in the world is really fed the beast. And I think when you look at platforms like LinkedIn or when you look at communication channels and intranets within organizations where someone will post an article on an employer's intranet and employees can. Can. Right. And debate in a way where they feel that there's a safety net and they have the psychological safety and feel protected. Those are ideal environments where we can really get into a place where employees can now bring their whole self to work, but in a way that enables their. Their humanity and their vulnerabilities and not be judged for it, but to be able to understand. Okay, if you're going to create an unhealthy environment with certain comments, right. We don't want to limit free speech, but if you're going to create unhealthy work environment, let's have honest communications about what that means and what that language. And then you integrate artificial intelligence into that to the previous example, then it can actually help you to say, are you sure you want to say that? Do you want to pause for a minute before you post exactly that comment? So that if you think about the little angel and devil on your shoulders, right, Then you get to say, okay, maybe I need two voices telling me, I know I feel this and I want to say this, but let's also think about the implications of that. That.

So, I mean, what. Instant learning. It's like having a career coach or, you know, writing coach or. Right there, you know, do you understand what this is? This might reflect, when you say this.

To think about the. The implications on us as individuals, the mental health challenge that social media has caused on us. Right. I can tell even when my husband and I are in different parts of the house and I've been in one of my chat groups debating something, some geopolitical issue that I'm quite passionate, and then I walk into the kitchen, he can tell. He can instantly tell. He says, who are you just talking to? You know, the virtual talking. Right. So it really. And then we bring that to work, and then we are short with people. And so this. Employers are no longer in the position and. And employees are no longer in the position where we can say when we click that turnstile or when we start our first zoom call of the day, all of that is no longer with me me. It's just too integrated. And so employers really need to understand what embracing the social media impacts on our employee base. And. And again, us as individuals, too, we really need to understand how to deal with that integration.

Can I ask a question on this? One question I. That comes up when you say that, you know, two things. I remember when I was working, so this is 40 years ago, I started my career, but 20 years later in my vice president job, I'm thinking of it because it was so alienating. No one asked me one question about who I was. Nobody. It was such a toxic environment. There was no sense of realness and belonging other than get the sale, the marketing, the dollars, the revenue. And I remember thinking, they don't know anything about me. They don't even know know I have children or I sing on the side or. And so thank goodness we're not there, but we've gone, you know, to the opposite degree. And that brings up a question. How would you say, what is your stand on if I said this? Because I don't really know the answer to this. We should happily allow all our employees to say what they want on their own social platforms. They can do and say what they want, but we know that's not true because people are fired all the time for what they say. So I'm hearing that you're wanting an integration that's healthy, where there's maybe generative AI that guides us. But what is your view working with all these organizations about. I mean, I. I've always said, even to my own kids, and it. I learned this in college, don't say anything that you wouldn't be happy that might appear on the front cover of the New York Times. I mean, that's how our world is. And that was before you could, you know, in a two seconds, share something with 10 million people. But I'm always careful because I really. I care about who I am in the world. World. Even if I'm talking to seven friends and not 70,000 people. Are you following what I'm saying here completely? What is your thought about. This is going to be controversial, I'm sure, but should people have the right to look, this is me on the side. It's not me at work. I'm more than an employee of your organization. How do you. How do you advise teams about this? Am I making sense?

You do. And you're right, it is. There is not a simple answer there. Right?

It is.

I mean, I remember I was COO of a department, and it was. It was idahot day, so the trans and homophobia support day. And we. Some of the senior management team, we had gotten with our LGBTQ network and we had done a photo. And so I had sent out to the entire. The entire department. I had sent a note out that said, we're going to be doing a photo in front of the building. Anyone is welcome. Right. This isn't just for the senior leadership team. Anyone who wants to come downstairs, come downstairs.

Beautiful.

And I got an email back from an employee who says, I don't appreciate you abusing your power for a, you know, a political topic like this. I shouldn't have to open my email and see some, you know, see something so horrible. And I was just absolutely blown back. Right. Because I thought you may have. For whatever religious or personal or whatever, you may have issues. But why. Why does that mean that. That supporting other employees is so fundamentally a problem for you that you would come after your boss's boss's boss's boss. I would give them a lot of credit for that, for coming straight back at me. And I really tried to understand it because I really tried to understand this person's perspective that they felt so violated. Violence. Yeah. And violated by me by one email. From me.

And also, you didn't say come out. That would be a violation. You didn't say, you have to be a part of this. So what I would love to ask this person, as a former therapist, what is so triggering to you that I'm on a voluntary basis saying, if you would like to support this, please join us?

Right. Yeah.

And I think that's not a violation.

I did speak to the employee because I instantly wanted to write back and I thought, okay, I better not do that. And two, I better call my HR person.

What happened?

But I asked if I could sit down with the employee. And, and I said, you know, I'd really love to understand more about your perspective here. It wasn't very. It still was not a well articul position from my perspective. There was a lot of emotion there. And, and what I was interpreting was it was a little bit about, well, I. You never email. I don't get an email from you saying, an opportunity to come take a photo with senior management for my day.

Right?

For. For the auntie for homophobe day. I don't get that email. So here you were giving an opportunity for people that support this one issue to come be in a picture and to interact with senior management. And so they felt it was inequ treatment, which I sat and I listened to the whole thing and said, okay, fine, I, you know, I understand that perspective, but do you understand the perspective of supporting minority groups, underrepresented groups, and, and how important it is for them to, in order to be able to feel, you know, included and belonging, that they need that more? And that was where I just ran into a brick wall because they did not. And so I knew once I got to that point. Right. And so I give you this story and this example to explain why I do think it's so difficult because that person might. I didn't follow them on social. But they may have a social media feed that rants about this type of a topic. Right. And that says they don't believe in inclus inclusion or they don't believe in including all groups or they don't believe in verbally or vocally support visibly supporting underrepresented groups. And that. Right. Did that mean they shouldn't work for my organization? I did say to them, I said, listen, you should know, this is the type of company that we are. It is in our values. We are going to visibly and verbally and vocally support underrepresented groups. If that's a problem for you, then you might be working for the wrong organization. It doesn't mean I'm going to fire them for it.

I'm so glad you said it because you know, I have a tiny firm but it's. And I've never had to state this out loud, but values are important and mine are pretty well articulated. I mean to myself and the people I work with somehow gravitate. I think they can see it perhaps on my website. But I do think as owners of businesses, as leaders, we have the right to say this. These are the value sets of our organization. You, you're not mandated to work here. Would you agree completely?

I have them on my website, my six values. And I have had a potential client say to me, me, listen, I just want you to know we have an anti woke culture here. And I said okay, can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that exactly so that I can understand whether there's a concept. Well, they, what they meant was that they didn't like what specifically. What he said was that I support the old school feminism which was about equal rights and about women having an equal voice and being able all about women's power. And that new feminism is about hating men and attacking men. Right to our discussion all the way back to the Barbie movie. And so I said, oh no, I have to be honest, I, I agree with you there. I don't think we should be making men, white men in particular the, the bad guys. But we do have to understand the power circle and we have to understand that businesses run from spheres of power and what demographic it has historically and still to this day maintains the most powerful and right, you're the power gaps expert, so you know this. And so we ended up not working together. But I did find I was able to remain calm and say I would really like to better understand. And so I, I don't think there's a simple answer to your question when it comes to that because I, I will say it got my heart rate up a little when he said it because I thought, oh, instantly I thought this isn't going to be my kind of person. But then I thought let me hear him out because I'm sure and I have close friends that, that will say, oh, we've gone, you know, we've gone a little bit too extreme with a cancel culture or this or that. And so I, I do like to hear everybody out and to understand their position. But you're right, your values do need to align. And if someone, if their social profile and their life outside of work is in strict you know, conflict with an organization's values. It, you know, there's, there's laws, there's rules, there's, you know, social norms in terms of how you deal with that. But I do think, think that employees need to rethink whether they're working for organizations that support their values.

What an important conversation. And you know what I love? I would love in a minute to hear your six values if you want to rattle them off. But one thing about what we state outwardly, it's, it's a filter. So you know, if you look at mine, I, I support men. I do. If men come to me and I'm a fit, I will be happy to give them, you know, any, any part of my services. That said, my passion and mission are, is supporting the advancement of women in business. That doesn't mean I want, I don't want it to be a zero sum game here, but women have a long way to go. But if people hate that, they'll pass on by and that's perfect, right? It's, it's a filter. So if I say I believe in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and I believe in supporting that in any human way I can. If you don't believe in DEI and think it's gone too far, you're going to move on by fine, completely. Can you share your six values?

I.

I'm sorry, I spot, I don't have them memorized. Okay, we'll put them in the show notes when you give them to me. Well, clearly when you said the, the fellow said, I'm not sure we're anti woke. You clearly have something about we support the rights of all humans.

Maybe I do have something in there that very much is about. We, we speak up for, you know, that, that we speak up for people and that we do the right thing. And we have difficult conversations both in our workplace and in our homes and that we do it not for credit and we don't do it for, for praise because it's expected. We do it because it's, it's the right thing.

Right.

And that it will make us better individuals. So that's, and that's how I, I mean we have very difficult conversations and at my family dinner table and, but we still, and it's one of the best places. Difficult conversations among family is one of the best places to do it because when you have a foundation of trust and love, then you know, you're able and it gives me an opportunity to hear from. I, I have two young sons, not, I have young men, sons 16 and 20. So it's my insight into that generation. And they both think very differently from each other. So it's great to hear the two of them having those discussions and debates with. With each other as well.

I feel the same way. My children are 26 and 29. My daughter is 29 and my son is 26. They think somewhat differently on a lot of issues. But to your point. Point, yeah. Sometimes there's emotion in what we're not agreeing on, but there's such a love there that we want to understand the other. Like, you know, there's such a bond that help me understand you and help me understand what I'm not getting. Right. And too bad we don't have that love with every human being that we meet, because I think that love mitigates the. The knee jerk reaction. I don't want to hear this. I don't want to be challenged. It's important to be challenged completely. You know, 50% of the people I interview on this podcast say I wouldn't be who I am if I weren't with people that are different from me and thinking differently from me. Oh, my gosh. I know. We're way over. Okay. I don't want to miss the DEI point. You have time to stay with me? Five, three.

I do. Sure, sure.

Let's go on future trends of dei. Maybe we've touched on some of it, but I'd love to hear.

I think we, we have touched on a lot of it. Right. And I'm obviously very passionate about diversity, and this will be a bit of a controversial position as well, but again, I think that employees and employers, human resource leaders, like, need to be thinking at it from different angles if we're actually going to make progress in this area. And I think, I think where I see the trend going is that we are now in a place where we are ending up with. So people are, as people are being more honest and authentic and vulnerable and showing up as themselves at work. We now have all these categories. Right. People will say to me all the time, well, I appreciate that because I'm neurodiverse. Right. And we have veterans and we have ageism and we have, we have so many topics out there right on top of feminism and racism and anti Semitism and all of these issues and homophobia and all of these issues that were dealing with in terms of how humans treat each other in negative ways and the diversity and inclusion implications of that that were. It's almost becoming too much to manage. Right. I was at an organization's website the other day looking at their summer intern programs because I mentor a lot of university students and, and all, and, and all diverse demographics of my university students and multi multiple universities from California all the way to the east coast coast. And what I noticed was all of these programs, veterans programs, women's programs, underrepresented minorities programs, a Native American program, and on and on and on. And I thought how on earth are they managing all of that? Right. How are they managing all that diversity? And the college students, you mean the, the organization. Right. In terms of. And, and for the university students also having to label themselves. Right. I have a lot of mixed race friends who have then married someone and they're like, my kid is a quarter black. Like, like I don't even like what's the math? You have to be 51, 50. Like.

Well.

And is it just how they identify? Right. I've also had friends who are mixed race been called out in interviews saying I'm sorry, your application said that you're blank, you don't look it. Right. And so I think we're getting to the point where because we still have not done a good job job closing the, the disparities in terms of wealth gap and gender leadership gap, you know, and, and still have such disparities by race in this country that everything we have been doing hasn't worked.

And so I worked in, in order to create a truly equitable.

Exactly.

Workforce.

Really, it really hasn't. We have, I mean I work, work with diverse leaders around the organizations and they still feel very much tokenism. They feel that they're constantly code switching and that they have to adapt. They have to speak a certain way in order to fit out this. I was in investment banking and private equity my whole career with very few women in leadership roles. So I know exactly what, what it means to have to role model yourself someone differently than you are. Right. To really pull on my masculine energy in order to be able to make it every day. And so we're still, we're still treating people in the world where they're still trying to adapt to what the common power norm is. Right. And to what that center is as opposed to really starting to transform our own thinking and to spend time inward looking on our own biases. We went through unconscious bias training about 15 years ago. That was the real big norm in the corporate world. And then it fell out of favor. A lot of people didn't really like it. And so then we said, okay, now we need to talk much more openly.

Right.

We need people to really share their experiences. And then everyone started getting fragile and saying, now I'm. I'm the enemy now. And I don't like, I don't like that either. So we keep trying a lot of different things, but none of it is really moving the needle. And so I, I think we need to be. We. We really need to start looking at where, at. At more individual humanity. Right? And being able to really say, oh, if someone says something wrong or mispronounces it or shows up in a suit with the wrong color shoes or whatever, why does that matter to me? Right? As opposed to adjusting for them. Right? And being able to say, well, that's okay, we're going to make space for them anyway. We're going to let, like, we'll help them along. We'll help them fit in, really start to challenge, why do I care? What does professionalism even mean in today's world and why am I so obsessed with it?

Is there a strategy we can take from this conversation which I think can leave us feeling a little bit at sea? Meaning? The world is changing so much and the recognition of diversity can be truly daunting and confusing for so many people. You know, they, they might have very good hearts. They might say, I believe that people have the right to live the way they want, but I'm struggling with all the change and all the different ways. Ways we have to be. Is there a strategy we can leave people with leaders or.

Yeah, I think that, that if someone has gotten to the point where they say and feel all those things, they are implementing the strategy because it is about that, that self exploration, right? And that self inquisition and being able to be that in touch with ourselves. To say this, this is hard. This is messy. If we think we're going to go through life with a Instagram feed that's all golden retrievers and rainbows. That's Instagram. That might be what you've curated as your feed, but it isn't everyday life, right? Everyday life, if we're doing it right, it is supposed to feel messy. It is supposed to have some of the difficult conversations you and I have had about what. Where does the blur the line between my social life and my work life. And so that, that's the lesson learned for all of these trends, right? Is allowing, and I'm going to sound a bit of an individualist here, but to really allowing people to have that inward focus, to really question in themselves. Okay, what, you know, how do I make sure that I can show up every day as a constantly improving version of myself even if that means a little discomfort and pain and suffering along the way at least every day I can feel that I'm on that I'm on that journey. Right I didn't get locked into me this version the 24 year old me and then copy paste, copy paste, copy paste for the next 60 years.

Oh it's beautiful. May I add one more tip and see what you think when you were speaking for some strange reason what popped into my mind is so folks know my 98 year old mother died in March my 93 year old father died 10 years ago. Really they were the staunchest supporters of me but deep in my dad's heart so he was born in 1920 me a woman should stay home and have children because they were are the inherent nurturers. That's what he thought and my mother while she worked General Electric amazing you know jobs in ordinance the minute she married she or soon after she stopped working and she said basically a woman's you're not really a woman if you're not having children. She didn't say it like that but she felt that was the woman's role. So I bring it up because what she used to say when gender roles were kind of fluid and more changing in later years that women can work and not get married and not have what she said is it's much harder for people today to I think what she meant is to figure things out to it was easier in my day and what I tried to tell her and I'm going to leave people with this this is mom. You're right, it's not as easy but I'd ask you to have some empathy which was hard for mom and put yourself in people's shoes. The woman who doesn't want children, the woman who doesn't want to get married now right now in your generation that might be half a percent but think about what that woman feels when everyone is telling her she's not a woman if she doesn't have children. Children and mom didn't get it mom they both weren't the most empathic but this is what I want to leave people with. It's hard to embrace all of this change but I think empathy, more empathy and how I define that is not just sympathy but sitting in someone else's shoes that they don't identify with typical gender norms. Okay, you do but can you put yourself in the shoes of that person for a minute even if you think it's wrong? I'm just choosing that as an example that is their living reality. Can we have more empathy for that? And I think if we have that strategy, even if we give 10% more, as my tennis instructor used to say when I was exhausted in the tennis clinic, can you give me 10% more, 1%, more empathy, 10% that you don't have to believe it's right, but you can understand that that human is going through it. I think that our world will be a better place. Yes, there's complexity. Yes, it's harder. What do you think about all that?

I love that. I definitely think it's, you know, I think the human condition, right. It's just easy for people to say, to shut that noise off. Right? To say, okay, well, easier just easy. Give me the playbook. Right. Give me the play for being a woman or a man or. Right. And. Oh, and that there's only those two.

Categories and you're wrong. You're just wrong if you do it that way.

It's just. Why it's, it's weird. It's not normal. It's different. You know, it's different. And, and, and that's why I say when we talk about diversity and we have so many changing categories, right? We have, like no one talked about 20 years ago when I started business, no one talked about non binary, no one talked about neurodiversity. Like, these weren't really topics and now these are real topics that we really need to understand that every human can be crafted differently. And so I think empathy, you're right, empathy is a really key part of that. And it does require us to, to not allow like the ignorance is bliss thing. Right? That's the generations before us, that's how they lived. Like, it's just, it's, it's nice to be ignorant, right. And to feign ignorance and. Right. Even I, I know in the older generations, very often when the, when a conversation will start and we'll start debating, they'll say, oh, I, you know, I'm a different generation. I can't be a. That I. We think differently, right. As opposed to do. Being willing to come to the table and evolve and have that growth mindset to say. And that's where I think the generation behind us is doing a great job from that perspective because they are, they are willing to, to do that hard work. Right? They are willing to just say, yeah, it's supposed to feel messy. It's not always supposed to feel comfortable.

Well, Elizabeth, what a conversation. I loved it so much. Where, where can people learn about you? Where can they learn to you know, vet you and hire you and have you in. I can see your COO background, I can see how you fit into a male dominated organization and you made it work in, in amazing ways. Can you tell us where we can find more about you?

Best place to find me is LinkedIn. That's definitely where I'm, yeah, I'm easy to get a hold of there. It's where all my content lives, where there's, they can see what I do. So that's definitely the best place for people to find me. Follow me, reach out, connect, all of it.

Thank you so much for sharing. I know your head hurts, but I probed, I probed you.

It was good. This is you. I like a challenge, so it was good to get into it with you. Thank you so much.

Please come again for part two. We'll just talk another five hours. Everybody. I know you go, here she goes. She's going to say the same thing. Honestly, if you don't have a question about anything we said, we're, we're not doing our jobs, you know. Wow. I have a question about what I just said. So where you see this and it's going to be on LinkedIn, you know, it's on Insta, it's on Facebook. Would you please listen, share, like, comment if you don't like it. I do always say please share respectfully. That helps us hear you share a question, share a challenge. Challenge. The more we can discuss, debate, you know, have authentic dialogue. The more we all learn, the more we all grow. So I hope you love this conversation. Check out Elizabeth's amazing work, check out our Barbie comment and article. And I hope you love this and have a wonderful two finding Brave weeks. And we can't wait to hear from you and hope it was helpful. Thank you again, Lindsay.

Thank you, Kathy.

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